Introduction / suggestions

Hi, I just pre-ordered an IOT2040 from Allied after finding out about this today on LinkedIn and will hopefully be playing with one soon. Figured I'd register here ahead of time.

Just wanted to say that what Siemens is doing is brilliant. The existing lower-end DIN rail mount PC offerings are poor, and this fills a huge gap: 1) reasonably priced, 2) more than 64/128 MB of RAM, 3) more modern Linux 4.x kernel on Yocto, and 4) UL approved!

As if it weren't awesome enough, the choice of design (choosing Intel Quark and giving it Arduino shield compatibility and a miniPCIe slot) makes it monumentally more brilliant. With this choice, the existing open-source communities, know-how, and software from the Yocto Linux, Arduino shield, Arduino 101 (uses a Quark), and Intel Galileo board (uses a Quark) projects can be utilized. Bravo.

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In the spirit of the same brilliant open-source leverage strategy, here are two suggestions to make your product even greater:

1) Get OpenWrt on this and/or officially support some mini-PCIe wifi cards on Yocto to make this a price-attractive and extremely customizable router. OpenWrt and Linux have huge communities and resources to get anything done on a router you could ever want. Having two Ethernet ports sweetens the deal: think LAN/WAN ports, or use the wifi as an AP. Here's a start: https://github.com/ECG-XMU/OpenWRT-Galileo

2) Get FreeRTOS on this. It's already on the Intel Galileo: http://www.freertos.org/RTOS_Intel_Quark_Galileo_GCC.html. Another huge userbase and a very great, stable project for a similar yet separate market segment.

Hope these suggestions will be taken seriously. This thing will be huge!