My main issue with using a full-blown linux device for IoT is that it's a full blown linux device. Not only is it harder to get up and running IMHO (vs just flashing your code to esp8266), you need to maintain a full OS which is a hassle security wise in the longer term. I get that there are some advantages, but overall I think IoT is better off as simple as possible.
Also, it's not possible to take the RPi zero seriously until they start shipping in any serious quantity - I don't like the play they've made by keeping it scarce.
> Also, it's not possible to take the RPi zero seriously until they start shipping in any serious quantity - I don't like the play they've made by keeping it scarce.
What do you consider to be serious quantity? You can order 250+ of them off Digikey right now or go into any Microcenter and buy them.
By choosing more complex, extendable system, the manufacturer can deliver extra functionality.
But on the other hand, every bit of additional complexity requires maintenance (both security and as standards evolve).
IoT companies rarely seem to care about the latter, which ultimately only impacts the customer (unless there's a recurring service model of revenue).
Something like the digital hazardous waste idea should be mandatory in the IoT space. Either: (a) you provide timely security patches for all shipped code and a way to apply them to your product, OR (b) you freely offer such tools, keys, and source as are necessary for users to self-patch.
Don't want to be responsible? Don't include unnecessary functionality.
Not in the same league (faster + more RAM but bigger + more power hungry), but the breadboard friendly form factor makes it very close to be the ideal minimal Linux module.
And note the comment that Transcend released the firmware (though that link is offline today.)
However I guess there really just aren't all that many use cases for this kind of a server. Or maybe it has been superseded? One page[1] lists it as weighing just 2 grams, compared with the weight of 2.5 grams for a U.S. penny. That's gotta have some sort of applications. Why isn't this more popular at $30, or what are people using instead? Is it like, impossible to get any ports out of it, even a single serial debugging port via soldering, so you can't connect it to anything else?
At first I thought it referred to just 3 MB of RAM (ouch!!) - but it has 32 MB. That's enough to do quite a bit in a stripped-down embedded Linux.
To quote that page:
>An exciting time indeed - now this WiFiSD card is a perfectly working ARMv5 computer with a kernel and ramdisk we can build, and 16GB of storage. Pity it only has 32MB of RAM. Well, we do have ability to modify the kernel now. I added support for swap, ext4, sysfs, loop, and a few other modern conveniences we all know and love. Once again the card booted. Now I was able to swapon a file on the SD card, loop-mount a 2GB ext4 filesystem and chroot into a version of ubuntu in there. Once inside, it is the nice and comfy environment you'd expect. I was able to bring up sshd with X-forwarding, and even run firefox on the card (it was slow). Modifying the card's boot scripts again, I tried to get it to do all this on boot and succeeded. SWEET!
....for about $30 and in the size of an SD-card and weighing less than a penny. With WIFI.
My use case would be to turn a 7 years old camera (which is still better than most phone cameras) into a WiFi networked camera so that when I shoot photos of items I'm selling on Ebay it directly uploads them to my home server (NFS/SMB). For that use it wouldn't even need the flash storage: just buffer in RAM until the image is uploaded.
The 2x Ethernet is a little quirky in implementation: Internally, the CPU only has one ethernet MAC, which is connected to a switch on the same die. In practice, linux sees two ethernet ports, but this is implemented by VLAN tagging on the internal switch. So if you think you have two actual ports and want to interact with VLANs, you're gonna have a bad time.
And the performance isn't very good either from what I have heard. It is a good candidate if you want to try and make something cheap, but few (none?) of the offerings really are (olimex has one if anyone is interested). Personally I am pretty tired of the Linux ecosystem in general. It is pretty well known that you can ship broken stuff by slapping an open source sticker on it.
The thing just is that TI didn't exactly retain the people that know the internals of the OMAP series. If you hit any bugs you're on your own unfortunately. (Your milage with the existing documentation may vary also).
Of course it will be produced for as long as customers want it.
