Edit: So one is definitely going to be the Proselytizer Library Stick (OK I need a better name for it, fine). Going to test out some Debian options on there, just need to find a nice way to make it a user friendly portable library/reader, so feel free to mention whatever comes to mind there as well.
But I have more of these little suckers, so thats just one for now.
So I’ve got a few Intel compute sticks sitting on my desk here, and I don’t know what I want to do with them (aside from throw them out, I’d rather find some value in them if I can).
They are STK1AW32SC, which have the atom x5-Z8330 chips, with a whopping 2gb ram, 32gb emmc, and a microsd slot.
A few things I’ve considered:
- Take a few LCDs and the drivers and make a “household front end”, basically just point to my locally hosted services (mealie for recipes, hass, etc)
- Same thing but make it a digital picture frame
- Compute to point to a magic mirror instance
- Try out how terrible emulation is on them to make a little game console for the kids thats standalone? They already can use the living room one for that, which is a usff box with a lot more power. So probably not.
- Automatically boots to rick roll to stick in TVs at my BILs house and drive him nuts?
Open to ideas! I’ve got tons of machines here, so I really don’t need them to do anything - which means the silly and borderline stupid (see rick roll note above) are perfectly acceptable ideas.
Media PC on your TV, instead of the crappy built-in “smart” features.
SimulaVR headsets
I always thought they were a cool idea, but never bought one. Idea-wise, IDK, use them for cluster-computing? I considered getting one as a retro gaming arcade…so maybe that?
Retro gaming I think is going to be good for one, cluster-wise I’d be better off with the old pi 3bs I have… somewhere… I think in with the microcontroller bin (amidst of a pile of esp32s).
I’ve got a USB gamepad I picked up when radio shack was closing its stores, I think thats with the old consoles though (everything going back to n64, my NES, Genesis, and PS1 are long gone unfortunately), which is at my BIL’s house as he is playing my old Wii and PS2. Which is now making me want to take the of Xbox shell and shove a PC in there for the living room, a good excuse to upgrade the living room PC… But a whole new project at the same time lol
I just bought one to use as a Magic Mirror dashboard. I can’t think of any other real use for them other than as dashboards.
I like the Volumio idea though. You can set up a Music Assistant container and get a whole home audio setup without having to run a bunch of speaker wire. At my old place I had an Apple TV airplay movie audio into the kitchen so you wouldn’t miss any dialogue while you ran into the kitchen.
Edit: Really specific hypothetical. If they’re powerful enough to run Kodi, and you have a travel homelab with Jellyfin/Plex, I wonder if they could serve as a travel streaming stick 🤔
I wonder if they could serve as a travel streaming stick 🤔
Good question… They really aren’t bad at all when it comes to simple video playback… Worth trying on one of them at least!
How much storage does it have? Google search indicates it may just be 32GB. With a small distro, you just maybe just barely fit text only Wikipedia on there with Kiwix (or whatever the Wikipedia archive reader is called.)
Alternatively, you could put some books from Project Gutenberg on there. Throw in some public domain music recordings, a freely available movie or two (like the ones from the blender project), and maybe some light weight open source games… Then, you could have have yourself a portable offline library which could be shared with no legal repercussions.
Its just the 32gb emmc + whatever you shove on an sdxc - technically supports up to 128gb (officially), but by spec its sdxc v3, so untested/unsupported up to 2tb. I’ve got a bunch of spares at 128gb or less so thats what I’ll likely toss in.
I like the idea of a mini library… but maybe a step further and drop in a front end to navigate books, with a lightweight ebook reader application, and put some anti-capitalist works on there? With a bonus of the AFAQ? Ooh and some anti-fascist materials…
I could call it my Proselytizer Stick
I’ve been meaning to do something like a portable library myself. Your version of that sounds interesting.
Do you mind if I ask what the AFAQ is? A Google search didn’t lead me to a concrete answer.
So just for the record, I think this works quite nicely. Using foliate as the ebook reader, mx linux on the stick, its pretty responsive. I think I can trim it down further (maybe I’ll go full custom build if I have the time), but its pretty good to go right now.
One thing I was thinking about doing, since its OPDS friendly, is setting up a custom catalog to be available publicly that it can access, for ease of adding new books. I’m also going to grab and load a bunch locally, I have some on my library server right now, but I’ll probably focus and expand the collection a bit for this.
Maybe something with sections for economics, the environment, anti-imperialism, social progressivism, etc.
