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GENRIP for Ultra Low Cost Wireless Deployments
Gregory Perry writes "A South Florida company just released GENRIP, an open source (as in GPL) project for Linux that turns low cost serial line devices (such as 900 Mhz radios) into IP addressable nodes; right now the technology is being used by various robotics groups to replace existing wired tethers on robots with wireless radio links, but the important thing to mention is the ability to use cheap radios to create wireless lan segments without the power and cost requirements associated with 802.11 WLANS."
Any idea if this could be brought to other platforms, i.e. Win or Mac?
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pringles can?
They even state that it isnt a replacement for 802.11.
Unless you're moving relatively small amounts of non-critical information, GENRIP is probably not for you. GENRIP does not even attempt to compete with 802.11 wireless LAN equipment.
GENRIP doesn't even try to compete with 802.11 wireless networks, because that isn't what it's for. GENRIP is relatively slow (average of 120ms ping? pong! time), and TCP streaming abilities of 21k/second.
-Kaos
I could connect home devices for cheap with this, without having to lay a lot of wires throughout the house.
802.11b runs in the 2.4 GHz band and is interrupted by 2.4 GHz phones, microwaves, and various other devices. This thing runs at 900 MHz, and there are most definitely more 900 MHz phones out there to interrupt this signal. For small groups, maybe this'll work. But unless everyone is going to go back to a corded phone or upgrade their phones to 2.4 GHz, this won't work very well. Cheap, sure, but reliable and effective? Probably not.
not use my 900mhz cordless phone while using this.....
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This GENRIP project is based largely in part on the STRIP project at Stanford.
(And no, the STRIP project is not the name of the film crew for Girl Geeks Gone Wild - Winter Vacation In SoCal either. It stands for STarmode Radio IP.)
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I can imagine having some critical item hooked up (for example an O2 tank for grandma) to a computer for monitoring of regulation, and teenager gets on cordless phone to dial her friend, and the 02 tank goes crazy with full force, blowing up grandma like a cartoon balloon. - Not a good thing
Fine, the equipment may be cheap -- and it sounds like you get what you pay for. But what about the cost of man hours it takes to get this up and running. Not to mention the man hours it will take to support some hodge-podge solution to wireless. For all the trouble you will have to go to to get this crappy solution going, you could afford 802.11b that works out of the box on most distros anymore.
If you want to save some money cutting corners, then build some cheap pringles cantennas or something.
-gerbik
Have any of you priced serial radio modems recently?
We're talking far, far more expensive than even the more expensive wireless Ethernet cards. Check this out: Arrick's wireless links.. $650.
Perhaps there are some modules that, in a manufacturing situation, are pretty cheap. But you're going to have to spend a lot, unless you're interested in developing with TI's transceiver modules. Break out a very tiny soldering iron and a magnifying glass, those flatpacks can get pretty small (this I say right before actually soldering a similar sized chip).
...
Having said that, easily microcontroller interfacable 802.11b devices are (at least by rumor) beginning to show up on the market. I have no idea what the cost is tho.
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Look, if you guys can't afford a few cans of Pringles, I'll chip in a few bucks...
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I refuse to purchase this product until it supports the far superior .ogg format.
What makes this different from ppp?
South Florida is so different from the nothern part of the state... almost a different state in and on itself! :)
Check your kernel sources. Enable the ax.25 kernel modules and you too can enable tcp/ip over serial devices.
Add in the supplemential toys which include a niftly "inted"-style super server and you can have it fire applications off on that serial lan, or use kernel routing to route to the Internet.
Spiffy.
It matters to me since I live in Miami, Florida! South Florida is known as the gateway to latin america and it has a strong technology workforce. Too bad I recently got laid off and have to do freelance work from home. Maybe "Design On Demand, Inc." is accepting applications?
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If you are using an OmniDirectional, you may have problems. If you have a p2p higly focuesed antenna, well, chances are good no problem (but don't use your phone in the line of sight of the close antenna).
According to this document, the Microhard MHX-910 has a range 20 miles (line-of-sight) or more. I'm guessing (and hoping) this is omnidirectional. That could prove to be very useful in many applications where the omnidirectional range of 802.11b doesn't cut it!
:^)
Also, did anybody notice that the company's name, "Microhard", is the opposite of "Microsoft"?
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those radios are MORE expensive than 802.11 cards.
