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VNC Server for Toasters and Light-Switches
An anonymous reader submits: "How about using VNC to configure your toaster, microwave oven, or even your light-switches? Thanks to Adam Dunkels' micro-VNC server it is now possible to run a VNC server even on really small embedded 8-bit microcontrollers commonly found in such devices. The idea is that even low-cost devices that don't have a screen or graphics hardware could have a GUI, accessible over the network. To show that the server can run with very small amounts of memory, there is a demo server running on a Commodore 64. But the real question is: how would want to 'configure' their toasters using a GUI?"
Yeah, back in the day we used to say "Lets install Linux on a toaster!" and it was a joke.
But now someone actually took it seriously, and look whatcha dun!! You should be ashamed!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Scares me to think how fast it'll fall...
Now all i need is VNC for my microwave and oven, and i can control my whole kitchen from my computer.
Wouldn't it make more sense to draw the gui on the client machine, rather than putting beefier hardware in the toaster so it can send you bitmaps?
After all, your desktop machine will always have more computational ability than your toaster (the senient talking toaster from Red Dwarf notwithstanding).
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
So, when your toast is done, will there be a "pop-up" window telling you that? Sorry. Couldn't help it.
MadDad32
Quoth the page:
The pages you are currently watching are served by a web server running on a an Ethernet equipped 6510-based system with 64k RAM running at 1 MHz (a Commodore 64 with a TFE cartridge). The same system also exports two displays using VNC and the small uVNC server software.
Other servers have come down like they were Commodore 64's, but this one actually is one!
OK, this is very cool and I can't count how many projects I would love to do with this...
That being said, is this smart?
Picture: 10 years from now, some company sells one of these things, and it takes off. Then somebody finds a nasty security hole that fscks the toaster up. Would you like it if suddenly you find your house burnt down by some script kiddie doing a port scan?
Everything connected to the net is not always a good idea.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
....I thought the title was VNC Server for Toasters and Light-Sandwiches.
But then I realised there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but VNC is a screen-sharing or remote-control system, ne? On a small device where memory, processing time, and complexity is at a premium, why would you waste effort rasterizing a screen image so that VNC can ship it over.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to have a tiny HTTP server which sends out an HTML file and processes the results? This seems akin to someone scanning in a print-out of their email as an attachment instead of sending an email directly... =/
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Call me crazy, but all the light switches in my appartment, my parents house, and damn near everyone I know doesn't have, nor do they need a 8 bit microcontroller. Anyone care to post a link to a ordinary light switch that has and utilizes this?
As for the idea, it's not that bad at all, with one small flaw that I can see. It's great if I can access my toaster from my desk at work, but if I have to leave a piece of buttered bread in there all day just so it's toasted but soggy when I walk in the door, I'll just start making it when I walk in.
A Commodore 64 isn't really a small system, and therefore isn't a great demo. Truly small embedded systems have on the order of a kilobyte of ROM and a hundred bytes of RAM available, not 64KB.
Examples you might be familiar with include things like the BASIC Stamp and other PICs. Your toaster's built-in logic is going to resemble these much more closely than in does a general-purpose 8-bit computer.
--
Twoflower
Techsupport: Hi, how may I help you?
User: Hi, I got your ToasterVNC, and when i tried to install it on my toaster, all hell broke loose!
Techsupport: Can you describe what happened?
User: I opened the box, put the CD in my toaster's CD-ROM, pushed the lever, and a few minutes later the whole thing started smoking.
Techsupport: I think I know what the problem is. Take the whole thing back to the store, and tell them that you got an ID-ten-T error
User: Thanks!
oops, that's the CLI. I don't know about the GUI version.
Linux will never make proper toast
without Pantone for calibration.
I like my toast darker than my rommmate does. We could set up personal preferences for the toaster and have 3 or 4 'personal setting' buttons on the toaster. It's not worth putting a full gui on the toaster, but you could put some memory into the servo settings and have it controlled over the 'net.
The 'pop up window' when your toast is ready idea is, at worst, a good pun -- but which machine to pop-up the message to could be included in the 'personal prefs' button.
Then, of course, there's the original purpose of the 'MIT internet pop machine' -- which was to notify you of when the machine was out of pop, so you could save yourself a (fruitless) trip to the machine (which was a good distance away from the computer labs)..
