Tiny Linux Computer Overview 56
SEWilco writes "Linux Devices has an overview of Linux-Friendly Embeddable Computers. It's a nice introduction to commercially available computers the size of a disk drive (biscuit) or smaller (PC/104). This is the type of thing to use for wearable or special-purpose devices." Excellent article.
Re:Car Stereo (Score:1)
Re:Firewall? (Score:2)
MY Dream Embedded Linux "box" (Score:1)
Must: 100BT Ethernet
Must: 1600x1200x24bit SVGA graphics
Nice: 640x480x24bit 60Hz TV out via SVideo
Nice: TV tuner
Nice: HDTV tuner
Nice: FM tuner
Nice: DVI interface
Must: Hardware DVD playback support
Nice: Local DVD-ROM
Must: SPDIF or AES/EBU Digital audio out
Nice: externally clocked digital audio
Must: work with local or wireless (IR or RF) keyboard/mouse
Must: Boot from 'net or (better) FLASH
NO FAN!
Re:I'd rather see them make them bigger, not small (Score:1)
so why not work the electronics into the walls and surfaces
Well, at least that way you would only need to buy an air conditioner that does cooling... the walls would have "built-in" heat pumps. :-)
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Marcelo Vanzin
Re:Car Stereo (Score:1)
Size Doesn't Matter (Score:1)
it's the motion of the registers.
Re:I'd rather see them make them bigger, not small (Score:1)
I'd rather have computer furniture, like a coffee table. It could have built in remote, plug in through the floor, have some convenient USB ports, and a thick piece of glass on top to protect from beer spills. It could even have the processor near the surface, to act as a plate warmer!
Re:I'd rather see them make them bigger, not small (Score:2)
Re:Firewall? (Score:1)
New connectors would help (Score:1)
One of my current projects uses a 44-pin (laptop) IDE (with the ribbon cable peeling nicely out into ser/par/USB, but a connector which looks tiny perched on the end of a 9.5MM IDE drive is a space hog on a 50x60mm (2"x2.4") board. It's cheap, but ultimately limited for some things I'd like to do. It's only marginally better than what they used in the 70's. There seems to be an invisible wall at 1 line per mm (linear). At 0.5 l/mm most connectors use multiple rows. 0.1" (.254mm) spacing must die!
Next time, I may use serial multiplexing (USB), if I can get cheap, tiny USB chips to embed in the cables. It would dramatically simplify layout, and with USB/parallel cables running at $20-40 (street), such chips must exist.
Is there a nonproprietary (mass market) connector with much better than 1 pin/mm^2, or is there some manufacturing/durability limit at smaller spacings (e.g. the 'pocket lint' factor or ribbon cable limits)? I think I recall high end special cables in the 80's that had a grid of pins with less than 1mm spacing, in a round tabbed connector.
Re:dampness (Score:1)
Re:TINI, Dallas SemiConductor Bad. (Score:3)
I've spoken to different representatives from Dallas Semiconductor in the past year, and have come to the conclusion that they are not a good company for the Unix-loving community to support.
They are not interested in the ingenuity and progress end-users often add to 'open' products such as their iButton, or TINI TCP/IP stack Chip. They are nothing more than a company of glutenous exec's, looking to sell millions of units to other large companies; They have no feel for the general publics willingness to contribute to new products.
I realize I sound like I'm describing every company out there, but hey; Even Microsoft tries to speak to its customers, game companies are switching platforms, and almost any large company looking to develop products which can be modified; want the general public to be happy and 'in-the-know' so they will feel a need to contribute to those products. This is not the case with Dallas SemiConductor.
Case in point. I was working at a small computer networking company in Ottawa a year ago, when 2600 magazine published an article on the iButton. I ordered one out of interest, and to become familiar with coding for it. Later the company I worked for mentioned it would be interesting if we could offer cryptographic ID rings to our customers that would log-them-in to their workstations. So I did some more research.
And came up with a few questions for "DS", 1 in particular: what protects computers from static when the wearer walks accross a room and plugs straight in to the serial port?
DS response, "why does it matter?",
me, "Because we may be ordering these for connecting to servers and workstations at our clients business's"
DS, "Look, we sell lots of these, there's nothing wrong with static"
me, "Ok well, do you have any information to support that? Do you have white-papers with measured voltage levels on connection?"
