Onion Omega on Kickstarter

[dexters_lab]

Flashed across my FB the other day, dont recall seeing it mentioned before

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onion/onion-omega-invention-platform-for-the-internet-of?ref=video

[janoc]

Well, the $25 for the board + dock is actually not bad, assuming they manage to deliver it for that price. Compared to the Intel Edison, this looks more sensible even though less powerful.

[Rasz]

meh, got same thing with $15 chinese routers, plus Im pretty sure they didnt sign qualcomm NDA = no calibration.

[janoc]

meh, got same thing with $15 chinese routers, plus Im pretty sure they didnt sign qualcomm NDA = no calibration.

Well, sure, just that $15 router may or may not be available tomorrow, they aren't all that terribly well documented, nor is it something that you can actually put in a product. The $10 difference between something you do have to hack and something you don't in order to make things work is not a significant issue, IMO. Also the cheap TP Link routers which you likely have in mind have quite a bit less memory than this.

Not sure what calibration are you referring to - the thing is running Linux and using Linux drivers under the hood, so they most likely don't have to deal with that. And perhaps they are shipping the official Qualcomm driver for it, how do you know they don't? The cheap Atheros based routers use those same Linux drivers, btw.

[zepto]

Onion Omega doesn't seem like an unreasonable or even particularly ambitious project. 

i.e. see
http://www.ebay.com/itm/AR9331-3G-4G-router-Open-Source-OpenWrt-WiFi-IoT-Module-Arduino-Project-/251891898595?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3aa5ed58e3
http://www.dragino.com/downloads/downloads/datasheet/HE%20WiFi%20IoT%20Module%20datasheet.pdf

Throw in some marketing, some shields, and some software
= $$$$$ on kickstarter

The price doesn't seem unreasonable given the inclusion of the dock, and I would be surprised if they end up failing at a hardware level since they don't really have to engineer anything.  If they can make some interesting additions to the software that would be pretty neat.

If these were available right now for that price(which apparently even includes shipping) I would buy a few.

[chickenHeadKnob]

This competes directly against raspi A+ and doesn't do anything better. In fact specs are much worse; Raspi has twice the CPU clock 4 times the RAM and can do the Linux-cloudie-javascript thing better, with plenty of ready to run on-line examples, so meh.

[codeboy2k]

Chinese devs have been making these little single chip / dual chip SOC + WiFi devices for a while now, $15-$20.

I don't see why these Kickstarter projects get the traction they do.

it's just an ARM SOC with RAM. it runs Linux, just like every other ARM SOC. It can run open source tools like PHP, Node,js, etc.. just like every other ARM SOC.

[Rasz]

Not sure what calibration are you referring to - the thing is running Linux and using Linux drivers under the hood, so they most likely don't have to deal with that. And perhaps they are shipping the official Qualcomm driver for it, how do you know they don't? The cheap Atheros based routers use those same Linux drivers, btw.

analog radio part of the chip needs to be individually calibrated per chip using Qualcomms NDA jig, this is why every single router has calibration block in flash, and every firmware dump bin is different

[janoc]

analog radio part of the chip needs to be individually calibrated per chip using Qualcomms NDA jig, this is why every single router has calibration block in flash, and every firmware dump bin is different

OK, but in that case if they didn't sign the NDA, the device is quite useless and will possibly violate various laws concerning radio transmissions. That sounds rather unlikely to me, IMHO - if they have built the prototype, they would have likely discovered that problem.

How did you actually arrive to the conclusion that they didn't sign the Qualcomm NDA?

[Rasz]

OK, but in that case if they didn't sign the NDA, the device is quite useless and will possibly violate various laws concerning radio transmissions.

would be less sensitive, and maybe off center frequency

How did you actually arrive to the conclusion that they didn't sign the Qualcomm NDA?

because they arent a multi million dollar corporation, qualcomm doesnt talk to rabble

[janoc]

because they arent a multi million dollar corporation, qualcomm doesnt talk to rabble

OK, so basically you don't know, only conjecturing. No problem to bash the project, though!

You really think that the Chinese manufacturer of the cheapo routers signed the NDA with Qualcomm and actually did the calibration?  They just took the cheapest SoC on the market, slapped off-the-shelf Linux in the flash and off it went ...

[Rasz]

OK, so basically you don't know, only conjecturing. No problem to bash the project, though!

I  know people that tried to establish some kind of business relation with qualcomm, I tried getting some documentation myself. Its always the same, you need to know someone to even get a reply, and its only uphill from there. Same story with Broadcom.

