"On A Quest For The Ideal Orbiter"

[lmce3000]

Hi All,

What do you think of this little number here http://www.norhtec.com/products/touche/index.html
as an Orbiter? About half the price of the TREQ http://www.qsicorp.com/product/vehicle/treq-dx.php.

Thom, if I send you a unit, Could you test it?
and How would you do it? would you port the software directly onto the unit or would you just modify the Orbiter software
that runs on Win CE to run on this unit?

Holla back, John.

[donpaul]

All you would need is WinXP installed, then you could install the windows orbiter software and run it full screen. Too bad there isn't more RAM, I wouldn't mind seeing this as a MD.

[lmce3000]

Good point donpaul, but I was thinking more along the lines of an integrated
solution therefore bypass having to boot into XP and so on... Port the Orbiter
software directly onto the unit. Is that feasible?

John.

[Marie.O]

All you would need is plug it into the network, and let lmce detect it, build the MD for it, and be done with it. You might need to fiddle with some settings and drivers, but that's what I would do. A nice audio only MD. 256mb might be a bit on the low side, but doable.

[lmce3000]

Hi Posde,

then this would mean that the device would become an MD not a standalone Orbiter.
I thought about that, by taking this route, the device would have to be stationary, being
connected to the LAN and all. I would much rather use it like the WebDT. Access the network
via Wifi. You know what I mean?

BTW, this unit will be available with 512MB of Ram by next month or May.

John.

[donpaul]

802.11n and 512MB RAM would make it a nice mobile MD/Orbiter. Let me know how it works for you, I may be interested.

[lmce3000]

Will inquire about getting it fitted with Wireless n. Also Waiting for the Ram upgrade.
Will keep you all updated.

John.

[Marie.O]

John,

I did not see any mentioning of it being portable, hence my MD note.

[lmce3000]

posde,

My bad, I should have been more specific. Can't wait to test it ! 
Will keep you updated.

John.

[totallymaxed]

Hi All,

What do you think of this little number here http://www.norhtec.com/products/touche/index.html
as an Orbiter? About half the price of the TREQ http://www.qsicorp.com/product/vehicle/treq-dx.php.

Thom, if I send you a unit, Could you test it?
and How would you do it? would you port the software directly onto the unit or would you just modify the Orbiter software
that runs on Win CE to run on this unit?

Holla back, John.

Hi John,

Looks like a nice unit...with a little more RAM and as Posde says PXE boot it as an MD and just use it for remote control & for audio playback.

All the best

Andrew

[lmce3000]

Hi Andrew,

I will definitely test this unit to the max. Waiting for the one with 512 MB of Ram.
Will certainly PXE boot it to see how it performs. Thx for the input guys.

John.

[colinjones]

lmce3000 - as you correctly noted, MD and wireless are going to be the issue if you want it portable.... my thoughts are

1 - it is possible that disked MD will be added back in eventually, that would mean it could use wireless, only thing is getting a "disk" large enough as SSD's of that size will be very expensive!
2 - it is possible that you could set up a flash/thumb GRUB/PXE boot process, boot from flash, start GRUB, load a wireless driver pre-configured for your SSID/encryption, then kick off the PXE boot from GRUB.

[totallymaxed]

lmce3000 - as you correctly noted, MD and wireless are going to be the issue if you want it portable.... my thoughts are

1 - it is possible that disked MD will be added back in eventually, that would mean it could use wireless, only thing is getting a "disk" large enough as SSD's of that size will be very expensive!
2 - it is possible that you could set up a flash/thumb GRUB/PXE boot process, boot from flash, start GRUB, load a wireless driver pre-configured for your SSID/encryption, then kick off the PXE boot from GRUB.

Re 1 above;

MD boot images are currently approx. 2.5Gig so that really is not a big deal. A 4Gig flash drive would give you a generous amount of space and is really very inexpensive today. So Flash booted MD's look like something very much worth pursuing under 0810 ;-)

All the best

Andrew

[colinjones]

Andrew - I didn't realise it was so small! Great news going forward!

[lmce3000]

Hey guys,

This is definitely the way to go then. Let me also point out that this thing boots
off of SD and CF cards, so in theory the boot image can reside anywhere,as long
as the bios can include the storage device in the boot device tree.
This is looking very promising. Thanks guys.