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Tiniest Linux COM Yet?
DeviceGuru writes: "An open-spec COM that runs OpenWRT Linux on a MIPS-based Ralink RT5350 SoC has won its Indiegogo funding. The $20, IoT-focused VoCore measures 25 x 25mm. How low can you go? Tiny computer-on-modules (COMs) for Internet of Things (IoT) applications are popping up everywhere, with recent, Linux-ready entries including Intel's Atom or Quark-based Edison, Ingenic's MIPS/Xburst-based Newton, Acme Systems's ARM9/SAM9G25 based Arrietta G25, and SolidRun's quad-core i.MX6-based MicroSOM. Now, an unnamed Chinese startup has raised over six times its $6,000 Indiegogo funding goal for what could be the smallest, cheapest Linux COM yet."
Just like "Web 2.0" and other non-concepts, this term gets used to pretend something is a new version of something else, just because its "Internet". Its a small computer, just like small computers that are already in things. Get over it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
These little guys appear to be running Linux, and some are even hackable (I'm not affiliated with any of these companies/blogs): http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...
http://haxit.blogspot.com/2013...
http://hackaday.com/2013/08/12...
Who else pictured Linux running inside a MS-DOS program?
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Here is a blog from the developer: http://vonger.cn/
Judging from the entries this thing looks real enough
open-spec COM OpenWRT Ralink RT5350 SoC Indiegogo IoT-focused VoCore
The only word I understood was "Linux".
TL;DR
All I got out of this comment is "I am not much of a geek". You might be more at home on reddit.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Open-spec: Open specification (i.e. you don't need to sign anything to get the documentation)
COM: Computer-On-Module, otherwise known as a single-board-computer (but smaller), usually a SoC (System-on-Chip) with very few other components
OpenWRT: Linux distribution with a focus on small installed size, spin-off from the Linksys WRT54G router firmware which Linksys had to make available under the GPL.
Ralink RT5350: System-on-Chip with a MIPS CPU architecture core and assorted peripherals (network interfaces, serial interfaces, etc.), made by Ralink.
SoC: System-on-Chip, a single chip (package actually) implementation of a computer system, including all necessary peripherals and interfaces.
Indiegogo: Crowdfunding platform
IoT: Internet-of-Things, marketing term for putting many small things on the internet which were previously too dumb to network (light bulbs, toasters, etc.)
VoCore: Product name of an open-spec Ralink RT5350 SoC based COM running OpenWRT for which the developers seek funding on Indiegogo.
Apparently it has a pin out dedicated to PORN ;)
https://images.indiegogo.com/f...
It's the whole thing (RT5350 SoC (OpenWRT device tree file), 32MB of RAM and 8 of Flash, along with the antenna and assorted support passives).
The board that provides wired ethernet and USB in their usual connectors(and presumably with the magnetics for ethernet) and a micro-USB +5v input is additional.
So you can get fully up and running for $20 (and a +5v source to apply to the correct contact), presumably good for adding a wifi connection and a moderately capable command-and-control module to something that can hang from the GPIO or USB data lines.
If you want the wired interfaces, and a little case, and need a PSU, because this isn't being integrated into something, it'll cost more.
What I got out of it is that he's not an 'IT Geek.' That's a specialized kind, ya know. Do you have a good understanding of the relative benefits of CMOS and TTL? How about the different types of lapidary grit?
I agree, though, that Slashdot isn't so much 'news for nerds' as it used to be. It's infested with IT types who think they're the whole community.
Wasn't the theory behind the Rise Of Embedded Java that companies would move between suppliers fairly rapidly (which they do) in order to keep BoM to a minimum and that those moves would involve disruptive changes of CPU architecture(which appears to be much more rarely the case) thus driving them to write as much as possible in Java for easy porting?
As it is, ARM doesn't exactly appear to be, um, strongARMing, licensees on fees, at least if the fact that MIPS is more or less standing on a street corner and begging people to care about them, and SPARC might actually be easier to download and burn into an FPGA than it is to buy premade at this point. Doesn't mean that ports are free and fun, since all the exciting details of platform drivers and dysfunctional bootloaders and such haven't been hammered out; but sticking to a single CPU architecture for extended time appears to be easier and cheaper than ever.
That market niche is actually doing better than most of embedded Java; but Maxim-Dallas' iButton package concept seems to have gotten pretty badly hammered, despite their mechanical virtues. A nontrivial number of the fancier contact smartcards run some flavor of teeny-Java; and fulfill the same basic role of being authentication devices powerful enough to handle their end of doing Proper Crypto; but smartcard form factor, contact-pattern, and external protocol seems to have mostly crushed 1-wire.
So small, there's no room for mounting holes, aside from the through-hole vias. Is that normal for COMs?
The ones that expose a substantial number of I/Os often repurpose whatever flavor of DIMM or SODIMM socket is current at the time, since that's a well known, mass produced, connector that can handle the fairly touchy signal integrity demands of RAM and so is probably qualified for most assorted I/O stuff.
If you don't go that route, the alternative for getting that small is usually some sort of terrifyingly fiddly fine-pitch Hirose connector(Gumstix COMs are good examples of doing this).
Through-hole limits the number of lines you can break out; but is cheap and hobbyist friendly. Given that volume customers would probably just use the R5350 directly on their product's board, it's probably a fairly logical choice: if they make the board bigger, it becomes less useful for people who really need something compact, and (if you add the additional connectors, USB, ethernet, that the larger board would allow), starts to step on the toes of more powerful devices or re-purposed routers with their casings popped off; while, if they make it any smaller, they'd have to go with some fairly nasty, hobbyist-scaring, connector, at which point it'd just be a low-volume prototyping board for people who are going to go buy bare R5350s instead when production time comes.
You might as well buy the bare chip for u$s 5, it's almost the same as this board.
How much will you charge me to deadbug it to an ethernet socket?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you combined it with PoE it'd make the perfect retrofit for old satellite dishes, e.g. Primestar. And in general, would make dandy small access points.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"