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Hmm. $200. You can get an Arduino with an ethernet shield for about $75-80. This does not appear to have any detailed tech specs on the linked page,detail on

by ErrantX 16y ago

Hmm. $200. You can get an Arduino with an ethernet shield for about $75-80. This does not appear to have any detailed tech specs on the linked page,detail on customisability/programmability or on the interconnects offered. But even if we allow it some leniency on that I figure an Arduino is still the no brainer choice :)

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PonyGumbo 16y ago
True, but this appears to be much smaller than an Arduino.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  I assumed this was intended as a posting for home hackers to have a go at internet enabling their devices; in which case I think the size consideration isn't much of an issue. If we're talking consumer product design, i.e. mass produced internet enabled fridges, sure this is not a bad idea :) But for a home hacker the Arduino is the way forward :)
  - nupark 16y ago
    Arduino is considerably more expensive, sizable, and complicated than is really needed for a finished home hacker project. Additionally, size does matter (sorry :) when you're trying to fit a piece of electronics into your home in an unobtrusive way. You don't need a full Arduino to wirelessly enable (802.15.4+ZigBee or 6LoWPAN!) a simple device. You just need the MCU (and the tiny family may be sufficient - $2-5) and the wireless hardware (eg, xbee, or one of Atmel's new combined atmega+802.15.4 chipsets if you can deal with the antenna requirements - $8 - $30), an optional crystal oscillator (<$1), and -- if necessary -- a power source (eg, some batteries). As for commercial applications -- I'd expect them to use wireless, and my money is on either straight WiFi (especially for something as large as a fridge), or 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN (especially for smaller, low-power devices).
    - bigiain 16y ago
      That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). If/when I get to a stage where I think I've got a "version 1.0", I'll sometimes (if space really is an issue - in my projects that's usually because I'm trying to fit it inside a small RC plane) reduce it to a 168 or 328 in a minimal-external-component configuration. Often though, an Arduino mini (or even a full sized Arduino) is perfectly fine. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time.
      - nupark 16y ago
        That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). Arduino is an OK development board, but it does constrain your final deployment choices. I use Atmel's STK600 development platform for the same purpose; the STK600 is their modern development board and supports just about every MCU available via (relatively) cheap routing/socket cards. They've got a have a programmable clock generator, adjustable VCC, switches/LEDs/etc, as well as support for ISP programming such that I can burn bootloaders, and high voltage programming if I happen to screw that up. I can quickly iterate on a design while using an STK600 to prototype, and I'm not constrained by Arduino's hardware/bootloader/MCU requirements, especially in relation to clock speed and power consumption -- something that I would assume matters a lot on RC planes. Plus, since the STK600 supports the full line of Atmel microcontrollers, you can specialize for the task at hand, be it USB or wireless. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time. I'll admit that the nice thing about the Arduino Mini for deployment is that it's a very accessible (and small sized) package; off the shelf, most people won't want to deal with SMT and would have a hard time building something as small.
cnlwsu 16y ago
Or you can get just the module, I know the Digi ConnectME is about 50$ for a 75mhz/8mb ram, runs linux and has an eclipse based IDE. Same company that makes XBee modules too.
tesseract 16y ago
It looks like a Lantronix (http://lantronix.com http://lantronix.com) XPort, which can be had for much less than $200 from various electronics suppliers. For example, I just found the XP1001000-03R variant for $51 (qty. 1) at Arrow. As far as the product being designed for hobbyists - hmm - it doesn't really have that feel to it. I think the intended market is more along the lines of one-off or low production volume industrial control hardware, test equipment, etc. One use I've seen documented was as an out-of-band control channel on a very high end FPGA board.
- yawniek 16y ago
  i can not recommend this unfortunately, as the devkit was far from easy to use. i could not get any scripting language running on it and generally the documentation was really sparse. that was 1 year ago.but if you are an ulinux pro it is certainly a good choice!
- reemrevnivek 16y ago
  A classmate of mine (Junior-level EE) used the Lantronix with an ATmega 8-bit controller. Lantronix sent him some Java, and the thing just worked.

by ErrantX 16y ago

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deleted 16y ago
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PonyGumbo 16y ago

True, but this appears to be much smaller than an Arduino.

