Low Cost Node Hardware

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/405125

June Updates

6/23/22 Report:

Previous Milestone:

As a recap of this proposal we are expanding upon our learning from our completed Fund 7 Proposals: Easy Cardano Node and our Off Grid Solar Enclosure where we found that there was major roadblocks for Raspberry Pi based hardware due to supply chain shortages, but huge opportunity with low cost hardware using a M.2 NVME drive to expand RAM on low end devices. We envisioned using similar hardware such as a Rock Pi with its onboard M.2 NVME expansion to improve on the learnings with managing a full node by increasing the RAM virtually and actually getting devices in the current supply chain shortages. (USA)

Progress: Our first step was making sure we have the hardware needed to test our theories and setup a node on a Rock Pi. Following Materials have been purchased to begin our experiments setting up a node and expanding the low (4GB) RAM with a virtualized SWAP. - Rock Pi 4 Plus Model B Rockchip RK3399 (4GB) - M.2 NVMe SSD 256GB - Heatsinks (Repurposed from Raspberry Pi) - better options exist if shipping from China. Finally we will be using this Thingiverse File for holding the M.2 SSD in place. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5247971

Next Steps: Tinkering! We will be starting from the previous deployment experiment from our Easy Cardano Node to see what roadblocks come up with deploying a better node.

Roadblocks:

None

Status: ON TIME

Final Update