The box: UPS brought me a box that weight a little more than air itself, i was wondering if there is actually anything inside. before filing the claim that somebody stole the device out of the box i decided to open it anyway (; there it was, a small green board with a few short cables and a little bag with a few tiny jumpers. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it and test the &*%$ out of it, but to my surprise there was no manual, no CD, no USB cable. i found a very basic manual on the mini-box.com site and the journey began.

The work: Without the availability of the USB cable and lack of software, i went ahead configuring the device to my needs with a basic manual and a few jumpers. I need 19VDC to power my Zotac A-U mobo, the device CAN produce this voltage but with the USB software, i set the device to output the nearest voltage that can be set with jumpers which is 18VDC, the multimeter shows 18.24VDC i then set the device to operate as a regular converter/inverter and connected it to my mobo. pushed the power button, the fan started to spin, and the mobo seems to run just fine. +/-1VDC inst crucial for this mobo. i then tested the output voltage range of this device and the device does what it is suppose to do. no matter of the input (as long as its within range) the output voltage will be what it is set to be. then i set it to automotive mode which adds timing options along with ON/OFF pulses to the mobo. i set the timing to send off pulse to the mobo as soon as ACC is off and completely turn off the device after a minute - it did just that. my Zotac now powers on and off automatically. because of the wide input range the device has absolutely no problems surviving engine crank. however once the device starts the timer, it cannot be interrupted, meaning that if i shut off ACC the timer will start and will count a minute, in this time frame if i turn the ACC back on the device will not power up the mobo, nor send on/off signals. but if i leave the ACC on until the timer finished it will power up the board and send ON signal. temperature wise this device does just well, it get a bit warm when powered for a long time, but absolutely nothing to worry about and nothing that will require additional cooling. in my setup the device does exactly what it is described to do.

The good: The device can be used for a wide variety of applications, it is very accurate, small profile, easy to setup,survives engine crank, appears to be reliable (i used it a few days already and it powers up and shuts down every time without problems) and the price is right.

The bad: I am not sure how it is shipped from mini-box.com but the device should most defiantly come with advanced documentation or at least some documentation. even though most of us SHOULD have the proper USB cabe, it should be included in the package, the configuration software should also come with the device or at least be available for easy download. otherwise more configuration options should be available on the device itself. mini-box.com use jumpers that are smaller then the regular computer jumpers, i don't see a reason for this, should just use regular jumpers.

The truth: All in all the device is great, does what you configure it to do and does it well. for this price ($59+shipping) you cant go wrong with it. though with more documentation, software and USB cable the package would be complete.

The rest: (from mini-box.com) - Applications: powering motherboard with single rail power from any voltage to any voltage, laptops, custom electronics. This module can be used to convert any voltage ranging 6-34V to any output from 5-24V. The DCDC-USB has 4 models of operation: - Dumb mode: Acts as a regular DC-DC converter with wide input (6-34V) and produces a fixed 12V output (or any output from 6-24V) - Automotive mode: Acts as an intelligent PSU, ignition aware, will send ON/OFF pulse to the motherboard to turn ON/OFF. Standby power consumption is well under 1mA. - UPS mode: The unit will act as an intelligent UPS unit, will shut down at prescribed battery voltages. - Script mode: Unit can be programmed to wake up, sleep, based on pre-programmed scripts. Additional features of DCDC-USB: - Remote ON/OFF switch capable of switching up to 6A, 8A peak. - Can control motherboard ON/OFF pins - Fused input, TVS protected - USB mini, type B - All Solid Polymer Capacitors, SVPD series, Sanyo, Japan.

