Marvell's SheevaPlug Linux PC fits in its power adapter
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted February 24th 2009 4:48PM
posted February 24th 2009 4:48PM
Marvell has the technology and the vision, and if the company gets its way the world will soon be overrun by lilliputian Linux machines. Hiding in wall warts and the like, these guys will begin quietly taking over tasks that we once relegated to servers and desktop machines. To this end, the company has just announced that they'll be making the SheevaPlug dev kit available. This is the platform that PogoPlug is based on, consisting of a 1.2GHz Kirkwood processor, 512MB flash storage, 512MB DRAM, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and USB 2.0. This bad boy supports many standard Linux 2.6 kernel distributions, and the whole thing plugs directly into a standard wall socket, drawing "less than one tenth of the power of a typical PC" while in use. Currently available for $99, the company says that it anticipates a price drop to $49 "in the near future."
Thin Client? Nice...
More like Ultra-thin Client
WOO!
Great for the 3rd world. Along with a wireless router/modem attached to the wall socket you have a nearly invisible pc!
sheeva (shiva) the destroyer
put wifi in this and you've got an awesome, stealth device for industrial espionage...
just drop one of these in someone's office. it will never get unplugged - no one will know what it is
It could easilly be mistook for a USB Charging adapter.
I was thinking Powerline Ethernet would be cool...
Make the ethernet connection PoE, add either powerline or wireless networking, and this easily becomes a server node for any decent ethernet network camera. I could see lots of security applications there.
@Fred
You may want to check out one of the PicoTUX Linux-PC models.
http://www.picotux.com/
can i be the first to say...AWESOME?
No, muddyh2o already said it.
Has a plethera of uses I'm sure, pair it with a nice 7" touch-screen you could wall mount somewhere and you've got a tiny nice computer anywhere in your house.
I know it's a lot to ask.. but why not wireless? Maybe one of those wireless SD cards...
Yeah, that's considerably reasonable. Oh, and it's plethora.
Do I have to plug the display into the one USB port?
It appears that there MAY be 2 USB ports.. one standard and one micro on the side
http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/kirkwood/SheevaPlug-002_WEB.pdf
Appears it's a MINI not a micro, excuse my n00bness.
Wonder if this could be paired with the WD HD USB TV device from a while back to make it network ready..
It would be a headless unit
No display needed since you log into it from a PC
NSLU2 on steroids. Minus a few USB and Ethernet ports...
all network console based
powercell right on... Giroro checkout USB VGA ADAPTERS:
The USB2VGA USB VGA Multi Monitor External Video Adapter turns an available USB 2.0 port into a VGA port - providing high quality, dual display or multi-display capability that can be used in a variety of laptop or desktop applications.
so YES would be the answer to that!
Use up your one USB for a wireless card. What display outs does it have? Id buy one for sure at $49. Dont know what I would use it for, wonder what kind of video playback it would have.
At 49$ I'll take ten, thank you.
you guys all have to remember that this is a linux dev kit, which means, you will have to right your own fraking drivers.
Best case is to SSH into the little bugger
Yes, if your drivers fall over, you will have to right them.
I'm not sure if you're referring to drivers for hardware within the system, or for external devices connected by USB. I'd expect Marvell is providing the former, and the latter are already existing unless it's new or previously unsupported USB hardware. There's not much driver-writing needed with these sorts of things; you'll spend much more of your time on integration than coding.
Nice firewall, stick this next to your router, whack smoothwall on
attach a usb ethernet with a switch and it can be your router.
I was thinking the same thing, except with IPCop. But won't it require more than one ethernet port?
You can add a usb or sdio ethernet card to it. Plug in a switch on the lan side an you would be set.
the theory behind this is sooooo sweet
for 50, i'd totally get one for my parents for some easy open office and firefox (theyre old, it's all they'd use)
I doubt it can support a gui - or a video output.... but maybe you can teach them to use VI.
It's a headless system, which mean no display port. You gotta connect to it by either an SSH connection, or through a web interface if there is a service providing it.
Why can't we get this in a sub $200 laptop?
screen, battery, graphics card, casings, charger, driver development
and the $300 illuminating fruit logo
$300 fruit logo? Illumination? Sign me up for that bargain!
What's a wall wart?
...and google is my friend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_wart
nevermind!
How would somebody install an OS without any display connection?
Just do it remotely via the network.
But u'r right, just a single USB is rather limited for some control applications (house automation, WLAN, VGA).
I find your usage of "u'r" puzzling. Not content to either spell out the correct contraction, "you're," or the common juvenile abbreviation, "UR," you opted for a middle ground I do not recall seeing before.
Perhaps I am up too late and sleep would do me well.
@Towncivilian: Autobooting flashdrive
@Martin Trautman: USB hub
Their web server must be running on one of these because marvell.com is currently timing out like nobody's business.
Uh, Business 101, never tell your potential customer base that the product you're trying to sell will cost less if they wait to buy it...
exactly do the opposite.
Buy now! the price is rising faster than my blood pressure!
lol you guys... i don't think the point of it is to have a GUI OS and a display as an alternative to a laptop. Im pretty sure its a network based idea and you run all your commands through a terminal using ssh. That said, you could boot from LAN probably and use a NAS unit (network attatched storage) for all your storage needs. I think this would be a great piece of kit in the wrong hands. I can imagine several people trying to use these things for malicious purposes. Which is great! At $100 ill have to get one just to tinker with. I could probably persuade one of my housemates that it is a very special air freshener for computer scientists.
Hmm, how about a USB external soundcard with SPDIF (something like this http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15745) and run a media player (music player daemon) on it that is web controlled from somewhere else? Plug into a set of active speakers.
A lot cheaper than (but admittedly not as sexy as) Squeeze Duet ;-)
Hmmmmmm ...
Wouldn't an Aiport Express be easier? And Cheaper (no need for extra dongles)?
So this is how SkyNet takes over everything...
Looks like a pretty damn fine seedbox to me! Just hook it up to a router and plug in a USB disk and it's good to go! =)
that is awsome.
Throw FreeNAS on it and seed torrents, host websites, or just have a super green NAS by throwing a USB drive on it.
if they hit $50 I will have one. More if I have it my way.