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The product specs state the wl500g weighs 500grams! Ouch! Can someone confirm this? Is it the case that's heavy? Can most of that 500grams be removed?
Single board computers usually weigh < 100g.
Our physics class is entering a competition and I want to send the wl500g up on a weather ballon. We have a small mass budget.
Case is not very heavy (I believe smthg like 100..200 g, I do not have wl500 nearby to check, I'll try to check on weekend). I believe that main problem will be power budget - 2 A@5 Volts == 10 Watts according to power source specs. You may consider cut or desolder LPT port and part of LAN ports transformers etc to decrease power consumption. And remove LEDs on final stage to cut consumption.
Also be aware that you'll need 5 Volts DC, which is not common voltage on such platforms (at least it was not common on platform I worked with several years ago, but that platform was a bit larger that weather balloon)
HTH
Roofcat
The weight and power could both be problems. Our total payload weight budget is 1500g.
Any idea how much cutting the parallel port and ethernet would save in power consumption? I'm new to electronics.
Other single board computers use 1W and weigh 50g.
Please note that router does not need 2A in fact. It is a max. value including an USB device attached to USB port of Asus. 5V is excellent as you can supply Asus from USB port of PC / laptop (a simple hand made power cable used). It works great in my case even with PQI USB key attached to Asus (tested with various laptops / desktops). The real current you need for Asus is about 500 ~ 700mA (peaks not measured).Quote:
Originally Posted by RoofCat
it's also the PCB that is pretty large and PCB's do weight enough..
cutting lan/usb/lpt port could be an option if grams matter
I just disassambled my WL-HDD
and give you some cira weights (I used our kitchen balance so that means cira ;) )
Case: ~110 grams
PCB: ~ 80 grams
Harddisk ~100 grams
Screws/Frontplate ~50 grams
--------------------
~ 340 grams
Asus says 200 g, i guess without a Harddisk.
I guess u won't need one for your project.
May be a good idea to cut of some weight is to do without the case and the frontplate.
It means 80 grams are left. Possibly u could use something like a freezer bag. Or something antistatic to get rid of the 110 gram case....
Greetz FastClick
hi,Quote:
Originally Posted by Technik
the Current you need for the Asus WL-500g deluxe ist about 1200mA, it could be that the Current of the "normal" WL-500g ist lower.
mfg. Markus
take care that the asus makes some peaks in current consuption, especially at boot-up. That's the reason why it can't be modded easily for PoE, because, using long wires, when it needs that peak in power it just reboots. It's very annoying.
on the other hand, the wrt54g doesn't makes those peaks, so it works flawless when used in PoE configuration.
And this problem is on Asus wl-330b too.
And the premium probably even more? :-/ are this values with wlan enabled? I want to turn a wl-500g premium (haven't bought it yet) into a mp3-jukebox with a radio control, a 4x20 lcd-display (6mA*5V) and a 2,5" harddrive (less than 2W) and it would be awesome if you could use it with batteries... If it uses 10W it would run 1h with 2Ah batteries - mh.
Btw.: what are the dimensions of the wl-500g premium? and is there any way to connect a hd44780 display to the serial port or usb without having to flash any microcontrollers and without such complicated circuit boards that I can't build myself...? ;)
Serial LCD display controllers exist and people sell ready made boards for it(http://www.phanderson.com/lcd106/lcd106.html seems to be one source of such a controller and google will find more).Quote:
Originally Posted by schnitzel
Having said that hooking it up to a simple microcontroller is dead easy.. and the board will not be very complicated.
edit: Current peaks should not be a problem if running of battery.
ahz, what do you need the wl500g for? if you need cheap, simple, light and low power consumption computer, why not give the Linksys NSLU2 a try. Have a look at www.nslu2-linux.org. It only has one LAN port, has 2 USB2.0 ports... It might be a better tool.
I know it might be considered bad to direct you away from this forum, sorry folks ;)
Jiri