[dorkbotpdx-blabber] IPv6 wireless MCU - dcgdark.net @DEFCON

[Erik Walthinsen]

A number of you saw the boards Mike Guthrie and I put together for
DEFCON, including a mockup badge, DIP-style adapters, and
coin-cell-powered "motes".

Well, we got those put together along with ~20 more motes, took them to
DEFCON, and gave our talk to a *packed* (600+) room. The post-talk Q&A
was so full Mike's wife literally got elbowed out of the room.... We
were literally mobbed by people scrambling to buy up the motes we had on
us so they could get started working on stuff. I know a pair of them
got to their new home in Australia yesterday, to be hooked up to some
Raspberry Pi's. A second talk in a tiny (~30) room was packed out with
people who *couldn't get into* the first talk. ;-)

The gist of the project is this: we're building hardware around the
Freescale MC13224V, which is an ARM microcontroller with 802.15.4 radio
(and all the ugly bits) in one package. They currently run Contiki with
a 6LowPAN stack, and are capable of routing all the way from the public
(IPv6) Internet. The demo had a small webserver on each mote assisting
with a protocol called COAP that is designed for push/pull sensor data.

We have a forum that's nothing but ideas for hardware and projects using
this network: <https://www.dcgdark.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=7>

The goal of the DEFCON talk was to get people working on a large-scale
hardware hacking project that not only tries to get more people
comfortable with hardware hacking, but to get those who already are to
move outside of their comfort zone (Arduino!) and learn something new.

Now the plan is to start getting quantities of hardware produced and
shipped out to people with all kinds of projects waiting for more than a
battery-powered mote with a serial port on it.

I've posted the first likely design at:

<https://www.dcgdark.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10#p18>

The main debate at this point is between a bare module and one with
onboard USB (and thus easier access to power and the bootloader). The
non-USB board has a 6-pin Arduino/LilyPad-style serial header to achieve
the same thing, on the theory that the boards are intended to be
wireless, so why waste money giving them all wired hardware?

Anyway, I'm hoping to bring what we have left (not much!) to the meeting
next week, but in the meantime I hope to get as much going on the forums
as possible, so we can finalize the design of the first production batch
and get the boards ordered mid next week.
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