fit-PC2

2009/08/24 — laurent

Last year I bought a fit-PC in order to replace my old router (which was a desktop PC). This year I bought a fit-PC2 to replace my home server (which was a big fat computer).

Requirements

This time my needs were a bit different than the ones for my router. I was looking for a low power consumption device with at least 512 MB of RAM, fast enough to read videos (I may use it as a HTPC in the future), fan-less and of course, it must work with Linux.

fit-PC2 specifications

So I end up with Compulab’s fit-PC2. Here are the official specs:

  • CPU: Intel Atom Z530 1.6 GHz
  • RAM: 1 GB DDR2-533
  • HDD: 160 GB SATA 2.5”
  • 1 Gigabit ethernet port
  • 4 USB 2.0 ports
  • 2 mini-USB 2.0 ports
  • 1 mini-SD socket
  • 1 IR receiver (infra-red, for remote control)
  • DVI output (using a HDMI connector, HDMI to DVI cable provided)
  • Power consumption: 6 W idle, 7 W reading H.264 videos, 8 W at full load
  • Shipped with Ubuntu

Several flavors are available (with WiFi, without hard drive, with an Atom Z510 CPU…).

Pictures

Usage

I tried the pre-installed Ubuntu but it’s an old version (8.04). Anyway, it was working quite fine. For video playback only MPlayer was using hardware acceleration provided in fit-PC2. I played Sita Sings The Blues on it, it works wonderfully (the movie is a Full HD (1920*1080), 4.12 GB file (I was hardly able to read it on my MacBook)).

But I don’t really want to use Ubuntu. If I want a *buntu linux I would install Kubuntu instead, anyway I installed Debian. Here is the beginning of my troubles.

First, I’m using Debian’s “testing” version, which proved to be quite stable so far. Except with the new 2.6.30 Linux kernel which froze my VIA C7 powered Dedibox and is behaving weirdly on the fit-pc2. I don’t know if the problem is in linux kernel, gcc, debian… but installing 2.6.30 kernel was not a good thing on my debian boxes. I’m using the fit-pc2 remotely (ssh, music streaming, time machine backups…) and from time to time it stops to respond, but if I hit a key on the keyboard, network operations resume… very weird. A problem in power saving code? a deadlock which resolved itself when a new interruption is raised? No idea, I’m clearly not competent in that domain. Easy solution: revert to 2.6.26 kernel.

Second problem: drivers. The graphic chipset used is an Intel GMA500. Even if Intel recently helped the Open Source community by giving specifications of its chipsets, they didn’t for that one (because it’s not really an Intel one, it was developed by PowerVR (and they are much less cooperative)). Somehow Compulab/DeLL/Ubuntu managed to get a partly open source driver with hardware acceleration (that part is still proprietary), but according to various websites, the driver is crappy and not well maintained (but it looks like some people are trying to make that better). So, for now, hardware acceleration does not work easily on Debian. I hope it will work soon.

Power consumption
  • Off: 0.3 W
  • Idle: 9 W
  • H.264 playback: <10 W
  • Full load: <11 W

It seems that it consume a bit more than expected (my watt-meter is a cheap one, I’m not sure how reliable it is), or maybe figures on fit-pc2 website were given for an Atom Z510.

Note: the case can be very hot.

Conclusion

fit-PC2 is a nice bit of hardware, but if you are going to install an alternative BSD/Linux operating system, you have to know that you may get some troubles with video drivers (if you need nice graphical interface).

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D-Link DGS-1005D “Green”

2009/08/18 — laurent

Previously I was using a NetGear JGS524 switch (24 Gigabit ethernet ports) which was doing a good job for my small home network but was a bit noisy.

So I went to my local store and bought a D-Link DGS-1005D “Green” (5 gigabit ethernet ports, fanless, said to be eco-friendly).

Eco-friendly?

First, the package. At the same time I bought this switch I also bought a D-Link modem, same size, not green. Both were provided in boxes with mostly the same content but the switch’s box was smaller, with less “materials”. So yes, the packaging is a bit greener.