After entering your serial number you are prompted with a warning about using a touchscreen while driving. I found the option to disable this a nice feature, often software leaves the user no choice due to liability concerns.
Once you click past the dialog you are greeted with a nice left side menu and top tab interface. After a few exploratory passes through all the options TouchScan has to offer (There are a lot!) I found it pretty easy to find what I was looking for in the menus. My TouchScan journey began in the Setup section where I was easily able to select my desired Com Port and Baud Rate. I had no problems connection to my generic ELM327 in my vehicle nor my ELM323 software emulator that I use for testing. I should note however that it was a little difficult to select the correct radio or check mark boxes in the setup section under the Connection or PID Monitor tabs with a touchscreen. It's nothing too serious since you will likely only visit these sections once. I had no problem hitting most of the other buttons in the interface with my finger. After successfully connection to my ELM I proceeded to look through the PID Monitor and PID Setup tabs where you are able to adjust a variety of options, including polling settings, dwell time to adjust update rates, as well as the polling rate for each individual PID. I found the individual polling rates to be an exceptionally nice feature that allowed me to retrieve the core values and well as secondary ones without sacrificing speed as much if I polled for all of them at the same interval.
The General tab allows you to adjust the unit system and switch between day and night mode, as well as adjust remembering preferences. While the Device Info tab lists the type of device you have connected.
Clicking the Diag Icon brings you to the set of tabs which allow you to read/clear trouble codes and monitor PID values as well as view the raw hex traffic between TouchScan and the ELM. I had no trouble codes to read so I was unable to test that feature but I found the PID Values to update relatively quickly, and do so at a rate in tune with the polling rate as things should be. Next up is the Dashboard section which is what is likely desired by most. MPG broken down by total, instant, and trip is displayed as wekk as fuel consumed and distance. In addition to the numeric displays are gauges representing RPM, Engine Load, Temp, and MPH. The possible dealbreaker for some is the fact that a MAF sensor readable through the standard PID is required in order to calculate MPG with TouchScan. Unfortunately, my Honda was not equipped with a MAF sensor so I had to test the MPG feature with a software emulator instead. Testing showed the calculated numbers to be consistent with those generated by Bruce Lightner's formula, MPG = 710.7 * VSS / MAF, so they should be pretty accurate. The last, but far from least section is Logs. Selecting the Logs icon presents you with the Plots, Plot Config, Data Logging, and Stats tabs. While the names are fairly self explanatory I found the plotting function to be nicely configurable with adjustable scales and sampling time and support for what appears to be as many plots as you have PIDS available. The Data Logging option is also a plus for analyzing data at a later time. And I found the Min, Max, and Mean shown under Stats to provide a nice snapshot of your overall trip.
In summary, if you have a MAF sensor in your vehicle that can be read via the standard PID I would definitely recommend you take a look at TouchScan. The Dashboard was easily visible on my 7" touchscreen and I see no problems embedding the app into RideRunner or any other frontend as everything is resizeable. If your vehicle lacks a MAF you need to determine how important MPG calculations are to you, as you will be unable to receive them with TouchScan.

I'm a long-term unix and Linux software developer, so anticipate
this review leaning in that direction.

features

Low Energy ARM chip [entire device is rated at 5W]
Small Form-factor [entire computer inside a regular sized power brick]

Comes with Ubuntu 9.04, but trivially reflashable

Communications with the outside world: Gigabit Ethernet,
USB2.0, SDIO. Also has a USB slave port as a serial console

512M DDR2, 512M Flash

pros

Excellent documentation
Does exactly what you'd expect. No less, and probably a little more
Extremely affordable
Stock Ubuntu install.

Zero configuration. Out of the box it boots and can be logged into

cons
There's an expectation that you are familiar with Linux.
Slow boot times and disk access
Lack of useful kernel modules in the box
Occasionally the plug feels warm to the touch

The Short Review:

I love this device, and everyone should get one. It's a fully
functional Linux box, and magically Just Works for all my needs.

See our forums for the Full review, details, and thoughts for the future and follow up with conversation


Full Review:
Right out of the box, it does exactly what I expect a modern
computer to do. You can log into it, install software from the
Ubuntu repositories, and run stuff on it. The software corpus
available for easy download is massive, and includes all the
usual development tools and user programs you'd expect or need.

The plug is running an ARM chip - as is common for low-power
embedded devices. The ARM architecture is a little bit different
from your typical desktop computer. To me, this is a Good Thing,
as I subscribe to the belief that portable code running on more
architectures is better than code that doesn't. [Notably, while
porting to other architectures, bugs often surface that otherwise
wouldn't have]. On the downside it means that occasionally, you
may find software that doesn't work for you on the plug. During
testing I found nothing I needed that didn't work immediately,
but the potential is there.

It's absolutely worth starting with the new plugger howto [http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki...Plugger_How_To
] and making a couple system changes to ensure you won't run into
problems. There are apparently some situations where an
inopportune update immediately after getting the plug can render
it un-bootable. It's easily re-flashable, but it's a lot easier to
just edit a couple files first.

The plug wiki and documentation tends to assume that the user has
a certain level of familiarity with Linux or unix. Most notably,
the wiki in a few places [not the least of which is the new
plugger howto] just said ‚Edit this file, without further
elucidating. Anyone familiar with unix will recognize this;
editing text on unix is historically a matter of both holy wars
and extreme difficulty to the novice user. This reviewer has
edited the wiki to provide a little more help, but as a whole a
small amount of Linux knowledge is certainly helpful.

Something I haven't commented on up until now is that there's no
easy way to plug a screen into the Sheeva. This is self-evident
from looking at the device, but bears mentioning. I successfully
used remote X over ssh with the plug, but primarily the Sheeva is
a command-line device that you ssh into - again, a level of unix
familiarity cannot hurt.

