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.
The story goes on to cover 11 more relatively inexpensive computers (depending on your idea of inexpensive). Read on for the complete list and links to each one.
[Continues...]
Here is ZDNet's complete list of 12 computers:
| 1 | $4-$15 | VoCore2 | Vendor Information |
| 2 | $9 | C.H.I.P. | Vendor Information |
| 3 | $59.95 | cloudBit | Vendor Information |
| 4 | $129.95 | PixelPro | Vendor Information |
| 5 | $92 | Intel Edison with Kit for Arduino | Vendor Information |
| 6 | $60 | NanoPC-T3 | Vendor Information |
| 7 | $55 | BeagleBone Black | Vendor Information |
| 8 | $135 | Udoo Quad | Vendor Information |
| 9 | $40 | Arduino INDUSTRIAL 101 | Vendor Information |
| 10 | $99 | Parallella | Vendor Information |
| 11 | $23 | NanoPi 2 Fire | Vendor Information |
| 12 | $82.99 | Banana Pi M3 | Vendor Information |
What experiences have you had with these? Is there one in particular you would recommend using (or avoiding)? Why?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:25PM
Why do they go to so much work to be open and then support a ridiculous proprietary protocol like AirPlay?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05 2016, @11:44PM
Can't you just wipe it off with a cloth or something? [bleachbit.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:36AM
Shill is obvious at shilling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:08AM
Yes, shill is obvious, but that is still an hilarious and timely bit of marketing by Bleachbit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 12 2016, @12:09PM
Not an obvious shill*. Just a funny joke.
*Shills are paid. The odds of one of them reading an article unrelated to their core business, on a not very high traffic or profile website at the right time to make this appropriate joke is pretty low. So, while it could be a shill, on the balance of probabilities that is highly unlikely.
(Score: 5, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Sunday November 06 2016, @12:33AM
Because all the cool hackers use Apple. Bonus points if you have stickers on your lid with the names of hip things like github and lame web framework of the week, hip clothing brands and other cook kid stuff (one of them must say hacker). That makes you |_|8E.- 1337! You also have to max out the sepcs on your macbook to the tune of $5000+ so you can brag about how fucking awesome your mackbook is while plugging in a half dozen $100 USB C dongles to hook up mundane things like keyboards, monitors, headphones and mice because Apple is so progressive that things like ports are for lame Windowz laptops (see below).
Windows is for poor and/or uncool people or lamer gamers. You either have no money or don't know a computer from a hornets nest. So you bought the cheapest piece of shit HP with an "HD" 1280x730 screen to help get your associates degree in liberal arts so you can hopefully get a better job other than fry cook at the local burger barf. You also most likely use IE/Edge and have about 10 different web toolbars leaving only 300pix left for actual web page rendering while some russian steals your identity. You are better off swallowing everything in your medicine cabinet you worthless looser. I bet your mother doesn't even love you and your keyboard is full of doughnut crumbs and dried cum.
Linux and BSD is only cool if your ssh'd into one via your macbook's riced up zsh git prompt (courtesy of this insipid fuck: https://github.com/robbyrussell [github.com]) uploading your contentless 1TB web 4.0 animated parallax scrolling java script horror. People who run it on actual PC/Laptop hardware are for forever alone looser virgins who get beat up for their lunch money. That or old geezer neck beards who yell at clouds and kids to get off their lawns, see previous sentence. Women spit on them on sight. They'll all eventually end up like Ian Murdock or Richard Stallman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:19AM
By and large, tramps are looser; virgins are tighter.
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:28AM
Fuck you, I have a problem!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday November 06 2016, @11:21AM
You can wipe that problem up, you know...
https://www.bleachbit.org/cloth-or-something [bleachbit.org]
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:48AM
My main computer was once an Apple ][. Switched to the PC and never got a Mac. Does that make me a cool hacker or an old geezer neck beard? Just curious.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:15AM
Since you spelled it using brackets, I'm going to lump you in with the medicine cabinet raiding windows lusers. Sorry.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:56PM
Speaking of retro applications I too have been using computers for a very long time, including the early 00s, and computers were quite useful in the early 00s, and the specs of this new product are very much "early 00s".
The problem with replacing pi is I have multiple pi doing things that a "very slow modern laptop" could handle, which is enough to run contemporary 2016 stuff without even backporting or stripping down at all, but I probably can't trivially backport to a early 00s computer.
