BotBlox's SwitchBlox Nano Packs Three 10/100 Ethernet Ports Into a Board the Size of a Quarter
Smaller than the already-compact SwitchBlox, the new Nano variant drops two ports in order to squeeze into the tiniest footprint yet.
Josh Elijah, creator of the ultra-compact SwitchBlox five-port 10/100 Ethernet switch, is back with a new design — and the SwitchBlox Nano is ever smaller than its already svelte predecessor.
Elijah launched the original open source SwitchBlox earlier this year, aiming to bring 10/100 Ethernet capabilities to even the smallest of projects. "It's unique on the market," he wrote at the time. "It's tiny and open source and works straight out the box. And I haven't closed off the design. I want this to help robot and drone developers and eventually build a suite of open source networking hardware for robots and drones."
Now, Elijah is back with a follow-up: The even smaller SwitchBlox Nano, roughly the size of a US quarter. "SwitchBlox Nano is a three port 10/100Mbps Ethernet switch in a 1 inch square (22.5mm) form factor. It's the smallest Ethernet switch we've ever created," explains Elijah, "and is designed for robust and space constrained network applications, typically in robots and industry 4.0 hardware."
"If you're building an Ethernet network inside an space limited chassis, you're basically out of options unless you design your own board. SwitchBlox Nano solves that problem. Further to that if you need to build custom network topologies with many devices connected at different points you would need a switch at each point. Typical Ethernet switches are needlessly large, which wastes a lot of internal volume; SwitchBlox Nano also solves this problem."
The SwitchBlox Nano includes three Ethernet ports — down from five on the original SwitchBlox — and accepts a 5-15V power input. To cut down on bills of material (BOM), the device also outputs 1.5A of regulated 5V power for external devices.
"As far as we can tell," Elijah says, "this is the smallest Ethernet switch that's ever been built, tested and sold. We're hoping that this tiny little device will enable engineers to design more advanced products, savings space, weight and cost."
The SwitchBlox Nano is available to buy from the BotBlox Tindie store, priced at $60 including power and custom Ethernet cables; more details are available on the BotBlox website, while the schematic and CAD file can be found on GitHub.