[atlas] Low cost, low energy consumption probe

Hi Ernst,

It’s always good to get some of the acrobatics on paper. As it happens, I’m looking at the v3 hardware probe, which is a TP-Link TL-MR3220 with 4MB of internal flash and 32 MB of RAM. I share your pain ;)

Can you tell me how you measured power consumption on the devices mentioned?

Regards,

Michel

> On 19 Dec 2022, at 16:42, Ernst J. Oud <ernstoud at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have probes running on VMware (CentOS), Ubuntu (native) and on Docker for Windows. These small PC’s consume a lot more than the Ripe supplied HW probes.
> 
> So I looked for a cheap and *very* low energy alternative.
> 
> TP-Link sells the WR802N mini travel router for around USD 20 (o.a. on Amazon) that runs the latest version of OpenWRT fine and the Atlas probe SW has been ported to it. With some acrobatics I managed to turn it into an excellent alternative. Runs fine, energy consumption 700 mW (!). The device is as small as the Ripe supplied probe.
> 
> Since the flash memory of this device is too small for some of the required libraries, the acrobatics involved copying them to RAM and putting links to them in flash. This means that with FTP after a power outage a couple of files need to be copied to the device and that one command must be given after that.
> 
> There is a more expensive version with a USB port so that a USB stick can be used to store those files. Will investigate that option.
> 
> If someone here wants a detailed write-up let me know and I will invest the time to write it.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ernst J. Oud
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