MP on Raspberry Pi

[Leonard Payne]

Hi Guys

I'm playing around with a couple of Rasp Pi in order to have some understanding of Meshing. I've not been able to get anything working.

Is there available for testing please an .img file to run on the reaspberry that would help me 'tinker'?

Thanks

[T Gillett]

Hi Leonard

I have not looked at RaPi at all for VT SECN, mainly because it does not have intrinsic wifi capability.

However if you have OpenWrt (preferably the stable AA 12.09 release) running on the RaPi and you have a wifi device attached that properly supports wifi AP and Adhoc modes of operation, then you have the basis for adding the batman-adv wifi mesh package.

If you have a choice, try to get an Atheros based wifi device as that will be most similar to our already supported devices.

If you get to that stage, then it is reasonably straightforward to port the SECN firmware to the platform.

If you have this working, please send me the /etc/config/network and ../wireless configuration files and we can look at giving you a tarball to set up the SECN firmware on it.  

Regards

Terry

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[Michel Daggelinckx]

Openwrt has experimental image for the PI.

opkg allows to install batman-adv

unfortunately the secn interface is not part of openwrt.

The PI is unbrickable so i suggest you try to build the firmware yourself.
The PI could be an affordable supernode in a VT network so i think its wirth the effort.

Michel

Leonard Payne schreef op 28/03/2014 0:10:

[T Gillett]

The issue as I see it is around the WiFi device that you use with the pi.

The wireless configuration will depend on the type of USB WiFi device you choose to get and plug in to the pi.

Also the adhoc mode support in USB WiFi devices has been problematic in the past, but if you can select a device that works ok, then it is straightforward to build the rest of SECN around it.

If you have one working I would be interested to see the wireless and network config files from it.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/village-telco-dev/5335BF0A.4010009%40gmail.com.

[Leonard Payne]

Thank you all for your responses. To be frank, I gave up coding over 25 years ago and my eyes are getting too old to pick it up.
I decided to order 2 x MP2's as a start to tinkering. I was impressed with some of the distances that can be covered in the Australian experiments.

I liked the Raspberry's because of their price point although I appreciate the point about ad-hoc wifi working being a problem with plugin dongles. Nonetheless, the processor speed on the Raspberry is very good. I've got one already attached to my own router and configured the Raspberry with Asterix/Incredible PBX. Got it working with sip phones etc. I just couldnt get it to Mesh. Couldn't get Byzantium to load and HSMM had problems with the wifi dongles.

I'm looking forward to getting my MP2's. I assume that SIP Phones will be able to get onto the units and that otherwise the MP2's work the same as the MP1 but without the hard phone socket??

Keep up the good work

leonard

[DE 'Tad' Heckaman III]

I used a Pi with the MP01... just plugged it up on the ethernet side.. I generally try to minimize the items that are on the mesh, and if it can be hard wired, even better. IMO, the less devices on the Wifi network, the less 'chatter' that happens and the better the throughput. Computer -> wifi -> ethernet -> Pi is half the wifi traffic than Computer -> wifi -> wifi -> Pi.  Of course you could be connecting directly to Pi over wireless, but that still ties up the wireless channel for other traffic. 

One pro-tip: Make sure PoE isn't leaking back to the Pi. When connecting the PI up to the MP01, I was injecting the power in the MP over the voice wires or directly into the MP itself. What this meant was that the power was coming BACK down the ethernet line and into the Pi. The Pi, not being setup for gigabit or PoE, just grounded (or had resistors on) the lines that the power was coming in.. shorting out the PoE lines. It wasn't a bad enough short that the equipment failed to power on... the MP01 continued working fine. However the ethernet jack on the Pi got very warm (almost finger-burning temp). I ended up cutting the blue and brown pairs out of the middle of a cable to prevent the power from back-feeding into the Pi. Both pieces of equipment handled it well over a period of a week or so. I noticed a 'hot-electronics' smell, and eventually picked the Pi up and noticed how hot it was. 

Tad

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Tad Heckaman