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Forgive my ignorance but what are the use cases for a device such as this? Are there specific industries or organizations that this is aimed at? Is it somethi

Forgive my ignorance but what are the use cases for a device such as this? Are there specific industries or organizations that this is aimed at? Is it something that would be used by consumers/hobbyists for particular projects? Any insight is appreciated!

seibelj 5y ago
I own a company that makes specialized hardware using raspberry pis (https://icryptonode.com/ https://icryptonode.com/). This is very helpful.
- theothermatt 5y ago
  That makes sense and I should have thought of it with all of the packages I've ordered from Canakit
kemiller2002 5y ago
Kind of old school, but if you were going to give out usb drives at a trade show with a demo/app/video of some sort on it. A lot of rural America doesn't have fast broadband, so this would make it easy to distribute something without worrying about the internet.
caymanjim 5y ago
Handouts at conventions or other events; provisioning large deployments in a corporate environment; vendors shipping media to customers who need it in physical form (computers don't come with optical drives anymore, and sometimes you can't download); small/medium-scale manufacture of embedded/IoT devices. Just envisioning some uses off the top of my head.
chaos_emergent 5y ago
I've wanted the Etcher Pro to come out because I used to manage dozens of IoT devices, it took the better part of two days to flash operating systems onto them before I could deploy them into the field. The Pro would've made that process take minutes instead of days!
- poyu 5y ago
  At the cost of almost $1k USD
  - robotmay 5y ago
    $1k is basically nothing to a business compared to the cost of paying some muppet to write 50 SD cards at short notice. Especially as it’s a one-off cost. At my previous job we’d have recouped the cost within a couple of months at the most, and the sanity of whichever person was assigned to do the cards.
2xhydrogenoxide 5y ago
A usecase that comes to mind is the general secondary school exams here in Finland. The exam is digital and done in a purpose-made OS, booted from usb-sticks. So every time a new version comes out, every school has to update their hundreds of sticks. Something like this is already used, but seeing as the exam authority already recommends Etcher software I can see this having a market.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Any links to a technical breakdown of such an OS? I'm particularly interested in the boot process and whether it's designed to run on non-x86 devices.
legrande 5y ago
It might useful for brands who want to distribute 'swag' with USB flash drives with their logo on it, and some software or media flashed to it, to promote their product.
lflux 5y ago
On use case I'v seen is live concerts that record the show and sell the show you just saw to you on a USB stick at the merch table on your way out the door.
robotmay 5y ago
I actually had a need for this at my last job - I first heard about this 2-3 years ago and we would have loved to have it. At the time I worked for a company building music studios, and we had at least one IOT device in every room. Commissioning a building meant writing somewhere around 20-50 micro SD cards, which was pretty boring and rather time-consuming.
rasz 5y ago
if you have any product shipping with storage you need a way of flashing it. There are different ways of going about it: manufacturers offer pre programming, its an added cost and might have MOQ requirements your factory offers to build an automated programming jig, again makes sense at a certain volume level you and a bunch of friends and family sit around and program the stuff manually for couple of days straight This device will make third option a breeze.

seibelj 5y ago

I own a company that makes specialized hardware using raspberry pis (https://icryptonode.com/ https://icryptonode.com/). This is very helpful.

theothermatt 5y ago
That makes sense and I should have thought of it with all of the packages I've ordered from Canakit

kemiller2002 5y ago

Kind of old school, but if you were going to give out usb drives at a trade show with a demo/app/video of some sort on it. A lot of rural America doesn't have fast broadband, so this would make it easy to distribute something without worrying about the internet.

caymanjim 5y ago

Handouts at conventions or other events; provisioning large deployments in a corporate environment; vendors shipping media to customers who need it in physical form (computers don't come with optical drives anymore, and sometimes you can't download); small/medium-scale manufacture of embedded/IoT devices. Just envisioning some uses off the top of my head.

chaos_emergent 5y ago

I've wanted the Etcher Pro to come out because I used to manage dozens of IoT devices, it took the better part of two days to flash operating systems onto them before I could deploy them into the field. The Pro would've made that process take minutes instead of days!

poyu 5y ago
At the cost of almost $1k USD
- robotmay 5y ago
  $1k is basically nothing to a business compared to the cost of paying some muppet to write 50 SD cards at short notice. Especially as it’s a one-off cost. At my previous job we’d have recouped the cost within a couple of months at the most, and the sanity of whichever person was assigned to do the cards.

2xhydrogenoxide 5y ago

A usecase that comes to mind is the general secondary school exams here in Finland. The exam is digital and done in a purpose-made OS, booted from usb-sticks. So every time a new version comes out, every school has to update their hundreds of sticks. Something like this is already used, but seeing as the exam authority already recommends Etcher software I can see this having a market.

selfhoster11 5y ago
Any links to a technical breakdown of such an OS? I'm particularly interested in the boot process and whether it's designed to run on non-x86 devices.

legrande 5y ago

It might useful for brands who want to distribute 'swag' with USB flash drives with their logo on it, and some software or media flashed to it, to promote their product.

lflux 5y ago

On use case I'v seen is live concerts that record the show and sell the show you just saw to you on a USB stick at the merch table on your way out the door.

robotmay 5y ago

I actually had a need for this at my last job - I first heard about this 2-3 years ago and we would have loved to have it. At the time I worked for a company building music studios, and we had at least one IOT device in every room. Commissioning a building meant writing somewhere around 20-50 micro SD cards, which was pretty boring and rather time-consuming.

rasz 5y ago

if you have any product shipping with storage you need a way of flashing it. There are different ways of going about it: manufacturers offer pre programming, its an added cost and might have MOQ requirements your factory offers to build an automated programming jig, again makes sense at a certain volume level you and a bunch of friends and family sit around and program the stuff manually for couple of days straight This device will make third option a breeze.