Hardware for OpenWrt(wrtnode.com) |
Hardware for OpenWrt(wrtnode.com) |
http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page
The only non open hardware on Allwinner chips is the ARM-licensed Mali GPU, but it's been reversed engineered to the point of producing a working, third-party, open source driver (the lima driver).
Both are very inexpensive Chinese chip manufacturers that use ARM-licensed MCUs, so it's not like the Allwinner is a vastly different product.
I personally prefer licensing projects with a permissive license that permits closed commercial development, such as the MIT or BSD license, over the GPL. However, when a company like Mediatek chooses to use GPL'ed software and then fails to follow the license terms, I think that displays a contempt for the entire open source community that I cannot support.
> The only non open hardware on Allwinner chips is the ARM-licensed Mali GPU
I seriously doubt that any part of Allwinners chips can be classified as open hardware. Just to clarify, this is wikipedias view on what open (source) hardware means:
> The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bills of material, PCB layout data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released with the FOSS approach.
> Both are very inexpensive Chinese chip manufacturers that use ARM-licensed MCUs
The chip in this device has a MIPS core. Besides, MCU != IP-core != SoC.
And I screwed up with my description of this project -- you're right that it's a MIPS not ARM core. Sorry about that.
* MIPS CPUs ranging from the the R4000 to the R10000, with clock rates of up to 250MHz. (This project uses a related MIPS CPU that clocks at 600MHz.)
* Up to 512Mb of RAM, equal to that in this project. The Wikipedia articles explains that the Indigo2 hardware could theoretically support 1Gb of RAM, but the thermal output of the DRAM available at the time was too great for the enclosure.
* 100Mbit/s wired Ethernet network interface (this project provides 802.11n wireless networking, which Wikipedia claims will reach 600Mbit/s).
I find it staggering that the hardware that was once powering a high-end workstation is now being put to good use as a low power router. It's good to see that after all this time you can still run a version of Unix on the same hardware though.
This project has 2x 100Mbps wired Ethernets in addition to 300Mbps WiFi.
edit:
> * Up to 512Mb of RAM, equal to that in this project. The Wikipedia articles explains that the Indigo2 hardware could theoretically support 1Gb of RAM, but the thermal output of the DRAM available at the time was too great for the enclosure.
As user Wicher below notes, there seems to be bit/byte confusion here. So Indigo has still significantly more memory than this project.
It is a pretty color, though.
The downside is that most of the Atheros chips have a single <1Ghz MIPS core, when most of the rest of the router SoC market is switching to multi core 1GHz+ ARM devices, or is focused on other parts of the device space.
The hardware design isn't open-source, but all the software is, and it's available now for 19euro per module.
It's built on Atheros' AR9331 chipset which means you get to use the awesome open-source ath9k driver.
Can we stop posting "news" like this unless it is actually significant, ie contains the thing that they claim is open?
Its almost to the point where these posts should be flagged IMO.
If anybody wishes to contribute to OpenWRT, this talk from 30c3 should give you a good overview on the "current" state of the project (hint: apart from system programmers, web developers are also very much welcome/needed):
Many people therefore prefer to run the nightly builds to get a (much) more up to date build. It may sound scary, but it's not really.
Anyway: openwrt is definitely not dead, definitely safe and I consider it about the only routing firmware I fully trust.
I'm holding out hope for http://www.securifi.com/almondplus
edit: I should say, TI's module isn't open either. As far as I know the firmware, which includes a TCP/IP stack, isn't open.
The problem with a lot of home automation and internet-of-things stuff is proprietary lock in, either from new young companies that could be dead in 18 months or established monsters looking to slurp your data. Having an open source foundation is the only viable long term approach to something that needs to live as long as your home infrastructure. If this lot cease being able to make the boards then at least, in principle, you can. (Or more likely someone else can pick up the ball without any license cost). If you've built around a Nest and that stops being made then you're screwed.
I have to admit I don't think either in extreme is going to work. You need the combination of standardisation with non-cloud dependency but also commercial viability. i.e. an Android of Internet-of-Things without Googly influence is needed, but without a rich backer it's hard to see where it will come from.
witness RAM part number here: http://wrtnode.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DSC_0038.jpg http://wrtnode.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/DSC_0046.jpg http://wrtnode.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2s.jpg
decode here: http://www.elixir-memory.com/Download/2007%201H.pdf
Very likely the 128M flash is 128Mb, so 16MB
https://twitter.com/WRTnode/status/483611574796447744
In the <title> it's about $20 so I'm guessing $25 includes a VAT tax or something: <title>PREORDER WRTnode for $19.99 now | WRTnode</title>
(As I understand in some countries you need to get a license to sell wifi devices - some Arduino's have issues with this - but not to use or build them).
If so, this is incorrect. There is no FCC certification required for low-powered, non-licensed devices like this one if you don't sell or market them. You can run up to 5 such devices without any certication. See page 3 on:
http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Doc...
Nothing on that page or their Kickstarter says that Almond+ is meant to be OSH.
edit: OSH --> OSHW
edit: probably http://www.oshwa.org (seems to be down right now)
This is the real reason the GPL has a sort of built in success limit for end user deployments, and why so much of the code in Android is Apache or BSD licensed.
