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."

Comments

not a replacement

[nogoodmonkey]

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.

Unfortunantly, it's not like 802.11

[kaosrain]

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

900 MHz Interference?

[JayDiggity]

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.

Re:900 MHz Interference?

[Yokaze]

That's why in Europe there are not 900MHz phones.
In Europe the eqiuvalent is 868-870MHz..

Re:dare I ask

[faeryman]

Possibly. It's based on STRIP, which has a Mac port sort of. OSX would have a much easier time of running this than OS 9, obviously, since I think it needs slattach and net-tools. I'm not 100% sure though.

Give credit where it's due

[ekrout]

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.)

Re:dare I ask

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Just get a compiler and port it.
I can promise you it won't be plug and play, but it is definitely possible. The code may work but you will need to replace any linux system and library calls that don't exist in windows, with ones that do exist in windows.

Think cygwin. www.cygwin.com. This is a collection of programs and libraries that are on linux, ported to windows.

This may or may not help with this task.

cheers!

Low cost?

[cybermace5]

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).

Re:Low cost?

[dethl]

It does have something good: better range (300'-3000'). Apple says their Airport Base Station gets 150'

Not necessarily cheaper.

[Hayzeus]

It should be borne in mind that a decent 900mhz radio modem is NOT generally cheaper than the equivalent 802.11b device. The real advantage (in mobile robotics) is that radio modems don't require the associated infrastructure to support an 802.11B device (like a PC, for instance) and can thus be indirectly cheaper.

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.

Linux Has Had an Equivalent

[zentec]

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.

Great range with the Microhard wireless modem

[Jon Abbott]

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"? :^)