While I wait for my Vizio Co-Star Google TV box, I’m playing with the SheevaPlug computer.
For the longest time I’ve been wanting to play with a Plug Computer. Thanks to my friends at Allure-Energy I get to play with a SheevaPlug dev kit.
The SheevaPlug is a Plug Computer and it hides an entire Linux PC. Its specs are pretty cool:
- ARM-based 1.2GHz Sheeva embedded processor (Marvel)
- 512MB of DDR2 memory
- 512MB of flash storage
- Gigabit ethernet and USB 2.0.
The dev kit I am playing with is preloaded with Ubuntu/Linux 2.6.
The applications to create are really up to your imagination. Some examples include:
- Home monitoring & control
- Integrated NFC solution for retails, similar to what my friends at Flomio are doing
- Network-enabling anything with a USB interface; an example are the PogoPlug guys who network-enable any USB disk-drive, resulting on your own private cloud-storage
To play with and explore this embedded platform I am thinking about some home-related applications for monitoring, data and control. For example, I can add a Zigbee USB stick via the SheevaPlug USB port and write a web application and/or web services that discovers and controls & monitors one of the many Zigbee-based devices that already are on the market. I can have the mobile device connect over Wi-Fi to the Plug Computer to access the web app and/or web services. And another idea is to write one of those super cool Christmas lights control software to control sequences/effects, similar to this YouTube.
ceo