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I've been looking for an alternative to Raspberry Pi for a project. Perhaps someone on HN can suggest a solution. Here's what I need: - Run minimal embedded

I've been looking for an alternative to Raspberry Pi for a project. Perhaps someone on HN can suggest a solution. Here's what I need: - Run minimal embedded Linux (LAMP) - No graphics/GUI required - Ethernet connector - Power connector for wall-mounted adapter (P5 or something like that) - Serial port header for debugging - Second serial port for other I/O - Maybe a couple of LED's or an 8 bit port available for status LEDs - SD card for OS (just like R-Pi) - No other peripherals or I/O needed - Low cost (ideally $25 or less) Barring a pre-existing board, any suggestions for a low-cost processor to design a board around that could run a bare-bones LAMP setup? A lot of what I see out there (like the i.MX233) have built-in peripherals such as LCD and touch-screen controllers that would be overkill for this project.

stephengillie 14y ago
The closest I can think of would be one of the Arduino ARMs or a Teensy or maybe a Stellaris. But I don't know if those have the "horsepower" to deliver a computing experience.
- joe_bleau 14y ago
  I don't think you'll be running a LAMP stack on any of those microcontroller based boards. How about something from Olimex? https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/iMX233/iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/iMX233/iMX233-OLin... looks close, but the price is a bit higher than your target. https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-OLinuXino-WIFI/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-OLinuXino-... if you want wifi over ethernet? Did any low-end routers come with an SD card slot?
  - robomartin 14y ago
    The Olimex is probably the closest I found too. I could see using their board for development and then doing my own to throw out all the hardware that isn't needed.
DanBC 14y ago
Is this for a one off or for a bigger quantity? There are a variety of devices that use Linux that you could kludge - routers, set-top boxes etc etc. How's this if you want 100? (much more expensive than you want) (http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?tab=options&product=TS-7500 http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?tab=opt...)
- robomartin 14y ago
  This is a neat board but too expensive.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
So the question is what you're shooting for. You can build an embedded web server which has two serial ports, ethernet (or WiFi), power, 8 bit I/O port, and an SD Card interface for < $10. But it won't run Linux or MySQL or PHP or Apache. Instead it will run thttpd with a built in CGI type application. I've got something very close to that from China which is trying to be USB over IP extender, but the basic setup is as you describe. If you leave LAMP on your must-have list though it raises the price to at least $35 :-). Given the success of Rpi though I expect we'll see someone else's 'phone' SoC in a board (and no I don't mean Samsung's $200 thing)
- robomartin 14y ago
  Leaving out LAMP is not entirely out of the question. It just means more work.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Its not out of the question at all, my point (poorly made), is that LAMP costs $35, the reasoning is like this: LAMP - Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, requires Linux which moves you into a memory managed core, Apache+MySQL adds memory requirements this puts you at 256MB minimum, 512M better 1G ideal. MySQL+PHP adds storage requirements (they are reasonably moot because an SD card can have 32G no problem). So the system requirements of the software, raise the cost of the hardware. If you buy that hardware in onesies quantity will cost you $50 - $75, if you can buy it in huge quantities its less, the RpI distributors can sell it for $35 but no idea what sort of margins they are getting. Requiring LAMP is a "skills" play, which is to say it costs less to find a skilled programmer who can code inside a LAMP infrastructure than it is to find one who can code in an embedded infrastructure. That can decrease your time to market and your development costs. From a business perspective one would look at the total cost of developing the product and then the lifetime value at a given price. If you know that you over payed on the Hardware to get the skills advantage, then if you were doing a threat assessment to your market (part of a SWOT) you would note that someone who did it with an embedded programmer could come in and undercut your price and still make a good margin on units sold. This is exactly what Network Appliance did in the NFS server market, they ported NFS to the bare metal and sold a box based on the 486 that out performed a Sun 4 server at 1/10th the cost. So if you are only making a few, the question is silly, $25 or $100 dollars won't make a big difference and there are lots off off the self solutions at the high end of the price range (PogoPlug, Guruplug, Etc, Marvell's whole effort there) If you have an on going market though, getting better margins per system pays off the longer you sell these things. You can compute the cross-over point with simple math based on salary of programmer, cost of goods, gross margin of the product. Just saying "I want a $25 system that is LAMP based" is like saying "I want a car that costs what every other car costs except that it can fly." Which is to say, its a whine. You can also reason to a pretty good guess that a $25 LAMP system doesn't exist but looking around at Hacker News or a variety of tech themed web sites, You have no doubt seen all the press RpI got, and if you went back in time you could see the press the Dallas Semiconductor Tini (single chip web server) got, so you could reason that any LAMP capable system at that price point would hit all of the tech sites like a ton of bricks. It would take effort for it not to create a lot of news. So you can be reasonably certain it doesn't exist. Now if you want to know why it doesn't exist, well you can figure that out too, take the Linux kernel and the efforts that have gone on to put it into small ARM chips, (there are lots to choose from) and look for the minimum viable chip to run Linux, then go to the manufacturer's web site and look at pricing (or use Octopart if its in general distribution). Look at the 1K price (that is "if you buy 1000 units") because it will be the nominal "street" price of the chip. Now price memory chips, ethernet magnetics, and board design/build. The PCB is going to cost $1 - $3 each depending most of these you can do in 2 layers but some designs really need 4 layers because the pin pitch is so dense. Then you'll want to find a place to make them. I'm lucky because living in the Bay Area I've got my choice of over a dozen shops that can make and assemble fine pitch printed circuit boards as a service if you're just making a hundred or so. When your run that exercise (at least when I do) I come up with between $35 - $40 per unit at about 1K units. Which, if I were to sell one to you I'd probably sell for between $75 and $150 depending on whether or not you were planning to resell them. To test my math I would go out and see if there were any products in that price range, and would find this one: http://www.adafruit.com/products/278 http://www.adafruit.com/products/278 the 'chumby hacker board' which retails from AdaFruit for $89. And then I would feel confident in asserting that no $25 system yet exists that supports a LAMP stack.
noonespecial 14y ago
TP-Link TL-WR703N running OpenWRT. Cost is about $22. Ethernet, Wifi, USB already working well with OpenWRT. Nice package manager. Real Linux at micro-controller price and power consumption. You can lift some GPIO beyond the single light and button that comes on the board if you're clever with a soldering iron, but a generic Arduino Mini can make it sing for about $10 extra.
- robomartin 14y ago
  Interesting hack.
- maratd 14y ago
  Currently using a TL-WR703N to build my own nest thermostat. Very cool device.
  - noonespecial 14y ago
    Yes, I'm very glad I found it. With the exception of graphics, it seems to deliver on all of the "maker promise" that originally excited me about the raspi, for a lot less, and with no issues actually getting hold of them.
    - robomartin 14y ago
      Where are you getting these boards for $22? It looks like they are not manufacturing the device any more. They list a '702 but not a '703: http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=&model=TL-WR702N http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=&... http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WR703N-Portable-802-11n-Wireless/dp/B0083Z54P0 http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WR703N-Portable-802-11n-Wir... http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-802-11n-802-11g-Wireless-TL-WR702N/dp/B007PTCFFW/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1356223829&sr=1-1&keywords=TL-WR702 http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-802-11n-802-11g-Wireless-TL-WR...
      - throwaway64 14y ago
        Be careful with model or even revision numbers, always check hardware compatibility lists. very often times the difference between something like a "653" and a "653+" can be an entirely different (and not supported) chipset.
loxs 14y ago
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/