I know early 00s desktops did CNC stuff just fine... using 00s software. I can slowly but usefully run 2016 3d printer software on my pi, like octoprint or the octopi ready to run distro. I think octoprint is way too fat to run unmodified on an early 00s computer, which makes it a huge problem to "replace my pi".
I'd have to think for awhile, what I'd do with an early 00s computer that draws little power. That would be OK for a crap tier NAS or router/dhcp server, other than stereotypical boards have horribly neutered network and storage performance. Even boards that aren't completely neutered have at least one ball chopped off like the banana pi m3 which would make a nice nas if it had more than one SATA port or would make a nice home router if it had more than one ethernet port.
One big performance problem is something like $150 gets you a free older computer, then you swap in a new motherboard and/or more ram, and replace the spinning rust with a small SSD (or two) and you've got maybe 1000 times the performance of a $50 pi if you're trying to do SDR or DSP or NAS or router or print server or something like that. The performance per $ curve goes practically vertical for awhile if you'll just toss in an extra $100 rather than trying to do a $200 job with a $50 part. In a way its like the frustration of trying to use walmart tools to build something serious, why drop $100 to fail with zero return when you could drop $200 for easy success?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 07 2016, @02:09PM
I got a whole Thinkpad T40 setup off ebay last month for parts for $30 with free shipping. It has a 1.5GHz Pentium M (souped up single core PIII), 512MB RAM, and came with the dock, dock power supply, laptop power supply and an IBM PS/2 mouse. Plugged it in to see what the deal was and it throws the fatal fan error which shuts the machine off on POST. Opened the case and found one of those thick, dense spider webs, the kind that protects the egg sac, in the fan. Cleaned it out thoroughly and whadda ya know, the damn thing works 100%. I wiped the XP install and threw on OpenBSD. Runs like a top and even Firefox works nicely and has just enough power to play a Youtube video. Not bad for 30 bucks.
As for CNC, you don't need a lot of power. Our old laser system has an Allen Bradley 8400 that is powered by 8 and 16 bit CPU's. It has two 8086's along with a Z80 as it's an asymmetric multiprocessor system. I'm betting the Z80 does digital I/O, the first 8086 runs the actual interface software and the second 8086 runs the CNC watching encoders and appropriately setting the analog output to the drives (old linear brushed drives with ±10V input, -10V = full CCW speed, +10V = full CW speed). It's a tank of system and they are still serviceable. A ~100MHz arm with the right I/O hardware and good code can easily drive multiple axes.
Another system we use is the Aerotech CNC system which is PC driven. It uses smart drives that each have a Ti C64x DSP and a Xilinx FPGA to handle the motion and I/O while a PC coordinates the drives. The PC unfortunately runs Windows along with a real-time subsystem from Ardence (they switched to INtime in later versions) that is a co-kernel setup that runs the soft motion controller. Ran a four axis system on an 800MHz P3 with 512MB RAM on Windows 2000 without issue.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 07 2016, @06:00PM
Exactly yes the backend of CNC is basically "audio frequency-ish range real time audio synthesis" that plugs into a couple axes of motor drivers, so sending 40000 steps to move X+ isn't all that much harder computationally from being a 1980s drum machine or music synth, which they certainly did with 80s hardware.
All the modern CPU power gets used in the UI. So octopi doesn't just feed gcode like old software, its got synchronized graphical view of tool movement so you can see it painting out a new object and real time temperature graphs and similar such stuff that technically isn't necessary but is very nice and burns a huge amount of CPU.
I have linuxcnc on my little mill and that burns a lot of CPU on user interface too although a Xwindow screen instead of a web browser like octopi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 12 2016, @12:12PM
Depends, do you run Windows or Linux/BSD on your PC? If Windows, then you're just an old geezer, if Linux/BSD you may also add the neck beard part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @05:33AM
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 07 2016, @01:48PM
The truth hurts my friend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @09:53AM
Why not have both?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @10:24AM
Because they're just trying to scam hipsters. This is crowdfunding, they will likely never deliver.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:45AM
And the Pi is still the only one with Open Source video and even it lacks Open GL. EGL != GL. So if you are building a headless product or since the Pi seems to have stable video acceleration a MythTV or some such media box, yea, go for it. Otherwise enjoy your unaccelerated framebuffer.