ErrantX 16y ago
I assumed this was intended as a posting for home hackers to have a go at internet enabling their devices; in which case I think the size consideration isn't much of an issue. If we're talking consumer product design, i.e. mass produced internet enabled fridges, sure this is not a bad idea :) But for a home hacker the Arduino is the way forward :)
- nupark 16y ago
  Arduino is considerably more expensive, sizable, and complicated than is really needed for a finished home hacker project. Additionally, size does matter (sorry :) when you're trying to fit a piece of electronics into your home in an unobtrusive way. You don't need a full Arduino to wirelessly enable (802.15.4+ZigBee or 6LoWPAN!) a simple device. You just need the MCU (and the tiny family may be sufficient - $2-5) and the wireless hardware (eg, xbee, or one of Atmel's new combined atmega+802.15.4 chipsets if you can deal with the antenna requirements - $8 - $30), an optional crystal oscillator (<$1), and -- if necessary -- a power source (eg, some batteries). As for commercial applications -- I'd expect them to use wireless, and my money is on either straight WiFi (especially for something as large as a fridge), or 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN (especially for smaller, low-power devices).
  - bigiain 16y ago
    That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). If/when I get to a stage where I think I've got a "version 1.0", I'll sometimes (if space really is an issue - in my projects that's usually because I'm trying to fit it inside a small RC plane) reduce it to a 168 or 328 in a minimal-external-component configuration. Often though, an Arduino mini (or even a full sized Arduino) is perfectly fine. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time.
    - nupark 16y ago
      That's all true, but for _me_, the Arduino is invaluable for making it easy to go through the many iterations of hardware prototype and software I need before I decide on the final form (or, more commonly, give up on it as not-as-good-an-idea-as-I-first-thought). Arduino is an OK development board, but it does constrain your final deployment choices. I use Atmel's STK600 development platform for the same purpose; the STK600 is their modern development board and supports just about every MCU available via (relatively) cheap routing/socket cards. They've got a have a programmable clock generator, adjustable VCC, switches/LEDs/etc, as well as support for ISP programming such that I can burn bootloaders, and high voltage programming if I happen to screw that up. I can quickly iterate on a design while using an STK600 to prototype, and I'm not constrained by Arduino's hardware/bootloader/MCU requirements, especially in relation to clock speed and power consumption -- something that I would assume matters a lot on RC planes. Plus, since the STK600 supports the full line of Atmel microcontrollers, you can specialize for the task at hand, be it USB or wireless. If I ever thought I was going to build dozens or hundreds of something I'd designed, the ~$30 for an Arduino Mini might become an issue, but for my style of homebuilt projects the money spent on a Mini is often a good tradeoff between my money and my time. I'll admit that the nice thing about the Arduino Mini for deployment is that it's a very accessible (and small sized) package; off the shelf, most people won't want to deal with SMT and would have a hard time building something as small.

cnlwsu 16y ago

Or you can get just the module, I know the Digi ConnectME is about 50$ for a 75mhz/8mb ram, runs linux and has an eclipse based IDE. Same company that makes XBee modules too.

tesseract 16y ago

It looks like a Lantronix (http://lantronix.com http://lantronix.com) XPort, which can be had for much less than $200 from various electronics suppliers. For example, I just found the XP1001000-03R variant for $51 (qty. 1) at Arrow. As far as the product being designed for hobbyists - hmm - it doesn't really have that feel to it. I think the intended market is more along the lines of one-off or low production volume industrial control hardware, test equipment, etc. One use I've seen documented was as an out-of-band control channel on a very high end FPGA board.

yawniek 16y ago
i can not recommend this unfortunately, as the devkit was far from easy to use. i could not get any scripting language running on it and generally the documentation was really sparse. that was 1 year ago.but if you are an ulinux pro it is certainly a good choice!
reemrevnivek 16y ago
A classmate of mine (Junior-level EE) used the Lantronix with an ATmega 8-bit controller. Lantronix sent him some Java, and the thing just worked.