I just got a UG802 device along these lines, I'm going to try it out in DC tomorrow perhaps. There are a whole bunch of these coming out, they all seem to be based on the Rockchip RK3066, so it seems like a good platform to target. They can sometimes be bought in bulk for as cheap as US$20 per unit, which is also very nice.
Could you get adhoc mode working on it? If so, it would make a very nice burner mesh server. Just install Lil' Debi and Commotion MeshTether from the Play store, and its a server that can be stashed anywhere there is power and wifi/mesh. .hc On Apr 24, 2013, at 5:28 PM, Paul Gardner-Stephen wrote: > Hi all, > > Sorry if you have already thought about and discussed these devices, but they > strike me as potentially very interesting for both communities, in addition > to our own interest in them for the Serval Project. > > We have been looking at some of the cheap Android-based stick PCs as a > possible platform for Serval Mesh Extenders, such as the MK802ii and more > recent MK808B. For more about the Mesh Extenders and their long-range UHF > packet radios, refer to: > > http://developer.servalproject.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=content:meshhelper:main_page&#prototyping > > > or: > > http://servalpaul.blogspot.com/2013/02/building-serval-mesh-helper-device.html > > and subsequent posts to that blog. > > The newer generations of the Android stick-PCs have dual-core 1.5GHz ARM > processors, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash, dual-antenna 802.11n Wi-Fi > (although the firmware is not ideal, more on that later), USB host port, > microSD slot, and HDMI out, all in a tiny thing about 80mm x 35mm x 15mm > depending on the particular variant you get. You get all that for under > US$50, e.g., from geekbuying.com. > > These typically come with a root-enabled ROM, and are very easy to flash with > a complete new operating system. > > Thus compared with many wireless routers they have much greater CPU and > memory resources, and similar or lower cost. > > What I wanted to discover what their power consumption was, because I want to > run them off battery for really resilient deployments. > > While I was initially concerned about the power consumption, I discovered > that the later generation models can perform useful services, including > running Wi-Fi for about 1W: > > http://servalpaul.blogspot.com/2013/04/comparing-energy-consumption-of.html > > The main issues that I have identified are likely to be: > > 1. The Wi-Fi antenna are little patch antenna, which probably don't have that > great performance. They could be replaced fairly easily though, I suspect. > On the up-side, they do have two antenna for doing clever 802.11n things. > > 2. The Wi-Fi firmware that comes with the ROMs I have found don't include > simultaneous AP and ad-hoc capability, at least as far as I can tell. This > would need investigation. They apparently use a Broadcom 8330 based Wi-Fi > chipset in at least some variants, which leads to my next point. > > 3. The Wi-Fi chipset and design quality varies between suppliers of these, as > it appears that they are all using a reference design of the RK3066 chipset, > to which they add Wi-Fi. Some use realtek or mediatek chipsets instead of > broadcom. Some implementations are better than others, e.g., some > sub-optimal implementations seem to have a common ground-plane between the > Wi-Fi and USB, which reduces the sensitivity of the Wi-Fi receiver. All this > is both a negative and positive. On the negative side, some variants might be > complete duds for our desired use-cases. On the positive side, it might be > possible to encourage one of these manufacturers to make one with, for > example, an Atheros Wi-Fi chipset that is well supported by Linux, OpenWRT > and Debian. Related, I have yet to survey the complete OS image to see if > there are any other closed binary blobs hiding around the place. > > 4. There is no on-board ethernet port on the cheaper models. This could be > solved with a USB ethernet adapter, or again, encouraging one of the > manufacturers to make a variant that is better optimised for our communities > needs. > > If anyone in the community is interested in working on porting OpenWRT and/or > enabling simultaneous AP+ad-hoc Wi-Fi on these, we can probably arrange to > provide a couple of MK808Bs to facilitate this. > > Paul. > _______________________________________________ > Commotion-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-dev
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