Amahi for the Marvell Plug Computer released! Get yours FREE!

Ionics Plug StratusWe’re very happy to announce the first release of Amahi Plug Edition for the Plug Computer platform based on the Marvell ® ARMADA processor! And you can snag one FREE in our new contest!

The Amahi team is all jumpy in excitement with this new “Plug Edition” release to the  ARM ecosystem and the Plug Computing platform, in partnership with Marvell. In these days when eco-friendly technologies are a must, the Plug Computer brings a number of advantages to running a home/media server at very low power. Now you’re probably thinking …

COOL, I want one! How do I get in on the action?

If you have one already and are ready to take the plunge, head on to the release page to see how to install Amahi on it! Or buy one if you need the hardware … OR … wait … get one FREE …!? 🙂

Today we’re also launching a theme and app contest, where 6 winners get a FREE 1.2GHz Ionics Stratus Plug Computer (pictured above), with WiFi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave (for wireless home control) and Gigabit Ethernet, sponsored by Marvell!

You don’t have the artistic or coding skills? Follow @amahi and retweet this tweet and you could win one FREE Ionics Stratus plug too! Follow the rules in the contest page.

To kick things off, we are releasing the brand new Sheeva theme (high res) inspired by Marvell’s PlugComputer.org site.

Even better, if you are a developer and are interested in learning more about developing for this platform check out Marvell’s developer day, PlugIN 2010 (August 18th). Attendees will get a full day of developer sessions and receive a Plug Computer development kit.

Amahi + Marvell = Smart

The synthesis of the Plug Computer’s compact design, low power, and headless operation with Amahi’s powerful, easy to use features, efficient network management combined with one of the largest app stores of its kind, is a very smart choice for a home server:

  • The Plug Computer offers remarkably low power consumption: 3 ~ 8 Watts. Nice!
  • It’s fanless and virtually noiseless. If you run yours with a flash drive, it has zero noise
  • Small footprint. You can put your server wherever it’s convenient. If you are in tight quarters, this is the perfect solution!
  • It’s inexpensive. Typically Plug Computers run $99 for a base system

Low Power, Heavy Lifting

Amahi Plug Edition is a powerful home server, capable of running lots of apps, from the simplest file sharing to iTunes streaming, to wikis, backups, and soon, DLNA media streaming to Sony or Samsung TVs as well as popular set top boxes with DLNA clients built-in.

Amahi Plug Edition running on a typical Plug Computer draws about 3 Watts idle, 7 to 8 Watts while booting and about 4 Watts with bursts of 6 Watts while streaming a full movie to an iPad with our very popular Videos5 app or a full 1080p stream to an HDTV. Not bad!!

All this goodness does not come without effort. While everyone was fussing about net neutrality, the iPad and antennagate, the team toiled, getting this release ready for your maximum enjoyment. Kudos to Scott, Guillaume, Rod, OB, Ofer, Pat, Peter & the crew. In addition, none of this would be possible without the Fedora ARM team for a great job!!

Cheers!

22 comments

  1. herath72 Aug 11

    Well done guys! Low power computing immediately came to my mind from the very first time i used Amahi. It’s nice to see you invested the time and effort so that plug devices are now officialy supported. In the near future, i hope we get to see hardware with amahi pre-installed at the stores. Keep up the great work.

  2. SolaR Aug 11

    Congrats team! Very nice job 🙂
    This release would make it a lot more usable for people who do not want to have a big server case but would like to use the many excellent features of Amahi.

    I wish I could get more of these plugcomputers!!

  3. Sybylle Aug 11

    That’s quite an interesting stuff you reveal here ^^
    I’m still testing Amahi (well atm it runs in a VM) and I have found a lot of usages (therefore I’m plannning to run more than one Amahi HS).

    Low power consumption, easy installation and a lot of possibilities for a low price…I might get one soon™

    Thanks to the team for releasing such an amazing CPU-plug!

  4. Chris Grant Aug 11

    Nice product! Great idea and really makes the home media server accessible to everyone. Great job Amahi!

    Chris
    LABrat.com

  5. lou1z Aug 11

    ummm…. i wanted this for a while and ordered a guruplug plus before they were even out. but alas, the trouble with the guruplug plus made me cancel my order and go to an mitx solution instead.
    and now amahi is on the plug! i may get one yet! well done!

  6. Brian Hanifin Aug 11

    Can you use these as a wireless print server, in addition to a file server? For some reason their literature leaves that out.

  7. Fred Thompson Aug 11

    Is there a cheap wake-on-access SATA chaining control/power method? This is a wonderful device but how to you use it for a large video collection if you can only attach single drives? SATA cradles are nice but even the 2-up models cost about $45. You’d need at least 2 drive at all times if you want home server functions; one drive to hold data for email and such, the other as a cartridge for media.

  8. Jimmy Aug 11

    Loving your work guys.

    I have been following this project for a long time now and you just keep going from strength to strength.

    Low power computing is the way forward. Thanks for supporting this.

  9. snowguy Aug 12

    This is very cool. Exciting. Thanks for all the work. Since many of us are really clueless how much electricity our amahi server is using now it would be nice to compare the watt consumption #s you provide to what would be true for a typical computer running headless setup.

  10. cpg Aug 12

    @Brian Yes, Amahi can be used as a print server. However, we have not introduced that functionality into the setup pages. Basically, it’s done via the standard tools in the base distro. In the Plug Edition, there is no desktop, so the text-based tools would have to be used.

  11. cpg Aug 12

    @Fred Fair point. I think there are some versions with eSata included, etc. For large storage the regular version of Amahi is probably best.

  12. AH Aug 15

    Guys, you’re doing the right things!

  13. Sasch Aug 16

    This looks great. My thoughts are to use this with something like the Drobo. This should give some protection against hard drive failure. How would this perform when streaming video, music while running Torrentflux for example?

  14. cpg Aug 19

    @Sasch That is a great idea! The Drobo hardware is sexy, so it would be a very good match with Amahi 😀

  15. nukie Aug 21

    This thing can replace my Qnap 🙂

  16. KJ Aug 28

    Hi!

    Do you know, is the overheating problem solved by 3.0?

  17. cpg Aug 29

    @KJ I was in the PlugIN event and what I heard was that that the issue was present on one device – the GuruPlug Server when it used Gigabit ethernet. Two workarounds existed: use only 10/100 and the other was to use a small fan that GTI made available.

    However, I don’t know much about 3.0.

  18. tho Mar 5

    Yay thanks guys! I have to try it with my GuruPlug Server Plus soon, have looked at Amahi and it just looks great.

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