I stumbled over Routerboard while searching for SBCs on the internet. Most of the SBCs out there are much too oversized for the things i want to do, but Routerboard could be the real solution for me because it offers just the things i really need and it is also very cheap.
I want to run Linux on the 411U, add a MiniPCI frame grabber card and also a Mini-PCIe 3G (UMTS) modem, so i can send out snapshots of my analog camera to my website. Is this possible or will i run into problems sooner or later?
Maybe i don’t need Linux for my custom application and can build upon RouterOS to achive this? Can i run own programs under RouterOS?
I would be happy if somebody can give me some advice before i waste my money
You cannot run your own programs under RouterOS. You will have to check openwrt Linux and see if they are supporting all the ports you need on the RB411U.
Thanks for your answer. Only OpenWRT? What about a small embedded Linux etc? None working yet?
In the manual i read about running own tools within RouterOS. Isnt that the place i can do my own stuff?
With ports under OpenWRT you mean the i/o ports to access my frame grabber?
What about this metarouter? What can it be used for if nothing can be run under RouterOS? Just to start OpenWRT? Sorry i am a noob for this hardware right now. I keep on reading but cannot find the answers to all my questions.
Metarouter has no access to hardware i/o, only virtual eth ports – and for good reasons.
And you are not likely to get a hardware/memory/io address map from MT.
RB is not an open architecture, otherwise we’d have all sorts of OS options.
OpenWRT has limited support for RB and even then, getting a driver that supports your frame grabber might be a stretch.
Thanks that helped me a lot. I wrote an email to Mikrotik and based on their answer i will choose Routerboard or UBNT Routerstation as the base platform for the project. I didnt know this exists yet
Btw: The grabber comes with Linux drivers I just need to run my small little app to grab and send the snapshot.
