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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Quick Tutorial - Maximite/DM RF Mesh
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| cwilt Senior Member  Joined: 20/03/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 147 |
I know... integer math 
Since it has I2c maybe I could add a um-FPU. I have thought about writing code for mmbasic to um-FPU but other projects are at the top of the list. |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
um-FPU is really a costly overkill ($20 USD) and you cannot use it for battery powered RF nodes. It draws way too much current. Also, Synapse I2C only does I2C "software emulation" - look out! 
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| cwilt Senior Member Joined: 20/03/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 147 |
I use the um-fpu64 often in RF nodes without issue, but I do disable it when not needed. Cost is relative to the customers needs. |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
It draws way too much current.
umega FPU 3.1 40 MIPS full speed ---> 90 ma -- WOW Maybe I need to get a vehicle battery to power my RF nodes when using an uMega FPU  |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
One last file is the very simple and crude MMBasic file to receive serial TTL messages from the Synapse Mesh Network. There you have it ... all software, schematics, PCB images. I neglected a BOM (bill of materials) but by viewing the node schematics you can create your own. 2012-05-03_122902_Main_R1.zip End of Project ...  |
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| cwilt Senior Member Joined: 20/03/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 147 |
Maybe find a energy harvester circuit that works on attitude. Thank you for the info. Enjoy your nodes. I will not be asking you any more questions. |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
I was just going to use two series Alkaline batteries to power my Hand Held Synaspe RF Node Controller, but I decided to "Go Green". I came across the Seeed Studio Depot Lipo step-up boost charger (5 VDC) and their inductive wireless mat charger. The Lipo Rider Pro charger has a nice 4 LED battery capacity indicator along with high current Lipo charging. All I need to do, after every use, is to lay the Hand Held Controller on the charging inductive matt and I would always have 2 amps of standby power for the Hand Held Synapse RF Mesh Node Controller. (The Synapse RF200 RF Node only takes 20 ma. for idle/receive & 80ma for Tx) There is even a solar power option and a USB charging input on this Lipo charger! Going green could not be easiler but only at a very high cost! 
BTW ... By increasing the battery capacity from 2 to 6 amps (Seeed has Lipo batteries) you could easily use a CGMMStick1 for days. I believe the current draw of the CGMMStick1 is around 115 ma. with nothing connected to it.
BTW ... Pic of Synapse Hand Held RF Controller without the Lipo/inductive charger addition. It takes 15 days from Asia eg Seeed Studio Depot for shipping to arrive to the states. 2012-05-07_041157_HH_1_pic.pdf |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
Picture of my "Green Power" Lipo charging system from SeeedStudio Depot. I use it for my RF Hand Held controller but you can easily power your PIC32 for days!
2012-05-15_020156_Wireless_Charging_System.pdf Since the Lipo Rider Pro Charger has all surface mount components - there is one major flaw. The charging status LEDs (red for charging and green for charging finished) are all on the surface mount board? I had to make a "lightpipe" to indicate the charging status on the outside of my enclosure. Note: There is no way to remote mount these status LEDs without destroying this charging board or you would have to be the best SMT surgical tech on earth! |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
With the "Green Power" portable charging/power system out of the way, the next design solution is to find a low power, low cost, low GPIO count, small footprint, 3 volt design, reliable/repeatable, 100% feedback, data entry electronics for the Synapse Hand Held RF controller. Having just a button switch, with NO feedback, on a hand held RF controller will not cut it! There were many commerical and homebrew solutions but each solution had its pros and many cons. Here are just a few data entry electronics solutions we have looked at: 1. Capacitive keypad (3x4) using the MR121 I2C with "additional" LED status feedback (Sparkfun) 2. 4x3 or 4x4 matrix switch input using tac or membrane switches with LCD feedback and backlite. (Sparkfun,Adafruit, Futurlec, or $$$custom) 3. Dip / Tac switch with low power status LEDs 4. Digital encoder input with status LED feedback (Sparkfun) 5. 