You really think that the Chinese manufacturer of the cheapo routers signed the NDA with Qualcomm and actually did the calibration?  They just took the cheapest SoC on the market, slapped off-the-shelf Linux in the flash and off it went ...

tplink did. small chinese manufacturers might be using cloned tools

[eas]

This competes directly against raspi A+ and doesn't do anything better. In fact specs are much worse; Raspi has twice the CPU clock 4 times the RAM and can do the Linux-cloudie-javascript thing better, with plenty of ready to run on-line examples, so meh.

No, it doesn't compete directly with the RPi A+ for the reasons you state, and some you completely miss, like size, onboard WiFi, etc.

Chinese devs have been making these little single chip / dual chip SOC + WiFi devices for a while now, $15-$20.

I don't see why these Kickstarter projects get the traction they do.

it's just an ARM SOC with RAM. it runs Linux, just like every other ARM SOC. It can run open source tools like PHP, Node,js, etc.. just like every other ARM SOC.

Well, it isn't an ARM SOC, but that is neither here nor there.

As for the rest of your comment, do you really not understand that people are willing to trade money for time, and vice versa?

Once upon a time, I was on an email thread where some senior Microsoft person said: I don't understand what Blogger offers that couldn't be done with FrontPage.  And they had a point, but by the standards of the question, Notepad.exe would have been another viable alternative.

[n1ck]

I think this looks like a pretty strong campaign. The company has done a lot of work already with seed funding as evidenced with their prototypes. While the hardware itself may not be groundbreaking, the software looks interesting. Their Cloud platform is hardware agnostic so it will work with Raspberry Pi, Arduino Yun, etc. It seems like they should be able to deliver what they claim, although maybe a few months late. I wrote up a full review here in case anyone is interested.

[Rasz]

Their Cloud platform

is the reason this is a FAIL
cloud is the new always online DRM, and is why they got any seed money. No one wakes up and says 'I wish to be tied down to this one platform for the rest of my product lifetime.

[n1ck]

The campaign states, "In addition, the operating system and other system software on the Omega, as well as an API compatible version of the Onion Cloud, will be open sourced." So it sounds like you could modify and run your own version of the cloud server if you wanted to. The Console/App store sounds like it won't fully be open sourced, but it looks like you have some freedom with the cloud platform.

[MLXXXp]

meh, got same thing with $15 chinese routers, plus Im pretty sure they didnt sign qualcomm NDA = no calibration.

Onion has posted in the comment section of their Kickstarter campaign:

Just got off the phone with our manufacturing partners. I confirm that we will have access to all the required procedures and equipments to configure the ART data on the Omega.

[janoc]

meh, got same thing with $15 chinese routers, plus Im pretty sure they didnt sign qualcomm NDA = no calibration.

Onion has posted in the comment section of their Kickstarter campaign:

Just got off the phone with our manufacturing partners. I confirm that we will have access to all the required procedures and equipments to configure the ART data on the Omega.

The last Amp Hour show has Akiba from FreakLabs there as a guest. Among other things he explains how is it possible in China to get for a few bucks complete schematics and documentation for many things that otherwise requires NDAs or just isn't available. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the Atheros calibration utilities were available like this in China as well and routinely used.

[dexters_lab]

sorry to bump an old topic

my Omega arrived a few days ago and wondered of anyone else here bought one?

[Kean]

I backed the campaign for the "pro kit", so I am anxiously awaiting my 8 devices & many adapter boards.
Glad to know they're really shipping.  I like the design. 

I also backed the Domino campaign, but had little concern with that one as I had collaborated with one of the creators before, and also bought devices from GL-iNet in the past.

[dexters_lab]

I backed the campaign for the "pro kit", so I am anxiously awaiting my 8 devices & many adapter boards.
Glad to know they're really shipping.  I like the design. 

well while your waiting for your kit to arrive they might get the cloud up and finish writing the console. The software side of things is well behind the hardware at the moment.

i got mine to learn a bit about linux and related programming languages

[PointyOintment]

sorry to bump an old topic

my Omega arrived a few days ago and wondered of anyone else here bought one?

I ordered a couple. I haven't checked my box since last week; maybe they've arrived!

[Kean]

No wonder mine haven't arrived - my reward selection includes all of the delayed expansions/docks.  Hopefully they'll ship me the rest ASAP!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onion/onion-omega-invention-platform-for-the-internet-of/posts/1388997