Hi AlexanderMerz,
Believe me, like I told BillS, I understand the shield struggle myself (see my comment about the UltimateGPS). I know I'm being really vague at this point, since I can't promise anything yet and we're all here just brainstorming, but let's dive into this shield compatibility issue a bit more. As I said, I'd rather keep my shield primarily for sensor, IO and FPGA use and have the Galileo team update their board to make it more compatible, but do you think there's a way to mimic a more compatible shield interface? What are some of the common issues with non-working Arduino shields on Galileo today? As I've only had GPS issues, I'm not aware of all the problems that I'm sure the community is experiencing.
I agree that we need to get a wiki or something set up and that documentation is key. We also need to explain our any RTL or software that you will need in a very thorough manner. I am a HW guy yes, but my background in computer engineering has given me a firm enough SW grasp to understand the need for clean code and documentation. My years of IT work writing detailed HOWTO guides also drives my love for documentation and I'll definitely see that you get the information you need.
I also understand that makers aren't going out and spending tons of money for board design software, fancy IP and flashy FPGAs. As a final test, I'm planning on testing the entire process (HW, SW, documentaiton, etc...) at my own home without any fancy tools. That means a cheap, working board, free software tools (Eagle, Linux, Altera's Quartus Web Edition or Xilinx's ISE WebPACK, etc...) and readily available components or existing shields/modules available on the SparkFun, Adafruit, Digikey, Mouser, etc... One interesting area, as I was explaining to BillS, is the DMA backend IP for the Hard IP core on the FPGA, which could run $10000s easily. I may have found a solution, which is still in the early research phase, of providing a resource that offers a free-to-try, full-featured PCIe DMA IP. I have been talking to a company called Xillybus (An FPGA IP core for easy DMA over PCIe with Windows and Linux | xillybus.com) about possibly using their product, which offers such a thing. But again, still too early to say :-) We'd provide the blank FPGA to you and then you could download their free-to-try IP. For the other RTL (sensor communication, etc..), we'd test that in-house and provide it open source.
Hope that helps.
Thanks!
Matt