stephengillie 14y ago

The closest I can think of would be one of the Arduino ARMs or a Teensy or maybe a Stellaris. But I don't know if those have the "horsepower" to deliver a computing experience.

joe_bleau 14y ago
I don't think you'll be running a LAMP stack on any of those microcontroller based boards. How about something from Olimex? https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/iMX233/iMX233-OLinuXino-MAXI/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/iMX233/iMX233-OLin... looks close, but the price is a bit higher than your target. https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-OLinuXino-WIFI/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-OLinuXino-... if you want wifi over ethernet? Did any low-end routers come with an SD card slot?
- robomartin 14y ago
  The Olimex is probably the closest I found too. I could see using their board for development and then doing my own to throw out all the hardware that isn't needed.

DanBC 14y ago

Is this for a one off or for a bigger quantity? There are a variety of devices that use Linux that you could kludge - routers, set-top boxes etc etc. How's this if you want 100? (much more expensive than you want) (http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?tab=options&product=TS-7500 http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?tab=opt...)

robomartin 14y ago
This is a neat board but too expensive.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

So the question is what you're shooting for. You can build an embedded web server which has two serial ports, ethernet (or WiFi), power, 8 bit I/O port, and an SD Card interface for < $10. But it won't run Linux or MySQL or PHP or Apache. Instead it will run thttpd with a built in CGI type application. I've got something very close to that from China which is trying to be USB over IP extender, but the basic setup is as you describe. If you leave LAMP on your must-have list though it raises the price to at least $35 :-). Given the success of Rpi though I expect we'll see someone else's 'phone' SoC in a board (and no I don't mean Samsung's $200 thing)

