VoCore – A coin-sized Linux computer with WiFi | Hacker News Reader

VoCore – A coin-sized Linux computer with WiFi

vocore.io

Has anyone played with this yet? I'm interested in the camera module as well, wondering if the little chip is beefy enough to stream video as an ip camera or something

I haven't played with it, but I just searched a bit and found:

It's a System on a Chip, SoC. Specifically, the F revision of this one: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Ralink_RT5350

This is the CPU: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/MIPS_24KEc

... Which is a MIPS32 device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_instruction_set

Oh, that first page says that it is used in various IP cameras. I think the answer to your question is 'yes'. :)

Cool, finally a chance to play with some MIPS stuff again. Could anyone find/know the power consumption for this board?

Apparently the chip runs hot, ~300mW with WiFi on, 220mW with WiFi off. This is not unexpected, the chip was designed for home routers running off of a wall wart where a few hundred extra mW wouldn't be noticed.

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=46339

I've made video streamers with TP-LINK 703n's (which are about the same thing) running openWRT and usb cameras, so I'm going to guess "yes".

I've got two, they don't have as much documentation as I would like, how to program for certain pins, SPI / I2C, how to compile for it locally and remotely.. I like the size but did not have the resources and time to blindly dive into it.

This is the perpetual problem with these no-name SBCs. All of the documentation and tech support is over in China, and even getting answers to simple questions can be impossible.

This is why the Raspberry Pi remains so popular despite having worse specs/higher price point than a multitude of competitors. The large English speaking community built up around it means you can usually find answers to any weird questions you might have about it. Usually some sample code too.

this looks like an implementation of this: https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/RT5...

olimex sells those itself: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/RT5350F/RT5350F-OL...

It looks so cute sitting on top of the "dock" board.

I thought that was a heat-sink or something. But it was just long headers and an ethernet port. 8O

It's basically a minimal system module around a RT5350, a MIPS-based SoC (hence OpenWRT?). Reminds me of ESP8266 in its not-so-ubiquitous days...

How revolutionary is this? I feel like I've seen stuff like this before.

Not very. You can find various systems and modules on a chip at a similar price point and lower.

It depends on what you want on chip, if you need it broken out and if you value documentation, vendor support and community development.

I was researching this yesterday for part of a personal project.

This is the smallest that I've seen. (I haven't seen much)

Every time this sort of hardware appears on a news site, somebody always chimes in with

"I can't see what the fuss is; you can, of course, get equivalently/more powerful and cheaper devices yadee yadda"

but it's never actually with a name, supplier, URL or price.

Last time it was the new Raspberry Pi.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm interested so show me the goods :)

There are many system on module (SOM) vendors in the market. Many of these SoM's have limited market so they're not going to compete on price.

I've used DAVE modules in the past, PHYTEC also makes some great modules for different Silicon vendors: http://phytec.com/products/system-on-modules/

Good break-down here: http://elinux.org/Computer-on-Module

This one is mostly notable for being so dang tiny. Just look at how that ethernet port on the hilariously overpriced "dock" dwarfs the board.

As far as power goes, it's basically a cheap home router without the plastic case. Don't expect too much from a 133Mhz MIPS chip. The most obvious use case for something like this would be a home grown IoT sensor or automation. Or you could make it a super tiny wireless bridge (but then you'll need to buy that overpriced breakout board or wire up your own ethernet jack), however the built-in WiFi is probably going to suck pretty bad thanks to having a super tiny antenna and being cheap as hell.

Maybe they'll find out a way to squeeze it down even more. There's "computers" that look exactly like a jack since there's really not much else in there.

The Xport for example: http://www.lantronix.com/products/xport/

Now that's not as great a CPU, but it is pretty much invisible.

Looks like it's stuck on a 3.10.x kernel. That's too bad.

These are the worst knick knacks I've ever played with

Care to elaborate?

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