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    IConnect Ingrediants

    Revision as of 14:25, 3 October 2011 by Admin (talk | contribs)
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    To setup a Meteohub system on iConnect, you need 3 ingrediants: The iConnect device, an suitable USB stick and the Meteohub software image to be stored on the USB stick. The USB stick serves two purposes. First the stick is needed to patch the iConnect to become a Meteohub. Second the same stick is used after that to be the storage media where the Meteohub system resides on and where the weather data is stored. smartbedded managed to integrate both functions in one single USB stick. Once you have inserted the stick and started the patch, the stick will stay connected to the iConnect forever, think of it as the drive C of your PC. Ingrediants in detail are:

    1. Iomega iConnect
      The iConnect is advertised on Iomega's Homepage here. The official name is "Iomega® iConnect Wireless Data Station", part number 34780. You can buy this unit in many stores around the world as Iomega has global reach. Prices may vary, while writing this, amazon.com has it for about $50 on sale, regular price may be around $80. Putting the Meteohub system onto that device is completely legal (you can do what you like with your device as long as you don't break patents, copyrights, encryptions, etc of the manufacturer, which you don't do by installing alternatvie software on it), but it will void your warranty on the unit from Iomega. So if you have trouble after doing the patch, Iomega will not help you. Smartbedded, which is providing the update does also not give you any warranty on functionality of the iConnect after having done the patch. To say it in simple words, when you brick the iConnect by doing the Meteohub patch you are at your own, you do it on your own risk. When you are not willing to take this risk, please buy a turn-key ready system from one of the Meteohub resellers.
      When you decide to convert the patched iConnect into a regular iConnect again (because the patch did not work for any reason or because you don't want to use Meteohub any longer) you can easily do this by the help of an "imager stick" Iomega provides for download in case one of the units do fail in the field. How to build the imager stick and how to apply it is described in detail here (including a link to download the needed software image).
    2. USB stick
      The USB stick needs a capacity of 4GB and it MUST be one using SLC. SLC stands for "single level cells" and defines a flash storage technology. While being more expensive than MLC (multi level cells) it provides about ten times the durability in terms of read-erase-write cycles. Meteohub on good old NSLU2 was also running on a USB stick and after a couple of quarters many systems started failing because of flash cells in the USB stick wearing out. To avoid your flash storage to fail after a few quarters, you definitely need SLC based flash. It is not an option, it is mandatory. Unfortunately, SLC-based USB sticks are rare, but there are a few. As an alternative you can buy a 4GB SD card based on SLC flash (which are reasonable cheap) and put these into a suitable SD card reader with USB connection. Tested options to choose from are:


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