DS, "All the white-papers are online."
The online white-papers (at the time) contained little useful information; and this man knew there was no detailed information in their on it. (I know this because, my question before this was, "do you have more detailed white papers with data on")...
My point? I think Linux/FreeUnix has enough pull now-a-days to demand a certain, small amount of interest from companies offering new, end-user configurable products. After all, it was the OpenSource community that made SEGA stay in the market with inferior products, they've added to the success of the Palm Pilot, etc. etc. All examples of the Opensource community modifying, or changing new products are because the companies who offer them,
1) *do* take an interest in end-user opinions,
2) they are interesed in innovation, and they
3) *do* provide important technical information on their products to end users.
Opensource has done little to help Microsoft, because they have missed out on the last requirement for innovation [myhometechie.com].
Re:dampness (Score:1)
Bollocks
Yep
ideut 1 ideut 2 ideut 3 ideut 4 ideut 5 ideut 6 ideut 7 ideut 8 ideut 9 ideut 10 ideut 11 ideut 12.
Re:dampness (Score:1)
Embedded Computers (Score:1)
Embedded Computer devices. Great stuff
like SBC's and devices for the PC/104 Interface
are listed on this page.
Check it out at www.sbc-pc104.com [sbc-pc104.com]
I'm sure some of you will find it handy.
Re:dampness (Score:1)
Re:TINI (Score:1)
Re:IP Addressable Speakers (Score:1)
My [small] kids are constantly taking the CD out of the player while I'm taking a shower or the wife is cleaning/cooking. I want to encode all my music (damn the RIAA!!) on a server and wire each room with speakers. Then you could have Jazz playing in the bedroom, Trance in the programming cave, Metal in the shower and Country in the kitchen.
I was thinking of just having a SBC with an ethernet port grab an MP3 (or OGGLater...
Latency/Syncronization. (Score:1)
Re:It is worrysome. (Score:1)
Embedded Linux Taking Off (Score:2)
Having an open-source embedded solution is important to engineers, who often need to optimize thier software solutions to custom hardware devices, especially when one considers that most of the growth in electronics in coming years will be on the embedded markets.
No you don't, imagine the hackers. (Score:2)
Re:It is worrysome. (Score:3)
Re:Firewall? (Score:1)
TINI (Score:5)
Re:Heat Problems... (Score:1)
Re:MY Dream Embedded Linux "box" (Score:1)
- NO FAN!
Right... and then you could cook on it too!
-bluebomber
Trying to get an idea of the size of a biscuit (Score:1)
Is that the size of a big ol' fluffy biscuit from Pillsbury, or a rock-hard "roll" from a school cafeteria? Or if it's really small it could be the size of a White Castle(TM) burger?
Re:It is worrysome. (Score:3)
The only way to tell is to try it out. Really.
What would you rather have -- A great OS that only works on your computer, or a great OS that works on every single device known to man? (Note that I said 'great' for each ... assume the quality is the same.) You'd rather it work everywhere, of course, unless you actively dislike the other markets.
Lack of focus is a possible problem, but not neccesarily true. It's also possible that making the code work on many different architectures has helped the design of the kernel as a whole. (I rather believe this to be the case.) But anyway, arguing intellectually about 'I think this would help/hurt the kernel' is rather useless. Find a part of the kernel that has been compromised by lack of focus. That's the backup you need to follow this line of reasoning.
Re:It is worrysome. (Score:1)
Re:Heat Problems... (Score:1)
Size doesn't really have anything to do with it. It is mostly component density (i.e. transistor density). A PCI card with 10 components on it will generate less heat than a PCI card with 100 components on it!
-bluebomber
Re:Embedded Linux Taking Off (Score:2)
Slashdot's visited this topic of small Linux devices several times, and the bottom line is that these devices always seem to be too expensive to take the world by storm (E.g. the matchbox server which costs about $1500). The uCSimm project seems to be the closest to overall practicality, since it combines small size, useful interfaces and relatively low price ($300). However things like this won't ignite the world until their lower price range is within an order of magnitude of PIC microcontrollers.
If anything, I'd be watching a different trend of "cheap Linux devices" as well as tiny Linux devices. Where they meet is a happy land.
Imbed rest. (Score:1)
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm already sick of having to synch up cell phones with PDAs with laptops with my home PC.
