Technology

59108 readers

3257 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

477

World's smallest, cheapest network switch developed by US high school robotics team — Murex Robotics makes the hardware fully open-source (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 4 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Designed for use in a remotely piloted underwater rover, the mrxSwitch v2.0 supplies five 100 Mbps Ethernet ports at a footprint of only 44.9mm by 42.2mm. Network switches of this form factor are typically reserved for highly embedded systems; the team prioritizes its use in remote-operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), but IoT devices and other consumer devices with space constraints may have use for network switches this small. The mrxSwitch v2.0 represents a 30% size reduction over its predecessor, along with a BOM cost reduction of 15%, even with its smart-looking custom PCB.

Most solutions for network switches of this form factor are priced at a premium due to the narrowness of the use case, with MATE-sponsored options running from $75 to $175 -- hence the decision to engineer an original solution. The mrxSwitch v2.0 stands at a current BOM price of $7. While you might not see it used in our best network switches (at least not yet), the build is a serious triumph for the young team.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] JigglySackles@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months ago

Yeah I was looking at it and was thinking the article writer is grossly misunderstanding the device. It looks like it'd be a fantastic item for their use case and it's highly impressive that some high schoolers did that. But it's not exactly a design that will take over for home and enterprise switching.