I would like to build a very low cost device that sits on my in-house ethernet and displays information on a small display panel (as opposed to being a webserver itself). Power can come from a wall wart or using the power-over-Ethernet tech (although that adds to the cost). Data can be pulled from a webserver or a custom piece of software. A couple of coloured LEDs would be good to attract user attention from a distance. A speaker for streaming audio would be a nice addition. Minimal sensor requirements… perhaps none, although a couple of buttons would be useful, and light or temperature sensors could be fun (obviously those increase the cost which is counter to the first requirement!). In a perfect world it would come in a pre-made case.
Thus far I haven’t found a pre-built device that comes particularly close to meeting these requirements. It (naively) seems like it should be possible to do this for a reasonably small price, but most Ethernet-equipped boards come over-equipped, over-sized, lacking a (cheap) display, and quite a ways north of $100.
You could do it with an Xport or EDTP Packet Whacker and add an MCU and LCD, but for the same price you could pick up one of the routers that have open-source firmware. It’s possible to solder a serial port into the WRT54G, and some have used it with an LCD. Now you have an ethernet, or even wifi, device that runs Linux and supports popular scripting languages. Your call…
If you just need one of these, look at the Microchip PICDEM.NET2 board. Has pretty much everything you need. I just hooked up a sparkfun sht15 breakout board to one. Works great!
But the price guys… is there anything notably <$100? With all these SoC devices these days surely something with a cheap display is feasible? Something along the lines of the Olimex “terminal development boards”?
Okay, that is seriously cool. Well over the budget, but so many more features that it would be worth it. Best of all there would be a market for the little app I wanted this for in the first place.