Making the wireless connection

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Elias Strandell Erstorp

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Dec 16, 2014, 5:54:13 AM12/16/14
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Hello again :)

As our Skype-meeting was cancelled, I thought I will put my most "urgent" question here.

I'll use either 3DR radios or XBee for telemetry. As these will be connected to BBBs serial ports, I'm wondering if the SerialOverTCP task
can be used to create a TCP socket with one of the ports that DUNE is using for Announcement/Discovery. 
If a TCP socket is then created over the serial port on the PC, will Neptus and DUNE then find each other automatically?
I'm thinking about using PySerial or some third-party Java library for creating the socket, but maybe there's an easier way?

Best Regards,
Elias Strandell

Elias Strandell Erstorp

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Dec 16, 2014, 6:05:57 AM12/16/14
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Or are they only Announcing at UDP?

Elias Strandell Erstorp

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Dec 16, 2014, 10:59:58 AM12/16/14
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After creating some TCP sockets I realised that the Announce task is using only UDP. I'll have to look at my options...

// Elias

José Braga

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Dec 16, 2014, 4:12:55 PM12/16/14
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Hi Elias,

I am the navigation guy so I may say something stupid. In that case, someone from our group will correct me :)
Here are my suggestions:

Transports/Announce is responsible to send the announce. You're correct this is only using UDPSocket. I guess only slight modifications are required (like using a TCPSocket object) so that information goes through TCP instead.
Otherwise, maybe add a new Transports/SerialOverTCP type task, this time defining UDP Sockets?
Other options would be to use SerialOverTCP and a few more nuggets to produce drivers for the 3DR radio and XBee.. ?

Let me check with my colleagues their opinion and I'll get back to you asap

Regards
José Braga

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Ricardo Martins

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Dec 16, 2014, 5:35:41 PM12/16/14
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Hi Elias,

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 9:12 PM, José Braga <eejb...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Elias,

I am the navigation guy so I may say something stupid. In that case, someone from our group will correct me :)
Here are my suggestions:

Transports/Announce is responsible to send the announce. You're correct this is only using UDPSocket. I guess only slight modifications are required (like using a TCPSocket object) so that information goes through TCP instead.
Otherwise, maybe add a new Transports/SerialOverTCP type task, this time defining UDP Sockets?
Other options would be to use SerialOverTCP and a few more nuggets to produce drivers for the 3DR radio and XBee.. ?

Let me check with my colleagues their opinion and I'll get back to you asap

Regards
José Braga

2014-12-16 15:59 GMT+00:00 Elias Strandell Erstorp <moe...@gmail.com>:
After creating some TCP sockets I realised that the Announce task is using only UDP. I'll have to look at my options...

// Elias


On Tuesday, December 16, 2014 12:05:57 PM UTC+1, Elias Strandell Erstorp wrote:
Or are they only Announcing at UDP?

On Tuesday, December 16, 2014 11:54:13 AM UTC+1, Elias Strandell Erstorp wrote:
Hello again :)

As our Skype-meeting was cancelled, I thought I will put my most "urgent" question here.

I'll use either 3DR radios or XBee for telemetry. As these will be connected to BBBs serial ports, I'm wondering if the SerialOverTCP task
can be used to create a TCP socket with one of the ports that DUNE is using for Announcement/Discovery. 
If a TCP socket is then created over the serial port on the PC, will Neptus and DUNE then find each other automatically?
I'm thinking about using PySerial or some third-party Java library for creating the socket, but maybe there's an easier way?

Our Announcement/Discovery implementation uses only UDP sockets because we use IPv4 multicast and broadcast to advertise nodes in the local network (TCP doesn't support that). I'm not familiar with 3DR radios so I will not discuss those, but I did some work with ZigBee radios a while back. If I were to implement support for your setup using ZigBee radios and assuming a star topology (base station at the center) I would configure the radios in transparent mode and use Transports/Serial (not SerialOverTCP) to serve as the message bus sink/source to/from the ZigBee network. I would then write a very simple task to be used in the base station that would listen for incoming data and create the required announcements for Neptus to process. This task would also be responsible for routing back packages from Neptus to the proper radio link.

Regards,
Ricardo Martins
 

Best Regards,
Elias Strandell

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Elias Strandell Erstorp

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Dec 17, 2014, 5:18:27 PM12/17/14
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Thank you both for your replies!

... use Transports/Serial (not SerialOverTCP) to serve as the message bus sink/source to/from the ZigBee network. I would then write a very simple task to be used in the base station that would listen for incoming data and create the required announcements for Neptus to process. This task would also be responsible for routing back packages from Neptus to the proper radio link.

I don't see how this is done in the DUNE context. How is the serial line configured as a message bus for IMC messages? Concerning base station, if I understood you correctly, 
I need to write a program that reads from the serial line and uses an IMC parser to interpret and dispatch the messages locally? I need some hands-on advice on what to look at...
In a longer perspective those tasks may be relatively complex if they're supposed to support networking of multiple vehicles. Maybe acquiring some other wireless solution is the way after all.

Best wishes, 
Elias Strandell

Elias Strandell Erstorp

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Jan 13, 2015, 11:14:18 AM1/13/15
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Hi guys!

I've been trying to set up an Ad-hoc network between my Mac and BBB. I can access the BeagleBone using ssh, but Neptus (Java output in terminal) gives 
and error message which says that the "network is unreachable". The ad-hoc network is simply created through the OSX UI and I get the following information from "System report" and running ifconfig in OSX. I've played around a bit with netmask and broadcast addresses on the BB, but that doesn't seem to do it. Do you have any experience with this/clue about the issue?
Since it's possible to ssh between the two, I guess they're on the same network after all?

  Type: AirPort

  Hardware: AirPort

  BSD Device Name: en0

  IPv4 Addresses: 169.254.101.76

  IPv4:

  AdditionalRoutes:

  DestinationAddress: 169.254.101.76

  SubnetMask: 255.255.255.255

  DestinationAddress: 169.254.0.0

  SubnetMask: 255.255.0.0

  Addresses: 169.254.101.76

  Configuration Method: DHCP

  ConfirmedInterfaceName: en0

  Interface Name: en0

  Subnet Masks: 255.255.0.0



| => sudo ifconfig en0

Password:

en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

ether 3c:15:c2:d8:30:ca 

inet6 fe80::3e15:c2ff:fed8:30ca%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4 

inet 169.254.101.76 netmask 0xffff0000 broadcast 169.254.255.255

nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>

media: autoselect

status: active


Best Regards,
Elias Strandell

Elias Strandell Erstorp

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Jan 15, 2015, 11:25:45 AM1/15/15
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It's working!
Not quite sure what the problem was.

Pedro Calado

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Jan 15, 2015, 11:44:04 AM1/15/15
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Good to know you've managed to make it work. I'm sorry about the delay but I don't think we've experienced any similar issue here.
Cheers,

Pedro Calado

On Jan 15, 2015 4:25 PM, "Elias Strandell Erstorp" <moe...@gmail.com> wrote:
It's working!
Not quite sure what the problem was.

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