So what happens as the protocol changes? Seems to me we end up in one or more of these positions:
- These units continue to support the old rules, and the more of them there are, the more likely they are to disrupt the network
- These units require the users to make a decision and download an update, and the more of them there are, the more likely there are to be enough of them not updated to disrupt the network if users think they can set it and forget it
- These units are automatically updated and therefore effectively controlled by Ubuntu (or some other centralized entity who takes over said control legitimately or otherwise) who suddenly gains say over future protocol changes as adoption increases
None of these positions seem incredibly good to me, especially since Ubuntu's bitcoin core distribution has been different than others more than once due to changes being submitted by one highly-opinionated sometimes holier-than-thou pool operator.
According to their official description, it runs the official Bitcoin Core open source client so I would assume that it would be possible to update it just like any other installation of Bitcoin Core in the event of a hard fork. If you're feeling extra paranoid, you could download the source files and compile them manually yourself.
Those are all protocol/security concerns that point out more nodes isn't necessarily better. There may also be technical concerns, for instance, how long it will really be before they become paper weights due to storage constraints or other problems if they aren't upgradeable / user serviceable, because 160GiB may sound like a lot, but who is to say what the block limit and/or block usage will be two years from now? Presumably they are upgradeable and user serviceable, but suddenly they're that much more expensive and users have to have that much more knowledge to transfer data from one HD to another unless Ubuntu runs on the flash and will automatically partition and make use of a newly replaced drive.
The hard drive is probably just your standard SATA affair. If the blockchain suddenly balloons in size then it should be possible to swap it out for a larger part. Creating a disk image of a hard drive is a pretty trivial process.
Don't get me wrong, it's certainly a potentially useful device for power users who know Linux if it's fully user-controllable, but I'd disagree with anyone stating that it's a great way for Joe-Schmoe to contribute to the network.
The hardware is based on the PcDuino3Nano which seems to be an Arduino clone:
http://www.linksprite.com/wiki/index.php5?title=PcDuino3NanoThe Raspberry Pi is a pretty popular choice for something like this although the fact that it uses a SD card for storage doesn't make it a completely ideal solution. This one's a bit more expensive but all the work is already done for you. If you wanted to, you could also make your own low-power full node by buying a single board computer, adding storage and networking, installing a lightweight Linux distro, and running Bitcoin Core on it. The end result would be pretty much the same thing.
