Hardware for Cortex

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • Paul_B
    Automated Home Legend
    • Jul 2006
    • 608

    Hardware for Cortex

    For normal Idratek operation the core software is Cortex. It is a very functional piece of software with incredible power and flexibitility. But what hardware do you need to run it?

    From my experience very little horsepower is required for Cortex, the GUI is functional rather than graphically beautiful.

    My hardware is:

    VIA EN 15000 Mini-ITX Motherboard (1.5GHz processor)
    1GB of RAM
    SATA II 80GB HDD
    Travla 1U Rackmount Case

    My system not only runs Cortex (without any trouble at all) but also runs a Windows AD Forest, Exchange 2003 Mail Server, SQL 2005 Server, Windows Update Server, File & Print, Web Server and Slimserver for running my Squeezebox audio system.

    Hopefully, you get the idea that Cortex would run on a very basic system and certianly oes't require a mega powerful machine to run. The reason for the the VIA MoBo selection is power consumption, the above setup draws just 27W which is very important to me when it is running 24x7. Some of the VIA boards will consume around 12W.

    Paul
  • Gumby
    Moderator
    • May 2004
    • 437

    #2
    My original Cortex platform was a 1GHz VIA board. I upgraded to handle the compute intensive CCTV functions, with a not particularly efficient Athlon board.

    This runs at an unforgivable 140W, so I am either going to go back to the Via board and have a separate camera server which gets switched on when required, or may be use one of the latest Intel Penryn devices when they become available.
    ----------------------
    www.gumbrell.com

    Comment

    • Paul_B
      Automated Home Legend
      • Jul 2006
      • 608

      #3
      Have you seen the newly release VIA SN? It has a 1.8GHz CPU, upto 4GB of RAM and PCIx slot. Not sure what specs a CCTV based server needs or whether a PCIx card could offload some of the CPU activity.

      This site looks quite good as it also has Mini-ITX boards using mobile CPU's from Intel and AMD.



      Paul

      Comment

      • chris_j_hunter
        Automated Home Legend
        • Dec 2007
        • 1713

        #4
        Hardware for Cortex

        our thinking was clearly very similar to Paul's, following David's good experience with VIA, and we went for something very similar, 'though it was an EK10000 motherboard, for its four RS232 COMs ports ... one for IDRATEK, maybe two, one for the hi-fi, and one spare (sometimes the calculator, maybe a data-logger) ... plus a four-camera IVC capture card to go in its PCI slot & a fairly large HD ... not really tried it yet, though, so can't yet say the theory was good !
        Our self-build - going further with HA...

        Comment

        Working...
        X