1 analog input data entry solution presented on this board forum by Jez Sidons 6. Resistive touch screen input with LCD/OLED (4D Systems and other vendors) We chose solution #3 and reduced the GPIO count down by using an "old technology" TTL IC SN7442 4 to 10 decoder which saved 6 GPIOs. By using 1 ma current status LEDs, with this design, the cost and power savings met our specs. For the homebrew hackers this solution can be easily applied to a perfboard or breadboard. All three designs are very small eg 1.250 x 2.500 inches or 31.75 mm x 63.50 mm to fit the enclosure front panel faceplate. My next door neighbor, the printed circuit designer, came up with three separate data entry PCBs. (see attached pdf photos below) The first design has a circular 0-9 decimal status LED pattern with a increase decimal tac switch and a data entry tac switch. It also uses the 4-10 decoder IC (SN7442) for the status "decimal" LEDs. The second design has a DIP switch with low power status feedback LEDs. The third design has very inexpensive tac switch inputs along with 4-10 decoder for the low power status LEDs. Note: The LED current limit, surface mount resistors (large 1206) are on the back side (bottom of PCB) 2012-05-16_034339_Data_Entry_R1.pdf |
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
My next door neighbor came up with a better packaging design for his high power Synapse Hand Held RF Mesh Controller. 2012-06-10_133522_HandHeld_RF.pdf With the mailbox mesh node, garage door mesh node, the mesh central node, which communicates with a MaxiMite Basic Controller for status and logging. along with the hand held mesh node controller complete, there is only one RF mesh node to design - the Environmental RF Universal Mesh Node. The Environmental RF Universal Mesh Node contains the following sensors / functions: (Most sensor modules can be easily obtained from SeeedStudio) 1. PIR motion sensing (digital) --> security and occupancy sensor 2. Temperature sensor (analog) 3. Light sensor (analog) 4. Humidity sensor (analog) 5. Moisture sensor (analog) --> water moisture detector 6. Security switch input --> from magnetic door / window sensors/ pb switch 7. Precision RTC with battery backup 8. Piezo buzzer 9. Digital output relay 10 Amps @ 120 VAC. Stay tuned ....
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
Pictures of the finished Synapse Universal Environmental Mesh RF Node Module. 2012-06-23_190242_environ.pdf This completes the Synapse wireless "distributed" RF mesh modules. The mailbox, garage door, hand held controller and the environmental mesh module forms a complete wireless home alert system. There is one module left to design ... A wireless serial bridge/gateway/Web Server to the Internet. This serial module can be easily attached to a MaxiMite/DM for sending email home alerts any place in the world. I am very surprised at all the vendors trying to sell their embedded web servers that can do SMTP. The problem is, in the US, most ISPs require authenication and SSL/TSL - AES security encryption. When you ask a vendor these questions most of the time there is silence or they try to avoid the question altogether with good reason. Stay tuned ...
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
Imagine having a Maximite/DM MMBasic controller and just hooking-up 3 wires (Tx, Rx & Gnd) plus power to a embedded web server and being able to display and control your MMBasic variables using an Internet web page. Along with web pages, you could also have the capability to send secure email alerts from your Basic PIC32 micro controller. <<NO @#$%@ PC REQUIRED!>> – except for troubleshooting and deploying your web pages and server. Applications: Home security and alert systems – no cloud severs required. Home automation and control. Design specs for MaxiMite/DM Web Server with email for alerts.(SMTP send only) 1. Low voltage 3 V operation (3.2-3.3 VDC) for easy interfacing to the Maximite/DM (no level converters required!) 2. Secure SMTP email (authentication and SSL AES encryption) with an option to turn it off if not needed by your ISP. Note: Most US ISPs require authentication (user name / password) and AES encryption. Some countries, other than the US, don't required SSL/AES because it is illegal to export this AES algorithm from the US which is also used in E-commerce. Having no security, your government could spy on your data! 3. This embedded web server would have to be inexpensive (dirt cheap) but extremely easy to use. This leaves out the "hobby junk" with "open source" software that is never complete and is full of bugs. We wanted something that worked "out of the box" and did not want to spend months in software development. 4. The web server would need an onboard Ethernet and also would have Wifi as an option. 5. A 32 bit processor for the web server micro controller would be needed. A 8 bit processor (like the Arduino) won't cut it. Just some of the embedded web server vendors reviewed: OpenPicus Netduino and Netduino + WizNet Series Web Servers WiFly GSX 802.11b/g Serial Module - Roving Networks Olimex - Ethernet Web PIC Development Boards SitePlayer WIB (Web Server in a Box) (Jaycar) CCS - Embedded Internet Development Kit If there is any forum user that would like to add to this vendor list please, by all means, do chime in. vendor research ongoing
