Did underclocking reduce the power usage by much?  I run a SheevePlug and a Dockstar from a solar powered battery bank.  The Dockstar has its own built-in power supply, so you just connect to the batteries.  My focus on the SheevaPlug was building the most efficient power supply I could to get 5v.

I bought one in December for $30.  Today on Amazon they were $50.  You might look at the Dockstar's replacement - the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Net STAK100.  It is basically a Dockstar that will dock two SATA drives and has only one USB port.  I've read that like the Dockstar you can install Debian or other OS on it. It also is supposed to have an internal header that you can connect to for a serial console.

I am just replacing a Linksys NSLU2 running Debian Lenny with a Seagate Dockstar running Debian Squeeze as our home file server.  We have only Mac OS X, iOS4, and linux computers.  I run netatalk for file sharing, Time Machine backups, and shared iPhoto and iTunes libraries (I use avahi so that the server shows up in the Finder's sidebar as an available afp server on the Macs).  I also run the Darwin calendarserver and use its CALDAV server for a shared family calendar in iCal and am working on getting the CARDDAV server working for a shared address book.  I have had this basic setup on the NSLU2 reliably for over a year now and am just getting it running on the Dockstar.  It works great with our Macs, iPhones, and an iPad.  In Debian Squeeze you can easily install these packages with apt-get install netatalk, avahi-daemon, calendarserver.

If you can install and manage a Debian server, you home file sharing possibilities are pretty limitless.  For your Pogoplug, you should look at: http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/

The two Sheevaplugs I support both have a cron file that runs ntpdate once a day.  ntpdate has to adjust the clocks about 2.5-2.8 seconds a day.

I don't have a GuruPlug, but I found my SheevaPlug's power supply was the biggest source of heat.  I power it from an external DC source and it runs much cooler.

I added an external power jack to my plug.  I can power it from a 5v supply from my solar system or just use a regulated 5v power pack that provides at least 1A.  I use a power pack from a Linksys NSLU2 that provides 5v at 2A.  It works great.  If you are powering equipment off the USB bus, you need more amperage than 1A, but 2A should work well.

See the posts at: http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=260.15

I own a Plextor px-tv402u (a USB2 analog video capture device with hardware MPEG1,2,4 encoding - wis-go7007 chip) and have been successful in building the drivers for this device and capturing video.  I run Debian lenny (Linux kernel 2.6.30-1-kirkwood) on my SheevaPlug on a 4GB SDHC card.  I capture video on to a Western Digital Passport 320GB hard drive (mount /dev/sda1 /mnt).  The hard drive and the Plextor px-tv402u are connected to a powered USB2 hub.  The Plextor gets its analog signal from a digital tv converter box for over-the-air broadcast recording.

These are the build and install instructions:

I can capture video using the gorecord app that comes with the drivers.  I've had good results capturing a tv show with:

I playback the video on my Western Digital WD TV.  I just umount /mnt, unplug the hard drive from the USB hub, plug the hard drive into the WD TV, and watch the video on my tv.  Very easy.

Now I just have to write a CGI program to write cron files to schedule recording.  Then I will be able to setup the recording times using a web browser.

I just refreshed my plug with the SheevaPlug Installer v1.0 and the new Marvell u-boot 3.4.19.  I'd like to pass along a couple of comments on Martin Michlmayr's manual instructions for installing Debian on a SheevaPlug.

I recently upgraded to the latest version of u-boot from the openplug.org web site and I stopped seeing any console messages.  I used the new SheevaPlug Installer v1.0 to bring it back to the default settings and setup.  I reloaded Debian following Martin's instructions.  Before I completed the steps in the section titled "Boot the system", I typed printenv and noticed that some things had changed:

1) The following set up instructions are not needed since the SheevaPlug Installer v1.0 installs a mainline kernel:

setenv mainlineLinux yes
setenv arcNumber 2097
saveenv
reset

The settings are set to these values in the new u-boot.

2) To get the console to work with the new list of environment settings, the next sets of commands for either a USB drive or an SD card need to have "console" in the third line changed to "bootargs_console". 

As an example, the SD card listing would now be:


Using these setting works well unless the SheevaPlug is being booted up by applying the power.  When this happens I get the following error:


If I type reset at the Marvell>> prompt, the SheevaPlug will boot normally.  So far the only solution I have found to fix this problem is to add a second mmcinit; to the second setenv line above.  I use the following commands to make this work:


One final note, the Appendix for Upgrading u-boot for SD support isn't needed if the SheevaPlug Installer v1.0 is used.  It installs the latest version that includes SD support.  I typically work from a Mac and the SheevaPlug Installer doesn't work, so Martin's instructions are still useful for upgrading u-boot.

CqCn -

I'm not sure I found your solution.  I tried adding rootdelay=10 to my bootargs_root.  It didn't make a difference.  So far the only thing that has worked is to have two mmcinit; commands.  On a power-on boot up, the first one fails, and the second one works.  On a reboot they both work.

On two different Sheeva Plugs I have had the same problem.  When power is applied and u-boot starts up it can't find the MMC/SD card and gives the output below.  If I am connected to the console and type "reset" it will boot up normally from my SD card.  I can also use a paper clip to reset the plug and it will boot up normally.  I tried adding a rootdelay=10 with no effect.  It has bootdelay=3.  I even loaded the latest Marvell u-boot version 3.4.19.  Still the same problem.  Any ideas on how to fix this so it boots properly when the power is applied?

I had good success setting up a ZyXEL G-202 to provide WLAN.  It is on a Plug running Debian.  The Debian wiki has good instructions: http://wiki.debian.org/zd1211rw, and it didn't take long to get it up and running.

There isn't a Mac OS X option for the installer, but  I can compile most of the source code with very minor modification.  Is there any interest in a Mac version?

The beginning of the runme.php can be modified to find if it is running on a Mac:

$WIN32=0;
$MACOSX=0;
$openocd_cmd="";

/* find out if we run on Linux/Windows*/
/* Should the next line be: if (PHP_OS == "WIN32" || PHP_OS == "WINNT") */
if (strstr($_ENV["OS"], "Windows"))
    $WIN32=1;

if (PHP_OS == "Darwin") {
   $MACOSX=1;
}

The main problem I run into is OS X doesn't have modprobe.  Does anyone know what would be in the variable $out that is produced in the php script when exec("modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x9e88 product=0x9e8f", $out, $rc); is run?

To access the serial console on the plug from my Mac, all I had to do was to install the appropriate ftdi driver from the previous post.   Reboot.  Then in Terminal type ls /dev and look for tty.usbserial.... (different tty.usbserial... depending on which USB port the plug is plugged into on my Mac).  In Terminal I use minicom installed via MacPorts to access the serial console.  Type sudo minicom -s to setup minicom (I deleted all of the modem initialization codes and setup the serial port with the appropriate settings).  Once, minicom is setup properly, I only have to type minicom at the prompt in Terminal and it works great.

5 volts

Attached is the assembled plug.