The switch materials: no idea. I don’t know what kind of plastic was used but it looks similar to the modem one. No more clue on the electronic parts. The power adapter is smaller than the modem one. Anyway, electronic devices in general are very energy greedy to build.

The D-Link switch is able to reduce power consumption on a port if nothing is plugged in (or if the connected device is powered off), the switch is also able to adjust the power on a port depending on cable length (plugging a 1 meter ethernet cable should consume less than a 100 meters one).

My “old” NetGear was consuming about 13 W while doing nothing (no ports connected), on constructor’s website it says to consume up to 40 W (under full load I presume).

The D-Link DGS-1005D consume 1.1 W with a bit of traffic (0 W with nothing connected to it (my watt-meter is not really done to measure power below 1 W).

So yes, it consume much less than my previous switch, but I wonder how much other small switches like this one consume.

Functional?

The question here is mostly: is it working? Well… I’m not really sure. I usually listen music streamed from my server to my MacBook, it looks like that from time to time, since I’m using this switch, iTunes stops the music and displays a “buffering” message (before resuming when data are back). At some point I was not able to backup the MacBook with TimeMachine, it failed with a network error.

To be sure about that I plugged back my NetGear switch. Same problems, but less often… (I have changed to many things in my home network recently and it looks like I have things to fix).

Conclusion

The D-Link DGS-1005D “Green” switch seems to be quite efficient (working not so bad and not using too much power).

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Getting energy from everywhere

2009/06/08 — laurent

For a long time now I have seen several “unusual” ways to produce electricity but mostly never seen them in use in real life devices.

As somebody working with a laptop, I can tell that the amount of electricity used by my computer does not allow the battery to last for a long time (maybe 4 or 5 hours if I’m doing nearly nothing with bluetooth and wifi shut down and screen backlight set to the minimum, and about 2 hours doing more CPU consuming stuff).

Computer makers are usually working a lot on:

  • making less power hungry computers,
  • making higher capacity batteries.

But I thought more stuff could be done, add electricity generators in the computer :

But then, we need to check the full energy usage here. If those generators cost more energy to produce and recycle than the “free” energy provided/saved, we should not use them.

My example was about a laptop, but those technologies can be used in lots of other devices (and several are already in use but not widely):

  • In wall clocks with thermoelectric effect (temperature gradient between the wall and the air) and solar panels.
  • In wristwatches with vibrations.
  • In cellphones with solar panels, vibrations.
  • In wireless keyboards with keystrokes.

Well, anywhere a battery is in use.

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D-Link DWA-110 on OpenBSD 4.4

2008/11/17 — laurent

In order to reduce power consumption and simplify my home network, I wanted to remove my WIFI router and replace it by adding an USB WIFI dongle on my router (a fit-PC with OpenBSD on it).

Choosing a dongle

As WIFI hardware is mostly proprietary stuff with Windows only drivers, not all of them are able to run on OpenBSD (or Linux).

So my requirements are:

  • USB WIFI dongle (USB is the only kind of connectors I can use on my fit-PC)
  • recognized by OpenBSD
  • do not requires non free (as in free speech) binary firmware
  • can work as an access point

I already had an Acer WLAN-G-US1 dongle, it has a ZyDAS chipset, which is supported by the zyd driver, but it can’t act as an access point.

From the OpenBSD’s supported WIFI hardware page I randomly selected the rum driver (working with Ralink RT2501USB and RT2601USB chipsets) and went to a store with the list of dongle models supported.

So I bought a refurbished D-Link DWA-110.

Plugging the dongle

When plugging it in the fit-PC, I got the following message in /var/log/messages:

(…)
Nov  7 20:00:32 hal /bsd: ugen0 at uhub0
Nov  7 20:00:32 hal /bsd: port 1 "Ralink 802.11 bg WLAN" rev 2.00/0.01 addr 2
(…)

What did just happened? The dongle is not recognized and the generic USB driver is associated with it.

