Freakduino-Chibi, An Arduino-based Board For Wireless Sensor Networking Freakduino-Chibi, An Arduino-based Board For Wireless Sensor Networking Freakduino-Chibi, An Arduino-based Board For Wireless Sensor Networking
[Akiba] from FreakLabs presented some days a go a cool mix between an Arduino and a chibi board:
Chibi means “midget” in Japanese and I felt that it was an appropriate name for this wireless protocol stack. It wasn’t meant to be a fancy, mesh routing, auto-discovery, standardized device profile type of stack. The main goals were that it was small and easy to use so that people that weren’t experts in communications protocols could still send and receive data wirelessly without dealing with complex setups and technical details.
For the Freakduino-Chibi board, the Chibi stack was ported to the Arduino platform and named chibiArduino . It comes in the form of an Arduino library and you just unzip the package into the /libraries folder of your Arduino directory. The stack takes up approximately 3.6 kB of flash and about 270 bytes of RAM and allows users to set up star networks where any node can communicate with any other node within listening distance.
The post is long (a must-read), focus on the protyping; Akiba shows how sharing experiences in hackerspaces can get your project more interesting and relied to people’s need (this is taken some lines before the first quote, and describes how he moved to the Arduino platform):
After working with it for a while, I discussed it with a few of the electronics and embedded people in the hackerspace and we decided to use the Arduino as the standard platform in the space. This would make it easier to ensure everyone has the same base hardware and software when we collaborate on projects. And since Tokyo Hackerspace has kind of a leaning towards wireless (hee hee hee), I decided to make a version of my Chibi boards compatible with Arduino but still include the 802.15.4 wireless radio. That marked the beginning of this design project.
[Akiba] from FreakLabs presented some days a go a cool mix between an Arduino and a chibi board:
Chibi means “midget” in Japanese and I felt that it was an appropriate name for this wireless protocol stack. It wasn’t meant to be a fancy, mesh routing, auto-discovery, standardized device profile type of stack. The main goals were that it was small and easy to use so that people that weren’t experts in communications protocols could still send and receive data wirelessly without dealing with complex setups and technical details.
For the Freakduino-Chibi board, the Chibi stack was ported to the Arduino platform and named chibiArduino . It comes in the form of an Arduino library and you just unzip the package into the /libraries folder of your Arduino directory. The stack takes up approximately 3.6 kB of flash and about 270 bytes of RAM and allows users to set up star networks where any node can communicate with any other node within listening distance.
The post is long (a must-read), focus on the protyping; Akiba shows how sharing experiences in hackerspaces can get your project more interesting and relied to people’s need (this is taken some lines before the first quote, and describes how he moved to the Arduino platform):
After working with it for a while, I discussed it with a few of the electronics and embedded people in the hackerspace and we decided to use the Arduino as the standard platform in the space. This would make it easier to ensure everyone has the same base hardware and software when we collaborate on projects. And since Tokyo Hackerspace has kind of a leaning towards wireless (hee hee hee), I decided to make a version of my Chibi boards compatible with Arduino but still include the 802.15.4 wireless radio. That marked the beginning of this design project.
[Akiba] from FreakLabs presented some days a go a cool mix between an Arduino and a chibi board:
Chibi means “midget” in Japanese and I felt that it was an appropriate name for this wireless protocol stack. It wasn’t meant to be a fancy, mesh routing, auto-discovery, standardized device profile type of stack. The main goals were that it was small and easy to use so that people that weren’t experts in communications protocols could still send and receive data wirelessly without dealing with complex setups and technical details.
For the Freakduino-Chibi board, the Chibi stack was ported to the Arduino platform and named chibiArduino . It comes in the form of an Arduino library and you just unzip the package into the /libraries folder of your Arduino directory. The stack takes up approximately 3.6 kB of flash and about 270 bytes of RAM and allows users to set up star networks where any node can communicate with any other node within listening distance.
The post is long (a must-read), focus on the protyping; Akiba shows how sharing experience
s in hackerspaces can get your project more interesting and relied to people’s need (this is taken some lines before the first quote, and describes how he moved to the Arduino platform):
After working with it for a while, I discussed it with a few of the electronics and embedded people in the hackerspace and we decided to use the Arduino as the standard platform in the space. This would make it easier to ensure everyone has the same base hardware and software when we collaborate on projects. And since Tokyo Hackerspace has kind of a leaning towards wireless (hee hee hee), I decided to make a version of my Chibi boards compatible with Arduino but still include the 802.15.4 wireless radio. That marked the beginning of this design project.
The attention to the design and possibility to move your project wherever you want brought Akiba and his friends in realizing cases for the boards (can I say this is very japanese? [smile]):
I thought that having a way to transport the board safely would be an interesting feature to explore because it makes collaboration easier and also allows people to do prototyping and design at places like coffee shops or on the road.
Link to Freakduino-Chibi Documentation
via [freaklabs]
The attention to the design and possibility to move your project wherever you want brought Akiba and his friends in realizing cases for the boards (can I say this is very japanese? [smile]):
I thought that having a way to transport the board safely would be an interesting feature to explore because it makes collaboration easier and also allows people to do prototyping and design at places like coffee shops or on the road.
Link to Freakduino-Chibi Documentation
via [freaklabs]
The attention to the design and possibility to move your project wherever you want brought Akiba and his friends in realizing cases for the boards (can I say this is very japanese? [smile]):
I thought that having a way to transport the board safely would be an interesting feature to explore because it makes collaboration easier and also allows people to do prototyping and design at places like coffee shops or on the road.
Link to Freakduino-Chibi Documentation
via [freaklabs]