Meet VoCore2 Lite, a $4 Coin-Sized, Open Source Linux Computer (zdnet.com) 106
An anonymous reader shares a report on ZDNet:Four bucks buys a lot of hardware these days, and nothing highlights this more than a project like the VoCore2 Lite. VoCore2 is an open source Linux computer and a fully-functional wireless router that is smaller than a coin. It can also act as a VPN gateway for a network, an AirPlay station to play lossless music, a private cloud to store your photos, video, and code, and much more. The Lite version of the VoCore2 features a 580MHz MT7688AN MediaTek system on chip (SoC), 64MB of DDR2 RAM, 8MB of NOR storage, and a single antenna slot for Wi-Fi that supports 150Mbps. Spend $12 and go for the full VoCore2 option and you get the same SoC, but you get 128MB of DDR2 RAM, 16MB of NOR storage, two antenna slots supporting 300Mbps, an on-board antenna, and PCIe 1.1 support.
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APMEX has 1957-67 Mexican Peso coins for $2.94 USD each.
http://www.apmex.com/product/20296/1957-1967-silver-mexican-1-peso-ave-circ-asw-0514-oz [apmex.com]
How big is a $4 coin? (Score:5, Funny)
just wondering...
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If you get a 1957-67 Mexican Peso coin for $2.94 at APMEX, it's 34.5mm in diameter.
http://www.apmex.com/product/20296/1957-1967-silver-mexican-1-peso-ave-circ-asw-0514-oz [apmex.com]
Re:How big is a $4 coin? (Score:5, Funny)
22.0mm x 1.52mm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Punctuation is overrated...
Re:How big is a $4 coin? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean, "punctuation is overrated, period." :)
Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, the year of the Linux Cointop computers
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"Private cloud"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Can I have a glass of water, please?" "Sure, would you like to see our menu of premium bottled rain, or is water from our private indoor river okay?"
Re:"Private cloud"? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's my taxonomy of storage:
NAS: File-based protocol access (SMB/NFS) with perhaps iSCSI block access. Largely locked to the LAN based on the nature of access protocols.
Private Cloud: Usually NAS plus some kind of HTTP/S access. May or may not include a Dropbox-type client for local synchronization. Largely limited to LAN by LAN/FW configuration itself, not the software, although I have seen some brain damaged web access components that would make use over the internet dumb or frustrating.
Private Cloud web accessible: The above, but with a hardware vendor service in the middle providing a broker service to access the device from non-LAN location.
Private Public Cloud: Yes, a contradiction in terms but a step above. Usually privately controlled hardware or VM accessible from the internet without reliance on third party broker services. Could be hosted at home, run on AWS, etc, but all software and OS is under user control.
Public Cloud: Third-party provided service, often only web accessible and with OS client for local file sync. Infrastucture is shared. Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.
Re:"Private cloud"? (Score:4, Funny)
Para.
Graphs.
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If you have n>2 machines sharing disks in a redundant way where the system automatically manages all those machines and automatically replicates those storages in a way that the client does not even notice if 4 or 5 of those machines are offline, then you have a cloud.
No, that is also not a cloud. That is a high availability, load balancing cluster. It's not a cloud until multiple parties are paying for resources (canonically instances, but not necessarily) in proportion to use. It's not cloud computing until it doesn't matter to you (give or take an API) whose cluster it's running on. And while I'm on the subject, (in reference to post above yours) having a HTTP/XML-RPC interface is irrelevant as well.
When the water drop hits you, you have no idea where it was in the cloud, all you know is that it came from that cloud.
More to the point, you don't care where it came from.
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A cloud is just someone else's computer.
Cloud Definition (Score:2)
"an informed consumer is our best customer" (Score:2)
Joke's on them, HAH HAH HAH
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because cloud good, every one says so, so when your XXX asks for are we utilizing cloud you can say yes. and then they can go to the penis measuring contests of CXX's and say we are cool we use cloud for our 1930's designed software.
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Because marketing. You're facetious but if someone sold a premium product called rain and other started doing it as well you'll very soon see exactly that happening.
