MochaBin-5G @ KickStarter

Thanks @ GlobalScaleTechnologies to take in account our feedback !

I have also update the picture of Block Diagram from KickStarter page...

A Mediatek 7915D PCIe card would probably work great with this platform instead of the NXP WiFi card. MT7915D is a 2x2 dual band concurrent (2x2 2G + 2x2 5G) 11ax chip which is well supported by the upstream/open source mt76 driver. The only place I know of to get these cards is AsiaRF currently but they are available.

Maybe Globalscale can just source these cards for their campaign instead of NXP?

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This looks perfect for what I want. Thanks for the post! …hope it takes off I’ll back them next week!

Are the wireless chipsets subject to change?

Either way, I’m interested in the 8gb ram and 4g/5g support.

I don't see any power consumption numbers listed in the campaign.

@superboxf1 is it possible to publish some idle/load power consumption figures?

to be fair, if you get a device like this you probably have dedicated wifi APs anyway.

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OpenWrt isn't just for wireless router. Many people use it for wired firewall appliance or home NAS.

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plus thermals... passive heatsink and enclosed plastic case seems a little odd...

this device's SOC supports ECC but I suspect that it's not available here? I don't see an additional RAM chip for parity but I would also be Ok with sacrificing some of the 4GB or 8GB of RAM to get that

it's not airtight, it has slits in the trench on the top, it works like a GL.inet b1300 https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-b1300/

but it is black so it is hard to see in the pictures

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@robimarko
Do you mean that the pre-installed OpenWrt will not provide the WiFi support for the NXP 9098 ?

Why non solid caps? 0.1 USD economy?

This is great news! Now for the other difficult parts wrt 5G modems:

  1. power supply: How many amps are available to the m.2 slot? some modems specify insane values like 5A peak and 4A continuos current. And I assume the mini-PCIe slot shares the same 3.3V regulator. Some WiFi modules will also draw multiple amps. I'm not looking for a commitment to support any module or combination, but it would be nice to know what the limits are.

  2. support for module specific pinouts. Some modems, like the Sierra Wireless EM919x, have very specific requirements wrt a few non-standard pins. They define pin 20 as PCI_DIS, which must be pulled high (1.8V) to enable the USB interface. There is also VBUS_SENSE on pin 22, which also must be pulled high for USB. The datasheet says min 1.6V and max 5.25V, so I assume a 1.8V signal would do here as well (and be a lot safer to other modules than a real VBUS voltage). Again - not looking for a commitment to support any module. Just wishing for some flexibility in the hardware design. Maybe it would be possible to have jumpers in front of some of these low speed pins?

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Yes, there will be no support as the driver doesnt exist upstream and even worse its behind an NDA

what's wrong with electrolytics

that's the best kind of wifi hardware for OpenWrt, just like Broadcomm's wifi

/sarcasm

Low lifecycle, high ESR, highly depending on the ambient temperature, significant changes in capacity over lifecycle

if you was born like me 20+ years ago i bet you had same as me fun time re-soldering electrolyte cap on your GPU or motherboard, and i bet you never re-solder solid cap.

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Nah the only ones I had to replace were because of the "capacitor plague" (aka a manufacturing defect that makes the electrolytic caps pop after a short time, it was a thing back in the day).

But PC motherboard manufacturers started to put "solid caps" instead than electrolytics and push that as a feature, capitalizing on the people that got burned by the "capacitor plague".

Mind me, there are plenty of situations where an electrolytic cap can do the same job, like in most power filtering applications. I know that a lot of stuff on the board has stricter standards and you need solid state (and also SMD) capacitors, and that's fine.

The "low lfecycle" is true only if you keep your electronics in an oven, (i.e. at the max temp the cap is rated for, which is usually somewhere around 100 celsius).

If the operating temperature in your device aren't anywhere near that, the lifetime increases dramatically due to de-rating. If you keep electrolytics at say 60 celsius instead than 100, their lifespan exceedes the lifespan of solid-state ones, in most cases.

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ot but anyone remember badcaps.net? I use to stay up many late nights replacing bad caps on various failed electronics, even whole computers, I got for free so I could resell them at a tidy profit.

Personally I think the issue was counterfeit caps super low quality plus some factories knowingly used grossly inferior components then were specked. They even knew about the failure rates and still kept pumping them out.... However! That was decades ago and I don't even remember the last time I had a capacitor fail on me. It's been years.... And out of habit I always check any time I have visual access to a PCB So if this board has 'lytic caps I would not worry about it. That chapter in history has been long closed. Please don't let the capacitor choice sway anyone from pulling the trigger one way or another, there are much better reasons to get one or not to get one.

The "semi-official" explanation of how it went down was that someone failed hard at industrial espionage when taking japanese electrolytic cap technology to china/taiwan. The chemical composition of the electrolyte in the capacitor was wrong and was both corroding the metal container and generating hydrogen, resulting in caps that blow the seal and die.

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I think I remember that too but I personally don't buy it. I think the issues went on way too long for it to be a case of espionage. I think espionage was an excuse made by damage control to cover up greed. Espionage in electronics is literally expected and one can hardly fault a chinese factory for stealing caps from a foreign competitor. It's just what they do with everything. But getting caught greedily dumping knowingly defective and inferior caps for the sake of profit can ruin a business's rep. I base this hypothesis on one main thing. --> Do you remember the case of certain caps from certain factories in china being found out to literally be hollow and containing physically smaller caps inside them? That isn't espionage, that's just greed. https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-370ab73e4979dbb7e6563e0d1dbf3cf2
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_MHnI-B0pJ8k/TdgUC_nd_0I/AAAAAAAAAms/fN3K6ujio6Q/s640/20uf_sprague.jpg
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_MHnI-B0pJ8k/TdgUKv7mVKI/AAAAAAAAAm0/yXIH6wZycVo/s640/100_9645.JPG
Anyways I'm getting way OT and I know it.