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Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are several linux filesystems suitable for embedded work, and they are designed for flash-card environments. There's cramfs which is a read-only compressed filesystem so you can cram as much stuff as possible into limited Flash space (to upgrade you just re-flash the entire filesystem with a new cramfs disk image, good for simple devices that can be upgraded with new ROMs). There's ramdisks or RAMFS to complement cramfs and make a usable Linux system where nothing at all is ever written to Flash. There's also JFFS which is a journaled filesystem made explicitly for Flash devices, which does try to adapt to Flash's weaknesses. It is used on iPAQs and other handhelds as the main filesystem.

What about 299$ ? Axis 82 - Developer Board

is intermec printer's with ethernet ports on them allready. However when it comes to an older moddel or any other type of printer besides hp we use
Axis print servers... they can be flakey at times.. so i would recomend whatever you decide on order 3, just for backup purposes

You don't want to put a lot of noisy equipment in the baby room. Axis makes an all-in-one solution. Their webcams include the camera and webserver, with password protection. Output is JPEG, which is easily viewable from any browser.

The 2420 model looks promising. Let's review the requirements:

• UK compatibility: yes. Needs 9-15V, 10A AC or 8W DC power supply, which should be possible. As a bonus, it has analog output in PAL (or NTSC).
• Wireless: optional.
• Built-in server: yes.
• Good quality static image: up to 704x536 at low frame rate, or up to 25 frames/sec at low resolution.
• Audio: optional
• Low light bonus: down to 1 lux. Infrared version also available for 0.5 lux.
• Not always on: It has motion detection. Or, the wife could just disconnect a cable. (If you really need privacy, why are you using 802.11b?)
• Username/password protection: yes

Plus, it runs Linux inside!

I've never used one, but I think this has everything that you want, and more, for a low low price of USD 1240! It comes with a 30-day trial period. If it's out of your price range, you might want to compromise a bit on your requirements and check out their other models.

You don't want to put a lot of noisy equipment in the baby room. Axis makes an all-in-one solution. Their webcams include the camera and webserver, with password protection. Output is JPEG, which is easily viewable from any browser.

The 2420 model looks promising. Let's review the requirements:

• UK compatibility: yes. Needs 9-15V, 10A AC or 8W DC power supply, which should be possible. As a bonus, it has analog output in PAL (or NTSC).
• Wireless: optional.
• Built-in server: yes.
• Good quality static image: up to 704x536 at low frame rate, or up to 25 frames/sec at low resolution.
• Audio: optional
• Low light bonus: down to 1 lux. Infrared version also available for 0.5 lux.
• Not always on: It has motion detection. Or, the wife could just disconnect a cable. (If you really need privacy, why are you using 802.11b?)
• Username/password protection: yes

Plus, it runs Linux inside!

I've never used one, but I think this has everything that you want, and more, for a low low price of USD 1240! It comes with a 30-day trial period. If it's out of your price range, you might want to compromise a bit on your requirements and check out their other models.

You don't want to put a lot of noisy equipment in the baby room. Axis makes an all-in-one solution. Their webcams include the camera and webserver, with password protection. Output is JPEG, which is easily viewable from any browser.

The 2420 model looks promising. Let's review the requirements:

• UK compatibility: yes. Needs 9-15V, 10A AC or 8W DC power supply, which should be possible. As a bonus, it has analog output in PAL (or NTSC).
• Wireless: optional.
• Built-in server: yes.
• Good quality static image: up to 704x536 at low frame rate, or up to 25 frames/sec at low resolution.
• Audio: optional
• Low light bonus: down to 1 lux. Infrared version also available for 0.5 lux.
• Not always on: It has motion detection. Or, the wife could just disconnect a cable. (If you really need privacy, why are you using 802.11b?)
• Username/password protection: yes

Plus, it runs Linux inside!

I've never used one, but I think this has everything that you want, and more, for a low low price of USD 1240! It comes with a 30-day trial period. If it's out of your price range, you might want to compromise a bit on your requirements and check out their other models.

You don't want to put a lot of noisy equipment in the baby room. Axis makes an all-in-one solution. Their webcams include the camera and webserver, with password protection. Output is JPEG, which is easily viewable from any browser.

