[arm-allstar] Next BBB update

[Doug Crompton]

Just a little little tease regarding the next release of the BBB image. 

There have been very few problems with the current release but the biggest complaint or concern is the vulnerability of the USB to power spikes, EMI, etc. Unfortunately when this happens the current kernel often does not recover gracefully and a reboot is almost always necessary. This is annoying with local servers but for those deployed in remote areas it is just not acceptable.

The latest ArchLinux kernel along with a minor fix to the simpleusb channel driver has solved that problem. This is in testing now and so far it seems rock solid. You can remove and replace the USB cable from the BBB while connected and it restores instantly. Thus if a USB spike takes out the connection it will recover. This adds a huge increase in reliability to the BBB. So for those of you who are experiencing these problems help is on the way!

The new kernel seems to start faster and although still under testing it appears the 30 second boot delay that is now in rc.local can be reduced significantly or possibly eliminated. The entire startup process is looking a lot faster. I have gone from power up to connection to a node in less than a minute.

Other things that should make it to the next release are GPIO and backup/restore and a few other nice utility scripts like weather alerting. Right now we are shooting for mid September.

There are lots of ideas brewing about future updates and if anyone has any particular (realistic) needs in additional features or can provide additional features that would be useful to all please email me.

73 Doug
WA3DSP
http://www.crompton.com/hamradio
 		 	   		  
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