I don't think having more simultaneously running OSes is the answer to anybody's needs. If constant internet connectivity is one of the key goals of these embedded OSes, it would seem to me that a bare-bones processor capable of remotely operating a central PC would be a much more convenient approach.
Either way, it still feels like a waste of money to integrate reasonably powerful computers into portable devices when you've got something far more powerful sitting on your desk at home.
Madhouse [insaneabode.com] - satirized for your protection.
IP Addressable Speakers (Score:2)
Where Will these be used? (Score:1)
Who is using these comptuers? The last time I saw a SBC was inside one of the gear cutting machines at my dad's shop. And this is a device the size of a small moving van. (yea a SBC is underkill)
I think the question comes down to, what's the ACTUALL market these guys are selling to?
Re:MY Dream Embedded Linux "box" (Score:1)
Right... and then you could cook on it too!
Well, yeah, that's the rub. I want to use it to pull uncompressed digital audio, and eventually MPEG2 video from over the home LAN, to drive (first) the stereo, and the high-res TV or monitor, respectively.
Thus, a fan is verboten.
I realize that hardware DVD decoding might require that level of active cooling, but surely a fanless solution exists that will at least do X and the digital audio stuff, leaving the video for later.
Even so, proper heat pipe technology should make it possible to use passive convection cooling. Look at the Mac Cube, for an example (and it doesn't even need a heat pipe).
Finally, I am willing to live with an outboard "brick" style power supply, if that helps remove the fan requirement.
portable server (Score:1)
Why not a cheap laptop? (Score:2)
This tiny Linux computer is just the thing (Score:2)
It has to be placed into a container of boiling water and vegetable matter. where it keeps the vegetable matter from sticking to the pan, until the desired softness is reached.
So far, I've planned it to work with ground corn, but rice should be doable to.
It is worrysome. (Score:1)
I would far rather have a kernel developed specifically for the desktop and server market. All this other exotica does not benefit the average user and diffuses the focus and purpose of the linux advocate and developer.
Even more reason why... (Score:1)
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Embeddable Systems == Viable Niche Market (Score:3)
I've not done my homework on this, but it seems at first glance that starting a company to make the neccesary changes/improvements, sell embeddable Linux systems, and provide support could be profitable.
root@mrcoffee ~# brew --decaff --cups 5
--
Has anyone seen... (Score:2)
Matchbox PC's are better (Score:4)
Good! (Score:1)
I'd rather see them make them bigger, not smaller (Score:5)
Smaller wearables are fine for mobile applications, but most people just spend their whole lives in one or two rooms (at home or at the office). Why don't we just build the computer into the room? Why not make the computer the room? You're already spending money to aircondition the room to make it inhabitable, so why not work the electronics into the walls and surfaces and have really big cheap components like the ones we used to have before smaller became sexier.
Small is good for a bunch of reasons, but it's also a luxury most people don't need, just as they don't need an SUV or that extra-expensive insurance plan that covers dental. "Small" is just one factor that should be weighed against other factors like cost and aesthetics. Bring back the behemoths! Make me feel young again!
Car Stereo (Score:1)
Re:This tiny Linux computer is just the thing (Score:1)
corn
I've been trolling since you were watching Thundercats, don't mess with me.
Re:I'd rather see them make them bigger, not small (Score:1)
-ec
Re:Matchbox PC's are better (Score:3)
Embedded Linux Journal! (Score:5)
About embedded systems: Linux is used on many of these because of its modularity, but if you're into it, try using other things on them...
My karma's bigger than yours!
Interface? (Score:3)
I think this is a key point. While I enjoy using Linux, I don't consider UI one of its strongest points. If embedded Linux is to become the thing of the future for wearable PCs and other embedded devices, there needs to be major progress in novel, Linux-compatible interfaces. It is here, I think, that Linux can distance itself from the pack. If the open source community can put together intuitive, stable and efficient interfaces, Linux will have a major advantage as embedded systems become commonplace.
Re:Embeddable Systems == Viable Niche Market (Score:2)
I have used anandtech and they are sweet (Score:1)
Re:Car Stereo (Score:3)
http://www.empeg.com
Heat Problems... (Score:2)
It's a misnomer that all the heat in a PC comes from the CPU. This is not the case. Anyone seen the heat sinks on mobo growing lately? Hmmm...? By making componenets larger, you merely make them hotter. Not faster...