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| DuinoMiteMegaAn Senior Member Joined: 17/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 231 |
And the embedded web server winner is ... hands down ... is the NetBurner PINK SB70LC (board only) Disclaimer ... We do not work for NetBurner nor do we have any association with this embedded networking company. Netburner Link: http://www.netburner.com/pink/ We chose the NetButrner PINK SB70LC (+3 V low voltage) board only. (Not the kit, to save money $$$$) It runs just fine by connecting only 3 wires (without level converters) to the MaxiMite/DM. Please Note: The following 3 V devices can also be connected to this PINK SB70LC low voltage web server: Vendor MBED (ARM 3v) NXP LPC1768, NXP LPC11u24 Vendor GHI Electronics Fez Panda II (C# dotNet ARM 3 v) Fez Mini (C# dotNet ARM 3 v) All MMBasic PIC32 microcontrollers (MMBasic PIC32 3 v) MaxiMite from Vendors Geoff Graham,Olimex & Dontronics Vendor Digilent chipKIT (PIC32 3v) chipKIT Uno32, chipKIT Max32 Vendor SeeedStudio CUISTEM (ARM 3 V) Vendor Olimex (Pinguino PIC32 "C" 3 v) PIC32-Pinguino, PIC32-Pinguino-MX220, PIC32-Pinguino-Micro, PIC32-T795 Vendor Parallax - Propellar (3 v custom Parallax microcontroller) Note: Parallax Basic Stamps can only work with Netburner PINK SB70 version (5 v serial TTL Tx and Rx) Any "C" ARM 3 v microcontrollers from the following vendors: Energy Micro, STM, Nuvoton, Holtek, NXP TI Atmel and Cypress Background ... Several years back Parallax came up with their Basic Stamp (+5 vdc PIC microcontroller) It was very popular basic micro controller until the Arduino came along and ate their lunch big time. Back then, Netburner created an embedded web server (software and hardware) for Parallax Basic Stamp and called it PINK. The board they used was the (5v only) PINK SB70 KIT, along with kit accessories, so it would connect and talk to the Basic Stamp easily and work "out of the box". Parallax use to carry this PINK kit but now only NetBurner carries this PINK Kit. They did not have SSL authentication SMTP send only email, at the time, but now they do. The PINK SB70 and SB70LC boards has the following software and hardware: Embedded Web Server with 256K Flash Memory for web pages and files FTP interface for uploading web pages and files Telnet interface for debugging serial communication Send/Receive UDP Packets on any port Send E-mail with or without SSL Authentication Password protection of configuration, FTP and selected web pages and files Over 100 web-accessible variables, allowing for dynamic web pages Over 20 variables can be written to flash memory for default values Serial access to PINK IP Address, Network Mask, Default Gateway and DNS Server info Please Note: This embedded web server uses HTM/HTML The PINK SB70 (+5 V) or SB70LC (+3v low voltage) "KIT" has the following hardware accessories: (1) PINK or PINK LC Ethernet Module (1) Blue CAT5 Patch Cable (1) Red CAT5 Cross-over Cable (1) Grey Serial Cable (1) Power Supply (1) Adapter Board Connector Ribbon (1) Adapter Board (6) Hookup Wires This PINK SB70LC "kit" cost $130 USD. Being frugal hobbyist and hackers and already having most of the kit accessories already, we decided to purchase only the new PINK SB70LC board (+3 V @ 500 ma. 3 V serial TTL only) and load the PINK SB70LC application binary image on to it. This saved us $130 - $59 = $71 USD! This effort was well worth it BUT you do need some basic network, PC, router and web page design knowledge, to pull this one off! NetBurner will not help you on with network setup and web design since they are the hardware network board manufacturer but by reading their documents and using "google" should give you most of your needed support. Netburner does have a forum board. Please check the PINKLC (SB70LC +3V) PDF for more information. Since the MaxiMite and DuinoMite are +3 V only GPIO microcontrollers then its only a matter of applying 500 ma 3.3 VDC power to the web server and connecting the serial port 1 from the NetBurner SB70LC board to the serial port (comx:) of the MaxiMite/DM. (eg ground to ground, Tx- Rx and Rx-Tx) To load the PINK application binary image, you would need to attached the PINK SB70LC to your PC Ethernet network and use the AutoUpDate Application supplied by NetBurner. You need a PC to do this task. Once the PINK