The Plug Computer

[fguy64]

Are you familiar with this? It's a little black box just a few inches in size, with an ethernet connection and plugs into a wall socket. It has a Linux Kernel in there somewhere.

You can actually create a "Plug Farm" just by lining a few up on a standard power bar.

At this point I'm a little unclear as to it's programmability, but it is apparently quite versatile. The key point is that it is very inexpensive, and uses little power and space. Probably very handy for certain network services.

http://www.ionics-ems.com/plugcomputer.html

[geese]

I've seen devices like this. It usually is very lower powered but very good to do ssh or other remote connections. At my last job we used one for displaying some stuff on a large monitor. As for programmability, I'm not sure about that.

[Freston]

Interesting little thing, isn't it? There's good documentation on getting ARMedslack installed on that device.

[D-cat]

Seems lacking in a critical area; storage. 512MB flash is not only small by today's standards but it doesn't indicate anywhere that the built-in storage is replaceable. What happens a couple years down the road when the flash storage starts burning out? Using say a SDHC slot (or something similar, can be hidden) for cheap compatible replaceable internal storage would seem to make sense to me.

Short of that, this appears to be a really cool device and I can already come up with uses for it just at home... I can only imagine how much I could cut the power bill by not having certain full size systems on 24/7. If I could get one with twice the RAM and storage, it could be used as a graphical server for a Linux Based Thin Client (it might be able to work as-is, but I'd think functionality would be limited)... Full speed on-line computing at 1/10th the power requirement (or less, I haven't done the math). This has even more potential use where a large reliable power grid isn't available. Could it function as a server for OTG OLPC schools?

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I noticed that there was no price listed, so I went looking. I found another plug computer, almost identical, listed for $99 USD... and it runs off a SD card. It quotes a higher power consumption though (19W, as opposed to Ionics' 5W). It's still a lot better than th 300+W of most of todays desktop/towers. Pay attention to the wattage draw of your proposed external storage as well (assuming that's part of the intended use) as it all adds up.

SheevaPlug Dev Kit

[fguy64]

Seems lacking in a critical area; storage. 512MB flash is not only small by today's standards but it doesn't indicate anywhere that the built-in storage is replaceable. What happens a couple years down the road when the flash storage starts burning out? Using say a SDHC slot (or something similar, can be hidden) for cheap compatible replaceable internal storage would seem to make sense to me.

Short of that, this appears to be a really cool device and I can already come up with uses for it just at home... I can only imagine how much I could cut the power bill by not having certain full size systems on 24/7. If I could get one with twice the RAM and storage, it could be used as a graphical server for a Linux Based Thin Client (it might be able to work as-is, but I'd think functionality would be limited)... Full speed on-line computing at 1/10th the power requirement (or less, I haven't done the math). This has even more potential use where a large reliable power grid isn't available. Could it function as a server for OTG OLPC schools?

---

I noticed that there was no price listed, so I went looking. I found another plug computer, almost identical, listed for $99 USD... and it runs off a SD card. It quotes a higher power consumption though (19W, as opposed to Ionics' 5W). It's still a lot better than th 300+W of most of todays desktop/towers. Pay attention to the wattage draw of your proposed external storage as well (assuming that's part of the intended use) as it all adds up.

SheevaPlug Dev Kit

When you discuss lack of storage, well I'm no expert but i would have thought that appropriate use of NFS to mount a remote file system would address storage issues. Is that relevant to the type of storage you refer to?

regards.

[D-cat]

I was referring to root storage. Unless I wanted to make just about every system directory an external mount, this device would be limited by capacity to what applications could be run on it. It's plenty sufficient for typical low user server-only systems, but the capacity crunch would be felt if using as say a TC NX server, especially if you're basing it on one of the heavier WM's like Gnome.

I have a tendency to think beyond developer's intended use.