It's Not Rocket Surgery » OpenPogo

Plug Into Plug Computing Update

craiglp — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:23:42 +0000

This is an update to an earlier post: Plug Into Plug Computing. There have been several new products and resources that have shown up since that post.

In the software arena, OpenPogo is moving to PlugApps. In response to the limited NAND memory available in the PogoPlug v2, the hackers in the OpenPogo project have created a new project and site, PlugApps. This is a Linux distribution that will boot from an attached USB drive, rather than replacing the supplied OS on the PogoPlug, TonidoPlug, or SheevaPlug. The site includes information to help decide if OpenPogo or PlugApps is the right direction for your plug hacking needs.

There are two wikis I didn’t know about when the earlier article was written:

PlugCompter.org and ComputingPlugs.com

And new products (or announcements, at least):

Marvell Plug Computer 3.0 has been announced. It has a 2Ghz ARM based processor, integrated wireless, and a hard drive. This is currently an OEM product, so there is no indication if or when it will show up as a consumer product.

Global Scale Technologies, reseller of the SheevaPlug dev kit, have added 3 new products for pre-order (March delivery):

GuruPlug Server

Linux Kernel 2.6.32
1.2Ghz CPU
512MB RAM
512MB NAND Flash
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
U-SNAP I/O
1 Gigabit Ethernet port
2 USB Ports

GuruPlug Server Plus

Same as the Server except the follow port configuration:

2 Gigabit Ethernet port
1 eSATA
2 USB Ports
1 MicroSD Slot

GuruPlug Display

Linux Kernel 2.6.28
1.2Ghz CPU
512MB RAM
2GB NAND Flash
4MB SPI Flash
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Wi-Fi 802.11n
U-SNAP I/O
1 MicroSD Slot
1 HDMI Port
1 100Mbit Ethernet
3 USB 2.0
1 Mini USB 2.0 OTG

Pricing ranges from $99-$149. These are dev kits, with no application software, just the base OS.

And a mainstream media mention:

Popular Science

Plug Into Plug Computing

craiglp — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:44:00 +0000

Since my last post I’ve continued to use and play with my new Pogoplug. I’ve also run across more resources for “plug computing”. There are 4 main “plug computing” devices available on the market: The Pogoplug (the original which I have, and the new 2.0), the Sheevaplug, and the Tonidoplug. Each of the three address a different user base. Although the Pogoplug and Tonidoplug have the most user overlap. The Pogoplug has been marketed as primarily a disk/file sharing device. Both for users on the same private network, or over the internet. It provides this capability with a proprietary web interface, or driver software to present the shared drives as local drives. The Tonidoplug is marketed as “CLOUD-IN-A-PLUG“. It comes with the Tonido software suite that provides multimedia sharing, collaboration tools, torrent downloading, etc. Aimed more at shared application services, than just disk/file sharing. The Tonido software is available seperately, to run on the Sheevaplug. The Sheevaplug is a different animal. It is the bare hardware the Tonidoplug (and others) is based on. There is an OS (Ubuntu Linux based), but no end user “cloud” apps. It is sold as a development kit. This is plug computing for the DIY crowd. If you want to develop your own “cloud” in a plug system, this is the place to start. Or, if you are looking for a cheap way to learn about embedded development. And finally, the Seagate FreeAgent DockStar. This is a dock for the Seagate FreeAgent Go hard drives that incorporates the Pogoplug software, and unknown hardware to provide disk/file sharing over the local network and internet.

There are two other plug computing devices based on the Sheevaplug hardware:

CTERA CloudPlug – This is aimed at the business sector, it includes an eSATA port in addition to the usual USB. It also has an online cloud backup capability.

Quadaxis QuadPlug – Looks similiar to the other consumer plugs, also based on the Sheevaplug hardware.

In addition to the off the shelf products there are several online resources to augment these products:

Playing With the Pogoplug

craiglp — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:18:19 +0000

I purchased a Pogoplug device last week. I have been playing with it for a couple of days. Being a tinkerer, I kept it in it’s out of the box configuration for nearly an hour. I unboxed it (sorry, no unboxing video, although it is packaged quite nicely), plugged it into my router, power, and a spare USB drive sitting on my desk. I logged into my.pogoplug.com, created a username/password and it found my pogoplug and I was able to access the drive and it’s files from my browser. I was expecting to be able to see a mountable drive like a typical NAS device like the Linksys NSLU2 device. But, the Pogoplug requires downloading client software to be able to mount the drives. Not a big deal, but it limits it usefulness in some ways.

But, there is a way to make the Pogoplug play other roles in your home IT infrastructure. OpenPogo is the place to stop to unleash your Pogoplug. The Pogoplug is a small Linux server running a very small OS configuration. It resides on a small partition in flash memory. There is a larger, unused partition on the flash memory. Following the instructions I have made my Pogoplug a bit torrent client, a TOR server, a media server, and a DynDNS update client. I can now offload bit torrent downloads to the Pogoplug, share my iTunes library, and access it by a domain name rather than IP address.

There have been a few hitches, nothing worth describing. It took a little work to set up the Transmission client daemon to add enough security to allow access from outside of my network. The TOR server setup was pretty quick and seems to work well. Firefly install and setup was very quick and seems to work great. There is a danger of overtaxing the small server with too many torrent downloads.

If you have some basic Linux skills and can manage to use Google, there is a lot you can do with this unit. I’m just getting started.

UPDATE: OpenPogo is giving away a Pogoplug go here: http://openpogo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=212. Or follow them on Twitter, @openpogo for more info.