This is a problem that really need to be addressed. It is obvious now that plenty of people can build low cost little machines, but if they are all going to have important subsystems restricted to blobs that often limit you to running one of couple Android kernels, what is the point?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:57AM
https://github.com/anholt/mesa/wiki/VC4-OpenGL-support [github.com] says VC4 hardware is ES, making true GL tricky (page explains the problems). https://github.com/freedreno/freedreno/wiki/Status [github.com] shows better outcome for Adreno.
Anyway, most of the problems with ARM chips is due to stubbornness of the HW makers (starting with ARM), meaning lots of reverse engineering, and also infights in OSS land (see Lima driver debacle). Some require blobs to boot (eg in RPi if if you want to do anything with it, as https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware [github.com] is so basic Linux booting is useless), even if later things gets done by other code.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:26PM
yeah, we need to start supporting architectures that are fully open.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:21PM
On that note:
Adreno and Tegra WOULD be the best choices, if either was available on an open hardware platform without a stage0 bootloader enforcing signing and control of your trustzone partition to questionable third parties.
Having said that, the Raspberry Pis are by far the most open of the popularly available ARM SoC platforms, has the third best driver support (Tegra then Adreno beat it handily thanks to nouveau and freedreno.) Furthermore, thanks to Eric Anholt's tireless work it has a mostly complete OpenGL 2.1 implementation, which puts it roughly on par with R300(Radeon 95-9800) hardware (and the closest Nvidia equivalent.. 6000-7000 series?) If the open firmware project gets completed, and Broadcom doesn't act like their usual dickholish selves and arbitrarily break future VC4 implementations so the current bootloader code can't be easily modified to support it, or begin requiring signed firmware like Intel, AMD, and Nvidia have (not including end-device manufacturer firmware signing on the ARM side), the Pi could become the modern day C64 or other microcomputer, with complete enough documentation to make it to all sorts of things the manufacturer never intended. Plus, the VC4 instruction set is complete enough to do some VERY interesting things on the GPU beyond simply pushing video pixels. Unfortunately that is also a pitfall: The VC4 has no MMU protection. It is designed as a real time bare memory addressing processor, which means if there are any software exploits possible in the vc4 mailbox implementation or in the userspace glue logic, it is possible for a malicious application to gain system level privileges through a processor very similiar to the Intel ME, and AMD equivalent processor, the one bright side being you can fix the code if such an exploit is found/used, unlike the AMD/Intel situation where you are FUBAR if that happens.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday November 06 2016, @06:45PM
This [soylentnews.org]" rel="url2html-13192">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/874883570/marvell-espressobin-board">This might take a PCI-e graphics card with a riser adapter to the Mini PCI-e slot. Though the NAS features are the real draw.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Informative) by richtopia on Sunday November 06 2016, @05:19PM
If you haven't kept up with the raspberry pi, there are two new models this year:
Raspberry Pi Zero: Smaller board compatible to the original Raspberry Pi for 5USD. Microcenter had a sale over the summer for 1 dollar so I have one on my desk now. I would say it is the best of the sub 10USD computers
Raspberry Pi 3: Update which really boosted the CPU, and added on-board WiFi/Bluetooth. For 35USD it is the computer to beat
Two new SBCs from this year are what I would consider the top competitors in the field:
Pine64: Kickstarter which actually finished and you can order production units for 15-29USD (memory sizes). Larger form factor with lots of GPIO pins, and similar processor to the RPI3
ODROID-C2: This Korean company has consistently made Raspberry competitors, and the latest model is very similar to the RPI3 but with higher clock speed and more memory. Less open though. 40USD
If I were to buy another SBC, it would be the Pi Zero or the C2 depending on the resource requirements. Currently I only run my personal website and mumble server on my original Raspberry Pi, so I have not hit any issues beyond a failed SD card. If you want to do a webserver type application for a SBC I would look at the DietPi OS first - it has been stripped down with servers in mind, and namely handles swap better than Raspian in regards to SD cards.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/pi-zero/ [raspberrypi.org]
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b/ [raspberrypi.org]
https://www.pine64.org/ [pine64.org]
http://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-c2 [ameridroid.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @08:42PM
Different devices, different purposes in life.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:40PM
Anyone else notice that the pinout includes a PORN pin? I've never seen a router with such low-level support for the primary function of the internet!