6 ms·

Smallest linux computer I've seen was Transcend SD card (the wifi one). There are more manufacturers and I think Electric imp uses the same chipset.

by janci 8y ago

logicallee 8y ago
I looked at what you meant, and first found this article https://hackaday.com/2016/06/30/transcend-wifi-sd-card-is-a-tiny-linux-server/ https://hackaday.com/2016/06/30/transcend-wifi-sd-card-is-a-... which links this article: https://jamesone111.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/exploring-the-transcend-wifi-sd-card/ https://jamesone111.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/exploring-the-t... So this is a Linux server in the size of an SD-Card that has 16 GB of storage. And Wifi. And lets clients connect to download whatever's on them. I was thinking, wow, this must be some pro photography thing costing like $399 or something. The cost (given in the second article) is £25 (which is $32.19 today.) That is pretty cheap for a tiny Linux server of this size. With WIFI. And it made the rounds 5 years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Transcend%20Wifi-SD%20card&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Transcend%20Wifi-SD%20card&sor... What is the world coming to. By the way here is the one where HN discussed it the most: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647434 And note the comment that Transcend released the firmware (though that link is offline today.) However I guess there really just aren't all that many use cases for this kind of a server. Or maybe it has been superseded? One page[1] lists it as weighing just 2 grams, compared with the weight of 2.5 grams for a U.S. penny. That's gotta have some sort of applications. Why isn't this more popular at $30, or what are people using instead? Is it like, impossible to get any ports out of it, even a single serial debugging port via soldering, so you can't connect it to anything else? It just seems so hackable! [1] https://www.extremedeals.com.ph/products/transcend-16gb-wifi-sd-card https://www.extremedeals.com.ph/products/transcend-16gb-wifi...
- gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
  My experience is that SD-cards don't last very long when used as the `/` directory.
  - plasticchris 8y ago
    Use a read only root fs and overlays in ram, this will keep your sdcard based Linux server running much longer, though it is a bit tedious to set up.
    - logicallee 8y ago
      For those curious about how much RAM it has, the bottom comment in the more active HN discussion links here: http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=15&proj=15.%20Transcend%20WiFiSD http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=15&proj=15.%20... At first I thought it referred to just 3 MB of RAM (ouch!!) - but it has 32 MB. That's enough to do quite a bit in a stripped-down embedded Linux. To quote that page: >An exciting time indeed - now this WiFiSD card is a perfectly working ARMv5 computer with a kernel and ramdisk we can build, and 16GB of storage. Pity it only has 32MB of RAM. Well, we do have ability to modify the kernel now. I added support for swap, ext4, sysfs, loop, and a few other modern conveniences we all know and love. Once again the card booted. Now I was able to swapon a file on the SD card, loop-mount a 2GB ext4 filesystem and chroot into a version of ubuntu in there. Once inside, it is the nice and comfy environment you'd expect. I was able to bring up sshd with X-forwarding, and even run firefox on the card (it was slow). Modifying the card's boot scripts again, I tried to get it to do all this on boot and succeeded. SWEET! ....for about $30 and in the size of an SD-card and weighing less than a penny. With WIFI.
    - gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
      Interesting. How does this sort of set up handle updates?
      - plasticchris 8y ago
        You could ab update using dd to write to the other partition(s)
- squarefoot 8y ago
  My use case would be to turn a 7 years old camera (which is still better than most phone cameras) into a WiFi networked camera so that when I shoot photos of items I'm selling on Ebay it directly uploads them to my home server (NFS/SMB). For that use it wouldn't even need the flash storage: just buffer in RAM until the image is uploaded.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    Sounds like the Toshiba FlashAir or Transcend WiFi SD cards might suit your needs.

Smallest linux computer I've seen was Transcend SD card (the wifi one). There are more manufacturers and I think Electric imp uses the same chipset.

by janci 8y ago

Smallest linux computer I've seen was Transcend SD card (the wifi one). There are more manufacturers and I think Electric imp uses the same chipset.

logicallee 8y ago

I looked at what you meant, and first found this article https://hackaday.com/2016/06/30/transcend-wifi-sd-card-is-a-tiny-linux-server/ https://hackaday.com/2016/06/30/transcend-wifi-sd-card-is-a-... which links this article: https://jamesone111.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/exploring-the-transcend-wifi-sd-card/ https://jamesone111.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/exploring-the-t... So this is a Linux server in the size of an SD-Card that has 16 GB of storage. And Wifi. And lets clients connect to download whatever's on them. I was thinking, wow, this must be some pro photography thing costing like $399 or something. The cost (given in the second article) is £25 (which is $32.19 today.) That is pretty cheap for a tiny Linux server of this size. With WIFI. And it made the rounds 5 years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Transcend%20Wifi-SD%20card&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Transcend%20Wifi-SD%20card&sor... What is the world coming to. By the way here is the one where HN discussed it the most: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7647434 And note the comment that Transcend released the firmware (though that link is offline today.) However I guess there really just aren't all that many use cases for this kind of a server. Or maybe it has been superseded? One page[1] lists it as weighing just 2 grams, compared with the weight of 2.5 grams for a U.S. penny. That's gotta have some sort of applications. Why isn't this more popular at $30, or what are people using instead? Is it like, impossible to get any ports out of it, even a single serial debugging port via soldering, so you can't connect it to anything else? It just seems so hackable! [1] https://www.extremedeals.com.ph/products/transcend-16gb-wifi-sd-card https://www.extremedeals.com.ph/products/transcend-16gb-wifi...

gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
My experience is that SD-cards don't last very long when used as the `/` directory.
- plasticchris 8y ago
  Use a read only root fs and overlays in ram, this will keep your sdcard based Linux server running much longer, though it is a bit tedious to set up.
  - logicallee 8y ago
    For those curious about how much RAM it has, the bottom comment in the more active HN discussion links here: http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=15&proj=15.%20Transcend%20WiFiSD http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=15&proj=15.%20... At first I thought it referred to just 3 MB of RAM (ouch!!) - but it has 32 MB. That's enough to do quite a bit in a stripped-down embedded Linux. To quote that page: >An exciting time indeed - now this WiFiSD card is a perfectly working ARMv5 computer with a kernel and ramdisk we can build, and 16GB of storage. Pity it only has 32MB of RAM. Well, we do have ability to modify the kernel now. I added support for swap, ext4, sysfs, loop, and a few other modern conveniences we all know and love. Once again the card booted. Now I was able to swapon a file on the SD card, loop-mount a 2GB ext4 filesystem and chroot into a version of ubuntu in there. Once inside, it is the nice and comfy environment you'd expect. I was able to bring up sshd with X-forwarding, and even run firefox on the card (it was slow). Modifying the card's boot scripts again, I tried to get it to do all this on boot and succeeded. SWEET! ....for about $30 and in the size of an SD-card and weighing less than a penny. With WIFI.
  - gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
    Interesting. How does this sort of set up handle updates?
    - plasticchris 8y ago
      You could ab update using dd to write to the other partition(s)
squarefoot 8y ago
My use case would be to turn a 7 years old camera (which is still better than most phone cameras) into a WiFi networked camera so that when I shoot photos of items I'm selling on Ebay it directly uploads them to my home server (NFS/SMB). For that use it wouldn't even need the flash storage: just buffer in RAM until the image is uploaded.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  Sounds like the Toshiba FlashAir or Transcend WiFi SD cards might suit your needs.