Personally I think the best use for a device like this is not as a media or small business server. The cloud is rapidly taking over all those functions and is easier to manage.
What a device like this could really revolutionize is the communication between what are now "dumb" devices. I could imagine this thing using NFC or Bluetooth to talk to your power meter, alarm clock, even your fridge. Instead of a whole wifi stack in each device just put cheap NFC chips in them and allow a small server to talk to the rest of the world. With the right third party ecosystem I could imagine one of these in every house.
I do not think you do fully realize what that N in NFC stands for. It is near as in 'centimeters'. I would not be surprised if someone cranked that up to miles by using a radio telescope at the other end of the connection and averaging signals over months, but I doubt you can get meters of range through walls in a package that fits inside your house.
Zigbee probably is the best bet for a wireless technology to use here.
You are talking SoC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip) right? I think most NAS you get for retail users are made by some of those chips. Also true for small home routers.
Comments
Personally I think the best use for a device like this is not as a media or small business server. The cloud is rapidly taking over all those functions and is easier to manage.
What a device like this could really revolutionize is the communication between what are now "dumb" devices. I could imagine this thing using NFC or Bluetooth to talk to your power meter, alarm clock, even your fridge. Instead of a whole wifi stack in each device just put cheap NFC chips in them and allow a small server to talk to the rest of the world. With the right third party ecosystem I could imagine one of these in every house.
I do not think you do fully realize what that N in NFC stands for. It is near as in 'centimeters'. I would not be surprised if someone cranked that up to miles by using a radio telescope at the other end of the connection and averaging signals over months, but I doubt you can get meters of range through walls in a package that fits inside your house.
Zigbee probably is the best bet for a wireless technology to use here.
You are talking SoC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip) right? I think most NAS you get for retail users are made by some of those chips. Also true for small home routers.