The Ben NanoNote (officially the 本 NanoNote)Melanson, Donald
"Qi Hardware's tiny, hackable Ben NanoNote now shipping"
''

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editori ...

'', 15 March 2010 (accessed 1 November 2012) is a

pocket computer A pocket computer was a 1980s-era user programmable calculator-sized computer that had fewer screen lines, Some had only one line and often fewer characters per line, than the Pocket-sized computers introduced beginning in 1989. Manufacturers i ...

using the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

-based

OpenWrt OpenWrt (from ''open wireless router'') is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic. The main components are Linux, util-linux, musl, and BusyBox. All ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

. An open-source hardware device developed by Qi Hardware, it has been called possibly "the world's smallest Linux laptop for the traditional definition of the word.".Humphrey, Benjamin
"Is This The World’s Smallest Linux Laptop?"
OMG! Ubuntu!, 17 January 2012 (accessed 1 November 2012) In addition, the Ben NanoNote is noteworthy for being one of the few devices on the market running entirely on

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...

hardware.Murphy, David
"Qi Hardware Launches Open-Source Computer"
''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...

'', 17 January 2012 (accessed 1 November 2012) The computer takes its name from the Chinese character běn (本), translated as "an origin or the beginning place."Ben NanoNote - Qi-Hardware
(accessed 1 November 2012)

History

Originally the hardware was developed by a third party as a digital dictionary. After the effort of several Qi Hardware developers, the design was freed as

open source hardware Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and ...

while using

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

. The product used to be manufactured by Qi hardware and Sharism At Work Ltd. As of 2011, more than 1,000 units had been sold.

Software

The device is shipped with the

software stack; the custom compilation includes a graphical menu called gmenu2x, with other graphical and command line applications available from the menu.

OpenEmbedded OpenEmbedded is a build automation framework and cross-compile environment used to create Linux distributions for embedded devices. The OpenEmbedded framework is developed by the OpenEmbedded community, which was formally established in 2003. ...

is also available through the Jlime distribution. The Pyneo software stack, a Debian-like distribution aimed for mobiles has been ported. The

MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...

port of Debian

can be run on the NanoNote. Additionally there is NanoNixOS, a cross-compiled distribution based on the

Nix package manager Nix is a cross-platform package manager that utilizes a purely functional deployment model where software is installed into unique directories generated through cryptographic hashes. It is also the name of the tool's programming language. A pa ...

Reception

After the 2010 introduction of the Ben NanoNote, reviewers praised its small size and low cost (

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

99), but also criticized the device for its initial lack of any networking capability and for its extremely modest data storage and

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

capabilities in comparison to other contemporary devices.Halfacree, Gareth. i Hardware launches NanoNote "Qi Hardware launches NanoNote" bit-tech, 16 March 2010 (accessed 1 November 2012)

Product development

Because the device lacked wireless connectivity, implementing this was one of the first goals for the Qi Hardware movement. This add-on, the Ben WPAN, was developed by

Werner Almesberger Werner Almesberger (born 13 August 1967) is an Austrian free software computer programmer and an open-source hardware designer/maker. He is mainly known as a hacker of the Linux kernel. Contributions to Linux (free software projects) include the ...

, and mainly consists of an

IEEE 802.15.4 IEEE 802.15.4 is a technical standard which defines the operation of a low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN). It specifies the physical layer and media access control for LR-WPANs, and is maintained by the IEEE 802.15 working group, ...

subsystem, made up of two boards: a USB dongle (ATUSB) connected to the computer and another card connected to the SDIO port of the device (ATBEN). All source code, documentation and test procedures, software and hardware schematics are available under copyleft licenses. UBB, or Universal Breakout Board, is a

PCB PCB may refer to: Science and technology * Polychlorinated biphenyl, an organic chlorine compound, now recognized as an environmental toxin and classified as a persistent organic pollutant * Printed circuit board, a board used in electronics * ...

shaped like a microSD card, focused on DIY projects and general purpose interfacing using the available MMC/SDIO port. So far two hacks had been published: one of them, the integration with a 443 MHz RF transceiver for power sockets control purposes and later a mix of

bit banging In computer engineering and electrical engineering, bit banging is a "term of art" for any method of data transmission that employs software as a substitute for dedicated hardware to generate transmitted signals or process received signals. Soft ...

and SDIO/DMA features turning the SD card slot into a VGA port. As the Ben NanoNote uses an Ingenic JZ4720 processor it supports booting from USB without use of the NAND flash memory.

Derivatives

The ''SIE board'' is an adaptation of the NanoNote. It has twice the memory and features a XC3S Xilinx FPGA on board. It is based on the XBurst JZ4725 SoC, which has more I/O pins available due to not having a keyboard.

Technical specifications

* XBurst JZ4720 336 MHz MIPS processor from

Ingenic Semiconductor Ingenic Semiconductor is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Beijing, China founded in 2005. They purchased licenses for the MIPS architecture instruction sets in 2009 and design CPU-microarchitectures based on them. They also design ...

* 3.0" 320x240 pixels colour

TFT LCD A thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) is a variant of a liquid-crystal display that uses thin-film-transistor technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in con ...

* 32 MB

SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random-access memory (synchronous dynamic RAM or SDRAM) is any DRAM where the operation of its external pin interface is coordinated by an externally supplied clock signal. DRAM integrated circuits (ICs) produced from the ...

* 2 GB

NAND flash Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use ...

memory * 1

SDHC Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanD ...

slot (SDIO/DMA capable) * 59-key

keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

* Stereo headphones connector, mono speaker and microphone * USB Client 2.0 High-Speed Device, Mini B connector * 3.7 V, 850 mAh

Li-ion battery A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also see ...

* Overall dimension (lid closed): 99 * 75 * 17.5mm. (display: 7.5mm, keyboard: 10mm) * Weight: (including battery)

References

External links

* {{Official website
Qi Hardware Launches Open-Source Computer
PCMag.com
Hands-on: Ben NanoNote Micronotebook
Linux Magazine Online
Open-source hardware group puts out vid system-on-a-chip
''The Register''.
A Review: Ben NanoNote Gets Small with Embedded Linux
Linux.com Computer-related introductions in 2010 Consumer electronics brands Open computers Linux-based devices Personal digital assistants Embedded Linux