Will USB 1.0 work with Telecom T-Stick

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Will USB 1.0 work with Telecom T-Stick

dazz1

95 posts

Master Geek

#62108 29-May-2010 22:50

Hi

I want to set up a remote webcam using Ubuntu, an old PC with USB 1.0 ports.
I want to use an old PC to reduce power consumption.
I don't need high speed data transfer because I will only be transfering stills, not video.
I will use Linux because it has to be reliable and I need to administer it remotely.
I want to use Telecom because I already have a spare unused card.
The aim is to buy a T-stick off Trademe and use a pre-pay account.

According to the specs I have seen for T-Sticks, they require USB 2.
My question is:

Is it essential to use USB 2 with a T-Stick, or will they work OK with USB 1?
If not, is there a Telecom compatible version of a T-stick that will work with USB 1?

If I need USB 2, I could buy a PCI card but I would prefer not to.

nitrotech

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#336156 29-May-2010 23:00

Yep the MF636 works on USB 1.0

richms

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#336423 31-May-2010 01:34

Old PC wont reduce power consumption, the older ones are usually worse than current ones for the same task since new ones have speedstep/cool and quiet/whatever else in them, and are using a lower Vcore so less heat as well. Thats why a netbook will get better life than my really old laptop despite being twice the speed and with half the batterys in it.

Have you looked at one of the embedded boards or else a router capable of openwrt? Some of those are sub 5 watts? pogoplug etc too.

Richard rich.ms

dazz1

95 posts

Master Geek

#336733 31-May-2010 19:12

Hi

For about $15 I can get an old PC fitted with a 100W PSU. I can remove the FD, CD-ROM, and graphics card. I can then underclock the CPU. I haven't tried to measure the power consumption in this configuration but it has to be less than 100W. On that, I can easily load a decent selection of LINUX applications and connect peripherals.

I understand that a higher buy price can achieve a lower running cost.

I would be interested to know if there is a more cost effective solution.

tumnasgt

83 posts

Master Geek

#336750 31-May-2010 19:56

You should replace the power supply at the very least. A decent modern power supply will have 80%+ efficiency compared with <60% with an old one. With 80%, 100W output uses 125W from mains, whereas at 60%, 100W uses 167W.

An even better idea is using an Intel Atom based desktop or laptop. Power consumption could be <15W, vs about 60W for an old desktop. Something like this would be ideal if you want to build your own box.

For reference, I have included the power consumption of a couple of my computers (measured with a Digitor meter):
*AMD Athlon 2100, 512MB, No HDD: 65W on the "No boot disk" screen.
*Dell XPS M1210 Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo (1.8GHz, 2GB) with a modern power supply: 20W when idle
*Dell XPS M1210 Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo (1.8GHz, 2GB) with an old power supply: 32W when idle
*HP dx7300 Business Desktop (Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz, 4GB): 60W when idle

As you can see, the older PC does not do well for power/watt, and the laptop's CPU is much more efficient, even with an old PSU.

Having a PC that uses 15W instead of 60W will save you $75 a year (based on 20c/kWh), so the the Atom box can cost $200 more and still save you money over 3 years. And as power is likely to get more expensive over that time, it'll only get better.

Sorry if I'm ranting too much, I'm quite passionate about power saving.

BarTender

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#336767 31-May-2010 20:30

richms: Old PC wont reduce power consumption, the older ones are usually worse than current ones for the same task since new ones have speedstep/cool and quiet/whatever else in them, and are using a lower Vcore so less heat as well. Thats why a netbook will get better life than my really old laptop despite being twice the speed and with half the batterys in it.

Have you looked at one of the embedded boards or else a router capable of openwrt? Some of those are sub 5 watts? pogoplug etc too.

That's what I would do as well. a NSLU2 works well for me.
I can personally recommend the Genius Magic Slim 2020 which works well on my NSLU2 in OpenWRT, I might try plugging in a MF626 as well.
That would probably be your lest power consumption option IMHO.

raytaylor

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#336848 1-Jun-2010 00:15

eee 701 netbook
~20 watts and can be underclocked even further.
I have used them in several projects as they will also directly run off of a 12v deep cycle battery.
Internal battery if good can act as a 4 hour UPS

Starting at $150 buynow on trademe

Ray Taylor

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dazz1

95 posts

Master Geek

#337132 1-Jun-2010 19:12

Hi

The NSUL2 looks like good gear but appears to be uncommon in NZ. I have an eee, also a nice piece of kit.

Any good suggestions for a low power appliance with 3 ethernet connections?? I want to run an IPCop firewall with three interfaces? I currently have an IBM Pentium 1 133Mhz but it only has two PCI slots.

Quic Broadband

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richms

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#337133 1-Jun-2010 19:17

Do you really need full thruput on all nics? cant use a router with openwrt on it?

Richard rich.ms

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#337146 1-Jun-2010 20:25

Otherwise a good router to go for which works a treat with OpenWRT is a Asus WL-520gU. I have installed a few of these, and had them work faultlessly. It has a USB on it, and it's a cheap little router that is basically the same as a WRT54GL, plus it has a USB.

dazz1

95 posts

Master Geek

#337604 2-Jun-2010 22:54

Hi

I have a Nokia M1122 modem. I think I could set that up to hang a web server off one of the ports.