sr-latch
Awesome work! It's really cool to see this from a high school team. While designing liquid rocket avionics [1] at Purdue Space Program, we went with a BotBlox switch that cost $80 apiece [2], which I thought was ridiculous. My proposal to in-house the Ethernet switch was vetoed because I was a filthy CS student (joke) and my co-lead (the electronics guy) said it wasn't worth our time designing and validating such a part.

An Ethernet switch for $6.9 directly from JLCPCB is pretty incredible, thank you for making this product sector a tiny bit better :)

[1] https://sagarpatil.me/projects/cms-avi-hw

[2] https://botblox.io/products/micro-gigabit-ethernet-switch

numpad0
Looks so cool! Just one question: IIUC, linear voltage regulators works by wasting voltage delta until target voltage is attained, instead of switching output current as buck converters do, so at 12V input it dissipates heat of up to (12-3.3)[V] * 0.8[A] = 6.96[W] onto the board depending on downstream current draw(of an FE switch, so I imagine would be tiny fractions of 0.8A realistically). Do board feel cool enough to touch as is?(please use back of hand/finger if unsure)
banish-m4
Nice project and good work.

The only thing is it doesn't address a new or existing market as-is because it competes with what already exists. For example, a TrendNet 10/100 compact switch (not a hub) goes for $7.31 including shipping on eBay and it comes with a case and a power supply. Decommodifying a product requires finding niches where there is demand like automotive, aerospace, military, or marine applications. Until roughly 2020, 2.88 MB 3.5" floppy drives were in-use primarily in industrial and turnkey commercial systems long after they disappeared from desktop computers. Dinosaur technologies can live on for a very long time, often in critical systems deemed too expensive to replace.

Keep pushing forward, learning, and getting better.

Btw, if someone made a:

- 48 port 10GBASE-T (802.3an-2006) POE++ (IEEE 802.3bt-2018) 960W-1600W+ (3422W would be the upper limit for type 4)

- L2 (at least) switch

- unmanaged to fully-managed (but no cloud features)

- 4 100GBASE QSFP28 uplinks (unpopulated)

- dual, hot-swappable PSUs

- 2 models: Ports facing either forward or reverse

- 19" 1U half rack depth, and wall mountable

- Most importantly: doesn't sound like a jet engine under full load by leveraging better engineering, such as using some industrial-rated parts, heatpipes, and moving hotter air but less volume

I'd throw down in the $6K price-point neighborhood.

Comparables:

$4800 FS S5860-48XMG-U is close but sounds like a jet engine with dual 1U screaming PSUs and 3 hot swap chassis fans, but only available in conventional top-of-rack forward facing, leading to longer, messier wire management unnecessarily.

bruce511
Well done.

For those of us not generally in the hardware world (and thus not 100% familiar with the terminology) could you post more pics?

Especially of the enclosure? I'm not really sure if you are just exposing headers, or if there are regular Ethernet plugs on the board?

rgovostes
The comparable BotBlox SwitchBlox Nano is 25.50 x 25.50 mm, albeit with two fewer ports. This is 44.90 x 42.11 mm. How do you justify the claim of being the world's smallest?
moffkalast
> It is only 6.9 dollars

> probably for $10+shipping

You could honestly sell it for $30-40 and it would still be a pretty good deal. Meanwhile Blue Robotics be like "that'll be $175 plus $50 shipping and customs fees as a percentage of that $175 fam"

https://bluerobotics.com/store/comm-control-power/tether-int...

God, everything they sell is overpriced to the point of insanity. They could really use some proper competition.

Blammar
Nice work indeed. However, was there a reason you didn't support gigabit ethernet? I haven't used 100mbit ethernet for more than a decade...
zokier
Why classic full-fat fast-ethernet (base-tx) instead of single-pair ethernet (base-t1 or t1l/t1s) if you are targeting embedded use?
advael
This is amazing, well done, no notes, would love to buy when available

I think it's been rightly pointed out that you aren't beating commodity parts on price, but you're also not a manufacturing operation with scale and there is a certain niche for which anything with open hardware that's well-documented is a killer feature

rbanffy
One side project I never seem to start is a single board cluster based on Octavo SoMs. The idea is to have 32 cores per board to mimic a Thinking Machines CM-1-like cube. How easy is it to use a PCB to route Ethernet between nodes? What kind of components would go between the SoM and the switch?
throwaway2037
Why do they say "a high school robotics team from Exeter, New Hampshire", instead of "a robotics team from Phillips Exeter Academy"?

FYI: Phillips Exeter Academy is an elite, private high school in the United States. Mark Zuckerberg went there, too.

jakeogh
Very cool. It says fully open source, are the board layout files available?
schobi
It is great to see that this is accessible and possible with limited effort/budget!

