[ale] Good think clients to use for house automation/kids/tv

[William Fragakis]

not the smallest form factor but excellent thin clients, especially if
you score oben box deals:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167037&cm_re=msi_wind_barebone-_-56-167-037-_-Product

MSI Wind

Jetway has something similar.
With patience you can get either as an "open box" for around $100. You
can get dedicated thin clients but you are paying for the reduction in
size. 

Make sure that he has gigabit connections all the way to the server. You
really can't do thin clients over wireless. If they need to be wireless,
you/he will need to put at least the os and apps locally.

Use Edubuntu as it has all the pieces set up. Fedora also has a good
ltsp setup - look up the k12linux project. There are others, too, of
course in Suse and Debian flavors.

The server has plenty of horsepower for the clients. No worries there. 

regards,
William

written on my MSI thin client running F13


On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 02:07 -0400, jrtroberts wrote:
> I am working with a friend of mine to slowly get his house setup for 
> home automation.  He is trying to get his house setup as a demo house 
> for home automation packages, an entrepreneurial business he owns.  He 
> is not the most tech savvy guy I have ever met, but he has some money 
> and a strong desire to make this work.  I was hoping that someone at ALE 
> has had some experience with thin clients and home automation with linux.
> 
> He has two daughters in grade school and would like them to have thin 
> clients in their rooms.  He would also like to have streaming video to 
> his TV's and possibly some other thin clients for things such as 
> security management, lighting control, sprinkler control, and anything 
> else he can roll into the home automation package.  I am aware that he 
> may not need thin clients for all of this, but I would still like to 
> understand my options.
> 
> His primary system is an Ubuntu 9.10x64 desktop system.  Because issues 
> with the mobo and 10.04 we cannot upgrade until drivers and other issues 
> are figured out on the linux side.  It is a core2 quad with 8 gigs of 
> ram, 2 gig nics, and plenty of storage capacity.  I am hoping that 
> setting up roaming user accounts and terminal services is a fairly 
> straight forward task.  Whether it is or not, I could use some input on 
> this subject as well.
> 
> The more important issue is pricing or building the thin clients.  Is 
> there a good company to look into when buying thin clients for this type 
> of environment.  I am very inexperienced with this type of hardware and 
> generally inexperienced with linux as whole.  Any help would be greatly 
> appreciated.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> Joshua Roberts
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