Digging a bit in the manuals I found that in rum manual on my OpenBSD do not have D-Link DWA-110 in the hardware list. In fact, the online manual is more up to date than the one in OpenBSD which is already at least two weeks old… So my dongle will be supported in next OpenBSD release.

So what? Can’t do anything to fix that?

Compiling the kernel

The problem here is just that OpenBSD do not know that D-Link DWA-110 works with the current rum driver.

It’s quite easy to change that, but it requires recompiling OpenBSD’s kernel and rebooting.

First, download kernel sources:

# cd /usr/src
# wget ftp://ftp.crans.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.4/sys.tar.gz
# tar zxvf sys.tar.gz

Then, add the relevant changes to the drivers source files and the USB devices list.

  • Add the following line in the file /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/if_rum.c in the vendors/products list:
{ USB_VENDOR_DLINK2,            USB_PRODUCT_DLINK2_DWA110 },
  • In /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs in the D-Link products add:
product DLINK2 DWA110           0x3c07  DWA-110
  • In /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs_data.h in the usb_known_products structure add:
{
    USB_VENDOR_DLINK2, USB_PRODUCT_DLINK2_DWA110,
    "DWA-110",
},
  • And in /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs.h:
#define USB_PRODUCT_DLINK2_DWA110       0x3c07          /* DWA-110 */

Then compile the kernel and reboot (this can be a bit long, especially on a slow computer like my fit-PC, it was about half an hour):

# cd /usr/src/sys/arch/`arch -s`/conf
# config GENERIC
# cd ../compile/GENERIC/
# make depend
# make
# make install
# reboot

Now we can check the USB devices:

# usbdevs -dv
Controller /dev/usb0:
addr 1: full speed, self powered, config 1, OHCI root hub(0x0000), AMD(0x1022), rev 1.00
  uhub0
 port 1 addr 2: full speed, power 300 mA, config 1, 802.11 bg WLAN(0x3c07), Ralink(0x07d1), rev 0.01
  rum0
 port 2 powered
 port 3 powered
 port 4 powered

The rum driver is associated with the D-Link dongle.

We can see that it uses around 300 mA on a 5 V USB power source, so I assume that the dongle is using 1.5 W. My actual WIFI router consumes 4 W.

The fit-PC was consuming 3.7 W, now with the dongle plugged in and running it consumes 5.5 W, that’s 1.8 W for the dongle, not so far from the theory.

Anyway, it seems that DWA-110 was already in “-current”, so it should have been in November’s release.

Useful links:

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Consommation électrique

2008/09/17 — laurent

Quelques mesures prises avec mon Watt-mètre.

Ordinateurs

  • Ordinateur DeLL avec Pentium 4 : 0,5 W à l’arrêt, 60 W en idle, 100 W avec le CPU à 100 %
  • Ordinateur DeLL avec Core2Quad : 5 W à l’arrêt (!!!), 85 W en idle, 150 W CPU à 100 %
  • Serveur DeLL 1750 (assez vieux) : 110 W au boot
  • Vieil ordinateur portable DeLL : 100 W au boot (!!!)

Écrans

Il y a une théorie qui dit que la consommation électrique d’un écran LCD est plus importante lorsqu’il affiche du noir que lorsqu’il affiche du blanc. La raison en est que dans tous les cas le tube lumineux est allumé, mais que pour faire du noir il faut activer tous les cristaux liquides pour arrêter la lumière.

Petite vérification empirique :

  • LCD DeLL 17 pouces : blanc < 20 W, noir > 20 W
  • LCD Samsung 20 pouces : blanc 48 W, noir 46 W

Conclusion : peut-être bien que oui, peut-être bien que non (j’ai vécu trop longtemps en Normandie moi). L’écart de consommation est assez minime et suivant les technologies utilisées la consommation peut certainement s’inverser. Bref, noir ou blanc, un écran ça consomme quand même beaucoup.