But the roadmap makes it also crystal clear where they are going: More DSP cores.
We likely won't see anything newer than the Cortex-A15.
TI builds what enough customers want, and if you're not locked in enough to their DSPs or general ecosystem, you'll move away. That in return means there won't be anything new. No single customer is big enough to warrant bigger cores alone.
A nice quote I remember "I'd rather buy TI stocks than their products".
I was interested when the campaing came up and ordered a VoCore2 + Ultimate Dock (42$) back in november 2016. Never received it (must have been lost somewhere).. so I lost all interest in it.
Do you know the fischertechnik toy line? It's a little bit like Lego technic (fischertechnik fans will hate me for this comment because fischertechnik appeared in 1964, while the first Lego technic was introduced only in 1977).
They have a programmable controller for their robotics models: 600MHz ARM CPU and 256MB DDR3 RAM. We are talking about a toy line here :)
That's because a lot of pins are configurable (there is a muxer on them), so you could have a maximum of 40 GPIOs but if you want say, an SPI port, then you get less GPIOs.
You can get pretty fantastic latencies on stock linux with some tuning, with the kind of processors embedded linux runs on you only really gain some microseconds by going to realtime variants. The main reason to prefer a true RTOS is because it will generally be simpler, and thus a bit more predictable and reliable in its behaviour, which is important for high-reliability systems.
I have one from the original crowdsourcing campaign, with an audio dock. Interference makes the sound quality is so bad it's unusable for any practical purposes. Support was useless.
HappyAlbatross is right: you definitely have a grounding problem, either due to missing proper ground or having a ground loop somewhere. Also if you're using a switching power supply and/or a class D amplifier (that is, a switching amplifier [1]), they can be real nightmares if not properly filtered, and cheaper ones almost never are.
Grounding and ground loops, filtering and decoupling are complex issues which would need entire articles, but there's a lot of stuff on the net to get you started.
Long story short: don't throw away your board, the problem could disappear just by changing a power supply or rewiring ground connections.
[1] They use the same identical principle behind switching power supplies but applied to driving speakers: performance is fantastic compared to current draw, but they tend to produce lots of harmonics and RF noise just like switching power supplies.
Website says: "It will help you to make [...] the tiniest router in the world."
Got one of these and I'm pretty sure they're quite smaller: http://amzn.asia/d/idyKhjN
Makes me wonder if I could turn those Japanese routers into computers (they're dirt cheap at £8.50)...
Yours are thinner, not smaller overall I think. The Vocore is basically the size of an ethernet port, judging by screenshots.
Still, in the end, you're correct that it's not real news that the size of a full Linux-capable computer is now entirely dictated by the type of physical interfaces you need. There is nothing you can do with a Vocore that you couldn't already do with other similarly-sized boards.
If you want tiny, the Elecom WRH-583BK2-S is as wide and high as two RJ45 jacks (yes it has two RJ45 ports) and like 2.5" deep (65 × 35 × 20.5 mm). If there's a smaller dual Ethernet wifi router I have yet to learn of it. Please let us know if you know of a smaller one!
Overall it’s an impressive little package, however I’ve been finding that you need to underclock the CPU to make it stable. Or possibly use a giant heat sink, but that would somewhat counteract the benefits of such a tiny board. Do you know if Neutis have found a good solution for keeping the H5 stable?
However, in broader strokes, I’m pretty excited that we’re starting to see these boards with open hardware designs (the vocore and the beagle, for instance). Being able to use this to bootstrap more complex board designs feels a bit like how web apps became a lot easier once the so-called LAMP stack was robust enough to build on top of. There’s additional hurdles with hardware, for sure, but each barrier removed is meaningful progress.
The Neutis is $49, the VoCore2 is $18. They seem to have different power consumption as well. While it might be similar in size, the cost difference is substantial. The best choice as usual depends on the project.
I take a major issue in their usage of OpenWRT. It seems to me that every hardware I touch with OpenWRT included is out of date - or "well aged". As soon as you try to modify something in the OpenWrt interface and/or update the system, half of the features do not work anymore - luckily the reset button usually works.
