We wanted to be able to remotely get into our Aruba Controllers via the cosole port.
Useful if you lose connectivity to the device etc.
While there are many console managers out there, nothing met the price point of a Raspberry Pi ($35)
The setup was simple ( iptables to secure the device, screen to keep the session open even when we weren't ssh'd in, and minicom as the serial console)
What was harder was to get the USB to Serial device working for the Aruba 72xx controller.
While drivers existed for Windows and OSX, the device wouldn't load under linux.
The issue had to do with the fact Aruba rebranded the CP210x device to their own "Aruba Networks USB to UART Bridge Controller".
So I got the sourcecode of the CP210x driver added Aruba's vendor and product ID's idVendor=2626, idProduct=ea60 and recompiled. (this was harder to do than it should have been under raspbery Pi!)
So now I have my very own Linux version 3.6.11+ Raspberry Pi driver for the Aruba USB serial device. (Not attached to this post as the board rejected it PM me if you want it.)
Yes I could have just used my own USB to Serial adapter and then plugged into the serial port. But the idea was to keep this cheap and small!
So now my engineers can ssh to the Pi and screen -r into the serial console session. Cool!
We also have a Pi set up as a NOC display board, but that's a story for Tim to tell...
Sorry for the lack of pictures, if there is interest I'd be happy to share.
A fun project for the week before Airheads!