robomartin 14y ago
Leaving out LAMP is not entirely out of the question. It just means more work.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Its not out of the question at all, my point (poorly made), is that LAMP costs $35, the reasoning is like this: LAMP - Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, requires Linux which moves you into a memory managed core, Apache+MySQL adds memory requirements this puts you at 256MB minimum, 512M better 1G ideal. MySQL+PHP adds storage requirements (they are reasonably moot because an SD card can have 32G no problem). So the system requirements of the software, raise the cost of the hardware. If you buy that hardware in onesies quantity will cost you $50 - $75, if you can buy it in huge quantities its less, the RpI distributors can sell it for $35 but no idea what sort of margins they are getting. Requiring LAMP is a "skills" play, which is to say it costs less to find a skilled programmer who can code inside a LAMP infrastructure than it is to find one who can code in an embedded infrastructure. That can decrease your time to market and your development costs. From a business perspective one would look at the total cost of developing the product and then the lifetime value at a given price. If you know that you over payed on the Hardware to get the skills advantage, then if you were doing a threat assessment to your market (part of a SWOT) you would note that someone who did it with an embedded programmer could come in and undercut your price and still make a good margin on units sold. This is exactly what Network Appliance did in the NFS server market, they ported NFS to the bare metal and sold a box based on the 486 that out performed a Sun 4 server at 1/10th the cost. So if you are only making a few, the question is silly, $25 or $100 dollars won't make a big difference and there are lots off off the self solutions at the high end of the price range (PogoPlug, Guruplug, Etc, Marvell's whole effort there) If you have an on going market though, getting better margins per system pays off the longer you sell these things. You can compute the cross-over point with simple math based on salary of programmer, cost of goods, gross margin of the product. Just saying "I want a $25 system that is LAMP based" is like saying "I want a car that costs what every other car costs except that it can fly." Which is to say, its a whine. You can also reason to a pretty good guess that a $25 LAMP system doesn't exist but looking around at Hacker News or a variety of tech themed web sites, You have no doubt seen all the press RpI got, and if you went back in time you could see the press the Dallas Semiconductor Tini (single chip web server) got, so you could reason that any LAMP capable system at that price point would hit all of the tech sites like a ton of bricks. It would take effort for it not to create a lot of news. So you can be reasonably certain it doesn't exist. Now if you want to know why it doesn't exist, well you can figure that out too, take the Linux kernel and the efforts that have gone on to put it into small ARM chips, (there are lots to choose from) and look for the minimum viable chip to run Linux, then go to the manufacturer's web site and look at pricing (or use Octopart if its in general distribution). Look at the 1K price (that is "if you buy 1000 units") because it will be the nominal "street" price of the chip. Now price memory chips, ethernet magnetics, and board design/build. The PCB is going to cost $1 - $3 each depending most of these you can do in 2 layers but some designs really need 4 layers because the pin pitch is so dense. Then you'll want to find a place to make them. I'm lucky because living in the Bay Area I've got my choice of over a dozen shops that can make and assemble fine pitch printed circuit boards as a service if you're just making a hundred or so. When your run that exercise (at least when I do) I come up with between $35 - $40 per unit at about 1K units. Which, if I were to sell one to you I'd probably sell for between $75 and $150 depending on whether or not you were planning to resell them. To test my math I would go out and see if there were any products in that price range, and would find this one: http://www.adafruit.com/products/278 http://www.adafruit.com/products/278 the 'chumby hacker board' which retails from AdaFruit for $89. And then I would feel confident in asserting that no $25 system yet exists that supports a LAMP stack.

noonespecial 14y ago

TP-Link TL-WR703N running OpenWRT. Cost is about $22. Ethernet, Wifi, USB already working well with OpenWRT. Nice package manager. Real Linux at micro-controller price and power consumption. You can lift some GPIO beyond the single light and button that comes on the board if you're clever with a soldering iron, but a generic Arduino Mini can make it sing for about $10 extra.

robomartin 14y ago
Interesting hack.
maratd 14y ago
Currently using a TL-WR703N to build my own nest thermostat. Very cool device.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  Yes, I'm very glad I found it. With the exception of graphics, it seems to deliver on all of the "maker promise" that originally excited me about the raspi, for a lot less, and with no issues actually getting hold of them.
  - robomartin 14y ago
    Where are you getting these boards for $22? It looks like they are not manufacturing the device any more. They list a '702 but not a '703: http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=&model=TL-WR702N http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=&... http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WR703N-Portable-802-11n-Wireless/dp/B0083Z54P0 http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WR703N-Portable-802-11n-Wir... http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-802-11n-802-11g-Wireless-TL-WR702N/dp/B007PTCFFW/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1356223829&sr=1-1&keywords=TL-WR702 http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-802-11n-802-11g-Wireless-TL-WR...
    - throwaway64 14y ago
      Be careful with model or even revision numbers, always check hardware compatibility lists. very often times the difference between something like a "653" and a "653+" can be an entirely different (and not supported) chipset.

loxs 14y ago

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/ https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/