Linux help needed - make fun of the N00b - Page 8

PaulF · 06-22-2009, 11:49 AM

I fully recognize that a heat sink will do just fine in a house, problem is when in my car this thing is going to be sitting in a trunk that may be 120 degrees to begin with.

That said, I just ordered a few tiny heat sinks. The exact ones that Carnetix recommended. I'll see what they do to temperature. For the price, they're worth testing before going the fan route.

Bugbyte · 06-22-2009, 12:24 PM

In an enclosed and high temperature space, fans can only help to the extent that the heat sink is warmer than the surrounding air. With a big PC installation, the heat from the processor will warm the trunk in a feedback loop, raising the temperature.

I don't think this necessarily applies to the Sheeva unit. You're probably right that a fan will bring the temp down faster than a heatsink would. It's just that there's only a *little* heat to dissipate so the sink may work.

Even if it doesn't, you'll need the sink to blow air from the fan over, so it's all good.

PaulF · 06-22-2009, 12:38 PM

Well part of the reason for the fan is also because the sheeva is basically an oven. It has only tiny little slits for air to pass through. I think in the car, I'm just going to take it out of its case so the heat has somewhere to go. Right now I've been running the sheeva off of 12 volts for a few hours and the regulator is outside of the sheeva. It is significantly cooler. I don't have an exact number, but I can at least touch it without burning myself. I'll try to get a temperature later.

cgalpin · 06-22-2009, 02:03 PM

And another reason to remove the ear cover/power supply completely when using it in the car methinks!

Bugbyte · 06-22-2009, 02:29 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by PaulF

Well part of the reason for the fan is also because the sheeva is basically an oven. It has only tiny little slits for air to pass through. I think in the car, I'm just going to take it out of its case so the heat has somewhere to go. Right now I've been running the sheeva off of 12 volts for a few hours and the regulator is outside of the sheeva. It is significantly cooler. I don't have an exact number, but I can at least touch it without burning myself. I'll try to get a temperature later.

Good point. I may keep the case but drill more cooling holes in it.

chunkyks · 07-20-2009, 07:55 PM

Bumper reply time. I realise I replied a couple times in this thread, but there's a bunch of stuff I've learned since my sheeva arrived.

Quote: Originally Posted by kev000

I've never tried this, but it should be possible, you can create a qemu virtual machine with the arm arch on your x86 desktop. If you need to compile anything, and don't want to mess with crosscompiling (which can be fun), it's worth a try. The good thing about web stuff is that you don't have to mess with compiling. But that won't apply to mal's fusion brain driver or any other custom piece you need.

qemu vm: it works [I did it], but cross-compiling is actually easier. The Sheeva comes with cross-compiling tools on the CD in the box, or they're freely downloadable. Since I'm using cmake, obdgpslogger even comes with the necessary toolchain file to cross-compile for the Sheeva. Of course, it turns out that it's trivial to build it actually *on* the device, based on what's in the box.

Quote:

sudo nano -w /var/www/htdocs/test.php

Lighttpd runs on the Sheeva too. I love apache as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just want something a little smaller. Just a thought :-)

Quote:

and as long as you don't keep plugging/unplugging devices into this network causing the IP to get rearranged.

Your DHCP lease can and will expire. While implementations of DHCP servers, and practical considerations, typically will sometimes keep sending you the same one, they're under no obligation to do so at all.

Quote:

I thought it would be neat to have the Sheeva named rather than put in the IP.

It's much better to set your DHCP server to statically allocate certain addresses [and names] to specific mac addresses. dd-wrt is your friend.

My whole network at home is configured by nodes using DHCP, and a dd-wrt router [two of them, actually] statically allocating names and addresses. I never had to configure the sheeva's networking, but as long as I keep plugging it in at home, it always gets the same IP, and always gets the name "chunkplug" - which my dd-wrt's DNS server understands, so from any machine in my house I can ssh to "chunkplug".

Quote:

I just wanted to post to see if I could, but also mention that in this case because of the arm cpu they may not have any repos setup or if they do, they may not have all the same things you normally can get since there are less people compiling for the arm.

The Sheeva comes with Ubuntu 9.04, and is configured to hit up the regular ubuntu repos. In other words, "good times".

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all kinds of discussion about modules and stuff

Unforunately, as it comes in the box, the sheeva lacks just about any kind of useful kernel modules [ftdi and bluetooth stuff, to name but two]. You may want to reflash it with a kernel supporting the features you want, which is covered in the plugcomputer wiki

I'm probably going to write a libftdi pseudoterminal application at some point, to avoid needing to recompile the kernel while still allowing you to use an OBDPro device. We'll see; if only there were more hours in a day.

Gary (-;

prodigalsun · 08-10-2009, 12:13 PM

Came across this app while looking for some alternatives to my orb set up. This tonido app is a cross platform way of sharing media etc. They are now selling a sheeva plug with the tonido apps pre-installed etc. All that would be necessary would be a router and say a usb drive for storage and this could be a easy and quick way to get this sheeva install going. See http://www.tonidoplug.com/tonido_plug_how.html. I've somewhat followed this thread over the last couple of weeks but I haven't read all the posts. Feel free to provide any comments/feedback on the downside of going the tonido plug route as opposed to the starting from scratch with the sheeva.

chunkyks · 08-10-2009, 01:06 PM

Looks kinda cool, but I'm never a big fan of closed-source stuff.

What are the actual things you *want* to do? There's often better tools made up of individual items. I have a review of the Sheeva with some ideas for uses in it that should be appearing on mp3car sometime soon, among other things I mention mediatomb which I've used with great success various times.

Gary (-;

prodigalsun · 08-10-2009, 05:43 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by chunkyks

Looks kinda cool, but I'm never a big fan of closed-source stuff.

What are the actual things you *want* to do? There's often better tools made up of individual items. I have a review of the Sheeva with some ideas for uses in it that should be appearing on mp3car sometime soon, among other things I mention mediatomb which I've used with great success various times.

Gary (-;

Not sure what you mean by closed-source stuff. Tonido is an open source project. Its GUI is extremely user friendly and and has multiple app support. The mediatomb suggestion you posted is just another option by going the upnp route but will be limited with app support as upnp focuses on just media. Since the tonido plug is practically the same price as a sheeva, it just seems like a better starting point. In addition there doesn't seem to be any limitation to install other stuff.