On Tue, Dec 09, 2008 at 09:54:26PM -0800, Russell Senior wrote: > > We have identified a replacement device that is much more compact, has > no moving parts, is about twice as capable and uses only about 5W of > electric power. The only downside is that it is not free. In a bulk > purchase, each one will cost about $175 to put together.
Sounds like our friend the ALIX. There is an additional advantage to Alix, which is that the compact flash drives are under $10, and we can carry spares in our wallets. Much easier to do a software swap than with hard drives. May I suggest a mechanical hardware change? If you are rolling out 30 of these, you can afford to do a little more case customization, rather than buying the stock metal case. Is there anyone here with the ability to route/sculpture wood, or alternatively to mold plastic? What I DON'T like about the ALIX case is that you have to pull 8 screws and all the connections in order to swap out the CF card. I'm also a little concerned that something so small might get stolen. Cables pull out too easily, especially the AC adapter. I propose a somewhat larger wooden case, the back board made of routed wood (or plastic), the front board being a pretty decorative panel with the PTP logo and some text. Make it 8.5x11 inches, about 1.5 inches thick. The front board might be a sheet of transparent plastic with a stick-on label sheet with holes to look at the status lights. TAP plastic sells scrap sheets of clear plastic for about a buck a pound. I have sheets of 8.5x11 waterproof vinyl sticker paper I can print on my color laser printer - I've printed bumper stickers that held up outside for a year so far. Send me the images, I will print them. White background, please! The back board would have a routed cavity that holds the ALIX board, as well as routed channels holding the ethernet and power cables securely in place. It could be screwed into a wall. Wood isn't a very good thermal conductor, but 5 watts (actually 3 to 4 for the ALIX) is easy to get rid of. The ALIX board is loose, held in place by the front board. The front board is attached with Velcro strips. Velcro, velcro! This permits rapid field swapout and maintenance without tools. If someone got really ambitious, the back board could be made of routed plastic, and there could be a groove to hold a gasket, so the whole thing could be made waterproof. An outdoor version would have security screws instead of velcro, but it would be the same basic arrangement. Since the ALIX has a mini-PCI slot, it can have a wireless card attached. Perhaps the back board should have an upper cavity to hold a small patch antenna. A pretty box with a decorative front panel may be more visually attractive to node operators. And routed channels in a back board might help keep cables from pulling loose. At the end of the day, this might not save a lot of money over the metal cases that Netgate sells, but the results will be better. If there is nobody reading this that can route wood or plastic, then we probably can't build this. OTOH, this might be an outreach opportunity - there might be a wood shop that would like a PTP node. If it looks good, the shop might sell back boards to many customers besides PTP. > You can make your donation by paypal here: > > http://personaltelco.net/donate Can we add a small advertisment to the splash pages of the existing nodes? We should note that the ALIX will log on and connect faster, and be more reliable - let the users vote with their donations for better service! Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/ Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/ Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
