[Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox-discuss Digest, Vol 8, Issue 63

[Chris Troutner]

Good suggestion Russ! I never thought of the Chumby. It's already an open
source linux hardware platform. With a lot of hacking it could definately be
turned into a Freedombox.

Chris Troutner
http://www.thesolarpowerexpert.com


> From: Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com>
> Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:08:31 -0500
> To: gnu at toad.com
> Subject: Freedom box
>
> Simon Phipps pointed me to your Freedom Box Sysadmin missive. Two
> things:
>
> Have you looked at the Chumby? It's designed to be a bullet-proof
> Linux box that needs no sysadmin. It's a freaking clock radio! Who
> wants to sysadmin their clock radio!?!? So it just works.
>
> I've been working with the Technologics TS-7400 (embedded ARM) for
> water quality sensors. Very similar problem, except that it reads
> "Must ABSOLUTELY boot every time no matter how you got shut down last
> time, and must ABSOLUTELY connect to the Internet every time for
> remote sysadmin work and uploading data."
>
> So, to that end, I have a shell script which looks for Ethernet, WiFi,
> or Cell Data interfaces, and uses whatever one works. Sends periodic
> pings to our upload server. If it fails, it goes back to trying
> different interfaces. If that fails, it reboots.
>
> Been working on it for a year. It's pretty robust.
>
> The problem with the damned plug computers is that the manufacturers
> are idiots. They don't know how to do supply chain management so that
> they can keep the boxes in stock. They're forever backordered, which
> is another way of saying that they are building AFTER they get the
> order.
>
> Something like the Chumby is more better. If you want one, you just go
> buy one. For $100. Has internal wifi on a usb stick and one external
> USB (which of course can use a hub). It will happily mount a $100
> terabyte USB driver. Plus a USB keyboard into it, and up pops a shell
> window on the screen.
>
> You should go buy a Chumby if you haven't already. Besides helping to
> stir your creative juices, it's a great clock radio. :)
>
>

-- 
Open Source Solar Charge Controller Project
http://www.freechargecontroller.org
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