I also really like the idea of incorporating some of the piefed rational discourse kit (maybe including some videos in a different section, or links to a wiki? Not sure yet.).
Well that part it looks like will be a project unto itself, but either way - the anti-fascist proselytizer stick has a start!
I’m referring to the Anarchist FAQ
There is a group read of it happening that I am just now realizing I was probably tagged on my db0 account, and I totally forgot about it!
Anyway, I think something with both non-fiction works and fiction with a specific lean would be neat. Everything from The Iron Heel to The Conquest of Bread, a bit of Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, etc.
Action retro did a video on them recently.
https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3WvOzdlpwY
I am actually quite impressed with mxlinux on there!
Edit: Oh, for the record the little hdmi extension cable (~6" or so) is super handy and what he was missing when he had it plugged into the back of that monitor. I might stick it into a video switch though.
Its quite snappy on there! I think I’m going to theme it up and start building the library tonight
The x5-Z8330 has 800 passmark points which is enough to run Arch with XFce without issues. 2 GB of RAM though is the sticky point. It is problematic with Debian/Mint as they consume about 800 MBs of RAM on a cold boot (don’t even think of Fedora or Ubuntu that are dogs when it comes to RAM usage), but on Arch you can configure it to consume only 450 MB of RAM: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/660/702/810/921/104/original/3313b7ec1d3cdae4.png (here’s my Arch/XFce with a BeOS theme using 585 MB of RAM with 3 apps open). That’s a life saver on a 2 GB of RAM computer, because Youtube alone on Chrome can use up to 800 MB of RAM, while on Firefox goes up to 1.1 GB. Consider that 128 MB of RAM also goes to the integrated graphics card. But with other websites, or with a third party youtube front-end, or other apps, 2 GB can be enough (just make sure you give it a 4 GB swap file – not zswap). Finally, make sure you use only a background color, not an image. Images, uncompressed in RAM, can use up to 80 MB of RAM if they are in high-res. A plain color takes kilobytes! Also, disable the BT service and any other service you don’t use via XFce’s startup utility. That one takes 45 MB alone, it’s a dog… Load it only when you need it.
Running a 32 bit os might net you better idle. I run 32 bit debian on an ancient laptop and my idle is a bit lower, 300-400 mb. I’m also using openbox.
Uh um with such hardware the best would be to make old console emulation with such disto https://www.lakka.tv/
If I think about it as a travel console for retro gaming, that actually feels mildly useful. Maybe I keep it to NES/Genesis era, and a couple of cheapie controllers? That could be fun
Yes u can do it fine :) I think it can handle maybe light PSP games
I mostly just like to avoid the landfill if it can be avoided, now to find something to do with the other ones that have been sitting in the bin for a while…
They used to do digital signage work, but they’ve long since been replaced in my lab use, thus the issue with what to do with them now :)
I run Volumio on one that’s connected to my AV receiver. It integerates well into Home Assistant and can be used to listen to webradio and music streaming services (including your own). It can also play from its own storage.
Oh thats fun! Thanks for the idea
Get a distro running XFCE, slap the Chicago95 theme on it, and try to convince your friends that their computer updated to the latest version of Windows.
Hahaha - I like it
About all they’re good for is signage and maybe assist tasks with HA. You won’t be able to drive a decent enough display to do normal desktop things for certain. Maybe use them as little seed devices or something.
Nah, they can definitely do a decent display, I’ve had a desktop running a stupidly fat web app (not mine) on those with 1440p at 60hz. And that stupid thing needed windows, which was even worse. Trying to do a second thing with windows + that stupid app? Waste of time, not going to happen, but the main app ran just fine as bloat on top of bloat.
But light desktop stuff they can do just fine, however that isn’t what I want. A few ideas from the original:
- Portable library (definitely going to happen, I’m installing now and going to build Bookworm on it)
- Portable (not mobile) emulation station, may happen, toss some NES and Genesis games on it. May try that out tonight after the library build.
- (not from the other thread) Portable kid distraction (basically boot to gcompris) - maybe, I’ll have to see how well that works. Should only need opengl 2.1, but I think that chip supports 4.something, so should be good.
You must be mistaken. The sticks you mention have max out at 1080p, and with 2GB of mem, you’re not going to be running any desktop for very long. The Atom chips and the memory limitations just don’t make these useful candidates for anything with a DE.
You are thinking of the predecessor (2015), the 2016 model (while only rated for 1080p playback) is hdmi 1.4b and supports up to uhd30.
Here you go, one still has windows on it:
Ooh, MX grabbed it off the bat too:
