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Help wanted for top secret project

Posted by Jordi Muñoz on January 2, 2011 at 5:00pm

Happy new year folks!

DIYdrones hardware development team needs some help, if you think you can contribute in something please PM, our requirements are:

-Any microcontroller capable to handle a little web server can be used.

-The hardware must have WiFi access (behave as an access point).

-The hardware must have SD card slot (where you can store html files).

-Must be cheap (< $100).

The system must be capable to read a HTML file stored on the SD card (including pictures) and create a web server accessible via WiFi (acting as an access point). When the user is connected to the Wifi device-must type any direction like "http://192.168.1.100" and be able to load the HTML files stored on the SD. Something similar to a home router.

The HTML files must be able to read/write to the IO, analog and UART pins of the same microcontroller....

What we need from you are suggestions of the right hardware, software contributions and connections to anybody capable to help us.

Anyone? ;-)

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Comments

Petr Hubacek January 5, 2011 at 3:18am

@Michael

1) why?
2) why a completely new GCS architecture is needed for flight visualisation? precission: Existing GCS will be a second possibility to visualise data. The new system surely will have its own GCS.
Developer

Michael Smith January 5, 2011 at 2:18am

@Petr

1) No. What you've said makes no sense.

2) As clearly stated already, the device is part of a completely new GCS architecture.
Petr Hubacek January 5, 2011 at 2:08am

Hi all. I have two points to ask you for experiencea and need some validation:

1) Do you agree with following? If not why?

The proto HW/SW solution shall be as simple as possible and newer versions can replace it later. For the SW side, when we have an WLAN/LAN/WAN and possibility to have several ports and clients opened at the same time in any SW including arduino, I would sudgest to set a port 80 for webserver, 8000 for TCP connection for securised data transfer and the port 9000 for UDP data stream. This easiest configuration uses all the adventages of TCP and UDP and will be robust and fast enough at the same time. I don't know to implement here mentioned websockets, so I don't propose it for this proto, but a mutation can be made later (There will be many of them :-).

2) This project has to allow to be usable by any GCS. Has anyone already any experiance with a virtual COM creation? Its for any GCS already made.
Tim Michals January 4, 2011 at 10:14pm

Ok, yeah, this is one of my many todo projects, get a USB dongle with 1500mw connect it to a host arm cortex LPC1768 or http://code.google.com/p/micropendous/ something like that supports host and configure for adhoc mode. And port the CDC Ethernet driver from BSD etc....
bGatti January 4, 2011 at 10:09pm

This is a 2009 project which Implements a very simple WebServer on an 8bit Atmel

http://alyer.frihost.net/web_server.htm

Presumably one could use the Microchip WIFI module with this approach.
carlitos January 4, 2011 at 10:09pm

Maybe it was mentioned before, but a BlackWidow with an SD card shield should do the job quite easilly.

Cheers and good luck.
Developer

Michael Smith January 4, 2011 at 9:55pm

@Tim what documentation is available implies that there is support in the firmware for adhoc mode. Given that it's not routing, infrastructure mode would be overkill.
Tim Michals January 4, 2011 at 9:51pm

There is a lot of code for a soft AP, it must send out beacons, etc, Not saying it cannot do it, but would be nice to get verification. Also, how many nodes it can support, it must atleast do 2.
Developer

Michael Smith January 4, 2011 at 9:08pm

@Tim the firmware as shipped is client-only. The documentation for the SDK implies that you could write server code with it.
Developer

Michael Smith January 4, 2011 at 9:07pm

@earl you still need the toolchain, BSP and documentation. If you're lucky the $2500 might even include a few minutes of support.