The 2420 model looks promising. Let's review the requirements:

• UK compatibility: yes. Needs 9-15V, 10A AC or 8W DC power supply, which should be possible. As a bonus, it has analog output in PAL (or NTSC).
• Wireless: optional.
• Built-in server: yes.
• Good quality static image: up to 704x536 at low frame rate, or up to 25 frames/sec at low resolution.
• Audio: optional
• Low light bonus: down to 1 lux. Infrared version also available for 0.5 lux.
• Not always on: It has motion detection. Or, the wife could just disconnect a cable. (If you really need privacy, why are you using 802.11b?)
• Username/password protection: yes

Plus, it runs Linux inside!

I've never used one, but I think this has everything that you want, and more, for a low low price of USD 1240! It comes with a 30-day trial period. If it's out of your price range, you might want to compromise a bit on your requirements and check out their other models.

when you can only write each bit a few thousand times, your disk is pretty much useless to run a modern OS off.

There exist specialized flash file systems that perform sector wear management, which eases wear and tear on frequently modified sectors, especially those containing directories and log files. A CompactFlash cartridge typically has such wear management on the drive's built-in controller.

If you give the thing enough SDRAM to hold the apps and the /tmp folder without swapping, and you run wear management on everything else, a CF cartridge should last quite a while. If that fails, use an IBM CF Microdrive; it still uses quite low current but may last longer than flash memory.

Try an Axis board. They are low power and high performance. The chip basically needs a voltage regulator and a crystal. Schematics are available and the software tools are free. They cost about $300 and run Linux.

Hello /.! Has anybody seen/tested/used AXIS's Power-Over-LAN equipment/midspans/adapters? What are your 2cents on them? Cheers, Paolo :-D

we use axis 2130 cams for our projects, and for the most part they do great with something like 100kbs bandwidth. granted they're somewhere in the four figures... ($1200 for ours b/c its PTZ) but its good enough quality that you can see individual's eye movements at a decent 15-20fps over business DSL lines. and the PTZ lets you remotely putz with what you want to look at.. granted there's no audio, but any midsize company can easily get their hands on a decent speakerphone setup.

anyway, my two bits.

From the second link in the article:

Performance:

The innovative 100 MIPS 32-bit RISC design delivers compact code and exceptional price/performance at low power consumption. An 8-kbyte on-chip cache helps to take full advantage of the CPU performance.

Or, from the top of Chapter 2 [PDF] of the Designer's Reference

It runs at a cycle frequency of 100 MHz, giving a peak performance of 100 MIPS.

Maybe its just me, but it looks like a 100 MIPS CPU to me!

Additionally, since it has a built-in MMU, the normal PC-centric view of the FSB being the bottleneck for memory doesn't apply. It supports PC100 SDRAM at 100MHz. Its just generating that 100MHz using a PLL and an external 20MHz clock.

(Said kind of slow, like I'm talking to a 3rd grader) Think of it as a "System on a Chip" (lets call it an SoC) where the northbridge and southbridge chipsets are integrated into the core CPU. The FSB you're envisioning is actually entirely internal to the chip. All you have is the interfaces that would normally come out of the chipsets.

I guess I'll just bite at all the flamebait that gets thrown my way...

From the second link in the article:

Performance:

The innovative 100 MIPS 32-bit RISC design delivers compact code and exceptional price/performance at low power consumption. An 8-kbyte on-chip cache helps to take full advantage of the CPU performance.

Or, from the top of Chapter 2 [PDF] of the Designer's Reference

It runs at a cycle frequency of 100 MHz, giving a peak performance of 100 MIPS.

Maybe its just me, but it looks like a 100 MIPS CPU to me!

Additionally, since it has a built-in MMU, the normal PC-centric view of the FSB being the bottleneck for memory doesn't apply. It supports PC100 SDRAM at 100MHz. Its just generating that 100MHz using a PLL and an external 20MHz clock.

(Said kind of slow, like I'm talking to a 3rd grader) Think of it as a "System on a Chip" (lets call it an SoC) where the northbridge and southbridge chipsets are integrated into the core CPU. The FSB you're envisioning is actually entirely internal to the chip. All you have is the interfaces that would normally come out of the chipsets.

