Slashdot Mirror
Israel's SolidRun Creates Open Networking Kit Inspired By Raspberry Pi (venturebeat.com)
Reader joshtops shares a VentureBeat report: SolidRun, a developer of electronic modules and PCs, said it is launching ClearFog Base kit, an off-the-shelf open development kit that enables do-it-yourself hardware enthusiasts to create their own telecom-grade routers. The kit is based on the Marvell Armada 38x SoC processor that runs on open source software based on OpenWrt. It lets enthusiasts build telecom-grade routers capable of Gigabit speed and embedded storage. The kit is inspired by the DIY computer kit, Raspberry Pi, which has sold a surprisingly large number of units. With OpenWrt support and several connectivity options, device makers can easily utilize the ClearFog Base within their own products to bridge a variety of network standards, like LAN, Wi-Fi, LTE, Fiber, and DSL. They can also utilize mikroBUS boards for IoT type networking standards such as ZigBee, Sub GHz, Bluetooth, and others. The $70 kit was created by Tel-Aviv, Israel-based SolidRun.
Much as I'd like to support Israeli companies, I don't know what I'd use this for. Maybe a wifi repeater?
been waiting forever for a company to build something like this: cheap, powerful but low-power usage.
...I see DIP switches...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Ctrl-F'd for 'mesh' and on both TFA and found nothing. Does anyone know if the software will be there to make these turn key mesh networks?
I have ~40 acres 0.15 sq km and would like to get wifi to a few parts. A few of these on solar panels would be perfect.
I'd love to see Untangle or another firewall option built on this. Small, low-power, cheap, no fan...
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I like the news but can understand properly what is OpenWrt?
And what exactly is a telecom grade router?
What's the throughput like on the ports? The big problem with the Raspberry Pi is that the ethernet port is on the SoC's USB bus which would be a bottleneck for network gear. Presumably these guys have thought of that?
This sounds like a decent replacement for the ancient WRT54G I've got in my home office.
pci-e based nic's or usb?
The pi's usb 2.0 ones can't even do 1 full 100 link much less gig-e or even 2 100 links.
Rehash of a rehash of a press release, No new news or insight here.
SolidRun website appears to be slashdotted.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
It makes me doubly proud as a Jewish-Israeli tech worker that an Israeli company made it to Slashdot with an interesting product, and that this company was founded by two guys who are Israeli Arabs and has equal numbers of Arab and Jewish employees.
Reference: http://www.israel21c.org/a-two-inch-computer-for-55/
That's actually the most positive news I'd heard in a while.
All I can find are the $90+ baseboard and $70 processor module -- so the kit is over $160 and at that price still doesn't have any wireless interfaces.
None of the "mikroBUS" wireless boards (trying for confusion with the well-known Mikrotik wireless hardware, perhaps?) support MIMO. miniPCIe does give better options, but figure ~$50 for the radio card, then add antennas.
Sorry, but no this is not $70, not price-competitive with Raspberry Pi, and not for serious networking.
On the other hand, you could make a slick implementation of this.
I had a lot of trouble with garbled SD cards until I switched to a different power adapter. The newish, 2A Samsung supply I had ended up causing stability issues, whereas my old flip-phone micro-USB power supply works just fine. (Although before I figured that out, my initial workaround was to use an NFS root filesystem, which does have its advantages I guess.)
I looked for this on Digikeyand didn't find it, but they do have a bunch of SolidRun boards, including the ClearFog Pro which has 6+1 GbE and an SFP, plus 2 mPCIe slots and 1 mSATA. At less than $175, that's a steal. I've been waiting for something like this that could replace the discrete routers, ethernet switches, and Arduino programming slaves at my transmitter sites, which only have a few hosts each. There have been other multi-nic SBC's, but I have yet to see one this cheap.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Ummm, do you have anything like facts?
In my experience anyhow. I have a WRT1200AC running OpenWRT, and last I checked (couple weeks ago) support is all over the place. Builds are forked with feature support scattered across them.