application is installed on this "generic factory network board" then its only the matter of using MMBasic to transmit and receive the 100 of web-accessible variables on the web-pages and to send SMTP email (SSL secure if need be). Please check the PINKLC (SB70LC +3V) PDF for more information. The PINK application binary image has all the needed variables embedded in "factory" web pages. In fact, this is all you need but you can also add your own "custom" web pages on top of the factory web pages. An email demo is also included, to test sending SMTP (SSL/ non SSL) email from this "factory" web page. Please check the PINKLC (SB70LC +3V) PDF for more information. We designed two "custom" crude web pages and we used a downloaded client "FTP" utility to upload our custom pages on to the web server. Then we wrote a crude but simple demo MMbasic serial driver that writes 5 variables and reads 2 variables from this NetBurner PINK SB70LC web server (PINKTest). Also, in the MMBasic file, we wrote a SMTP send only email routines. Note: In this MMbasic demo file, we had to remove our network settings for security sake! (filled in with ? marks) WARNINGS - The PINKLC.PDF document has some "overlooked errors" in it. The NetBurner personnel was made aware of these PDF document errors. They are now, in the process, of re-editing this PDF. (PINKLC.PDF 1.0) #1. SB70LC +3.3 VDC (VDD) should be on pin #2 (NOT pin #20) of the 20 pin ribbon connector. <----<<<<< LOOK OUT ! #2. SB70LC GND (VSS) should be on pin #20 (NOT pin #2) of the 20 pin ribbon connector. <------<<<< LOOK OUT ! #3. SB70LC Pin 12 TX1 (out - connects to RX in of Maximite/DM - 3 VDC TTL serial only) is the PINK SB70LC Serial Data Uart Port 1 #4. SB70LC Pin 13 RX1 (in - connects to TX out of Maximite/DM - 3 VDC TTL serial only) is the PINK SB70LC Serial Data Uart Port 1 #5. Only "low voltage" GPIO (3.3 VDC) should be connected to the SB70LC. The Parallax Basic Stamp is a +5 VDC device and will NOT work with the PINK SB70LC unless you have 5 V to 3 V TTL level convertors or just use their standard SB70 5V only board. #6. Many places in the PDF docs often refer to the Parallax Basic Stamp so please disreguard. #7 Using RS232 converters in this project are not needed since the communication interface is low voltage TTL signals! #8. The SB70LC "application image" is missing from their website. Please contact NetBurner for the correct binary application image file. #9. The generic Windows FTP did not work with the PINK, so we just downloaded a client FTP from the Internet. #10. Make sure the IPSetup baud rate is the same as the serial baud rate on the "configuration web page". Both will have to match. We used 9600 8 N 1 to communicate to the MaxiMite/DM #11. Google "Chrome" was an excellent web browser for HTML development work for this web server. #12. NetBurner has many advanced networking development tools with "c" software but it will cost more compared to their PINK factory application image or build. If you need this extra development it's there. #13. Do not load any custom web pages on the web server until you thoroughly test the factory web pages out completely. Summary We found a very low cost embedded web server, which is very easly to use, to display our variables from our Synapse mesh network. This web server also has the capability to send secure SSL SMTP send only email alerts to anyone in the world. Please note: Your ISP might / will restrick you from sending x number of emails in x period of time to prevent spamers from using this network device for "other means". This web server can be easily attached to the MaxiMite/DM and within minutes you could send alert emails from this device. Attached files and docs for the MaxiMite/DM and NetBurner PINK, are: 1. Custom Index.htm and mesh_write.htm web pages. 2. MMBasic demo test file (PINKTest.bas) to interface with the two (above) web page HTM server files 3. Terminal utility with macro capability to test serial comport interfaces using a USB 3 V TTL module. (Sparkfun / Modern Device) 4. HTM/HTML beginners tutorial PDF from the web. 5. PINK SB70LC PDF user manual 6. NetBurner speciality utility files and tools For any new forum user, just starting out in networking, IT, electronics and Basic programming, the combination of a web server attached to a MaxiMite would give you a great educational experience! Enjoy
2012-06-30_133300_Pink_Demo.zip BTW ... This completes the Synapse RF mesh wireless project along with the NetBurner embedded web server. With the addition of a wireless ethernet bridge network adapter like Vonet's VAP11G WiFi Bridge or the Asus WL-330gE wireless access point, a totally wireless Internet and home wireless mesh network system could be constructed with the MaxiMite/DM. End of Project ...
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