I guess I'll just bite at all the flamebait that gets thrown my way...

From the second link in the article:

Performance:

The innovative 100 MIPS 32-bit RISC design delivers compact code and exceptional price/performance at low power consumption. An 8-kbyte on-chip cache helps to take full advantage of the CPU performance.

Or, from the top of Chapter 2 [PDF] of the Designer's Reference

It runs at a cycle frequency of 100 MHz, giving a peak performance of 100 MIPS.

Maybe its just me, but it looks like a 100 MIPS CPU to me!

Additionally, since it has a built-in MMU, the normal PC-centric view of the FSB being the bottleneck for memory doesn't apply. It supports PC100 SDRAM at 100MHz. Its just generating that 100MHz using a PLL and an external 20MHz clock.

(Said kind of slow, like I'm talking to a 3rd grader) Think of it as a "System on a Chip" (lets call it an SoC) where the northbridge and southbridge chipsets are integrated into the core CPU. The FSB you're envisioning is actually entirely internal to the chip. All you have is the interfaces that would normally come out of the chipsets.

I guess I'll just bite at all the flamebait that gets thrown my way...

First, people are mistaking the ETRAX 100LX (and its devel board) with the "MCM". Here is the MCM URL (IT HAS NO DEVEL BOARD)

Now, the chip is a "BGA", that means ball grid array. Imagine a socket 7 CPU. Instead of where the pins are normally, a BGA has a small ball of solder there. One usually needs a special machine to "mount" these to anything.

With that said, there are adapters that convert it to a simple socketable system. Perhaps if these get huge, a geek could track down the proper convertor and socket. Here is a pic of a convertor. (purple screw cap)

So, to clear things up, this chip ONLY requires power and a 20Mhz crystal to work, it basically has the "devel board" built in..

sboger@hotmail.com

Look at the complex addressing modes and variable-length instructions: hallmarks of a CISC. To quote chapter 2 of the documentation,

2.3 DATA ORGANIZATION IN MEMORY ...

Data can be aligned to any address. If the data crosses a 32-bit boundary, the CPU will split the data access into two separate accesses. The use of unaligned word and dword data will thus degrade the performance.

... 2.4.1 Addressing Modes The CRIS CPU has four basic addressing modes. These modes are encoded in the mode field of the instruction word. The basic addressing modes are:

• Quick immediate mode
• Register mode
• Indirect mode
• Autoincrement mode (with immediate mode as a special case)

More complex addressing modes can be achieved by combining the basic instruction word with an addressing mode prefix word. The complex addressing modes are:

• Indexed
• Indexed with assign
• Offset
• Offset with assign
• Double indirect
• Absolute

The addressing modes of the CRIS CPU are

Assembly syntax; Addressing mode
i, j Quick immediate
Rn Register
Pn Special register
[Rn] Indirect
[Rn+] Post increment
x, u Byte immediate
xx, uu Word immediate
xxxx, uuuu Dword immediate
[Rn+Rm.m] Indexed
[Rp=Rn+Rm.m] Indexed with assign
[Rn+[Rm].m] Indirect offset
[Rn+[Rm+].m] Autoincrement offset
[Rn+x] Immediate byte offset
[Rn+xx] Immediate word offset
[Rn+xxxx] Immediate dword offset
[Rp=Rn+[Rm].m] Indirect offset with assign
[Rp=Rn+[Rm+].m] Autoincrement offset with assign
[Rp=Rn+x] Immediate byte offset with assign
[Rp=Rn+xx] Immediate word offset with assign
[Rp=Rn+xxxx] Immediate dword offset with assign
[[Rn]] Double indirect
[[Rn+]] Double indirect with auto increment
[uuuu] Absolute

The chip itself is $40.
... plus $70 shipping charge outside Europe, according to their order page

If you want an idea of the types of products this chip could be used in, check out the company's main site.

http://www.axis.com/us/index.htm

Nope, you're all wrong. It uses the CRIS architecture. See here for the architectural description.

It is available.

The chip itself is $40. The eval board for the ETRAX 100LX is available for $299 as well as a version with bluetooth for $495.

