Template:NEXT/display

Led
How about two solder points for an LED on the main board so people can optionally add a 5V led for debug (attached to one of the digital I/Os - with sample C code of course ;-)

Video out
The ability to output video as composite and/or s-video would open up the possiblity of using the gumstix in the home theatre space. It would make a very small control/display unit for decoding content stored on a network attached PC or local USB drive. I'm not sure about the capability of the CPU's that are in the gumstix at the moment, but PocketPC's could certainly do this sort of task if they had the video-out and digital audio-out connectors.

FPGA or DSP expansion board
An expansion board with an FPGA or DSP chip. This would create many options for high bandwidth real time signal processing for audio and video. Compression research, video conferencing, object detection and tracking, and many other applications would become possible. The schematic and layout wouldn’t be difficult; the main issue would be the cost of parts and manufacturing for a low volume run. A Motorola DSP might be better for a hobbyist then a TI DSP because the cost of the TI JTAG setup is very expensive.

JTAG price can be solved by USBProg a multi purpose Programmer/JTAG. It cost 32€ assembled.

led/lcd terminal
A useful new add-on board would be a miniature terminal. This would be a board with an LCD panel and rubber QWERTY keyboard. This could be used to build devices like the Motorola TXTR D7 wireless SMS terminal for a mobile phone. This is a 54 x 18 mm unit with a 4 line x 20 character LCD screen and Qwerty Keyboard.

But a unit with a larger 5.6 inch VGA screen and keyboard may be more useful. This might be made inter-operable with the Microsoft Ford Sync car computer. It could then be used for playing music and video from a mobile device, as well as operating a mobile phone remotely. This could be built into a car dashboard, used in the home or made as a portable device. Another use would be for building a low cost educational computer.