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Linux Wall Warts Small On Size, Big On Possibilities
davidmwilliams writes "Every geek and technology lover will undoubtedly have stumbled across online adverts for tiny headless Linux-powered devices that are barely larger than the power point they plug into. What can you actually do with them? Plenty, it seems!"
Did it really need 3 pages? Nope.
I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
SheevaPlug, I don't know about the rest of you but that name brings visions to my mind that has nothing to do with computers.
Got Code?
Plug computers are widely overrated. For the same price you can get a cheap home oriented NAS box like http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11384 with 1TB of storage that can be reflashed http://lacie.nas-central.org/wiki/Main_Page to do whatever you want.
With infinite programming capabilities for encryption of recordings, offsite backups, and other sexy things you can think of. Hook it up to a small sensor that triggers the recording whenever a door opens and it can get really interesting. Computer, webcam, sensor, all fitting in your jacket pocket to install at home when you go on vacation, in the hotel room when you leave for a day trip, at the office when you leave for the weekend etc.
I actually RTFA because I'm interested in these things... And found it a total waste of time. Let me summarize everything in it:
The small and cheap, low-power computer that you plug directly into the wall is actually a small and cheap, low-power computer. It has USB 2.0 (as can be clearly seen in all pictures of the device). You can install linux on it and do stuff that such a linux computer could obviously be used at: File storage, run FTP server, run apache, use it as SSH gateway... That's about the list of ideas mentioned in TFA.
Did anyone here actually find new information (okay, 3rd page has a bit of technical specs. Nothing unexpected, nothing that would have taken more than 2 minutes to google) or ideas in the article? If so, what were they? If I missed something essential, my bad... But this seems to contain zero information. Especially to someone who already has interest to such devices (obviously, if you've never heard of these "wall warts" ((Okay, I hadn't heard that name being used for these devices before)) before, everything there was new. Though I still believe that running ftp server or ssh gateway would have been about the first things you would have thought of yourself, too).
"What can you actually do with them? Plenty, it seems!"
Not really. The article spent 3 pages to say that you could use it as a file server with an external hard drive or... a web server. That's it?
This reads more like a slashvertisement for a product with no real purpose. Yes, it's great that it's cheap and runs linux, but if you need an external hard drive to get any real use out of it, what's the point in making it so small? Just make it the size of a caddy.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
The article mentions internet router, file storage, and print server. Really? That's the best you can do?
A decent dd-wrt compatible router is pretty inexpensive, and will give you a few port switch and a decent set of wireless antennas. Most people aren't so constrained on space that they can't tuck one away somewhere. They often include the capability of handling USB hard drives as well for file or print sharing. Many printers these days have built in ethernet or wireless to handle their own print serving capability.
Devices of this size do have possibilities, but the article doesn't mention anything really interesting. Apple has had its airport express base station for a while, and while it's mostly an ordinary wireless N router, it does provide music sharing via airtunes which works well if you happen to use the Apple/iTunes ecosystem for music.
So what do you do with a tiny Linux box? mpd or a squeezebox client would provide music sharing (though you can get Logitech's own radio for $100-$150, and it comes complete with a screen and controls). It would either need a good quality sound chip on it (unlikely) or a decent USB sound card (added expense, though).
What would be really neat is if they had an HDMI port for a thin client. Maybe an install of Android and its browser to turn a smaller LCD monitor into a little internet browsing box in otherwise cramped spaces (e.g. kitchen). Or have something powered off 12V and use it as the basis for a car computer.
Even with the current offerings, I'm sure there are much more interesting ideas that people could come up with (probably involving more significant hacking) than a file or print server.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Plug computers are widely overrated. For the same price you can get a cheap home oriented NAS box like http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11384 with 1TB of storage that can be reflashed http://lacie.nas-central.org/wiki/Main_Page to do whatever you want.
If you don't need the storage as much as you need the always-on/low power processing, you can get a WRT54-based router that can be relfashed with Tomato or DD-WRT, then you can install optware. The Asus WL-500G has enough guts to run Asterisk while still doing its primary purpose. Or maybe a cvs, svn or other repository. All for maybe half the price of the Sheevaplug. And much more available. Of course, it doesn't have the wall wart form factor, for good or bad. And it's not quite as discreet, if that's a requirement.
I am not a crackpot.
Torrent Slaves
I wonder ... if somebody made an image with a self-registering Tor relay* that looked at the TCP congestion control state and throttled dynamically ... and then people started dropping $100 on these and plugging them in to random office buildings where a free data jack and power outlet were available - how many of them would still be operating after a couple years?
* I know you said 'torrent slave', but it gave me the idea
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I own a few of these devices. My first one has a eSATA port that I connected to a 5 bay sata port expander. That has been my network DHCP/DDNS/fileserver/printspooler/VPN endpoint/etc for a while now. The problem is that its hard to justify when compared with the recent firewall/wireless devices that have USB ports for exactly this reason. Sure I can get ~60MB/sec, absolutely outrunning anything attached via USB, but it cost about 3x as much to get there compared with just purchasing a $70 netgear and plugging in a dual drive USB raid array.
Plus, these things _REQUIRE_ hacking to get them to do a lot of stuff. I wasted days of my life trying to figure out why the JTAG interfaces didn't work as documented, or trying to boot kernels that didn't come with the devices. Or even consistently boot off USB instead of internal flash. This would be fine, except they are hardly open devices. Much of the time wasted turns out to be endless reverse engineering closed portions of the device. Marvell publishes a fair amount of the documentation for them, but I quickly found, time and time again, that the information I needed wasn't available.
So, In the end, for low level stuff things. The AVR butterfly an similar devices are far better hacking platforms, and on the higher end its hard to ignore the atom nettops or dozens of very nice single board computers that are far more powerful for not much more money.