Something extremely cool. It got power and enough RAM, within tiny form factor.
And it’s totally open.
It’s just another ARM-based embedded platform. There are so many of them around with slightly different specs, but all-in-all it just another SoC in a package. Vera uses an older Broadcom MIPS platform. This one is from Marvell. No big deal, really…
Well, I don’t many such devices with 512MB each of RAM and Flash, and a 1.2GHz CPU around. Especially with this form factor
I found that SqueezeBox guys are working on porting SqueezeCenter on this device.
Connect 16-32Gb USB stick with flac encoded audio collection and you get high quality audio streamer consuming just 5W.
SheevaPlug runs full Debian, Ubuntu, etc which makes it very versatile.
Yes the platform is not special, but the form factor is particularly nice and it’s a completely open platform (HW and SW). I especially like the thought of having a lower-power CPU that I can plug in behind the couch or wherever and not need to clog up my desk or entertainment center with yet another little black box.
Yeah, not special…
The Sheeva Plug doesn't have a hardware floating point unit so the FP number is very low. It is also slower than an Intel M running at the same clock speed. From nbench's website, the Sheeva Plug falls somewhere around a [b]P3 800Mhz range[/b].
That ARM hardware looks less appealing indeed when you see this…
We actually do have Vera on the Marvell plug computer already. It’s overkill for Vera and has way more memory and processing power than we need. But we’re looking at combining features with other companies using the same Marvell plug.
Wow! But how did you guys do it if open-wrt isn’t available for ARM?
Anyways, I think you might leave it as a “special order” option - I’m sure there will be enough geeks that can think what to do with unused resources.
It’s for OEM deals. We don’t need OpenWRT; our software runs on anything. You’ll see we mention it in our new Luup announcement because we already have a deal in place with Marvell. [url=http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Press_Release]http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Press_Release[/url]
We designed Luup to use very little memory and CPU resources and to run on all the major processors, such as MIPS, ARM and x86. Luup applications can be embedded in very low cost devices like DSL/cable modems, routers, access points, and so on. Luup is great for open, collaborative projects with hobbyists and techies.Any plans to let non-OEM hobbyists and techies to play with Luup on alternative platforms?
Not really because it requires setting up a new build server with new tool chain, etc., and doing regression testing on each platform. So it would really slow down our development if we had to do that. With OEM deals it’s OK because as part of the contract they pay an annual fee for support and that covers adding an extra developer just for them to support their platform. You’ll be seeing similar smarthome solutions to Vera on other platforms using our software engine. But at this moment it seems all the OEM’s want to offer ‘closed’ solutions, so Vera will probably remain the only open one that’s friendly for hobbyiests to play with.
Any plans to at least have a openwrt repository setup (if you dont’t already) for the non-licensed binaries?
The new Foneras with usb seem like perfect satellites. Reflash with openwrt and have the dcerouter/luup scripts running to interact with the serial and network stacks.
With openwrt satellites you can get into interesting scenarios like Zwave/wap repeater, remote control, network auto media players and network storage
I’d like to see that. But atm all dev hands are focused on getting the release of Luup out and fixing any issues in the Insteon and Zigbee stack.