I have another question for you? Why call it a NAS? For those people who don't have Network Attached Storage (which network? the internet? a local one?) spelt out for them all it is is another word that has no meaning. Cloud people hear a lot about, so private cloud they can relate to.
How does it work? You connect your private cloud to your home
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please, end this. I come from a dark future to warn you of dire consequences. In my time, we have invented the tiniest VoCore the size of an eyelash to compete with the tiniest Raspberry Pi the size of a pepper flake. A beagleboard exists thats no larger than a cheerio. The last conference I attended ended in disaster when the presenter accidentally inhaled her RPi cluster and choked to death on a router the size of a matchbook. Things are very grim indeed.
As long as they all have hard-coded root passwords I'm fine with this. I have a hungry IoT botnet to feed.
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i for one applaud the courage of future ms and apple
You can't fool me! (Score:2)
There are no $4 coins!
Re:You can't fool me! (Score:4, Informative)
The Canadian mint put out a $4 CAD coin in 2009.
https://www.coinsunlimited.ca/canadian-proof-bu-commemorative-coins/2009-hanging-the-stockings-4-dollar [coinsunlimited.ca]
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A $4 coin that costs $45?
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A $4 coin that costs $45?
It's $35.54 USD. Melt value is $9.21 USD for one-half ounce of silver. Four times the melt value for a 2009 Christmas coin with 15,000 mintage might be a good deal. Could sell for a much higher price on eBay.
Re:You can't fool me! (Score:4, Informative)
That is OK -- there is no $4 VoCore 2 either. Their shop shows it going for $14.99.
Maybe they meant that the shipping is only $4.
http://vocore.io/#store [vocore.io]
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The VoCore2 Lite is the $4 version, and won't be available to the masses until January. That's why it's not in the store.
You have to get in on the Indiegogo campaign to get it early:
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... [indiegogo.com]
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Shows what you know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
(Credit to pushing-robot for that one)
how's the software? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's so much hardware out there... you got Arduino's, lots of clones, Raspberry Pi's, C.H.I.P, etc.
What they don't tell you is how the software is. Is it up to date, or does it still run Linux 3.x? What Linux distros does it run? Can you run stock Ubuntu, or do you need some guy's custom build that's two years old and you can't apt-get upgrade?
My specific beef: It looks like the VoCore2 rans OpenWrt. Which version? Custom build that's updated every six months?
And, thanks to Indiegogo, you can't post a comment (to ask a question) without contributing. What a bunch of bull.
Piss-poor. (Score:5, Informative)
The original VoCore has been out for 2-3 years now, and other than maybe like 5 projects that various people have come up with in those intervening 2-3 years, the community surrounding it is dead as a door-nail, and it's going to be just as dead for the VoCore II.
The VoCore and VoCore II are made by some shitty Chinese company just trying to make a buck off the cheap embedded board market. Just look at the poor excuse for "documentation" that comes with the VoCore, rife with Chinglish and light on details. Their "How to develop for the VoCore on Windows" guide is what I'm assuming is the Chinese equivalent of a joke, with the first two steps being "Install VMware" and "Install Ubuntu as a VM via VMware", which is not exactly what I call "developing for the VoCore on Windows".
Just like these fly-by-night hacks did last time, they're shopping their advertisements around to just about every geek website that's out there, and just like they did last time, the moment the campaign is over they'll release their hardware, release a ridiculous excuse for "documentation", and then pretty much disappear into the night.
Moving beyond the company making it, the lack of a community, and lack of documentation, the hardware itself is also fragile as glass. On a whim I bought two VoCores some months ago, and managed to brick one within an hour. How? By having the temerity to try to set it up so that it used the wired ethernet interface on the dock board, rather than using its default, useless, functionality of a wireless bridge. I somehow managed to fuck up configuring it thanks to the scant documentation on exactly how to configure the damn thing, and now it doesn't so much as pull an IP from my router, so I can't actually shell into it to see what's wrong. The kicker? Despite having a micro-USB port on the dock, they didn't bother including a USB-TTL bridge chip on the dock, so I can't even try to unbrick the fucking thing that way without investing in a USB serial cable. Fuck that.
