11 posts tagged with “beast”

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The Evolution of the Beast Continues

TLDR: the Beast is a single board computer cluster designed as a testing and demo rig for resin.io. We built Beast v1, with 120 Raspberry Pis, back in 2014 and started working on the next iteration, Beast v2, with 144 Raspberry Pis, about a year later. Now we're designing Beast v3 and sharing progress on Gitter! Beast v2 in the wild Weighing in at nearly 150 kg and measuring nearly 2m tall, Beast…

January 06, 2017 / 2 min

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Good, Better, Beast! #9

For all of you out there, following the development of Beast 2.0, I'd like to apologize for not having updates for a loooooong time (check out the last one) . It's not that there's nothing to say, rather the opposite, there's too much going on, and getting ahead with the Beast 2.0 was prioritized above talking about it. So here's an update with a bunch of new bits and pieces! The Beast 2.0 Tile We…

August 05, 2016 / 3 min

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Good, Better, Beast - #8

Sharing is Caring After quite a long development process, the design of the Beast 2.0 system is finally worthy of a release. We’re looking to manufacture upwards of 100 units. At the same time, we are reflecting on the nature of truly open-source hardware (OSHW) design and looking for the best possible way to share the mechanical design of the Beast with the wider community in a way that is open…

March 18, 2016 / 3 min

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Good, Better, Beast - #7

Spit and Polish Hello again. This time round we’ll be sharing a couple of the final touches to the Beast design process. A look at the refined design of the BeastTile front panel - the primary point of customisation for the system. Strength testing of the chassis to determine how high we can stack. A quick look at a refined design of the power hub. Faceplate By design, the front panel, or…

February 25, 2016 / 3 min

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Good, Better, Beast - #6

A quick update OctoTower Since the last entry, we’ve been engrossed in the fine details of the BeastTile design. Mostly questions of usability. We've also been talking to a customer who’s keen to use the BeastTile as a demonstration platform for their IoT product suite. Introducing the OctoTower, an 8-sided column constructed with BeastTiles and a few custom-designed structural and cosmetic…

February 10, 2016 / 1 min

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Good, Better, Beast - Week 5

It’s Aliiiiiive! CU logo The little monster breathed it’s first this week when we assembled the first 6 units of the BeastTile. As can be expected with any first-born, we had a few teething issues, but all-in-all the build went smoooooth. Like a baby’s bottom. The first chunk of this post is technical mechanical engineer grease-monkey stuff. Scroll on past if you’re here for the pictures. Chassis…

January 22, 2016 / 4 min

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Good, Better, Beast - Week 4

Let’s Get Physical… logo-chest Ahoy. We promised to venture beyond the comforts of CAD this week and commit to something real. Well, our word is our bond… We went through two rounds of prototyping, where we improved the structural strength of the tile, fine-tuned the fits of interlocking components, and generally honed the details. Prototype #1 proto-type 1 This guy demonstrated nice ease-of…

January 15, 2016 / 3 min

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Good, Better, Beast - Week 3

This is a quick welcome back. It’s been quiet in here due to the post x-mas food coma, but looking forward to the next steps. Last time we described the design of our BeastTile, and how they interconnect, both mechanically and electrically. We also gave some examples of what you could build. This week we’re gonna build a few tiles and hope they’ll fit together. There have been a couple of minor…

January 07, 2016 / 3 min

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Good, Better, Beast - Week 2

For those who have just tuned in, we’re working on a new improved version of what we call the Beast. In our last post, we shared our goals for the Beast as a demonstration platform for resin.io, but also mentioned that we’d like to open the design up for use by any- and everyone to hack. You can join in our discussions in the chat room. We want to see the Beast used in ways that we couldn’t…

December 16, 2015 / 5 min

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Good, Better, Beast!

Beast 2.0 -- Taking Single Board Computer clusters to the next level About a year ago, we wrote about the Beast, our 120 Raspberry Pi cluster. Since then, we’ve had a lot of experience with it. First surprise was that the Beast never spent too long in one place. It was never meant to leave London, but a quick search of Twitter shows photos of it at various events, and that’s just some of what the…

December 09, 2015 / 3 min

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What would you do with a 120-Raspberry Pi Cluster?

Update: We're now designing the third generation of our Raspberry Pi cluster, you can follow the evolution of the beast here and chat with us about the project on our dedicated Gitter channel! To cut a long story short... The Short Version We've assembled an awesome 120-Raspberry Pi cluster for testing balena.io. We're looking for ideas of awesome things we could program for it. The Long Version…

October 05, 2014 / 2 min