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. <div><br></div><div>Chris Troutner</div><div>
<a href="http://www.thesolarpowerexpert.com">http://www.thesolarpowerexpert.com</a><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br>
From: Russ Nelson <<a href="mailto:nelson@crynwr.com">nelson@crynwr.com</a>><br>
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:08:31 -0500<br>
To: <a href="mailto:gnu@toad.com">gnu@toad.com</a><br>
Subject: Freedom box<br>
<br>
Simon Phipps pointed me to your Freedom Box Sysadmin missive. Two<br>
things:<br>
<br>
Have you looked at the Chumby? It's designed to be a bullet-proof<br>
Linux box that needs no sysadmin. It's a freaking clock radio! Who<br>
wants to sysadmin their clock radio!?!? So it just works.<br>
<br>
I've been working with the Technologics TS-7400 (embedded ARM) for<br>
water quality sensors. Very similar problem, except that it reads<br>
"Must ABSOLUTELY boot every time no matter how you got shut down last<br>
time, and must ABSOLUTELY connect to the Internet every time for<br>
remote sysadmin work and uploading data."<br>
<br>
So, to that end, I have a shell script which looks for Ethernet, WiFi,<br>
or Cell Data interfaces, and uses whatever one works. Sends periodic<br>
pings to our upload server. If it fails, it goes back to trying<br>
different interfaces. If that fails, it reboots.<br>
<br>
Been working on it for a year. It's pretty robust.<br>
<br>
The problem with the damned plug computers is that the manufacturers<br>
are idiots. They don't know how to do supply chain management so that<br>
they can keep the boxes in stock. They're forever backordered, which<br>
is another way of saying that they are building AFTER they get the<br>
order.<br>
<br>
Something like the Chumby is more better. If you want one, you just go<br>
buy one. For $100. Has internal wifi on a usb stick and one external<br>
USB (which of course can use a hub). It will happily mount a $100<br>
terabyte USB driver. Plus a USB keyboard into it, and up pops a shell<br>
window on the screen.<br>
<br>
You should go buy a Chumby if you haven't already. Besides helping to<br>
stir your creative juices, it's a great clock radio. :)<br><br></blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Open Source Solar Charge Controller Project<br><a href="http://www.freechargecontroller.org">http://www.freechargecontroller.org</a><br>
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