Purchased two Xi3 Xi5A micro PC's last week.
The company has gone out of business.
They are well built machines. They were introduced in 2013 at CES.
They were also expensive at between $500+ USD each. Purchased each here for $60 USD.
I am doing a comparison here to the PiPoX7. The PipoX7 is an Atom Baytrail with 2Gb of RAM. Mine is currently running Windows 10.
Goals here are to make one a mini Homeseer automation server maybe replacing the current RPi2/3 and the other one a KodiBuntu box (just to see how it works mostly).
This "test" will be installing the following. Note that the Xi3 Xi5A utilizes a regular mSATA SSD card. Memory / CPU are not upgradeable.
The stock machines come / came with Windows 7 Pro or OpenSuse.
For Homeseer 3 installing LUbuntu 16.04.
I have attached a couple of take apart pictures.
1 - Download LUbuntu 16.04 from here ==>
Lubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)
2 - write ISO to a USB boot stick
A - for Wintel utilized Rufus - Download Rufus from here ==> Rufus
B - for Linux utilize standard included tools. Specifically just click on ISO and tell it to write to USB stick.
3 - Boot up with LUbuntu 16.04 USB stick, write to entire SSD while including all updates.
4 - Check to make sure that OpenSSH server is running - it is.
A - Login to Xi5A via SSH and sudo name and change password to root.
B - change ssh to allow root access
C - Installed Webmin
D - Installed lm-sensors
C - installed mono-complete
E - Installed Mono V4.X
F - Shut down Zee-2 Homeseer 3. Used WinSCP to copy the /HomeSeer directory to the Xi5A.
G - Errored out when starting. Kept playing for a time with it thinking it was the version of Mono.
H - turned out it is the way that WinSCP is copying over the files. Switched to copying files with Linux / Linux box.
I - worked fine after that except remote of Z-Wave. It seems to connect fine; then starts to generate Mono errors. Going to downgrade Mono (at 4.X now) to Mono 3.12 which is the same version as running on the Z. The Xi5A doesn't get as warm running Homeseer 3 as it does when running KODI.
J - removing Mono 4.X was a PITA and got in the mono rabbit hole for a bit. It seems that the mono autoremove, purge functions didn't remove it all and had to get a bit granular.
K - updated the sources.list with the 3.1.2 reference and it was wrong for whatever reason. Found the correct one and then update worked.
L - install mono-complete.
M - ran homeseer 3 on the Xi3 Xi5A using the ./go function via SSH
N - ran z-wave plugin on the Zee-2 - - > mono zwaveplugin.exe server=ipofXi5A.
O - works fine now.
P - moved it from a dynamic address (DHCP) to a static IP address.
- 30th of June, 2016 status
- migrated from the Zee-2 to the Xi5A box yesterday
- kept the RPi2 in the attic with it multiple temperature/humidity sensors and Z-Wave GPIO card
- remoting the temperature info and Z-Wave to the Xi5A (kind of a ZNet device of sorts)
- all is working fine after 24 hours or so.
The company has gone out of business.
They are well built machines. They were introduced in 2013 at CES.
They were also expensive at between $500+ USD each. Purchased each here for $60 USD.
I am doing a comparison here to the PiPoX7. The PipoX7 is an Atom Baytrail with 2Gb of RAM. Mine is currently running Windows 10.
Goals here are to make one a mini Homeseer automation server maybe replacing the current RPi2/3 and the other one a KodiBuntu box (just to see how it works mostly).
This "test" will be installing the following. Note that the Xi3 Xi5A utilizes a regular mSATA SSD card. Memory / CPU are not upgradeable.
The stock machines come / came with Windows 7 Pro or OpenSuse.
For Homeseer 3 installing LUbuntu 16.04.
I have attached a couple of take apart pictures.
1 - Download LUbuntu 16.04 from here ==>
Lubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)
2 - write ISO to a USB boot stick
A - for Wintel utilized Rufus - Download Rufus from here ==> Rufus
B - for Linux utilize standard included tools. Specifically just click on ISO and tell it to write to USB stick.
3 - Boot up with LUbuntu 16.04 USB stick, write to entire SSD while including all updates.
4 - Check to make sure that OpenSSH server is running - it is.
A - Login to Xi5A via SSH and sudo name and change password to root.
B - change ssh to allow root access
C - Installed Webmin
D - Installed lm-sensors
Code:
ICS-Xi5:~# sensors k8temp-pci-00c3 Adapter: PCI adapter Core0 Temp: +39.0°C Core0 Temp: +41.0°C Core1 Temp: +39.0°C Core1 Temp: +37.0°C
E - Installed Mono V4.X
F - Shut down Zee-2 Homeseer 3. Used WinSCP to copy the /HomeSeer directory to the Xi5A.
G - Errored out when starting. Kept playing for a time with it thinking it was the version of Mono.
H - turned out it is the way that WinSCP is copying over the files. Switched to copying files with Linux / Linux box.
I - worked fine after that except remote of Z-Wave. It seems to connect fine; then starts to generate Mono errors. Going to downgrade Mono (at 4.X now) to Mono 3.12 which is the same version as running on the Z. The Xi5A doesn't get as warm running Homeseer 3 as it does when running KODI.
J - removing Mono 4.X was a PITA and got in the mono rabbit hole for a bit. It seems that the mono autoremove, purge functions didn't remove it all and had to get a bit granular.
K - updated the sources.list with the 3.1.2 reference and it was wrong for whatever reason. Found the correct one and then update worked.
L - install mono-complete.
M - ran homeseer 3 on the Xi3 Xi5A using the ./go function via SSH
N - ran z-wave plugin on the Zee-2 - - > mono zwaveplugin.exe server=ipofXi5A.
O - works fine now.
P - moved it from a dynamic address (DHCP) to a static IP address.
- 30th of June, 2016 status
- migrated from the Zee-2 to the Xi5A box yesterday
- kept the RPi2 in the attic with it multiple temperature/humidity sensors and Z-Wave GPIO card
- remoting the temperature info and Z-Wave to the Xi5A (kind of a ZNet device of sorts)
- all is working fine after 24 hours or so.
Attached Files