If the toaster says it's in use, you can spend a couple more minutes surfing before you go down to make breakfast (or sneak in and steal the toast from your roommate when it's done).
Then again if your roommate is cute, and likes to make breakfast in sensuous undies, you might want to set the toaster to notify you when {s,}he hits the appropriate prefs button.
The possibilities are about as endless as the possibilities of attaching a video camera to a web server (I mean, who'd really want to do that?).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The most popular 8-bit chips today are the 8051 (multi-source), AVR (atmel), PIC (microchip), and HC08/HC11 (motorola). Cost is usually the primary consideration, and projects with volumes of 20k/year and up, it makes a lot of sense to do some or all of the project in assembly language so you can get the code into a smaller chip that costs $1 less. Multiply that $1 by 20k (or whatever production volume is expected) per year over the life of the product.
At the beginning of many projects, there's usually a list of "got to have" features, and "would be nice to have" features (as long as they don't add cost or significantly delay the product release). A good designer (and there are many) will ask a lot of questions about the actual application and make changes to the feature set that still meet the customer's needs (often times an improvement) but allow the code to be smaller, run at a slower speed (increase battery life or reduce the cost of the power supply circuitry), and use less RAM.
It's a very different world from PC software. The 8051, PIC, AVR and HC08/11 are available in many different flavors with different mixes of built-in peripherals and different amounts of code and ram memory.... and an amazing amount of work goes into making VERY efficient code so it can fit in a less expensive chip. On top of that, most products that ship with those 8-bit chips ARE UNDER WARRANTY for years, and a bad bug in the firmware usually means replacing the product for everyone who's effected.
I just can't see a VNC server on that "got to have" feature list, and I can't see it not increasing the cost enough to get quickly axe'd from the "nice to have" list. Even using an additional 128 or 256 bytes (yes, bytes, not Mbytes, not kbytes, but individual bytes) will almost certainly push a "normal" 8-bit microcontroller project up to a chip that costs $1 to $2 more. That's a lot of money when you go into production and start shipping thousands every month!!
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
If we run it on the coffee machine, will we have to run the JAVA version of the VNC viewer?
Earlier today, Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-Disney) announced legislation to allow copyright holders to use otherwise illegal hacking techniques to disrupt toasters, light switches, and other devices used by individuals believed to be pirating copyrighted works.
RIAA chair Hilary Rosen hailed the effort as a milestone in attempts at combatting Internet piracy. "The development of Internet-enabled toasters offers us vast new opportunities to hit the pirates where they live. 'Smoking out the bastards' will no longer be a figure of speech. It will be a reality.'"
An anonymous reader submits: "How about using an external control, made of plastic or metal, to configure your toaster, microwave oven, or even your light-switches? Thanks to Adam Dunkels' "dial", it is no longer necessary to run a VNC server on really small embedded 8-bit microcontrollers commonly found in such devices. The idea is that even low-cost devices that don't have a screen or graphics hardware could have a physical control, like a GUI only in 3-d space, accessible right on the device...But the real question is: who would want to 'configure' their toasters using a physical dial?"
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
yes, but it was the best a smoking lump o' plastic surrounding a the burnt out husk of a 6502 of its time!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I was immediately thinking of how much I could freak out the wife by making all the appliances turn themselves on and off. She still gets confused when the mouse on the home computer starts moving around on it's own while I'm at work.
It would be best to have an "appliance server" that is capable of handling the communications to the devices and generating interfaces from standard libraries created for appliance control. Then we could have an extremely lightweight communications protocol for the appliances, as they would only have to go so far as to detail their features to the server, and it would construct an interface for them.
This makes much more sense to me in the long run, as a central house server would be able to coordinate activities of numerous devices simultaneously with simple If/Then/Else statements. If you wanted coffee & toast in the morning, you could write something like this:
Beyond that, as appliances become more functional (refrigerators that know what's in them), a central system like this could also accept device notifications, telling you there is no milk or that the oven's timer went off.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
"Or Turn on your A/C from work because it's going to be a HOT afternoon. (Sure could use that today)."
Turning on AC's now? Wahtcha gonna do, send them Goatse?