At least the OpenWRT variant they are choosing looks recent. Good luck!
I'm at the point where I only get Raspberry PI-based hardware. This way I know that I'm able to update/or reinstall in a year or two.
Oh dear - no HTTPS on that page. But, it does host a store section that lets you add stuff to your cart and then click a checkout button. That button takes you to PayPal (unless an attacker re-directed you elsewhere). Its not clear to me that there would be any real way to verify that what you are paying for the stuff from that website - it seems relatively straightforward for an attacker to modify the PayPal link to send you to pay for stuff on their store.
Basically, this seems like a pretty irresponsible way to run a web store.
I e-mailed the support email about it. I got a response back - I think I convinced them to do it: "Thank you. You are correct, I will go to godaddy and get one :) it is fashion. Regards Chin"
It seems a full day has passed since you've posted the message. I've just checked the store and it's still served through a plain old unsecure HTTP connection.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadIt will start to become competitive once it is actually cheaper than Raspberry Pi Zero. Especially as the Vocore2 is MIPS-based.
Also, it's not possible to take the RPi zero seriously until they start shipping in any serious quantity - I don't like the play they've made by keeping it scarce.
What do you consider to be serious quantity? You can order 250+ of them off Digikey right now or go into any Microcenter and buy them.
By choosing more complex, extendable system, the manufacturer can deliver extra functionality.
But on the other hand, every bit of additional complexity requires maintenance (both security and as standards evolve).
IoT companies rarely seem to care about the latter, which ultimately only impacts the customer (unless there's a recurring service model of revenue).
Something like the digital hazardous waste idea should be mandatory in the IoT space. Either: (a) you provide timely security patches for all shipped code and a way to apply them to your product, OR (b) you freely offer such tools, keys, and source as are necessary for users to self-patch.
Don't want to be responsible? Don't include unnecessary functionality.
The Vocore2 looks like a considerable step up, but without mainline Linux support it's of limited utility.
Not in the same league (faster + more RAM but bigger + more power hungry), but the breadboard friendly form factor makes it very close to be the ideal minimal Linux module.
https://hackaday.com/2016/06/30/transcend-wifi-sd-card-is-a-...
which links this article:
https://jamesone111.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/exploring-the-t...
So this is a Linux server in the size of an SD-Card that has 16 GB of storage. And Wifi. And lets clients connect to download whatever's on them.
I was thinking, wow, this must be some pro photography thing costing like $399 or something.
The cost (given in the second article) is £25 (which is $32.19 today.)
That is pretty cheap for a tiny Linux server of this size. With WIFI.
And it made the rounds 5 years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Transcend%20Wifi-SD%20card&sor...
What is the world coming to.
By the way here is the one where HN discussed it the most:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647434
And note the comment that Transcend released the firmware (though that link is offline today.)
However I guess there really just aren't all that many use cases for this kind of a server. Or maybe it has been superseded? One page[1] lists it as weighing just 2 grams, compared with the weight of 2.5 grams for a U.S. penny. That's gotta have some sort of applications. Why isn't this more popular at $30, or what are people using instead? Is it like, impossible to get any ports out of it, even a single serial debugging port via soldering, so you can't connect it to anything else?
It just seems so hackable!
[1] https://www.extremedeals.com.ph/products/transcend-16gb-wifi...
http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=15&proj=15.%20...
At first I thought it referred to just 3 MB of RAM (ouch!!) - but it has 32 MB. That's enough to do quite a bit in a stripped-down embedded Linux.
