Here you will find some of the things you will need to set up a PIP of your own.

Required Hardware

PIP is built upon the gumstix platform and you will need at least the following components to get a unit set up.

• Verdex motherboard
  
• network and storage expansion board
• console board
  
• Some type of USB camera (preferably one that uses the pwc driver)
• Optional: wifi module
• Optional: USB power injector or hub to power your camera. This will depend on the type of camera you want to use.
  

Required Software

You need to be using Linux. Most of the development work has been done using Ubuntu but any distribution should do. You can find a list of the required software at http://www.gumstix.net/Software/view/Getting-started/Setting-up-a-build-environment/111.html.

We have made some changes to the default gumstix build environment. You can check out our custom build environment from http://github.com/jdegges/gumstix-pip-oe/tree/master. This code base will include almost all of the software that will be run on the PIP.

Getting Started (the easy way)

Download our pre-built PIP images from the Downloads page (you will be redirected to github.com where the files are hosted). Then you can skip to Basic Gumstix Setup for instructions on getting those images loaded onto your gumstix. Once they are loaded see "Post Installation Setup" for instructions on how to connect to your PIP node, install the web interface, and make any further customizations.

Getting Started (the advanced approach)

If you want to compile your own images, make modifications to the default packages, settings, or anything else then follow these pointers.

* Build the images and install them onto the gumstix. You can refer to Flashing the filesystem and Basic Gumstix Setup for more help with that as well as to the gumstix documentation, http://www.gumstix.net/Software/cat/Software-verdex-pro/111.html. In the future we plan to provide you with pre-built images.

* Configure the networking to suit your needs, Flashing the filesystem and Ad-hoc Connectivity.

* If you run out of memory on the Gumstix, try Booting from microSD/SD/MMC.

* If you run into any trouble along the way you should read the Gumstix Open Embedded Common Sense page. It may have some information to help you out.

* It is also useful to run your images in an emulator before installing them on the boards, you can find out how to do that here: Using QEMU with Gumstix Images.