SSD Drive Instead of USB Flash Drive

Hardware Mark II
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Neon.ai sells a 540MB SSD drive (or at least did! I can’t find it now and they were out for a while), which I assume has the Neon OS installed on it. Just a note that you can also get this (without a pre-installed Neon OS) from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D2RDD8G for somewhat less $. Of course you might want to support Neon more than you support Amazon, but at least they are available. I have one and copied the Neon OS (which I had also installed my Hubitat skill on) using Win32DiskImager on (gag) Windows. It booted right up, worked fine, and is noticeably faster than either the Neon-branded USB flash driver or the one that originally came with the Mark II.

One thing: Using Win32DiskImager to copy from the flash drive created partitions the same size as those on the smaller flash drive. Thus there is a lot of unused space on the SSD. I’m not sure whether the version you download directly from Neon will expand the partition during startup or not.

The other thing: With the small amount of RAM in the Mark II, there is a lot of swapping going on. In general there is a limit to the write cycles on an SSD and I can’t really tell if it is reading or writing or both, but it does it a lot (there is a blue light on the SSD that tells you that).

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It will. There’s probably a fairly easy way to do it direct from Windows by using WSL to write the image, but I’d have to look into it.

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Thanks. I’m just going to start from scratch and follow my own instructions for re-install my skill :slight_smile:

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Thanks @burns! You are absolutely right that switching to an SSD drive improves performance.

Our new release is out today, and it includes the option to plug in a USB or SSD in the second USB port on the back of the Mark II and say “Make Bootable Media” to have Neon download the latest version, and then write it to that drive for you. Hopefully that simplifies many people’s experience. :slight_smile:

Here’s the link you were looking for - Neon AI Bootable SSD Drive (240 GB) | Neon AI and thanks for your support.

We offer the ordering option as a way to get our OS into the hands of users without them flashing their own drives. Purchase wherever pleases you - we aren’t making money on our drive sales, USB or SSD. Though if you do purchase from us, I can include our growing array of stickers for your Mark II. :slight_smile:

The swapping and undesirably large frequency of writing to the USB is something the Neon & OVOS devs are working on right now, because you’re right, it’s certainly not desirable for long term drive life.

We’re also looking at optional things to use all that extra space on the USBs and SSDs for - music collections came to mind immediately. Daniel is also working on adding a “backup OS” feature using that space. So many great things on the horizon!

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Indeed, that worked, although the sw folks are trying to figure out why frequently the configuration file for my new skill gets deleted.

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Sounds like great stuff! I wish I had waited a bit to get the new version to try out the “make bootable”. I had the version from a couple days ago.

One skill we might want is a “Tune In” skill. For example, if I tell Alexa “Play New Hamshire Public Radio” it gets the streaming service vai Tune In. Neon had no clue what I wanted :slight_smile:

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there are a few OCP skills around

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While I get the context, what does OCP stand for? I’ve found everything from “Oracle Certified Professional” to “Obsessive Compulsive Poster”, but can’t see anything that relates :slight_smile:

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OVOS Common Play. It’s the core service for all media skills in OVOS.

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