Hello.
On 13/05/15 19:24, Geoff Chapman wrote:
Hi Alex,
I just wanted to thank-you for your reply, it certainly helped with my
understanding. Initially, I thought the device was a HardMAC device,
so thank-you for correcting me on that. It seems that the device
simply implements a USB-to-SPI interface.
Funny enough our first driver for it was actually a fake spi master
driver which did nothing else but connected to the normal at86rf23x
driver and transmitted all SPI message over usb to the device. :)
That worked ok-ish but was a performance problem for transmit and
receive. Thus this part was moved into the firmware. We kept the way of
setting register for configurations like this though.
I have used the schematics at [0] to build a few boards of my own. I
would like to use the two boards to send data between two laptop
computers running linux.
Nice, that you used the same schematics and build your boards!
Do you by any chance have the infrastructure to handle a bigger run of
these? We often get asked about such a device for easy hacking with
ieee802154 from a laptop or desktop without any SPI connections available.
The run Werner did was around 100 - 120 pieces for atusb IIRC. My best
guess would be that there could be interest for another 50-100 depending
on the promotions.
Werner did a great job on documenting the whole design to deliver
process so most pitfalls should be known and the risk reduced. If you
stay with the same chips the firmware and factory testing things are
also ready.
I'm not doing hardware myself so I'm not sure how risky this all could
be but I see a need for this kind of devices. Especially with good
plug'n'play support in the mainline kernel this could have potential.
Still not talking thousands here as it will stay a developer/hacker only
device.
If you have no time/interest/infrastructure for this but someone else
has please speak up here. Going a route through indigogo or kickstarter
might also help to determine the interest to have a better idea who big
a run should be.
The description at [1] indicates that the ATMega firmware implements a
"home-brew protocol on top of USB". My plan is to do the following:
1. Examine the source ATUSB firmware source code to determine the
home-brew protocol.
2. Write some application software in C for the two linux PCs using
Netlink sockets to communicate with the devices and transfer data
between the two PCs.
I was wondering -- do you think I am on the right track? Do you have
any suggestions?
Hmm, you really only want to transmit some data between two linux hosts
here, right?
In that case you can simply use the now mainline atusb driver and its
0.2 frimware and tranbsmit your data over the ipv6 sockets we offer with
6lowpan.
Unless I misunderstood you and you wanted to to something more low level
with ieee802165 there would be no need for you to hack on the firmware.
You are welcome to if you want, but I see no need for you right now. :)
regards
Stefan Schmidt
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