Fuck the VoCore, and fuck the VoCore II.
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without investing in a USB serial cable
Oh poor baby.
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It has a serial port you can use to access it and reconfigure it.
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It runs a custom-version of Chaos Calmer. I have zero idea if they're planning to try and introduce their code upstream, though.
This is literally the most important thing to know if you're hoping to have any kind of long-term support...
Should be mainline. (Score:2, Informative)
This is the same SoC as the M1 3g/4g wifi router (a similiarly cool 6-12 dollar device that is a full fledged router the size of a bic lighter.)
In contrast the M1 only has 32 megs of ram and 4 megs of spi flash, but has the USB and ethernet stock, and a microusb connector for power.
This sound like a pretty cool device, but I haven't seen any actual mention of the PCIe 1.1 support: Does it have a desktop/laptop PCIe x1 connector board available? Can it handle REAL PCIe x1 devices? Can it be used with the usb
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California Highway Patrol has a linux box? EstradaOS?
Nah, PonchOS.
Strat
Tiny what? It isn't much of anything (Score:1)
The specs are pretty tiny. It needs outside storage, antenna (on the $4 one), and power supply. This is hardly equivalent to raspberry. It is more like slapping a media chip on a board, adding a crystal, and connecting the chip to some castellated pins. OK, that is exactly what they did. It is a great way to test that chip to make new boards using it. Hardly a Linux computer.
Not available for sale (Score:4, Interesting)
Not available for sale yet
http://vocore.io/#store [vocore.io]
And the $12 VoCore2 from the article will be available in 2 weeks for $14.99.
I'll take my chances with a RPi zero at MicroCenter
Re:Not available for sale (Score:5, Informative)
Also the VoCore2 Ultimate, which actually has USB & microSD ports like a RPi sells for $44.99
The "normal" VoCore2 is just a PCB with a chip on it.
http://vocore.io/v2u.html [vocore.io]
One more detail: All product pages on store say:
Sources
Update at Nov.30
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When they are actually shipping, and not taking pre-orders, I may consider buying one.
Just like C.H.I.P., which has been taking pre-orders for years.
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I got my C.H.I.P like 6 months ago.
storage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is going to waste a coin-sized computer by tethering it to a storage device and power brick?
There's definitely applications for tiny devices like this and I think the design is nifty, but using it in situations where its size (and price) is going to be dwarfed by its peripherals is a bit of a waste.
Obligatory (Score:2)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these in Natalie Portman's pants!
Hmm... Front or back pocket?
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"Honey, have you seen my computer?" (Score:2)
Press Releases on Slashdot (Score:2)
An anonymous source indeed... This reads just like the advertisement...
No mention of innovative compression algorithms? (Score:2)
With the claim of suitability as a private cloud to store your photos, video, and code all in a maximum of 16 MB of flash storage, the compression tools they provide must be impressive, indeed.
$4 coin? (Score:2)
Where can I find one of these elusive $4 coin?
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> a $4 Coin-Sized, Open Source Linux Computer
They probably didn't make many because they must be very impractical, being the size of a whole computer.
Counterfeit money (Score:1)
There is no such thing like a $4 coin.
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... still a better read than the article above.
GNAA - junk (Score:2, Informative)
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Personally I'm not bothered, there are stupid and/or hate-filled people in the world everywhere. I love the quote from the sidekick in Rambo 3, 'God must love idiots. he created so many of them'. Before something kicks off about that, no, I'm not re
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i vote no moderation on slashdot, its been working fine like that all the fucking time
free speech for the dumb ! (off-topic yea but i couldnt help but notice your reaction , this is not a hippie board im afraid)
i WAS wondering where i can get those things, i was thinking of making them into buttons and have them sewn onto a jacket for one thing (dam, i dont have money t
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on the website [vocore.io] i see nothing under $14 btw
still a nice price for intelligent buttons lol