Neat little box. I tried the controller software on a $250 Eee PC running Xandros, everything runs fine although about 6-7 times slower than on my regular laptop.

Ben Drawbaugh wrote on Aug 30, 2008 16:10:
Maybe I spoke too soon, as this shuttle for $189 is a little bigger and has a PCI slot -- which comes in handy for 8 port RS-232 cards. All we need is some Linux support and we should be all set.

Both are neat indeed but I don't think the form factor works for us.

A solid state box that doesn't suck on memory (1G) is the least of our problems. It clocks at $250 (which is like 30 euros) and will only drop and we don't need the latest and greatest and we don't need a multi-purpose thingy with graphics and all the whistle. We just need a decent CPU that can run a webserver and java with response times under 30ms from socket communication on a iPhone. That price point will soon be under $100. Moore's law says 24mo or 2 years. We will be more than ready by then.

I have to ping MS again, see if we can get the box to be built out of Alabama. With a little investment he said we can get some spiffy design. I think the form factor should be rack mount no?

I was reading Jeremy Aston's blog at customintegration.blogspot.com and he talks about Zonbu as the HA platform. I know the guy from Zonbu, he is a fellow Polytechnicien (same college) and he contacted me back in March. I have been noodling whether it would make sense to outsource some to him but figured it would be more complexity than we need.

The hard part is getting the freaking box built.

Neil Cherry wrote on Aug 30, 2008 16:53:

Ben Drawbaugh wrote on Aug 30, 2008 15:40:

The second I saw this little cube I thought of it as an HA controller. Sure it only has one RS-232 port and one USB, but other than that it seems like the perfect little Linux box.

I get a little nervous when I read So, would you like a Space Cube? Tough luck, at least for the moment. and While we won’t be sending the Cube into space any time soon.... The problems are the memory is a very weak at 64M, a lack of wireless and the price. You're paying the $100+ difference for the novelty of it's size. Small is good up to the point where you can easily walk off with the unit.

The size is neat, and I can see why Ben would be excited by the gadget. But I agree that it is not relevant to us as a rack mount on your A/V system would be totally kosher. Silent and slick are too advantages though. I like it when people say awe. Means you are onto something design wise.