Modular & Open-Source Router: Turris MOX on Indiegogo for pre-order

[joegreat]

Turris MOX is the first modular router Open.Source (Hard- & Software) you can build according to user's expectations:

It has currently 5 modules which can be combined as needed:

• Turris MOX A (Basic) with Marwell Armada CPU, USB 3.0, microSD slot, Gbit-WAN, will be Power over Ethernet (PoE) ready
• Turris MOX B (Extension) with mPCIe slot to hold the 2,4/5 GHz WiFi or WWAN 3G/LTE modem (incl. SIM slot)
• Turris MOX C (Ethernet) with 4× Gbit-LAN
• Turris MOX D (SFP) with a Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) transceiver for >1 GBit LAN/WAN connections
• Turris MOX E (Super Ethernet) get 8- or 12-port router, or extend an 8-port router with a SFP connector
• Turris MOX F (USB) module contains four USB 3.0 ports. You can not combine more than one of this module in your MOX set. You can not combine this module with MOX B (Extension)
  
• Turris MOX G (Super Extension) adds a pass through module with mPCIe slot. The module is compatible with all MOX sets. No SIM card slot on this module.
• plus: Turris MOX PoE Dongle (IEE802.3af/at) - small internal dongle, connect it directly to the special pin on MOX A and powering the router over Ethernet

A detailed description of the modules and more can be found here. The user decide whether he wants a pocket sized router, or a an AP, or a switch or a media converter by combing the modules.

Do you want to build your own MOX? Try the MOX configurator.

Currently the Turris MOX router can be pre-ordered on Indiegogo for a highly discounted price.

PS.: The Turris MOX is launched by the same team which as already successfully created the Turris Omnia router...

 

[System Error Message]

Openwrt is open sourced, i've seen the Turris omnia before but i wasnt particularly interested before because openwrt is open sourced and their hardware was literally the same as everyone else.

It seems like that they finally have released a modular based router, this would be interesting.

 

[CrystalLattice]

Turris MOX is the first modular router Open.Source (Hard- & Software) you can build according to user's expectations:

It has currently 5 modules which can be combined as needed:

• Turris MOX A (Basic) with Marwell Armada CPU, USB 3.0, microSD slot, Gbit-WAN
• Turris MOX B (Extension) with mPCIe slot to hold the 2,4/5 GHz WiFi or WWAN 3G/LTE modem (incl. SIM slot)
• Turris MOX C (Ethernet) with 4× Gbit-LAN
• Turris MOX D (SFP) with a Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) transceiver for >1 GBit LAN/WAN connections
• Turris MOX E (Super Ethernet) get 8- or 12-port router, or extend an 8-port router with a SFP connector.

The user decide whether he wants a pocket sized router, or a an AP, or a switch or a media converter by combing the modules.

Currently the Turris MOX router can be pre-ordered on Indiegogo for a highly discounted price.

PS.: The Turris MOX is launched by the same team which as already successfully created the Turris Omnia router...

What the world needs is a modular heater/air conditioner/heat pump, not a modular router that will fail in the marketplace. 'cause they never heard of KISS engineering (keep it simple, stupid) !
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Turris-Omn...262667&hash=item1edb86a5df:g:wlUAAOSwxrlaolFv ??319$??

 

[sfx2000]

Interesting project - hopefully they do well... it's a logical extension of the Omnia

Science Project looked at doing a modular approach like this, but we pulled back, as the numbers didn't work for us - some modules would be very popular, and some would have good purpose, but limited number of items sold - the NRE needed for each module is pretty much fixed, and needs recovery on sales to make it viable to do. $250K USD is right at the edge of a project like this for initial funding.

I assume they're running with Marvell again on the baseline - and Armada is supported well by more than just OpenWRT - Arch and Debian run well enough these days on both ARMv7 and ARMv8 (for the 64 bit chips).

FWIW - they have at least documented the physical side of their expansion bus - link below;

https://doc.turris.cz/doc/en/howto/mox/moxtet

 

[System Error Message]

they're running the marvel dual core 64 bit CPU as the baseline, and they only have 1 PCIe when they could use both right and left. Its still not bad because you can pick what you need price wise and its also decent in price.

i do wish they'll have an improved version capable of more modules as SFP is lacking in consumer space when you can use it to do without a modem and for ISPs to just supply an ethernet compatible phone.

 

[joegreat]

i do wish they'll have an improved version capable of more modules as SFP is lacking in consumer space when you can use it to do without a modem and for ISPs to just supply an ethernet compatible phone.

You can post and discuss such suggestions with the team on Indiegogo - maybe they are open to enhance the project (if they get it funded)...

 

[joegreat]

@joegreat, im not seeing any stats on ram, it must come included as well?

Of course it has RAM - without RAM no @raellove!

I have updated the first post with the links to the full description of the modules A-D (E not there yet).

 

[sfx2000]

they're running the marvel dual core 64 bit CPU as the baseline, and they only have 1 PCIe when they could use both right and left. Its still not bad because you can pick what you need price wise and its also decent in price.

i do wish they'll have an improved version capable of more modules as SFP is lacking in consumer space when you can use it to do without a modem and for ISPs to just supply an ethernet compatible phone.

It's a Dual Core Marvell Armada 3720 (3700LP) - I know the chip well... and better than most, based on a science project some time back... it's a Cortex-A53, with some Marvell secret sauce.

