[mh] appliance hardware

[Tom M. <tme...@gm...>]

Mickey Argo wrote:
> Also is anyone currently running or looking into using a plug in
> computer to run Mister House? I just was looking
> at http://plugcomputer.org today my immediate thought was that these
> would work great for home automation.

That site looks like an attempt at creating a generic community for plug 
computers, but I'm only aware of the Marvell SheevaPlug (there may be 
multiple OEMs, but it is all the same chipset). Looks like Marvell runs 
that site.

See also:
http://www.marvell.com/platforms/plug_computer/
which links to the above site.

I've seen Marvell SheevaPlugs demonstrated at a user group meeting (they 
had a bunch configured as a solar powered parallel computing cluster). I 
see Marvell has since updated the platform with a faster CPU and new 
packaging.

A home automation controller is an obvious application for them, and 
something I've considered, but I haven't bought one yet.


Thomas Harding wrote:
> As far as the plug PC, it looks very limited. It is designed to be
> loaded with an application and just run, at low power. It looks to
> consume about 2-3 watts, and uses the ARM CPU. In contrast, I have a
> 25 watt ITX based PC running MH, but also a couple other things as
> well.

Marvell pitches the SheevaPlug as having "PC-like" performance (more 
like netbook-like performance), and aims it at the media server market. 
ARM is also working on boosting the performance of its CPU to go after 
the Intel Atom dominated netbook market, and Marvell, as an ARM 
licensee, will probably gain from that. Looks like they've already 
boosted their CPU up to 2 GHz.

The original SheevaPlug should have more than adequate performance for 
most home automation tasks, including video capture. (One of the 
presenters at the above mentioned user group meeting had a SheevaPlug 
doing video capture from a USB camera.)

If you're not doing video capture, I tend to think the SheevaPlug is 
overkill for the task. If Mi Casa Verde (http://www.micasaverde.com/) 
can pull it off using essentially a $40 ASUS router as the appliance 
hardware, why bother with a $90 plug computer? (Mi Casa Verde probably 
would have captured the majority of the Linux/hacker/open source home 
automaton market had it been possible to freely download their software 
and install it on a $40 router. Unfortunately keeping important bits 
proprietary eliminated that possibility.)


> It is upgradable and more standard.

Sure, the ITX solution is a good option if you think you might need to 
plug in a controller card, but things are trending away from that. Even 
in the MythTV front-end space where it used to be handy to be able to 
plug in a higher performing graphics card, the trend is toward 
all-in-one nettops with integrated video.


> ...I would suspect a regular PC would still need to be used as the
> main MH box to allow all the sensor and input devices to be attached.

Here too the trend is towards Ethernet connected sensors, no? That's 
part of what the xPL/xAP protocols facilitate.

What you really meed is a cheap embedded computer that sits between the 
Ethernet and the sensor. For that, the SheevaPlug is overkill and too 
expensive.


> The plug PCs seem to have very limited connectivity...

They have USB, and in theory, you can do anything over USB. :-)  (Of 
course reality says otherwise.)


I'm interested to hear of any success stories of MH being hosted on 
appliance hardware (for some broad definition of "appliance hardware").

Are there any projects to create a fully open equivalent to Mi Casa 
Verde? Or approximating that by perhaps packaging MH for one of the open 
router firmware distributions?

  -Tom