Finally, the order page for both of these is at https://www.axis.com/shop/technology.htm.

It is available.

The chip itself is $40. The eval board for the ETRAX 100LX is available for $299 as well as a version with bluetooth for $495.

Finally, the order page for both of these is at https://www.axis.com/shop/technology.htm.

It is available.

The chip itself is $40. The eval board for the ETRAX 100LX is available for $299 as well as a version with bluetooth for $495.

Finally, the order page for both of these is at https://www.axis.com/shop/technology.htm.

Right now, for my own home, which isn't too big, I think something like the MSI transcieving module would be more like it. But I'd rather get something good from Axis which has excellent Linux support, than from MSI who doesn't support Linux explicitly at all.

I've dumped their sales department an e-mail about this now and then, but never got a response.

Boa is used in the Axis camera product line. Its also used in the Canon VBCam pan-tilt-zoom controllable camera.

Plus the fact it's been used in Axis web cameras for many years now (a camera with an embedded webserver, modem connection and network connection).

1. Without support for an autoiris lens, none of these cameras is suitable for outdoor use. If the sun were to come into the field of view, directly or through a strong reflection, the sensor would be irreversibly damaged. Axis has a camera that overcomes this limitation, their 2120 with an autoiris lens -- for considerably more money.
2. The Axis 2100 can support pan and tilt (or just about any other function) through its serial port -- if you're willing to work at it. I obtained from their tech support a daemon (serservd) which interfaces to the serial port over the network using telnet. This allows commands from, say, a Perl script to communicate directly with devices attached to the 2100's serial port.
3. Axis' use of Linux makes their cameras eminently malleable. The API/HTTP interface specs are published, and the latest firmware versions even support camera-resident shell scripts!

1. Without support for an autoiris lens, none of these cameras is suitable for outdoor use. If the sun were to come into the field of view, directly or through a strong reflection, the sensor would be irreversibly damaged. Axis has a camera that overcomes this limitation, their 2120 with an autoiris lens -- for considerably more money.
2. The Axis 2100 can support pan and tilt (or just about any other function) through its serial port -- if you're willing to work at it. I obtained from their tech support a daemon (serservd) which interfaces to the serial port over the network using telnet. This allows commands from, say, a Perl script to communicate directly with devices attached to the 2100's serial port.
3. Axis' use of Linux makes their cameras eminently malleable. The API/HTTP interface specs are published, and the latest firmware versions even support camera-resident shell scripts!

Another camera, the Axis 2120 has built-in motion sensing and up to a 30 FPS framerate, and an auto-iris lens for indoor/outdoor applications. Be forewarned, it isn't very cheap.

Disclaimer: I am not an Axis employee, and I do not sell their products, but I have owned an Axis camera (2100, as in the review) for nearly 3 years now.

If it is not clear enough, you should know that Axis supports the community and actually runs embedded Linux with features like NTP, FTP, SMTP and dial-up-when-triggered-by-external-switch and other nifty features.

JFFS is the Journaling Flash File System developed by Axis Communications in Sweden, aimed at providing a crash/powerdown-safe filesystem for disk-less embedded devices. It is released under the GPL, and the current version works for the Linux 2.0 kernel series and memory-mapped industry-standard flash-memories (aka NOR-flashes).

No, yerricde knows quite a bit more than you do about this topic.

There are two main types of flash memory, the NOR flash and the NAND flash. Here are the similarities:

• They are non-volatile.
• You can write in small chunks (even as small as one byte), but you can erase only in large chunks (as much as 100K).
• Writing refers to changing a bit from the erased state to the opposite state. You cannot reset that bit back to the erased state without the bulk erase.
• It wears out after a number of erases, much sooner than hard disks wear out.
• Reading is fastest. Writing is much slower than reading. Erasing is much slower than writing.

• NOR flash erases to 1, and NAND flash erases to 0.
• NOR flash tend to have a smaller minimum write block size, while NAND flash tend to have a smaller minimum erase block size.
• NOR flash don't tend to need error correction.
• I think NAND flash tend to be cheaper.

