This month, Analog Devices gives away the FireCracker embedded processing reference design and development board, which has been developed by Silica. The platform, worth 499 euros, is based on the powerful Blackfin processor and is designed with industry-standard interfaces and peripherals. These components streamline the customer development process by providing fully verified functional modules that eliminate the need to perform detailed design of common embedded sub-systems. The FireCracker base board includes - where applicable - a ADSP-BF537- or ADSP-BF527-based Core Module from Bluetechnix supporting 10/100Mbit Ethernet, an on-board Xilinx XC3S1000 FPGA and associated SRAM and Flash, a USB-based JTAG interface, a connectBlue wireless LAN module, a connector for a 2Mpixel CMOS camera, a Sharp 3.5" TFT display featuring 320x240pixel resolution and a touch-screen controller, connectors for analogue audio in and out - using the ADI AD1936A -, connectors for Composite Video in and out - using the ADI ADV7183 and ADV7391 -, a Zigbee enabled wireless interface, a USB-to-UART bridge, a CAN driver, an SD card socket, and an optional Blackfin Debug Agent. In addition, there are several expansion connectors to extend the capabilities of FireCracker, which also ships with a number of demonstration and evaluation software modules that allow recording, file transfer and playback of audio and video files. The compact and reusable core modules connect to the base board through two 60-pin connectors.