
$100 Linux wall-wart launches - naish
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9634061300.html
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noonespecial
I'd just like to point out how exciting this actually is, because it seems
like the reviewers mentioned it but missed the point.

This isn't some vaporware product that some company is geewizzing us with that
will likely never get released. The greatness here is that its _completely
open_. Not "going to be open when we're done with it". You can download the
schematic _now_. You can get a dev kit _built by someone else_ now.

For $99 you can start automating your lavalamps right away. The internet of
things starts with the plugs. Tres cool.

~~~
jodrellblank
How will it help me automate my lavalamps? It plugs into a wall socket, but it
isn't a wall socket.

It's no different from a hacked Linksys WRT54G or any hacked Linux powered
home NAS, except in shape and openness.

And openness isn't a great distinction compared to a hacked Linux powered
device, since their closedness has been worked around.

I don't see it as especially exciting - it has no ethernet-over-mains or
wireless or switching or any other tech that makes it inherently geared
towards home automation, it's just another linux powered print/disk/ssh/web
server, isn't it?

~~~
noonespecial
Its open. That's the greatness. The dev kit is a little lacking but already it
has GPIO pins if you wanted to do a relay and a usb port for a $20 spark-fun
"usb-whacker" if you're too lazy for gpio.

The point is that with the schematic and the backing of Marvell, it will be
easy for relatively small players to add cool innovative features with custom
builds. Every time I find a place to buy a WRT54G, its different inside and
takes a lot of googling and fiddling to get any linux at all on its _tiny_
flash.

The Linksys WRT54G or any hacked Linux powered home NAS are finished products.
This is an exciting beginning.

Note: I actually chose lavalamps as an example while looking at the little usb
lavalamp on my desk and thinking about writing a tiny web app for this little
box so that I could plug it into the usb port and have a "computer free web
enabled lava lamp" anywhere in the house. The simple (usb to) serial commands
to make the lamp come on and change colors would be super easy with this
little device.

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mattjaynes
If you don't feel like parsing the article:

It's a tiny linux server that plugs directly into the wall like a night-light
called the SheevaPlug.

It has:

512MB of DRAM

512MB flash storage

gigabit ethernet

USB 2.0

1.2GHz CPU

Nice little device - I'd love to see how folks plan to use it.

~~~
blasdel
It'd be great if it was significantly cheaper, with much lower specs: <128mb
RAM, 100mb ethernet, ~300mhz CPU, etc.

As is it's ridiculously overpowered for it's niche, and at $99 it's too
expensive to be 'throwaway'.

~~~
wmf
Those specs are pretty similar to a hackable wireless router or a Gumstix.
There are plenty of slow embedded devices available already; I like this one
_because_ it is powerful.

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staunch
I read that as Wal-Mart launching a $100 Linux-based PC.

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10ren
This is a classic case of a potentially disruptive technology, by targeting a
different market from PCs.

I can't see Microsoft or Intel being able to compete in this low-power, low-
margin space, but as this device gets more powerful, and even cheaper, it
could creep up into their spaces.

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onk
<http://www.bash.org/?5273>

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savrajsingh
Where is the Wifi? This thing is great, and I have an awesome application for
it, but it needs to connect to my home wireless network. ;)

~~~
nirmal
There is USB Host so there is always the option of a USB based Wifi card. Not
fast but possible.

~~~
jrockway
Why "not fast"? USB 2.0 is 480Mbps, 802.11g is 54Mbps.

~~~
nirmal
I was speaking from general experience with USB wifi cards. Maybe the hardware
just sucked and not the standard. :)

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kqr2
Too bad it doesn't natively support homeplug networking:

<http://www.homeplug.org/home>

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jacquesm
if you'd teleport that thing back two decades you'd be burned at the stake for
witchcraft. Simply amazing, that kind of tech in such a package. I'm pretty
sure they could make a it lot smaller and cheaper still if the demand is
there.

~~~
cperciva
No you wouldn't. Go back two decades nobody will be able to tell that the GbE
and USB2 actually work -- or even know what you're talking about if you tell
them what those two sockets are for -- so the reaction you'd get would
probably be along the lines of "ok... so you have a $100 box which plugs into
the wall and lights up a red LED?"

~~~
jerf
There's a decent chance that the GbE can fall back to 10Mbps ethernet, just as
it can certainly fall back to 100Mbps ethernet. The 10Mbps Ethernet standard
was released in 1982
([http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/09/19FEether.sb2_1.ht...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/09/19FEether.sb2_1.html)),
so I'm going to guess that by 1989 there must have been at least one 10Mbps
card.

Edit: It occured to me I should check the timeline on 100Mbps ethernet.
According to <http://www.broadcom.com/company/timeline/> , the first 100Mbps
ethernet product was shipped in 1994, so we're definitely looking at 10Mbps.
(Note even if that's off one way or the other by a year or two it doesn't
matter for this discussion.)

USB will be a problem, because they'll have to reverse-engineer the protocol,
but I'm sure with work they could get it to fall back to a USB1 speed that
they could figure out how to work with. The problem there isn't so much the
USB as figuring out how to send keyboard events, but even then I bet they
could figure it out pretty quickly since I'd lay money the USB keyboard
standard is deliberately as close to the old keyboard standards as possible.

However, you are grotesquely underestimating the people of 1989 if you think
they're going to be shocked by the idea of a "faster serial port with some
defined standards for devices", and you're just factually wrong that they'll
be confused by an ethernet port. RS-232 serial ports date back to _1969_ , and
survived into the mid-to-late 1990s, for instance.

This is another one of those "there really isn't anything new in computing
under the sun" things. It's hard to name an idea that someone from 1989
wouldn't have heard of or understand, they just lack the hardware to
experiment with it for $200 1989 dollars.

Have more respect for your predecessors. They were not stupid. They just had
much more expensive cycles.

~~~
dfranke
You'd have trouble with speed autonegotiation, though. That wasn't developed
until 1995 and GigE won't work at all with peers that don't support it.

~~~
jerf
Thank you, good point. Looking at the protocol on Wikipedia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonegotiation>) it looks very reverse-
engineerable with not much work, but yeah, it won't work out of the box.

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emilis_info
I searched all those product sites and couldn't find any detailed technical
specs. The question that interests me is how can I run Debian/Ubuntu on it.

Other than that, the idea is awsome. I've been waiting for somethinng like
this for years.

~~~
kqr2
[http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/de...](http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/SheevaPlug_DocumentationPackage.zip)

It has instructions on how to install a stripped down ubuntu 9.04 jaunty image
onto it.

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BjornW
Mhhm add another network connection, install Tor , privoxy and perhaps some
other network encryption / clean up tools. Config with sensible defaults et
voila: nice userfriendly device to overcome data retention.

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gsiener
Very cool. I would love to see this market converge with the Arduino scene to
create some very novel uses for interaction. Heck, maybe this is the sort of
device that could help launch the "Smart Grid" everyone's getting so worked up
about.