Therefore, unless you're storing simple information (infrequently-changing things like game save data, or configurations), you need a real flash file system. Simply using something like FAT16 or ext2 directly on flash will fail miserably. Check out JFFS for a journaling flash file system for Linux.

I wouldn't say incredibly small, as it is on the order of meters. Also, you could put up an access point, like Axis 9010 which has a quite reasonable range. Actually, I think this is a good idea.

If you do build one, an Axis board would be a perfect. Boots from flash, has dual serial, has ethernet, and runs Linux!

Well, true that they are not similar technologies, but BT access points are becoming increasingly popular. Here's one. Now, they seem to me to be limiting tchnologies, except that if you have a lot of BT already... Also the BT SDIO card for Palm handhelds is tiny, so people like that.

Can't help but agree with you. The Axis 2400 is the best piece of equipment of its class that we've ever used. Hardy and robust, the darn thing takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. Ours never goes down and has never given us one minute of grief. Highly recommended. Of course it's a big plus in our book that Linux helps make it possible.

The Axis 2400 video server also uses embedded Linux, not sure which flavor.

We have an older 2400 and when I recently upgraded the firmware they had switch from whatever they were using to Linux. I was impressed. In addition to adding a number of new features, including a doubling of the frame rate, I got a command line on the server!

The server is used to post images on a weather site here

I really want a BT access point, I was just hoping the prize would come down a bit to make it viable for home use. I really don't need the range either.

Actually, you can buy outdoor enclosures and mounting systems like the ones from Pelco for the Axis cameras. If you don't want to do it yourself, there are many retailers who build complete packages of cameras, enclosures, and accessories.

Also, ThinkGeek sells the Axis 2100 and the Axis 2120. And to make it even cooler, the cameras run Linux.

Their network cams use multipart jpegs over HTTP. You can simply save off the growing jpeg file on a disk, or you can also set the camera to automatically upload a incrementally-numbered file onto an FTP server every n seconds, or you can write a small script that'll pull the file from HTTP every n seconds ...

What's more, you can also use third-party free software such as VNCCam that will allow you to customize and view your camera's display over VNC.

That's what I use for an indoors security solution : I have one of these cameras bolted on a ceiling (it comes with the hardware) of a room that has expensive equipment. For indoor use, these little cameras work great, they're reliable, they only cost between $500 and $1000, and they're a no-brainer to get going. However, if you plan on outdoors security, an Axis camera is definitely not what you want.

My EUR 0.03.

There are actually quite a few network cameras available if you don't need a high-speed camera. Most have a built-in webserver, and several run a version of embedded linux. My personal favorite (and Ed's) is the Panasonic KX-HCM10 which can be had for as low as $329.99. The Axis and Samsung cameras are pretty cool too, if you can afford them.

Other cameras include the StarDot NetCam, which is also available from ThinkGeek (along with the Axis 2100 and 2120 cameras) and the IQeye cameras.

The real advantage to these is that you can simply plug them into your network and watch [whatever] through your web browser. My interest stems from my upcoming need to be able to work and keep an eye on a baby sleeping at the same time. There are, of course, baby monitors that come with little TV's or that plug into your television, and the annoying X10 cameras, but they all require a separate monitor and need extra gear to be viewed in more than one location. With a network camera, not only can we watch the kid from any computer in the house, but relatives can watch too, over the internet. And all I need to do to set it up is plug it in and set the IP address.

The PC running it currently has to be a fast machine, becuase of the Windows requirements. Linux however, could use much lower requirements.

Thing is, when you're making an automated saw for $100k, you don't give a toss about what kind of computer is needed to run it. You care about:
a, Making people buy the saw.
b, Making sure it doesn't break down.

And point b is where Linux wins. Even if we assume that NT doesn't fall over, you're still going to need a hard drive purely from a bloat point of view. In the embedded arena one huge advantage Linux has is that it can be put on 2Mb of flash that is soldered to the board. No moving parts = very happy automated saw manufacturer. Reducing the number of cables, connectors, fans etc. must also not be overlooked as a major way of increasing reliability of embedded systems.

Wouldn't it be great if your employee didn't feel like working that day, fired up regedit and made a few small changes ?