Up to now, everything I've commented was things that are ‚good‚
in my view, but some of them may be perceived as problems. There
are a couple of real downsides to the plug:

Boot times are noticeable [on the other of 20-30 seconds, which
feels high for a small embedded device] and large un-cached disk
accesses tend to be pretty slow. This is because the plug uses a
file system called jffs2, which is very good for wear-leveling
and error handling in flash, but can be slow. There are good
alternatives [eg, ubifs], but switching to them again requires
re flashing the plug, something I will almost certainly be doing
in the near future. If you plan on doing a lot of disk writes, or
large disk writes [as I do], then it's definitely better to pick
up an SDIO card or a USB flash drive, and write to that. Those
are supported out of the box.

The plug feels warm to the touch. I believe it's still not using
much power, but there's obviously some inefficiency somewhere.
Some mp3car forum users have converted their plugs to run off 12V
as provided by their car, and apparently the new 12V PSU
dissipates less energy in the form of heat.

3.3 Running my own software

The specific goal for me on the plug is to run my pet project,
OBD GPS Logger. Due to past experience with portable code, I was
happy to see obdgpslogger build first time on the plug, after
installing the requisite tools [six packages plus their
dependencies, starting with what was in the box]. I didn't build
the GUI tools [no need for them here] but obdsim, obdgpslogger,
and the conversion tools worked immediately. On the CD in the
box, or for free download, are cross-compiling tools;
obdgpslogger also builds just fine using that environment.

One problem was that as it comes in the box, the Sheeva doesn't
have the necessary kernel modules [aka “drivers”] that an mp3car
reader might need; specifically, ftdi for an OBDPro scantool [http://www.obdpros.com/
] or similar, or any bluetooth modules. Since the OBD devices I
have are all either ftdi or bluetooth, this was an issue. This
has been discussed on the Sheeva forums [http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=84.0
], where the best [only] proposed answer was to reflash the
kernel on the device.

While that's not difficult in practice, that's kinda fearsome to
someone unfamiliar with Linux or serial consoles. I came up with
a somewhat different solution to the ftdi problem: I wrote a
small userland tool using libftdi [which is available in the
Ubuntu repositories] to proxy my ftdi device to a unix
pseudoterminal. At time of writing, it's not fully working with
obdgpslogger yet, but it works enough to access my OBDPro
scantool.

Overall, I found the Sheeva a fantastic tool; it really is a
complete Linux system that does everything I need.

4 Future Uses

In writing this review, I found myself coming up with various
ideas for using the plug, beyond a simple host for obdgpslogger.
Of particular interest is that it's simply a low-cost device that
you can run always-on and always-connected-to-the-internet for
cheap. For want of a number, a quick back-of-the-envelope
calculation says that it costs me about 1.7 cents per day to run,
or about six dollars a year... and I live in a part of the US
where electricity is relatively expensive.

Some food for thought for others picking up one of these plugs:

Webcam. The plug can run a webcam and either host a live
stream, or regularly upload photos to another site. Great for
those of us with jobs and dogs. This way my power-hungry
desktop can remain asleep during the day and I can still watch
my dogs.

Storage server. Plug a huge external hard drive into it and use
it for network attached storage. Typical uses might include a
streaming server for a PS3 [using the fantastic mediatomb http://mediatomb.cc/
a backup server, or a bittorrent tracker or downloader.
Combine a few of these things and you get:

Leave an RSS reader running on the plug all day, reading
streams from torrent sites and automatically downloading
things you like. When you get home in the evening, turn on
your TV and PS3 and start watching. Imagine if your cable
company's on-demand didn't suck - that's what this is.

In the past, I've used squid to block ads and as a network
cache; the Sheeva is perfectly placed to handle that. Nowadays,
fast internet and intelligent browsers make a lot of that moot,
but squid can still pull off some pretty neat tricks.

Home automation. It's nice to have something you can ssh into
before leaving work, perhaps to start a coffee machine or
something. The Sheeva could perhaps control some X10 devices.

For people interested in a whole new worldview of instant
messaging, the Sheeva makes a great Bitlbee server.

Similar to DD-WRT, it's not hard to imagine complete images to
flash to the device. The RSS-bittorrent-PS3 configuration above
could easily be prepared to an image, and have end-users simply
download and flash the whole bundle.

On the topic of DD-WRT, some people don't like to reflash their
wireless routers or similar devices; the Sheeva could run all
the services you otherwise would have liked your wireless
router to do [such as DHCP with static allocation - the main
reason I upgraded to DD-WRT in the first place]