
WRTnode Opened for $25 - Noel_lo
http://wrtnode.com/
======
samcrawford
Great effort, lovely little device. Building your own hardware is not easy to
do cost effectively!

But a few niggles:

\- Quoting RAM and flash in Mbits? Whilst that may be the norm for buying
components, I'd argue most people familiar with OpenWrt and the Raspberry-Pi
generation are going to miss this detail and think "Oh wow, 512MB RAM and
128MB flash!", when in fact it's 1/8th of that.

\- There's some mention of a standard shield, but no information on what it
includes or when it will be available.

\- Like others have said, that scrolling on the website is extremely annoying.

Regardless, I will definitely be buying one anyway.

~~~
noonespecial
The Mbit thing is quite common in the embedded world. When I saw this my first
thought was "oh wow, twice the specs of my current favorite OpenWRT hack
platform (the TL-703N) at about the same price _and with gpio exposed_.
Awesome.)"

~~~
hardolaf
I never see Mbit in the embedded world when talking about RAM or Flash. I
always see KB or MB, never Mbit.

~~~
guelo
Agreed, bits should only be used for bandwidth.

------
noonespecial
It feels like theres like a Lagrangian point out there in device space that
these devices are converging on. It doesn't quite exist yet, but we are
getting tantalizingly close. It networks like a Cisco, runs linux like a
server, has GPIO like an Arduino, and costs as much as a Latte.

Once it exists, its almost like computorium, becoming the center of nearly
every maker project and then _staying there_ because its so cheap you don't
have to choose which projects get your precious dev boards.

This is a fantastic step towards that goal.

~~~
diminish
and it's sold in packs of 6 or 12 at your local discount store or walmart,
right next to the pens.

------
peterwwillis
I hope this trend of really annoying scroll-skipping goes away like flashing
"under construction" .gifs and framed pages.

~~~
ris
Absolutely. It's all very well and clever until you can't read all the text on
the final page because it flows off the bottom.

------
coin
Website is totally obnoxious on a mobile device - no pinch zoom, no scrolling,
must press little dots to "scroll".

~~~
dangerlibrary
It's just as obnoxious to try scroll through on desktop.

~~~
kazinator
Any electronics-related web page that uses "shield" other than as meaning "RF
emission/reception blocking element" is automatically obnoxious, mobile or
not.

~~~
patja
it is a very common and well known term in the Arduino world, and the physical
appearance of the device with all of the header pins would immediately suggest
shield applications to anyone who has spent time with Arduino

~~~
mhb
Why is 'shield' more appealing than 'daughterboard' anyway? Gender neutrality?

~~~
kaoD
Linguistic economy.

~~~
mhb
Maybe not if you take into account all the people who will need an explanation
of why this item is called a 'shield'.

------
rffn
Could I have this please with 802.11ac WiFi, 5GHz, preferrably supporting a
4x4 MIMO setup. I would love to have an open access point for my network. I
like to have more than 300Mbps and to avoid the 2.4GHz network though even
more. I understand this owuld be more expensive, but would be willing to pay a
higher price.

~~~
ajb
I don't think networking is the market of this thing, despite the name. In
fact, it could probably use a different name. It's a mips24k; I doubt it can
do software networking at the 300mb speed the wifi runs at.

~~~
listic
Do you have an idea how much of bandwidth a MIPS cpu like that can push?

The chip is actually made for routers: it has 802.11n "MAC/BBP", 5-port 10/100
switch, etc.
[http://www.anz.ru/files/mediatek/MT7620_Datasheet.pdf](http://www.anz.ru/files/mediatek/MT7620_Datasheet.pdf)
I wonder how "Hardware NAT with IPv6 and 2 Gbps wired speed" works if the
switch is only 100 Mbits...

I guess if what you want out of this is really a router, you are supposed to
either build the rest of the hardware yourself or wait for yourself, or wait
for the "motherboard" module for this.

