Yesterday, I mentioned the SheevaPlug. Today, I tried it out:
- Plug in Ethernet, plug in power, done.
- The box registers via DHCP.
- Figure out its IP address, and follow the New Plugger instructions.
- That’s it. Ubuntu 9.04, running on a pretty amazing little box. Effortless!
Here are some system details, once you log into it via SSH:
Upgrading to the latest software packages went flawlessly, using the normal Debian/Ubuntu apt-get update/dist-upgrade/autoremove commands. Once done, there is still plenty of room left on the internal flash ROM:
According to this post, power consumption is really low:
I’m seeing about 3.5 W, doing nothing and hooked up to 100 Mbit ethernet. Close enough.
Mighty impressive for a 1.2 GHz processor with 512 Mb RAM. Here’s a brief review of it.
This could make a pretty nifty “home monitoring and control center”. I’m not going to limit my options to this, the plan is to support a wide range of platforms – but still, this ShevaPlug sure is a comfy unit, almost like a desktop!
Make sure to include an Atmel NGW100 in your research.
I’ve got one waiting here :) – But what makes the NGW100 special? Is it widely used? I’m asking, because I’d expect people to prefer either boxed units, or perhaps really really small boards…
The NGW100 is much more widely distributed. You can even get it from DigiKey. It appears the SheevaPlug is surprisingly limited in distributors. The SheevaPlug does have the nice small already enclosed form factor which may be a big advantage for this scenario. You can get an enclosure for the NGW100 from SparkFun.
Hi,
where did you get your SheevaPlug ? I’m interested in getting one !
GlobalScale – see the comments in yesterday’s post.