OpenWRT has not pulled in the MVEBU64 consumer board definition into their mainline yet - so it's likely running the Marvell kernel source (Kernel 4.4), but there are ways to integrate it into OpenWRT, just a bit more work.

I have mixed feelings about this chip - Armada 38x is a better performer, but more expensive, but the Cortex-A9 implementation there, along with the IO's would be, IMHO, a better choice than the 3720.

At 1GBe - the 3720 has decent BW, but the ethernet PHY's are limited to 1GB at the MAC layer - the PCIe is single lane, so that's something to consider. Even with SFP...

In our testing, the 3720 a good 500Mb/Sec for routing with Topaz, the 3720+Topaz can hit 1Gb throughput in certain cases - but again, Armada 38x will easily do this with LinkStreet SOHO.

Turris is launching this device with 512MB - which is ok for OpenWRT - it's kind of tight for debian...

If folks want to explore performance of the 3720, the espressobin board from GlobalScale is available for $50 USD from Amazon, and that board is pretty decent, with the caveats I mentioned above - but you get everything in one place - PCIe, SATA, the Topax 1Gbe Switch, and a bit more RAM...

 

[sfx2000]

Fun stuff...

We did a very different layout on our board, but the essentials are there - remove the expansion connector, push two ethernets to the left where the SD card slot is (we had eMMC for Prod focused boards, and an adapter there for dev boards with SD card support which was mounted on the bottom side) - we were a bit wider so we could get both DRAM's on the topside - 3720 can run with one or two DRAM's, and we did two - more bandwidth for us.

The PD stuff - you see their doing discrete - we adapted a PMIC for power distribution and management (upper right side here on this view) - this is a side effect of the team's background with mobile phones.

Nice to see they break out some GPIO's (CN4) and UART's (2x, see CN5 and CN6) - that can be useful - we did one, but pogo's on the back side that would work with our fixtures for debug.

 

[sfx2000]

Turris MOX is the first modular router Open.Source (Hard- & Software) you can build according to user's expectations:

It has currently 5 modules which can be combined as needed:

I still think this is a very novel approach - and it makes some sense - just how do the numbers work?

The Omnia was a very strong effort - and I can appreciate the work there.

 

[System Error Message]

Fun stuff...

View attachment 12761
We did a very different layout on our board, but the essentials are there - remove the expansion connector, push two ethernets to the left where the SD card slot is (we had eMMC for Prod focused boards, and an adapter there for dev boards with SD card support which was mounted on the bottom side) - we were a bit wider so we could get both DRAM's on the topside - 3720 can run with one or two DRAM's, and we did two - more bandwidth for us.

The PD stuff - you see their doing discrete - we adapted a PMIC for power distribution and management (upper right side here on this view) - this is a side effect of the team's background with mobile phones.

Nice to see they break out some GPIO's (CN4) and UART's (2x, see CN5 and CN6) - that can be useful - we did one, but pogo's on the back side that would work with our fixtures for debug.

if openwrt supports, GPIO means you could attach sensors that you would to a raspberry pi or arduino.

 

[joegreat]

I have updated the initial post with a nice additional feature Turris MOX PoE Dongle - allows Power over Ethernet for any devices supporting it and also additional Turris MOX devices to be powered!

 

[sfx2000]

if openwrt supports, GPIO means you could attach sensors that you would to a raspberry pi or arduino.

OpenWRT has good GPIO support - that's what drives the indicator LED's, HW buttons, etc...

Depends on how rich and flexible Turris' device tree is.

 

[Livin]

Joe - I tried to send you a message via the system but the 'start conversation' option is not there on your profile... can you pm me?

 

[ASadani]

I have updated the initial post with a nice additional feature Turris MOX PoE Dongle - allows Power over Ethernet for any devices supporting it and also additional Turris MOX devices to be powered!

Hi Joe. I wanted to ask you a question around hg

 

[joegreat]

OpenWRT has not pulled in the MVEBU64 consumer board definition into their mainline yet - so it's likely running the Marvell kernel source (Kernel 4.4), but there are ways to integrate it into OpenWRT, just a bit more work.

Some feedback from Turris support about the use of newer Kernel version:

...Turris OS 4.0 will be based on OpenWRT 18.05, which will use kernel 4.9 or 4.14 as you can see from mailing list and the initial kernel version will be 4.14 LTS.

Right now we're working so hard to make sure that MOX will be supported in mainline kernel and u-boot.

Link to the OpenWrt-Mailing list discussing the Kernel: https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2018-April/043746.html

PS.: ...and Turris support promised to watch this thread! But also invites us to discuss things in their own forum here.

 

[sfx2000]

Nice...

 

[joegreat]

A new option was added to the Turris MOX router:
"We also developed new module F which provides you with four more USB 3.0. This is not an USB hub, it is whole new USB 3.0 controller attached to PCI Express and getting some extra juice from our power source so you can use it to power up two modern 2.5" hard drives directly (unless you also have plenty of other modules). So no need to worry about extra cables and extra power supply, you get everything in nice and tidy box ready for you drives. If this idea sparked your interest, you can even get new perk MOX Cloud which bundles all you will need for your home Nextcloud for discounted price!"

 

[sfx2000]

A new option was added to the Turris MOX router:

Feature creep - they should focus on shipped on the core there...

 

[joegreat]

A new option was added to the Turris MOX router:
"We also developed new module F which provides you with four more USB 3.0."

Feature creep - they should focus on shipped on the core there...

Well, most likely the options were already prepared before the funding campaign - currently it looks like they still need more support to make the numbers for the core product production...