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A comment on The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping. Parent comment

Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by Florin_Andrei on Thursday September 24, 2015 @06:54PM (#10275355)
> We've had Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, but stuff like this really opens a lot of doors.

I think this is an inflexion point for IoT at amateur level. We have the CHIP for RPi-level devices, running full Linux, with WiFi and BT onboard.

We have particle.io and soon digistump.com for Arduino-level devices with WiFi and soon cellular onboard.

My prediction: the number of IoT projects I'll see next time at the Maker Faire will just explode.

I have a Photon (by particle.io), I've preordered a CHIP and an Oak (by digistump.com). Very excited to play with the new toys.

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Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by MegaDeKay on Thursday September 24, 2015 @08:41PM (#10275808)
ESP8266 is where the excitement is now. You can buy three ESP-12's on Aliexpress for the price of a CHIP and get free shipping to boot. No Linux, but you can program it now with the Arduino IDE. FCC approved 802.11 b/g/n built-in, SPI, UART, a few GPIOs, faster and more RAM / FLASH than Arduino, etc.

https://nurdspace.nl/ESP8266#Technical_Overview

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Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by bsder on Thursday September 24, 2015 @08:35PM (#10275791)
Power is still a problem for IoT.

In addition, this thing will not ship for anything close to $9 in the near future.

The BLE and WiFi bill of materials is more than that-it's why the BeagleBone Black and RaspberryPi don't include them.

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Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by Florin_Andrei on Thursday September 24, 2015 @09:36PM (#10275977)
> Power is still a problem for IoT.

I'm not sure about that. If it's a stationary, long-term thing, just tap the main power conduit on whatever device you're hacking.

If it's mobile or short-term, Li-Ion cells are pretty awesome. For a few bucks, you could buy a Li-Ion cell, and a smart charger that will switch the load between battery and main power depending on voltage levels.

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Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by dingaling on Friday September 25, 2015 @04:49AM (#10276981)
Many IoT concepts are remote or battery-powered. Most of the single-board computers on the market will drain a 9V battery in a couple of days.

Wireless power transmission will be the enabler that causes IoT to really advance.

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Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by Steltek on Thursday September 24, 2015 @08:54PM (#10275847)
I'm surprised there isn't more use of Power-over-Ethernet or similar concepts in projects. Ethernet doesn't need complicated configuration or crypto for basic security. It's not a good choice for general consumer products (how many people have cat6 running through their house?) but I imagine that won't slow down people assembling IoT projects.
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Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by beagle3 on Friday September 25, 2015 @04:52AM (#10276989)
PoE is on one hand (relatively, for ~$10 devices) expensive to do, with all the signaling and filtering needed, while on the other hand, not abundant in the environments where these projects are run.

I do have an 8-port-1Gb/s-switch with 4-PoE ports at home. It cost 5 times as much as the "plain" 8-port-1Gb/s with no PoE, and I'm the only person I know who has one at home.

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Re:The $9 CHIP Computer Is Shipping by Steltek on Friday September 25, 2015 @07:50AM (#10277575)
Oh definitely. "Real" PoE is expensive and unhelpful but it doesn't have to be standard PoE. You can just steal some pairs from cat5 and still get some form of ethernet. There are even cheap splitters/injectors out there. You won't get the nifty auto-negotiation, filtering, or anything else but it'll work.
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