On the higher speeds, it remains difficult: In the datacenter, 10G ethernet is often standard or even outdated. But for non-mains powered systems, even 10G uplink is hard to come by. I would love to have a switch with 25/100G uplinks in a smaller-than-19"-rack form factor with 12-40V DC power. Building one as a side project might still be too complex - if you would get access to chipsets at all.

AstroJetson
Nice job, I'm always impressed with HS robotics projects. Clever design and nice form factor.

I bought a stack of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Tenda-Gigabit-Unmanaged-Wall-Mount-Pr...

for some projects that need ethernet. They are mid-level quality. Not sure I'd put them on something that would break my heart to get back.

FredPret
Your group is incredibly cool, keep it up. It's exciting that kids in high school have access to this type of activity. I love living in the future!
ChuckMcM
This is truely awesome! Hat's off. If you're experience in college is anything like mine you will find that 90% of the incoming freshman class is looking at "electronics" for the first time (assuming you're going EE, but similar for CE or CS), you will be way ahead right from the start.

That this switch is small and light might make for some interesting UAV applications as well!

lanewinfield
Hey can I just say I appreciate y'all's mission and energy in the comments? Very inspiring, very welcoming—you're the best!
spcebar
Congratulations! Impressive work for any age.

Is creating bespoke parts a requirement for your robotics competition or just a part of your team's ethos?

minetest2048
I wish we have this 2 years ago, this will be extremely useful for our cubesat. 115k2 baud UART is too slow for ground development
contingencies
Nice job guys. For your next challenge, see if you can find a cost-effective way to add VLAN management, or do something cute with the form factor, like make it fit inside a standard electrical socket wall cavity with AC adaptor, or inside another ethernet port.

PS. Try to reference vendor application notes or datasheets instead of stackexchange where possible.

jeffrallen
> full Bob-Smith style termination for all center taps

Man, that's some serious inside baseball right there.

jiveturkey
hmm ... not the cheapest. $7 is just for the PCB (assembly) right? you need an enclosure and power supply as well.

monoprice #41710 is $10 all in with a price break starting at qty 2.

maybe you want to qualify your description with 'embeddable'.

> built-in magnetics

interesting b/c the website says `external magnetics`

voidmain0001
“We are super proud to have made this open source piece of technology” - of course it’s open source - you live in the state of “Live free or die!” My favourite state motto. Thanks!
auselen
Congrats.

A few months ago I wanted to make a small lab out of a few SBCs. Looking for a cheap 10/100 switch, I was surprised to see prices are this low; got a tplink 8 port / LS1008 for 10$ from Amazon.

chatmasta
I was PEA ‘10 :) This is amazing. You’ve come a long way from the robotics class I took senior spring…
tarasglek
Not a hardware guy,how does one crimp and secure those custom ends?
chx
If you are interested in such things, check botblox. They have a similar sized switch, a smaller one with fewer ports, a stacked one for Gigabit... it's very expensive though.
checker659
Are you telling me one does not need an EE degree to make hardware like this? How do high school folks have access to resources / mentorship to make such a polished product?
yonatan8070
This extremely cool, when I was in high school a few years ago we made some power adapter boards, but we couldn't have hoped to build a functional network switch, great job!
fragmede
> We will be putting a small run of these boards for sale somewhere

Somewhere like http://tindie.com?

cliftonk
j/c but why are we still maxing out at 1gb ethernet connections? why have the speeds essentially not progressed in 20 years? you can get a 40gb connection by just using usb-c on modern machines. what's going on? (curious about why this is the case industry-wide, i think this project is really cool)
jpc0
Some details I would like to see:

- Does the backplane support full 1.25Gbps throughput?

- Does is switch at line rate for all packet size?

- The switch chip supports LACP, port mirroring, vlan tagging, QOS, these would be amazing to integrate into a product even for slightly higher cost in a 5 port switch

- It's generally a hard requirement for me the 801.3az be off by default or can be turned off. I've had far too many issue with it enabled on network

xhrpost
Sorry if I missed it on the page but are all the ports Auto-MDIX?
UnlockedSecrets
I would love to have one of these, if still is available!
OrvalWintermute
Can you produce a 10Gb version of the same?
TZubiri
Cool.

Is this designed for personal or industrial use?

tgtweak
Can you make a 2.5g version
iancmceachern
This is awesome, you all rule
toomuchtodo
Excellent work, stay bold.
ojbyrne
Typo: “commerically”
bhouston
Great work!
teddy__d
impossible is now possible
StephenSmith
Now do POE
gardnr
It looks great! Have you considered running it through https://www.quilter.ai/ before sending it out? It's free.

You can hear more about it in this podcast: https://wandb.ai/site/resources/podcast/episodes/ai-in-elect...