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If *all* you want is a WiFi SSH client, hack a ZipIt. (mine's still on the way)

-Z

Is wireless ethernet and Linux (but not debian) good enough for you? If so...you can get the ARM based zipit for about $99. It has a normal stereo headphone jack, and what looks like an audio remote jack on it. You have to hack it a bit to actually get it to play mp3's and such, but the manufacture claims it will support streaming audio in the next firmware release.

http://www.elinux.org/wiki/ZipIt

The idea here is not for long movies, it is for short clips. I personally believe there would be a market for that type of thing.

That's what Mattel thought with their Juice Box before they fell from the market. Then again, had Mattel allowed personal video to be played with the SD/MMC adaptor along with the MP3 capabilities, they'd probably still have the item on the market.

Didn't Mattel learn their lesson in the 80's with the Intellivision II when it came to locking out third party addons?

I have one of these little darlings, and in addition to helping on the devel front I have done quite a bit of truly productive work actually using. The linux devices article was, quite frankly, the best starting resource to date for anyone wishing to obtain and play with a Zipit. Prior to it, there were no concise collections of relevant links. Do stop by the wiki, as it is currently under construction and showing some good progress.

For the curious, a brief overview of impressions and capabilities:

• The device comes (stock) with:
• ARM720T processor @ 90mhz
• 16 mb RAM
• 2 mb ROM for kernel and userspace programs
• 320x240 grayscale LCD
• Agere 802.11b/g wifi
• Wolfson Micro stereo DAC audio
• ships with linux kernel 2.4.21 with the rmk arm patch, as well as an aeronix-specific extension to this patch, plus wireless extensions
• the standard pcmcia-cs wifi driver with two relevant patches
• Busybox 1.00 pre1
• uClibc 0.9.15
• glibc-2.2.5
• Wireless Tools 26

Also included are non-GPL'd bootloader, audiodriver, and the zipit messaging application.

As-is when purchased, the device is indeed running linux natively. The appropriate drivers and programs are brought about with a few init scripts, all transparent to the user. The zipit messaging program is a rather large 1.6ish megabyte arm binary which includes framebuffer, embedded audio, some decent graphics, and generally stable performance. NOTE: The zipit messaging binary is statically linked to glibc, therefore containing GPL'd code, yet Aeronix has thus far refused to release the code for this program!! If this bothers you (as it should), do something about it. At time of writing, the current firmware does not support the playing of streaming audio, though it is promised in a future upgrade.

On the devel front involved in hacking the zipit, thanks go to Aibopet and Ken McGuire primarily for their work in deciphering the process by which the firmware operates and updates. The yahoo community by which much of this work has been accomplished, has also produced an OpenZipit linux "distro" of sorts. It is superior in several ways to the stock Aeronix linux distro; indeed, McGuire from the abovementioned yahoo group has rewritten the audio driver to perform much better than the supplied driver. Streaming audio via madplay and freebase is indeed possible, and having played with it myself, does truly function well. While a bit underpowered for some uses, the processor has quite enough power to decode mp3/ogg audio (if you want to whine about processor speed, go get a laptop; the zipit is not for you). Others in the group were instrumental in tracing gpios and adding a serial port for troubleshooting. OpenZipit includes, among others, madplay, freebase, dropbear ssh, and the busybox versions of (b)ash, vi, ftp, telnet, etc. Please see the yahoo message board and the wiki for more information involving OpenZipit and its specifications.

From a user standpoint, the zipit is quite useful. One of my specialties is in wireless networking and wireless security; the zipit is quite good for a handheld auditing tool. (a port of kismet is in the works, for those of you that are interested). The range and robust nature of the wifi chip has never failed to surprise me: it has better range and sensitivity (perhaps not on paper, but indeed in use) than many of the most popular wifi cards available (orinoco, senao). Additionally, with the dropbear ssh client, any open (legal) wifi signal is a free ticket to your box of choice for console based applications. Battery life is an astounding 6+ hours. The 2mb ROM is too tiny for much in the way of userspace apps, but as the device is built for wireless connectivity, ssh serves as a gateway to most applications you mig

http://www.elinux.org/wiki/ZipIt useful for anyone looking to hack it

There's a wiki dedicated to the ZipIt located here that contains useful HOW-TOs explaining how to install Linux on the thing... Myself and several others have written up tons of instructions on how to hack this thing. For example, I use my ZipIt as a wireless SSH client (the OpenZipIt firmware includes dropbear ssh...), and also to play streaming MP3 radio (groovesalad is nice...) It's a really cool device, and there's a ton of hacking potential...

There are always a few exceptions, and the JuiceBox looks like it's one of those. Probably for exactly the same reason that it failed in the marketplace as well - a $50 (questionably useful) toy is a bit too much.

The JuiceBox isn't one of the cheap, one-in-all chips: it's an S3C44B0X 66 MHz ARM7TDMI processor with 8M of RAM onboard (some have 2M) and an SD slot (via a custom connector, but you could make an adapter for roughly free by sampling the connector from Molex) with a uClinux distribution. Plus, JTAG pins are available on the far side. Hacking it into anything you want would be relatively simple.

This isn't exactly akin to a "toy". And it wasn't supposed to be $12 - but clearance sales are wonderful things, especially when they involve devices with LCD screens.

Looks like some interesting things....

2.75 inch 240x160 color LCD
http://www.elinux.org/wiki/JuiceBox

2.75 inch 240x160 color LCD

RTFA, where T = this:

More informative article on the Mattel JuiceBox

From what I can see (walmart.com, amazon.com, and froogle.com) the JuiceBox is about $40 to $50. The only place I can find it quoted for being less is at the blog that this story links to... Perhaps they were on sale, the unit was in an opened package, or the online prices do not reflect the in-store ones. I don't know. YMMV.

It seems that this would have been a more informative link to include in the story as it gives quite a bit of information about the JuiceBox and links to some of the code from Emsoft.

It does seem like an interesting device to putz around with but I'll hold out until you can display pics via wlan to it :)