My Main Use For A Pandora

[Deso]

Hello guys,


I'm about to reorder my andora1: pandora, but i was wondering...
I know the main use for most people is gaming, and rightfully so, in the end it was made for this.
I'll also be using it once in a while for gaming, but my main use would be for downloading torrents.

For months i've been looking into building a decent computer that almost uses no power, the smaller form factor the better, but in the end the pandora has everything i need in one tiny box.
Plus the pandora consumes like what, 10 Watts max?

So my question is, can i hook up an external harddisc to the pandora? It will see the disk as an extra drive in plug and play?
Its a western digital 2.5" drive, that uses one USB (!) for power and data.
Also, will there be a torrent client available for the pandora OS?
Would there be a way to remotely check from an XP or MAC machine? like a remote desktop for it?
And final question: can the pandora be powered by the adaptor, even when the battery is removed?

Thanks in advance!


kind regards


-Deso

 

[logokas]

Yes to everything except remote viewing.

And for gods sake man, read the pandawiki before you post.

Any linux P2P client will be usable as long as somebody makes an ARM port of it.

 

[Deso]

Yes to everything except remote viewing.

And for gods sake man, read the pandawiki before you post.

Any linux P2P client will be usable as long as somebody makes an ARM port of it.

Hello Logokas, thanks for your quick reply.

I'm sorry if i asked a lot of questions that have been answered before, I just joined this forum...
Well in short, this is awsome news

If anyone wants to add something to that, feel free.
Thanks

 

[Dutch_Cap]

If you're looking to use it as a desktop computer, you may want to consider getting a BeagleBoard. It's almost the same hardware, but it has DVI-D, so you can hook up a monitor.

 

[mali]

You could use something like this:
http://www.extrabyte.com/index_d.htm
Or buy a Wifi AP with USB port and connect an external USB storage device. The Pandora would act like a Wifi hub to redirect the torrent to the drive.

 

[Spirit]

Why should remote "desktoping" not work? Does Matchbox not work with VNC things? (Yes, surely other desktop environments, xservers or whatever those are could do, but I am interested about the shipped software.)

 

[typs lik dis]

He's wrong. There's nothing to stop you from using any remote desktop setup as long as the software doesn't require any libraries not ported to ARM. In other words, the answer to all your questions but the battery one is "yes"; the battery, though, needs to be in for the system to receive power. Why not just get a Beagleboard?

 

[Yigguth]

the battery, though, needs to be in for the system to receive power.

Actually they fixed that with the third board

 

[Klepto]

Yes to everything except remote viewing.

I'd have said yes to that as well. Quite apart from ssh and vnc some popular torrent clients include a web interface.

 

[kattle87]

Answer is yes to all. BTW: I expect power consumption well under 10 watts. My 17' laptop can get as low as 25 watts. I hope the Pandora can get 5 watts or less. Althought this is just speculation.

A beagleboard is less expensive but less portable. You won't be watching your movies on-the-go with a beagleboard

 

[benjymous]

Yes to everything except remote viewing.

I'd have said yes to that as well. Quite apart from ssh and vnc some popular torrent clients include a web interface.

Don't forget the X protocol is *designed* to allow you to run an application on one machine, but redirect it's display and input somewhere else.

A Version of VNC already exists on Angstrom, so that path shouldn't be a problem either:
http://linuxtogo.org/gowiki/Angstrom/Opie/VNC

 

[j.pickens]

I thought you'd need a powered hub to run the hard drive.
The USB powered hard drives I've used have drawn more power than the Pandora was designed to put out (500mA?), if I recall correctly. I'll search the forums...

 

[Brockway]

I thought you'd need a powered hub to run the hard drive.
The USB powered hard drives I've used have drawn more power than the Pandora was designed to put out (500mA?), if I recall correctly. I'll search the forums...

Western Digital 320gb 2.5" drives will run off 1 usb port.

 

[j.pickens]

I thought you'd need a powered hub to run the hard drive.
The USB powered hard drives I've used have drawn more power than the Pandora was designed to put out (500mA?), if I recall correctly. I'll search the forums...

Western Digital 320gb 2.5" drives will run off 1 usb port.

Yeah, but they draw 1000mA.
I found a thread:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...4864&st=30#

aw no, it's not looking good T_T

"Response (Danny Z.)10/21/2008 07:39 AM
Dear Grant,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

The drive is in need of 1000mA during boot up so I'm afraid that if the pandora only supplies 500mA it will not work.


If you have any further questions do not hesitate too contact us.

Sincerely,
Danny
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com"

does that mean it's not gonna work even if it's connected to external power? T_T

 

[Squidge]

Roughly, Watts = Volts*Amps. We know the battery is 3.7V, and MWeston has said the most he managed to get the system to draw was ~700mA. If we round this up to 1A, we get an easy equation of 3.7*1 = 3.7Watts

Of course, if you power the system from AC, then you need to find out what the adaptor requires to provide that wattage (How efficient it is, etc), plus what is required to charge the battery (if present).

I'm going to guess at 85% efficiency and ignore the battery, which would certainly be less than 5 watts.

WD Drives are notorious for saying they can run directly from USB ports, and they may well draw 500mA or less when idle, but the startup current is typically much more than 500mA (the 2.5" one I tested was >700mA).

 

[j.pickens]

This sounds like the best solution to me:

1) Go to ebay
2) buy an iPod with a broken screen but still functions as an external hard drive
3) Profit!

 

[White Flame]

I plugged my N800 through my Kill-A-Watt once, and it reported 5W of draw at the socket, regardless of what I did with it. I'm pretty sure that's the OMAP's effect of it doing wall->battery and battery->unit separately, so it was drawing a constant load for the battery charge.

 

[vputz]

My vote for low-power torrent appliance: NSLU2 running debian. I eventually stopped using my NSLU2 as a general-purpose server (it was too slow for Squid and I kept overloading the poor thing) but it'd be great for this, and drew very little power indeed.

 

[bsamm97]

My vote for low-power torrent appliance: NSLU2 running debian. I eventually stopped using my NSLU2 as a general-purpose server (it was too slow for Squid and I kept overloading the poor thing) but it'd be great for this, and drew very little power indeed.

You could always get a USB Double Sided A to USB mini B Cable and plug the 2nd usb connector into a usb to a/c power adapter