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TCP/IP Meets Physical Reality

Posted by timothy on from the connecting-things-to-stuff dept.

An anonymous reader writes "When Google is clouding the borderline between web and the desktop, a much, much smaller project is blurring the border between the Internet and the physical reality: the newly released Contiki operating system version 2.2.1. Contiki runs on networked wireless sensors that are used for anything from road tunnel monitoring for fire rescue operations to collecting vital statistics from ice hockey players. These sensors typically have as little as a few kilobytes of memory and a few milliwatts of power budget — a thousandth of the resources of a typical PC computer — yet Contiki provides them with full TCP/IP connectivity. Meanwhile, San Francisco is monitoring parking spaces with wireless technology."

1 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Also runs on C64 by Saffaya · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looking at the wikipedia page :

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiki

    Confirms why I thought of the C64 when I read Contiki.
    Here is a list of supported systems from wikipedia :

            * Computers:
                        o Apple II family[1]
                        o Atari 8-bit[1]
                        o Atari ST
                        o Atari Portfolio
                        o Casio Pocketview
                        o Commodore PET[1]
                        o Commodore VIC 20[1]
                        o Commodore 64[1]
                        o Commodore 128[1]
                        o GP32
                        o Oric
                        o PC-6001
                        o Sharp Wizard
                        o x86-based Unix-like systems, on top of GTK+ as well as directly using the X Window System[2]
            * Video game consoles:
                        o PC Engine
                        o Sega Dreamcast
                        o Sony PlayStation

            * Handheld game consoles:
                        o Nintendo Game Boy
                        o Nintendo Game Boy Advance

    Impressive features as well :

    A full installation of Contiki includes the following features:

            * Multitasking kernel
            * Optional per-application pre-emptive multithreading
            * Protothreads
            * TCP/IP networking
            * Windowing system and GUI
            * Networked remote display using Virtual Network Computing
            * A web browser (claimed to be the world's smallest)
            * Personal web server
            * Simple telnet client
            * Screensaver