UPDATE:

I know its been a bit since the log update, so I'll summarize:

- Turns out the board for the Rock2 did die, sadly, beyond repair. So we got it RMA'd and purchased another one. The delay in the project is mostly due to this.

- We've put together a small test fixture to hold the LCD panel, touchscreen digitizer, and the associated control boards for the LCD panel. (pictures to be posted soon). Thanks to my Dad for the precision cutting :-). This also delayed the project slighty as both of us wanted something a little more stable than the cardboard box that I cut apart.

- We've also purchased and received the DSP, DAC and associated hardware for the audio processing part of the project (once again, pictures to be posted soon). Tested basic functionality and we were both very pleased with the results.

So, at this point we will be working out some of the finer details of the actual workings of the software, right now we are sticking with Android, as opposed to a true Linux distro, for a few main reasons:

1. Easily integrated applications and the ability to play nicely with our smartphones (and their applications).

2. Driver support for the board is fairly robust, and in its current state things work pretty nicely with the Android OS. Though for the touchscreen and a few small things we may have to compile some drivers/support into the kernel, but that shouldn't be too bad.

3. Android seemed a bit faster on that board vs. Linux. Now, that being said I'm sure the kernel was not as optimized as it could have been, and there were some things running that I'm sure could be turned off, but either way integrating things that we wanted to work properly seemed like a bit kludge and they did not operate as smoothly as hoped.