~~~
ajb
I do, thanks.Hmm, let's see if I can give you the information without breaking
a confidentiality agreement. Ah, here is a discussion on the openwrt mailing
list: [https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2013-Augus...](https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2013-August/020963.html) As you can see, they reported 90mb/s (they also
quote 710, but I think that is the switch doing that). And that's on a
mips74k.

I know it's made for routers, but most likely not for doing a lot in software.
As you quote, it does _hardware_ NAT. There's a reason they put that in.

There isn't a fundamental reason why the mips couldn't do the job, but running
stock linux it's going to be thrashing its L1 cache, and it doesn't have an
L2. Also, next time you play with one of those,check the hardware counters for
how many instructions/sec it actually manages to process running flat out :-)

~~~
listic
90Mb/s at least? Makes sense that they won't go for the gigabit Ethernet. Any
idea how that compares to ARM with the same frequency? I'd say about the same.
That's not bad, right?

~~~
ajb
I would guess about the same; I didn't have two similar ones to compare. The
mips might be a bit slower though. I had the sense that the limitation was
really L1 thrashing of code space, so the ARM being a bit denser might help.
It would also help if the SOC had a smaller latency to memory as well - don't
know what this one has.

Bear in mind that it's probably a packet rate rather than a bit rate
limitation. That really bit us in our application because we were trying to
run many lines of voip, which means lots of small packets. - YMMV.

------
patrickod
Scrolling on this site w/ a mac is incredibly frustrating. It keeps resetting
to the top of the page.

~~~
vhost-
Linux too.

------
cbhl
This webpage doesn't seem to interact well with Mac's touchpad scrolling...

~~~
wlesieutre
It doesn't interact well with _any_ scrolling

------
tormeh
Is it open hardware if the ISA of the processor is not free (in both senses)?
I think MIPS (which this uses) is free, but I see a lot of open hardware where
I doubt the ISA, much less the architecture, is free.

~~~
yasth
Generally in the "maker" community open hardware is based on layout and
software level openeness. So board layouts are shared even if the internals
are not.

This is what allows adruino to be open as they share layout files and
software, but the Atmel AVR micro-controller they use does not have an open
design.

It does get confusing since there are open hardware projects that go down to
silicon, but for the most part that level of design is just beneath the
concern of the people who want to internet enable their fridge or whatever.
Just like most computers contain closed source code in the form of controllers
and all but the most extreme open source types just don't care that they have
a closed source USB controller.

~~~
tormeh
Well, my beef with it is that the proprietary blobs should be interchangeable,
and that requires an open ISA, the silicone can be as proprietary as it wants,
as long as the interface is open.

~~~
noselasd
That would make any attempt at creating such a device very hard, if not
futile, and not economical.

The ISA is just a small part of what's required. All the other interfaces are
just as important such as pinouts, memory mappings, memory interface, bus
support and so on.

There's very few SoCs from different vendors that are interchangeable even
among the ones that uses an open ISA. This requires you to either build
everyhing from scratch including the CPU, or to use more generic and perhaps
interchangeable CPU or microcontrollers and rather push the special components
to other chips instead of having those components on a SoC - which gains you
nothing.

Meaning the value of using an open ISA is miniscule as long as the code is
available and easily translated to another ISA by a compiler.

------
jamiedernoob
my favorite is the banana pi: gigabit, sata etc

[http://www.lemaker.org/](http://www.lemaker.org/)

[http://www.linuxx.eu/2014/08/banana-pi-raspberry-pi-
upgraded...](http://www.linuxx.eu/2014/08/banana-pi-raspberry-pi-
upgraded.html)

~~~
Ecio78
uhm I checked if this could be a good solution for mediaplayer usage, but it
seems not: [http://openelec.tv/forum/124-raspberry-pi/71202-banana-
pi](http://openelec.tv/forum/124-raspberry-pi/71202-banana-pi)

