deep darc

Nothing quite celebrates one's geekdom like showing off pictures of an OLPC XO-1 using an RZUSBSTICK 6LoWPAN network adapter. I couldn't resist sharing.

Don't give me that look. I needed to test my CDC-ECM additions on a Linux box, and it was the closest one handy. It's all in the name of science. SCIENCE.

You can see it actively (and successfully) pinging ff02::1 on the XO-1's screen.

The Contiki distribution comes with some very useful firmware that turns the RZUSBSTICK into an ethernet interface. This firmware is informally called "Jackdaw".

Unfortunately, out of the box it only supports RNDIS and CDC-EEM (Ethernet Emulation Model) USB protocols. There is no RNDIS driver on the Mac (and likely never will be). There is no usable CDC-EEM driver either.

There is a standard protocol for USB ethernet devices, and that is CDC-ECM (Ethernet Control Model). In order for the Jackdaw firmware to ever 'just work' on a Mac, someone is going to need to add support for CDC-ECM to the firmware.

I've been intending to do this for a few months now, but only recently managed to scrape up the time to put all of the pieces together. After a good 8-10 hours of work this weekend, I am now pinging my RAVEN board directly from my Mac using a RZUSBSTICK running my updated Jackdaw firmware.

I'll be sending my changes upstream so that they can hopefully be included in the next Contiki release. If you are curious or just impatient, you can grab the changes from my private subversion repository here.

I have been using Parallels for most of my Windows and Linux virtualization needs, but it's shoddy USB support has driven me over the edge. Time to cut my losses and give VMware Fusion a try.

The majority of software supporting tools (like low-level hardware debuggers) are unfortunately Windows-only or Linux-only. This means that if I want to use, for example, the CC-DEBUGGER, I need a virtualization system that does USB well.

Parallels has given me nothing but grief so I'm hoping that VMware Fusion does a better job. I'll post my findings.

I just wanted to share some pictures of another aspect of the same home automation project.

What I'm doing here is connecting a TI CC2520 802.15.4 transceiver to a ybox2, using a break-out board that I designed a few months ago. I'm in the process of developing the CC2520 driver for the Propeller now, and hope to have it working in a week or two. After that, I'll be developing a 6LoWPAN stack for the propeller chip. Fun times.

So what are the possibilities?

• 802.15.4 tunnel, for connecting two Zigbee networks in different locations.
• 6LoWPAN to ethernet bridge.
• 6LoWPAN border router.
• TV-based 802.15.4 network monitor

I'll be exploring all of these options in the weeks to come.

I finished placing all of the components on my CC2530-based XBee clone a few days ago. Tests using SmartRF Studio indicate that the chip is fine and working properly.

Not sure about how well the radio works yet, since it seems that my initial layout is going to lead to significant signal attenuation. Hopefully it won't be too bad. I'm new to all this RF stuff.

I'm now dubbing it the FauxBee. Note the lower case 'X', to avoid any trademark confusion.

It turns out I had the wrong landing pad for the crystal—my 32MHz crystals were a tad large. I went out to HSC Electronic Supply and picked up the closest thing I could find. The new crystal just barely touched all the pads, but it does work!

Most of the decoupling caps are on the other side of the board.

Now the hard part: porting Contiki to this thing.

A while back I got my CC2530-based XBee-clone boards back from BatchPCB. Then reality set in—I actually had to solder these things! After much trial and error, I think I finally have figured out the right technique using solder paste, flux, and hot air. Here are some results:

I think I just found the perfect device to be the graphical user interface of my home automation project: the Insignia Infocast.

It came to my attention via one of the people who worked on it: Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, the creator of the Chumby. According to a relatively recent blog post by Bunnie, the device was designed to be very hackerDIY-friendly. Enabling SSH on the device is a snap, and as an added bonus it will even automatically install GCC for you. For $169, this is a great deal.

Check out Bunnie's blog post for more details on the device.

One of the things that I'm sure many computer users have noticed is how much power simply browsing the web can take, especially on flash-intensive sites. The primary reason is that most websites have no respect for how much power your computer is using, or how accessible their website is. This is one of the top reasons why I welcome the fact that Flash is not supported in the iPhone or the iPad—these devices become an oasis from all of the obnoxious flash ads.

On my MacBook Pro, I use Click To Flash, and it is one of the most welcome and useful apps I have ever installed. By making it so that I must explicitly click on flash to actually load it I can avoid loading the tons of useless and obnoxious flash ads and interfaces out there—improving my sanity, extending my battery life, and, hell, reducing my carbon footprint to boot.

Then, while reading Daring Fireball, I saw this. I was at first amazed and impressed. Then I was terrified. If all of the obnoxious flash ends up converting to HTML5, then I am back to square one.

I guess there's no stopping it.