Not a problem, NT embedded wouldn't even have regedit on it.

Plus, when you start looking at the outrages licensing ammounts for Windows. Linux, starts looking VERY nice.

NT Embedded is $70/licence. Again, nothing in the $100k saw, especially if it reduces development costs. The good thing is that Linux is getting such a stronghold in the embedded arena that it looks very unlikely that developing for embedded NT would prove cost effective.

a large PDA company like Palm to start offearing it on a few Palm Pilots

Problems with the design requirements for low power kernels. A low power kernel basically has to get the processor back to sleep ASAP. Multi-user requirements (for instance) take a major back seat here. Luckily processors are getting much more efficient and moore's law is looking to pick up Linux on it's curve as it goes past. Go look at the power consumption vs mips figures for the Intel Xscale. Bloody stunning.

Dave

PS. Check out this bitch, then rejoice, for Linux rules in embedded.

Actually, there's a filesystem designed for this very application. It's called JFFS, or Journaling Flash Filesystem. The original development for the filesystem was done by Axis Communications, but it has since migrated to the kernel proper under the term JFFS2. You can probably follow discussions regarding this filesystem and the kernel API at the Memory Technology Devices site. Check out the mailing list archives and/or subscribe to linux-mtd from the aforementioned site.

> Quite right. I'll be getting an XBox first thing on Nov. 8, and
> next thing I'll do is crack it open and get Linux running on it.

Then, stop feeding Microsoft and buy a real computer.

Want some nice platforms to hack on? Look here,
here, here, here, here and here.

Some are expensive, some are cheap, but I bet that all
of them will be way more interesting that any Microsoft
crap. And there are plenty of these around.

But, please, stop giving more money to Microsoft.

1. You can't hand-solder BGA's
2. And even if you tried, you'd need an X-Ray machine to check the work

Actually, those serial ports make it looks a very small amount like a transputer or the 21364 Alpha chip; at $75 a chip and 100 MHz, more like the transputer I suppose. Now, imagine using the serial links to do fault-tolerant distributed lock management and request forwarding, and the EIDE for snoopy-NAS. (You can't do disk-mirroring on one node, so don't ask to. You have to do mirroring across the network.) 4*$100 40GB drives, $75 CPU, $50 512MB ram, $50 PCB, $50 power. $625 for a 160GB storage block.

Now, that would make an interesting cluster-app.

fx:reads website.
fx:jaw drops
Looks like someone already thought of that.

Respect for the development board; it's got screw terminals. Now to justify this from the development budget ...

I followed the links to the company's PDF of it... Have a look http://developer.axis.com/doc/hardware/etrax100lx/ 18354_etrax_lx.pdf

Responding to self...

Poking around a little, I found this:

Snap Server supporting AppleShare, NetWare Bindery, SMB, NT Domain Controller, and remote administration.

Also, less interesting, basically a plain headless PC box with drive bays. Axis Storage Server, from the same guys who make the self-contained network-attached web camera.

I was looking to do a similar thing except for my home.

I would strongly recommend an Axis 2120 Camera. They have an auto iris lense to prevent it from damage when exposed to sunlight, it can also be hooked up via 10/100 ethernet or standard serial port to a land line or a cellular modem.

This will provide for much more scalability. It also has built in motion detection and can send pictures via FTP before after and during a break in. It also has a build in web server, and can alert you via email when an alarm is triggered.

I'm currently using several Axis 2100 cameras and I think they're great. They can very easily be hooked up to a motion sensor like JiNG described. These cameras have been mentioned several times here on slashdot and you can check them out at: http://www.axis.com/products/cam_2100/ If budget permits (they're about $500 USD each) I would give this camera a try.

Ahh, finally! Microsoft's first bad move. This is but the beginning of The Big Fall. Historicly, prententious decisions like this one are known to set off the first in a series of events that eventually will cause an empire to fall apart. Just take IBM, for example: "Bah, personal computers. People want mainframes. We know because we own this market".

People of the open-source world, unite! And lobby for Bluetooth like you never have lobbied before. Bluetooth support for Linux is already in place, now use it.

You might be able to find some info on the Bluetooth on Linux homepage pages from Axis.