------
guelo
What are the power specs? For battery powered applications like the shown
mini-quadcopter you really need to know the watts as well as weight.
Admittedly, WiFi has a very spiky power consumption profile.

~~~
Noel_lo
Current consumption: 0.13A - same module, wifi off 0.17A - same module, wifi
enabled 0.14A - dock (RJ45 included) + wifi off 0.20A - dock (RJ45 included) +
wifi enabled

according to one of WRTnode from
[http://openrouter.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=36058](http://openrouter.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=36058)

and WRTnode is about 20g in weight.

------
pourred
Looks like a Carambola2 (19€).
[http://8devices.com/carambola-2](http://8devices.com/carambola-2)

Same amount of RAM and flash, but different SOC.

~~~
makomk
There's several similar boards; off-hand I can think of the VoCore, the AsiaRF
AWM002, and a couple of unbranded Chinese ones.

------
api
This looks really awesome. I've been contemplating a KickStarter project for a
Linux networking device for a while, and this may well make it possible at an
attractive per-device price point. Everything else was either too pricey or
not quite powerful enough.

------
unwind
Previous submission that sank:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181321).

~~~
Fastidious
This proves one thing: you need to keep trying.

~~~
4ndr3vv
or get a "flashy" website that enrages people enough to upvote rant

------
codehero
Can anyone comment on the read/write performance of SPI flash? Seems like it
would be similar in performance to SD card, but without the wear leveling?

~~~
listic
AFAIK, SD cards do not have wear leveling, SSD drives do.

~~~
bradfa
Many SD cards have wear leveling built in, but most of the algorithms and CPUs
used for the controllers are quite crap at wear leveling. If you start looking
at more industrial targeted SD cards you'll find quite decent wear leveling.

------
manfeel
The best mips based wireless router dev board I've ever seen! and I've added
an OLED screen on it, works like a charm ;-)

------
ErikRogneby
An excellent price point with wifi included.

------
yangquan3
hardware is very good

~~~
yangquan3
The board is very good

------
yangquan3
good hardware

------
chrisBob
I always find it hard to take things seriously when they are written in poor
english. "Will coming soon" makes me worry about the quality of the rest of
the project, maybe more than I should.

~~~
nknighthb
I bet if we could read their Chinese website, the copy would be perfect.

Some manager who probably doesn't speak much English has tasked a random
person on their staff who went to college in the US or UK with writing their
English copy, without realizing the difference between "this person can
communicate effectively 1:1 in English" and "this person can write formal
English like a native speaker".

In other words, a task is being supervised by someone who doesn't understand
the task. Just like every other company we deal with. As native (or at least
highly fluent) speakers, we just happen to be competent to critique it.

~~~
cflee
Yes, the Chinese website ([http://cn.wrtnode.com/](http://cn.wrtnode.com/)) is
perfectly fine. (Chinese is my second language.)

However, I would not immediately characterise the copy as written by a US/UK
college grad though - it feels like it is written by someone who learnt
English on the mainland.

I don't really know why companies in various parts of East Asia don't
hire/outsource to someone who actually is highly fluent in English to
write/edit their copy. Sometimes I suspect it is simply due to cost, other
times I suspect they just don't realise that their fluency is not quite..
'international English' level

(No offence to anyone who runs/writes for East Asian company websites.)

~~~
nknighthb
For my coworkers based in Taiwan who are somewhat fluent, they mostly don't
recognize it, and really can't.

Their limitations are effectively hidden from them. Odd things still come out,
but in informal contexts it's not worth correcting, and there's little
opportunity for formal critique. (There's also the issue of "face" that
complicates matters and drives me insane. It's easier with people who have
spent a few years in the US, though.)

If there's no (near-)native speaker around to check, nobody's going to notice
until it goes out to the world, and then there are a half billion people ready
to jump on it.

If they recognized it, I don't think cost would be a factor. I could
review/correct a site like this in an hour (or less). I might spend a day on
the mini-manuals that come with some gadgets.

