This has been a long post in arriving.  Why?  I keep finding new stuff to throw into the project.  I’ll do some of the major items right now, but there will be more as we go along – there’s a LOT going on in the embedded and low power processor and sensor spaces.

Let’s start with the processors:

This is my SJJ Micro Framework board (I’ve stuck the breadboard on top.)  I’ll be using this for where I need a small, low powered remote processing unit that has access to an Ethernet cable (very handy feature that last one.) 

Next is my GHI USBizi board – again, Micro Framework, but smaller and with more serial ports.  This is useful for even lower power situations, and those with the need for local storage and USB Host capabilities.  Note no Ethernet onboard, but I’ve got some ways around that a bit further down.

And a base Arduino (with prototype shield.)  Useful for quick and cheap, but fewer control lines and memory/storage size.  It is worth a note that the Arduino Mega is out and answers a number of these concerns. 

And (not quite stand alone but even easier to prototype with) my old V1 Phidgets 8/8/8 controller.  Requires at least a USB connection to a PC so it’s not for remote usage, but it’s really easy to put together various configurations, has a LOAD of great sample code, exposes functionality as a web service, and has Robotics Studio support for features.  Oh, and the wiring is keyed for the analog I/O so I don’t fry all my sensors when I get distracted and forget to make SURE that everything’s hooked up right.  (Yes, I tend to multitask far too often.)

A number of XBee radios – not the processors themselves, but allowing me to do wireless serial over some nice distances.  Handling point to point communications right out of the box, this nice little radio is fairly inexpensive, pretty good with power, and it has a good many tricks up it’s sleeve (including star network and mesh networking configurations.)  Below I show the radio itself and one of the several breakout boards that are used to talk with the radio both from the embedded controllers above and my main controller computer.

The Sparkfun weather board.  This is a prototype from Sparkfun that gathers up environmental data and reports on it in a text format through a serial interface at a rate of 1Hz.  I’m throwing this in on the controller section because it really is stand alone – the processing happens locally and then opens up that data for remote usage.  I could even rewrite the firmware for different local functionality (but I probably won’t.)

Next time – OK, so you’ve got a bunch of procs floating around – what are you going to use them for?

Tags: Coding Outside The Box

So what’s this all about?  You may have heard me talking about this during the spring, but with all of the activity and talks during March, I’m making myself sit down and put some of it together. 

The base concept of this series of posts is that if you want to be be your most effective in architecting and implementing solutions today, you have to take advantage of all the resources available.  Today there’s so much going on and things move so fast that we often either just look at the items that are top on the buzz list, or we reach for the tried and true because we know it works and we just need to Get Stuff Done. 

What I’m hoping to do here is take a number of technologies and tie them together in a way that’s different from the mainstream of just Desktop/Laptop development or Web Browser development.  My goal is to pull in some of the custom hardware that’s available today at very reasonable prices and tie that into some of the web services (lower case on that phrase) and use that to put systems together that can actually help me stay aware, in touch, and connected with the information and people I’m interested in.  Plus doing something like this helps be justify blocking out time to implement some of the things I’ve been talking about for a while.  I’ve had a number of people asking me to come speak on things such as Smart Environments, Ambient Information, Cloud Computing, and Adaptive Architecture – so in doing this I’ll both have some follow on information for them to continue the conversations that get started, and I’ll have the hardware and services put in place for examples.

So that being said – what are you going to get out of it?  Hopefully some ideas and inspiration.  Maybe some techniques.  I’m going to be doing the articles live – I have a rough outline of the first part of the series that I want to cover, but I can definitely tell you that where it ends up will be influenced by comments or observations from the blog here and through other mechanisms.  Let me know what you think.  Let me know what’s interesting.  And let me know when I put my foot in my mouth (because I will sooner or later.) 

So enough about the conceptual.  Next up, the first batch of technologies.

Tags: Coding Outside The Box

I’d mentioned the USBizi was being worked on here and at a couple of events.  Well, for those who have been asking me about it, it’s now shipping.  And not just with the 2.5 Micro Framework, but there is also a beta version of the 3.0 Micro Framework available.  You can get the official info and ordering locations at http://www.ghielectronics.com/details.php?id=113

Tags: Coding Outside The Box