Linux Wall Warts Small On Size, Big On Possibilities 316
davidmwilliams writes "Every geek and technology lover will undoubtedly have stumbled across online adverts for tiny headless Linux-powered devices that are barely larger than the power point they plug into. What can you actually do with them? Plenty, it seems!"
Two Words (Score:3, Interesting)
HomePlug / Power line ethernet (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody know of a similar device that includes Homeplug so you can do away with the ethernet connection as well?
Re:Wall warts? (Score:3, Interesting)
A small business owner's viewpoint (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm in the design phase of opening a consulting business (non-IT related) to run out of my home. Marvell's plugs look very attractive to me as a right-sized server for my modest needs. Email, web, file storage (especially with a RAID NAS or via DropBox) -- the wall wart looks just right for that kind of workload. I've worked in IT with big, fancy servers, and I just don't need them.
The alternative is to lease something like a Linode. I like the way Linode does business, but five months of their low-power service would buy a SheevaPlug. All I'm missing then is a static IP and the always-up cloudiness that Linode provides. The choices are tempting.
Re:Two (other) Words (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Did it really need 1 page? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention half the applications for something of this size are equally well filled by a reflashed OpenWRT wifi access point you can fish out of a dumpster for free. You don't need 512M of flash/ram to run an ssh gateway.
Re:oh man (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, the technology isn't quite there to do that cheaply, but it certainly wouldn't be expensive currently to build one that just connects to a wireless network and outputs Hulu.
Re:oh man (Score:5, Interesting)
Torrent Slaves
I wonder ... if somebody made an image with a self-registering Tor relay* that looked at the TCP congestion control state and throttled dynamically ... and then people started dropping $100 on these and plugging them in to random office buildings where a free data jack and power outlet were available - how many of them would still be operating after a couple years?
* I know you said 'torrent slave', but it gave me the idea
Re:oh man (Score:3, Interesting)
And I wonder, if you went into random office buildings and plugged some of these in, programmed to connect out to your master server (through their NAT, etc) sniff traffic, scour the local intranet and file shares and generally do some spying and acting as a jump point for your hacking, how many of them would still be operating after a couple years?
* I know you said 'tor relay', but it gave me the idea
Re:Here's an idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What indeed? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:oh man (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Did it really need 1 page? (Score:4, Interesting)
My best ideas are to pair them with some old LCD screens and do something like this: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/ [panic.com]
Headless nethworked mpd client (Score:2, Interesting)