I can get a pair of 802.11 cards for $20.00 each on ebay (ISA type not pcmcia) or even cheaper is the old wavelan cards.. Granted I cant talk to embedded items like a 68hc11 or a Pic with an ISA card, but for what they are trying to do, it's certianly a whole bunch cheaper than buying the 910MHZ devkits they are using..
when someone says "ultra low cost" I expect it to mean "cheaper than what you can do now."
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Aren't ricochet wireless modems serial-communicable radio modems? You can get the older ones for fairly cheap, and the newer ones for probably about $30-40 a piece. Older ones being preferable in areas where Ricochet has been reactivated, due to issues with them deliberately crippling your point-to-point connectivity with the newer modems.
The company I work for is currently in the process in changing out the worn wiring harnesses in one of our 3-axis industrial robots. What a giant pain in the ass! Several weeks ago we were talking about how much better it would be if there were no cables (i.e. wireless) between the controller and each robot axis. Less cables = less failures = less downtime.
While this would greatly simplify transmitting the control information, you still need to feed power and compressed air/vacuum via cable/tubing.
Are you kidding? That would be great!!! I've been trying to bump off the old bag for a while, the bitch is too stubborn to just die.
It used to be that the IEEE would only complete OUI blocks (16M addresses). They charge $1650 for that, but now you can buy an "Individual Address Block" of 256 addresses for $550. For locally administrated addresses you don't have to pay anything, but of course you're not guaranteed that they are unique.
For more info, see the IEEE registration authority pages.
There's also a rule that you aren't allowed to use a new OUI until you've used up 90% of your existing allocation. But it's obviously not enforced, since Cisco has over 190 assigned OUIs (not including those of companies they've acquired), and I very much doubt that they've shipped 2.85 billion Ethernet ports.
'Cause you can't have all three.
I guess that old adage is still true as ever. Still, this seems like good tech for appropriate applications.
How about authenticated remote access? You carry a small trasmitter (key-fob?) that trasmits an encrypted key over an ultra-low-power encrypted signal (to reduce chances of interception) to a radio receiver at the door which relays it to a server. The server verifies the key and opens the door/gate. All without having to do anything other than approach the door.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
How is this any better than SLIP or PPP? The document never mentions any advantages.
In the example they use the nonrouted (and nonunique) IP addresses in the 192.168.x.x range. Wouldn't this be a problem if you had 2 groups of people doing this independently within radio range of each other?
How unlikely is this in an urban area?
You'll probably see pretty cheap (my guess is $20-$50) Bluetooth serial dongles coming out in 2003. And, of course, you can already get unpackaged Bluetooth modules from Ericsson that effectively have a Bluetooth connector. And you'll probably see more PICs with Bluetooth capabilities. Those are likely to be a more convenient and robust solution than special-purpose 900MHz serial hacks. They will also allow you to talk to the serial devices from any Bluetooth dongle, not just a proprietary one.
You can, of course, already get Bluetooth USB dongles for around $30. Those are really great little pieces of hardware, and you can stick them on just about any computer that needs to communicate wirelessly.
I seriously doubt that the boards that GENRIP works with are "ultra low-cost". Their web site doesn't have any prices that I could see, and these kinds of boards tend to be costly.
Hello!
I live in Russia where a) It's illegal to use anything 2.4 GHz without a costly permit; b) It's illegal to transmit anything except the speech on CB band, c) Severity of law is compensated with inactivity of law enforcement, d) Typical income is $100/month and e) All equipment is much more expensive due to import taxes.
So, I try to design something similar, closing my eyes to all legalities since the law simply cannot be observed. There are 2 projects - 2400/4800 bps CB modem and the 115200 bps TRX working on ChM/FM band (63..108 MHz).
I try to use the existing AX-25 layer. It's part of Linux kernel, there is WAMPES package that hopefully works under FreeBSD. I have no idea about TCP/IP over AX25 under Windows - I am BSD specialist and don't know Windows at all. Please recommend me some free/opensource or at least shareware TCP/IP over AX25 for Windows, if you can.
The 115200 project uses TDA7021 as both the RX and TX exciter, PIC16F873 and some circuitry. Duplex mode will require 2 devices per station. The projects are in initial state since they will be required only when the communications authority introduces the metered phone access, that is being planned during more than 20 years, discussed but not introduced. Maybe the government is afraid of people's fury.
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