Does anyone know of USB powered Linux computers that you can use serial or ssh over the USB it gets power from?
Hak5 has this Bash Bunny and I found this called the USB armory.
I'm looking for one just to mess around with.
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If your into DIY this is an interesting project:
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Something like Damn Small Linux? (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org) I used it about once or twice for ssh and it seemed to work fine.
No, like the USB stick having an ARM processor and RAM so it runs the OS on the drive.
Also the turtle.
I don't think there are many (any?) that work exactly like that straight out of the box. Are you completely tied to the USB idea, or just one cable? There are a lot of smaller ARM processors that can be set up to run off of the power coming from a computer USB port. You would have to look at the power specs and possibly underclock/undervolt or disable unused components.
One option would be to use an ethernet cable to connect to your network and make your own Power-Over-Ethernet to power the board. It could be connected through a network bridge on your computer. Or just set it up at a router. Or just do away with ethernet (and disable it to save power) and use wifi.
Technically the Pi uses Ethernet to USB, I don't know if there is any way to hack it so you can directly communicate and power it via USB.
The important question here is the exact usage. Is it ok to set and forget the device at a router? Are you using on a desktop? Do you plan to bring it around with you and use a laptop? there isn't enough information to know what kinds of solutions would be acceptable for you.
My idea was using it with a laptop.
The Raspberry Pi Zero, USB Armory, Bash Bunny, and LAN Turtle all do what I'm wanting. I was mostly wondering if anyone knew of alternatives. I do realize it is more of a niche product so my options might be limited to what have been listed already.
Even though the USB Armory is the most expensive I'm leaning more towards it because of how small and portable it is. My laptop only has USB C ports so I'll have to use some sort of adapter anyway.
I follow a few sites like cnx-software and liliputing, so I know there are tons of boards out there. I'm looking at FriendlyElec/FriendlyARM, but they don't have the community that the Pi does. There are lots of options but you are probably best served with the list you have. Good luck!
That is quite handy! I haven't gotten my hands on any Pi Zero/W boards. From the pictures it looks like someone could easily hack off an old USB cable from various old mice, USB A-B cables and such, and do the same thing. I couldn't personally justify spending (including shipping) near the cost of the Pi Zero on a connector like that, but it is a really handy setup.
That Adafruit USB gadget tutorial is pretty interesting.
So I ended up getting a Raspberry Pi Zero W and set it up as an ethernet gadget on the micro USB port. I have some zero stems, but aren't using them as I'd need a dongle anyway to connect to my USB-C only Chromebook, so I just have a USB-C to micro USB cable connecting them.
The main issue was my Chromebook wouldn't properly connect, so I had to setup a DHCP server on it and set the interface to usb0. Then I setup my phone's hotspot and home WiFi networks in the wpa_supplicant file.
I can now easily ssh into [email protected] and have a full Linux terminal without putting my Chromebook into dev mode
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