Fit2-PC

[royalj7]

I mean heck, give it a try (then you can tell me if it works ). Folks that have been into this for a while I'm sure have bumped up against this, but I don't want to have 4-6 computers running all my different HA tasks, so I kind of want beefer boxes that can do 2-3 things at a time. Of course, I'm going to try to make these PC's as energy efficient as possible.

 

[Dean Roddey]

If you are not trying to stream any media (and don't have a big media repository, i.e. thousands of cover art images), and the server is just serving a few clients, then it can be a quite light weight box. It needs to have sufficient I/O to get the data to the clients quickly. But it probably doesn't need much CPU. In those cases, the clients may be working harder than the server, just because the server is having to do so little.

But, if you are going to be setting up a good bit of scheduled and triggered events, or a sizeable media repository that multiple clients are accessing (not the media data itself but the meta data), running the web server, or running the new RIVA server to support some small devices, then you'll need more CPU and memory as you want to do more of those things.

You probably couldn't serve up much media on a really light weight box, and also provide snappy response to the clients.

 

[hucker]

Remember my first post when I started this thread. I want it for automation only, not media. Does this change your mind?

We are currently using an atom based laptop for a project at work (not sure if it is the 1.1GHz or the 1.6GHz) and it is running a network based motion control system and it is doing just fine. I'm seriously looking at one of these so I can shutdown my big server. I am not worried about the speed for my system which will serve up MP3's and serve as a hub for a bunch of automation stuff (CQC and homevision). I'll buy the faster one i'm sure.

Here are the limitations I see:

1) won't autostart after power loss
2) 1Gig Ram Max
3) Has no support for analog output of display (cheap adapters cannot work since analog does not exist)
4) No digital sound over the HDMI port.
5) No wifi

If you can live inside of those constraints it looks pretty cool. The problem of course is that an XP based 1.6GHz system will cost around 400 bucks. A netbook costs about the same and you get a screen and keyboard...

 

[rfdesq]

5) No wifi

Thanks for all the responses, keep 'em coming. I think the latest iteration of the box comes with built-in WiFi 802.11 b/g/n.

 

[royalj7]

If you can live inside of those constraints it looks pretty cool. The problem of course is that an XP based 1.6GHz system will cost around 400 bucks. A netbook costs about the same and you get a screen and keyboard...

The XP based system I'm thinking of building will only cost me ~$270 with a seriously faster processor. As Hucker mentioned it doesn't have a keyboard or monitor, but I would be administering the system headless, as alot of folks probably would. It would also use more power, but it looks like it would idle around 35W and average 50-60W, not a monster load but there. So I can see the attraction of one of these, but if you are going to go small and efficient like this, why not use the Marvel SheevaPlug?

 

[damage]

So I can see the attraction of one of these, but if you are going to go small and efficient like this, why not use the Marvel SheevaPlug?

because nothing runs on it...

another option for low power with a little more processing power http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Atom-A...cient,1997.html

 

[Black Magic]

Jumping in late into the conversation, but I've been using the original Fit-PC (version 1) with CQC for quite some time. Not only that, I'm running SQL Server Express on there as well (to log CQC events). It's pretty amazing what you can run with just 256 MB of RAM. The Fit-PC is the CQC Master server and it controls my receiver and projector. This is an excellant low power system for CQC.

 

[rfdesq]

FitPC2 arrived. It's on the bench and I'm installing CQC on it. Works like a charm so far.

 

[felixrosbergen]

If it wasnt for SageTV i woudl be all about this FitPC2 thing..but since i need a beefier server anyway for SageTV (especially when doing commercial skipping) running the CQC load is trivial...

Now at some point if i can have the 'big' server down for most of the day and only come alive for SageTV purpoose and have a 'little server' like the FitPC2 run CQC then things woudl get interesting...I think this is all already possible..but i just don' thave the time to look into it now...

For those interested..I recently built a fairly powerfull server (Intel E8500, 3.16ghz) with efficient PSU, etc and the lowest power consumption i can get (even with CPU throttling, etc) is about 85watts, at my elecric rate thats about $18 /month. I actually upgraded my WD green power drives to a non green power raid 1 array and the server now iddles at 99 watts.

I would strongly suggest anybody looking into a main server to very carefully consider the power they actually need versus the power usage cost of the server...