Smallest/cheapest possible Python platform?

[tinnews at isbd.co.uk]

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> What's the smallest/cheapest/lowest-power hardware platform I can run 
> Python on today?  I'm looking for something to use as a hardware 
> controller in a battery-powered device and want to avoid writing in C 
> for this project.
> 
> Performance requirements are minimal.  I need to monitor a few switches, 
> control a couple of LEDs and relays, and keep time over about a 30 
> minute period to 1/10th second accuracy.  Nice-to-have (but not 
> essential) would be a speech synthesizer with a vocabulary of maybe 50 
> words.
> 
> The Rasberry Pi certainly looks attractive, but isn't quite available 
> today.  Can you run Python on an Arduino?  Things like 
> http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7250 are 
> more than I need, and the $129 price probably busts my budget.

Rasberry Pi is available, some have arrived, mine will arrive on
Monday or Tuesday (I'm talking about UK here).

I think getting python to run on an arduino device would be quite a
lot of effort even if it's possible.  You might want to avoid C but
the 'sort of C' on the Arduino is very simple indeed, hardly more
difficult than Python.


-- 
Chris Green