Alphalem’s ARM-Powered Rex Is A Robot Controller Board

January 13, 2014December 3, 2018 Aseem Girkar 7 Comments Alphalem, Brain, Controller Board, Kickstarter project, Rex, Robot, Robotics

We all know that some day Robotic technology will take a big leap and come out with amazing robots, but to achieve such thing makers and enthusiasts should come up with a robotic project that enhances the robotic development. Well, it seem there’s a company thinking of the same and has roll out a new development controller board for robots, called the Rex. The Rex is a robot controller board or you can say a new brain for robots introduced by Alphalem, a company based in San Mateo, California. The Rex is a palm-sized, single-board computer designed specifically for DIY type robots.

Rex – A Robot Controller Board

It provide high-level control over microcontrollers such as Arduino, sensors and motor drivers in robot. The developers even claim the Rex to be as small as the Arduino Uno and more powerful than the Raspberry Pi microcontrollers. How to use the Rex? The Rex is basically designed to work out of the box with a self-contained development environment. So, users can interact with it through a command-line interface over a PC serial port using a USB-to-Serial adapter.

The Rex features a dedicated camera and audio ports that can be used for advanced algorithms like object and speech recognition, adding of servos and motors is easy, allows simple power routing i.e a 6-12V battery not only powers the boards on one hand, but also powers anything connected to other output side, and also a kill-switch to cut power to the motors without shutting down the rest of the system. Rex will come with pre-installed Alphalem OS which is a FOSS custom linux distribution, including a core set of built-in device drivers.

Here’s the Hardware specification for Rex:

Texas Instruments DM3730
1 GHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-A8 Processor core
800MHz DSP core
512MB LPDDR RAM
USB Host port
MicroSD slot
Camera Module port
3.5mm Stereo Audio-in jack
3.5mm Stereo Audio-out jack
14-pin GPIO header
6-12V Battery Pack Input for mobile development
5V Regulated Input for desktop development

The Rex robot controller project which is currently over the kickstarter website is looking to raise funds to convert their amazing robotic concept into a large production. So, if you think Rex can contribute for Robotic development in future, you can head over to the Kickstarter website and make your contribution. Till then check out the video demonstrating the Rex concept:

Any queries? Please mention in the comment below. Stay tuned for more updates.