To quote that page:
>An exciting time indeed - now this WiFiSD card is a perfectly working ARMv5 computer with a kernel and ramdisk we can build, and 16GB of storage. Pity it only has 32MB of RAM. Well, we do have ability to modify the kernel now. I added support for swap, ext4, sysfs, loop, and a few other modern conveniences we all know and love. Once again the card booted. Now I was able to swapon a file on the SD card, loop-mount a 2GB ext4 filesystem and chroot into a version of ubuntu in there. Once inside, it is the nice and comfy environment you'd expect. I was able to bring up sshd with X-forwarding, and even run firefox on the card (it was slow). Modifying the card's boot scripts again, I tried to get it to do all this on boot and succeeded. SWEET!
....for about $30 and in the size of an SD-card and weighing less than a penny. With WIFI.
It's a TI AMxx series linux computer in a package on package module like a raspberry PI is.
It comes in two variants, a regular pitch BGA and an ultra wide BGA so that it is actually possible to hand solder it! (or with hot air or a toaster.)
It is what is used on the Pocket Beagle.
It saves you the need to to most high speed signals and really the hard parts of building a higher-performance board.
More expensive than Pi however. I can get an entire pi for the same price as this module,
Lots of compromises in the sbc space. A lot aren’t required but cost is the most common factor.
https://training.ti.com/sites/default/files/docs/TI%20Missio...
A nice quote I remember "I'd rather buy TI stocks than their products".
Looked promising, though.
This is small supercomputer!
My first distribution (Slackware 2.0) was running on a P75 MHZ with 8 MB.
They have a programmable controller for their robotics models: 600MHz ARM CPU and 256MB DDR3 RAM. We are talking about a toy line here :)
Yep pretty crazy nowadays, although if I would be playing with electronics, I guess I would just use the ESP32 instead.
“Around 40” GPIO pins
That said, Linux can be built in a realtime mode.[1]
[1] https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/realtime/start
SpaceX uses Linux but also uses VxWorks for the real time pieces.
I mean... you just defined real time there.
http://forum.vocore.io/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3500&p=5185
[1] They use the same identical principle behind switching power supplies but applied to driving speakers: performance is fantastic compared to current draw, but they tend to produce lots of harmonics and RF noise just like switching power supplies.
Makes me wonder if I could turn those Japanese routers into computers (they're dirt cheap at £8.50)...
Still, in the end, you're correct that it's not real news that the size of a full Linux-capable computer is now entirely dictated by the type of physical interfaces you need. There is nothing you can do with a Vocore that you couldn't already do with other similarly-sized boards.
https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Wireless-Portable-Travel-Rout...
Only downside is they're $29.
http://www2.elecom.co.jp/products/WRH-583BK2-S.html
Overall it’s an impressive little package, however I’ve been finding that you need to underclock the CPU to make it stable. Or possibly use a giant heat sink, but that would somewhat counteract the benefits of such a tiny board. Do you know if Neutis have found a good solution for keeping the H5 stable?
However, in broader strokes, I’m pretty excited that we’re starting to see these boards with open hardware designs (the vocore and the beagle, for instance). Being able to use this to bootstrap more complex board designs feels a bit like how web apps became a lot easier once the so-called LAMP stack was robust enough to build on top of. There’s additional hurdles with hardware, for sure, but each barrier removed is meaningful progress.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17285411
I'm at the point where I only get Raspberry PI-based hardware. This way I know that I'm able to update/or reinstall in a year or two.
Basically, this seems like a pretty irresponsible way to run a web store.
Or he is telling me to get lost.
It seems you were told to get lost.
Be prepared for a surprise when you try making wifi work on that thing
RT5350, 360 MHz, MIPS 24K, with 32MB of RAM.
CPU datasheet: https://www.mouser.com/ds/2/813/RT5350-1022839.pdf
Vocore2: MT7628AN 580 MHz MIPS with 128MB DDR2 and 16MB NOR: $18
Omega2+: MT7688 580 MHz MIPS with 128MB DDR2 and 32MB flash: $13
Both have b/g/n Wifi and are 10/100 ethernet ready. Omega2 software is based on LEDE.
Note that there is a SMT version SoM of the Omega2+, the Omega2S+ which is around $10 per unit when buying trays of 50.
http://vocore.io/v2.html