Onion omega capabilities?
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I backed 20 bux and ordered a perk on Indiegogo - an omega 2 plus and a dock of my choice.
I'm thinking about the capabilities of the omega 2.
I read it has 64mbs of ram. That's the same specs as the Apple macbook G3.
Does it mean that the onion omega, if somehow connected to RCA or HDMI, can output GUI? can it stream video?
BTW, is there any way to flash an OS, like Puppy linux or DamnSmallLinux, on Onion? They have really low system requirements.
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It doesnt have a Video Output and i dont even know if the chip has a gpu.
Edit: went through the datasheet and no, it does not have a GPU, so having a desktop or even a Command line diaplayed on a screen wont be possible really. You would be better of with a pi zero
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Good question, honestly I dont know but if I were to guess, there is no desktop but it looks like we might be able to use ssh and that is why they are working so hard to develop the onion cloud for users. The Omega was not designed to have a visual interface, in the same way you wouldnt expect to plug the arduino into a monitor. I am sure that someone will find a way to flash other software for Onion, and it does say on the kickstarter page that you can run FreeBSD with Onion. So the Omega is a full computer but not in the traditional sense w/ a desktop and it will only replace the Raspberry Pi in situations where you wouldnt want to run a monitor. I dont know what you mean by "stream video" but you could hook it up to a webcam and have the onion stream that video to the internet. Also look up the LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo because it is very similar to Omega, being an OpenWRT dev board.
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Eric, since you mention Puppy linux and DamnSmallLinux and 'really low system requirements' as a feature that you seek, you should stick with OpenWRT since this Linux distribution has already been ported to the ARM processor used by both Omega versions. The other Linuxes are for PCs (Intel or AMD processors), so they probably do not support any ARM processors off the shelf. Some people use Arch Linux ARM, so that one is a possibility too. A physical screen can only be connected via an Omega serial interface, thus is very limited and very slow compared to an actual VGA or HDMI screen, so forget about it for this particular use. It is technically feasible to have a graphical interface accessible through VNC or SSH, but the X Window system will need to be ported to the ARM processor, as well as its numerous dependencies, and this will perhaps be too storage hungry on the Omega 2, and perhaps quite a few months of work for that specific port. Are you ready to do the time?
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Oh, okay, thanks!
I wasn't really expecting the Omega to run GUI, I was just curious what the purple blob can do with 64mbs of ram. But I REALLY wish I could flash it with an OS one day, like, I don't know, debian server???
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@Eric-Min said in Onion omega capabilities?:
But I REALLY wish I could flash it with an OS one day, like, I don't know, debian server???
You quite certainly can. But what services are you REALLY interested in? You haven't mentioned it. Maybe those specific ones have already been compiled for an ARM processor. A system does NOT need to be labeled Debian to be a Linux Server system.
Visit this website for further inspiration and details:
https://openwrt.org/
