...
Yee Ting Li of SLAC reports:
Hello,
yeah, i purchased one a while back. it's a very nice device. power wise it needs >1amp @ 5v - so a normal usb mobile phone charger would work for example. it uses a mini-usb connector for this.
i did have some issues with the power input on mine: a normal iPhone charger (e.g.) didn't work - the machine would boot, but then the (single) network ethernet port wouldn't. it wasn't until i used an amazon kindle charger (rated at 1.8amp @ 5v) that it was completely useable. YMMV.
there are also 2 usb 2.0 ports on the device (with relevant power draw) which can be used to connect wifi cards etc. but i've read that keeping certain items powered will require a beefier power supply.
i run debian on the box; so all the standard apt-get's etc work great from it. dd'ing the image was easy; and i was able to install onto a 2GB SD card. although i guess a 4GB would be better (because a 2GB image is not always <2GB).
you can also run arch linux on it, although i'm not sure why you would bother.
the only downside to the device is that lack of cover/box for it. it comes as a circuit board only. it's just a little too big for an altoid's tin. it can also get a little hot (to the touch), so ventilation holes would be required. production volumes are still quite low at the moment (and they're coming out with a 512MB version as standard), so you might have to look through ebay for one (and pay more).
It's now available with all sorts of accessories.
Malaysia
UNIMAS went with the Raspberry Pie.
...
Johari is exploring creating a custom built Ubuntu/PingER installation. Based on what he learnt from giving the tutorial on installing PingER he is improving the process. The idea is that if we could get a corporate sponsor then we could send preconfigured PingER monitor units to new monitoring sites to simplify things.
Experience
The first attempt ran into reliability problems with the flash memory
We tried again in July 2014. Since the SBC does not have CMOS battery on-board we had to use NTP to keep time.