Freebox

  • pendant le boot : < 7 W
  • démarrée : 8,4 W
  • TV allumée : 8,5 W (±0,5 W suivant la qualité vidéo de la chaîne de TV)
  • TV + communication téléphonique : 10 W
  • Téléchargement (1 Mo/s) : 8,5 W

Divers

  • Ampoule basse consommation 16 W : 15,5 W
  • Fonera : 4 W
  • iPhone en charge écran éteint : 2 W (2,5 W écran allumé)
  • Switch NetGear JGS524 (24 ports Gigabit) : 13 W (allumé, aucun port branché, aucun transfert)
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fit-PC

2008/09/16 — laurent

L’ordinateur basse consommation, idéal pour un routeur ou consulter ses mails et surfer sur le net.

Intrigue

Récemment encore, j’utilisais un vieil ordinateur de bureau pour faire office de routeur.

Ce dernier est tombé en panne et je l’ai remplacé en catastrophe par un assemblage très peu stable de pièces détachées de différents ordinateurs qui traînaient chez moi. Mais cette solution ne pouvait être que temporaire. Je me suis mis à la recherche d’un ordinateur pour le remplacer.

Casting

Étant donné que le but de cette machine est de faire routeur, une petite configuration à basse consommation fait largement l’affaire. Mes contraintes sont les suivantes :

  • Faible consommation électrique (un routeur tourne 24/7, à la longue ça peut faire cher sur la facture d’électricité et ce n’est vraiment pas écologique).
  • 2 ports ethernet disponibles (afin d’avoir une configuration réseau simplifiée)
  • OpenBSD doit pouvoir fonctionner dessus (c’est le système d’exploitation que j’utilise pour mon routeur).

Depuis un certain temps je regardais les machines de chez Soekris, mais je me suis finalement tourné vers un fit-PC de CompuLab.

Mensurations

  • CPU : AMD Geode LX800 500 MHz
  • RAM : 256 Mo
  • HDD : IDE 60 Go
  • 2 ports ethernet 10/100 Mbps
  • 2 ports USB 2.0
  • Consommation : 3 à 5 W en utilisation normale.
  • Pré-installé avec Ubuntu et Gentoo en dual boot mais sur les forums on peut lire qu’OpenBSD fonctionne.

Séance photos


L’heure de vérité

Si vous avez l’œil attentif et une certaine notion des consommations électriques, vous vous dites peut-être : “3 à 5 Watts en utilisation normale, encore un discours marketing, avec une utilisation normale ne correspondant à personne”.

En tout cas, c’est ce que je me suis dit. Du coup j’ai acheté un Watt-mètre.

Voici les résultats :

  • Branché, à l’arrêt : 0 W (et ce n’est pas le cas de tous les ordinateurs)
  • Dans le bios : 4,4 W (ça ne s’annonce pas très bien)
  • Max pendant le boot de Linux : 6,7 W (ça consomme…)
  • Idle sous Linux : < 5 W
  • OpenBSD en train de faire son travail de routeur : entre 3,5 et 4,5 W (en général à 3,7 W)

Bon, et bien en ce qui me concerne, la consommation annoncée entre 3 et 5 W est largement tenue vu qu’en général le fit-PC consomme 3,7 W chez moi.

La facture

CompuLab est une société israélienne, elle dispose d’un revendeur en angleterre.

Prix du fit-PC : £260,93

Une fois converti en euros via PayPal : 343,12 €

Conclusion

Après quelques temps d’utilisation je dirais que le fit-PC est une machine idéale pour faire un routeur (largement assez puissant et très faible consommation électrique) mais j’émets quelques réserves sur son utilisation comme ordinateur de consultation internet.

Et je pense qu’ils sont conscient de cela chez CompuLab puisqu’ils s’apprêtent à sortir le fit-PC Slim. 40 % plus petit, avec WiFi, 512 Mo de RAM et un port USB supplémentaire.

La quantité de mémoire était un peu limite, mais je pense que les 512 Mo du fit-PC Slim suffisent. En revanche il dispose d’un port ethernet en moins et la consommation en utilisation normale augmente d’1 Watt.

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