I know, we had this question already several times before , but I'm not sure
about the current state and if some of you have made new experiences in this
domain: is there any off-the-shelf hardware available that provides an IEEE
802.15.4 interface for Linux systems - preferable something like a USB stick?
If yes, does this hardware work with a standard Linux vanilla kernel and which
version is required? Or does it need any custom/developer version of a driver?
How well are upper layers like 6lowpan supported by Linux in the meantime? And
has anyone ever tried to connect such a device to a RIOT driven device?
we are using an IEEE 802.15.4 transceiver-module that uses an CC2520-device. Currently its used as an add-on module for our Wega SBC, but we are planning to build an USB-stick like device as well.
The transceiver was tested, using the the latest available Linux-kernel (net-next).
We can see the packets in promiscous-mode, but currently we are facing problems in receiving them in Userspace. This is an status of November, currently we are picking up this topic again and I hope we will have some news about that soon.
For testing purposes we could provide some hardware devices for RIOT-Developers.
We are able to use a Raspberry Pi and sniff 802.15.4 packets. We have a hardware based on the AT86RF212B which has a 802.15.4 MAC within it. It works for the India band at 865-867MHz transmitting 27dBm but supports the EU band (868 MHz). We should be able to communicate as well and can share some details on the status on the same.
The AT86RF212B driver will also be released once fully tested on the RIOT (it is similar to the AT86RF2xx) as also for the Linux kernel.
Please let me know (offline please) if there is interest within the user group here to allow us to schedule a lot for sale for the AT86RF212B module.
We are able to use a Raspberry Pi and sniff 802.15.4 packets. We have a hardware based on the AT86RF212B which has a 802.15.4 MAC within it. It works for the India band at 865-867MHz transmitting 27dBm but supports the EU band (868 MHz). We should be able to communicate as well and can share some details on the status on the same.
The AT86RF212B driver will also be released once fully tested on the RIOT (it is similar to the AT86RF2xx) as also for the Linux kernel.
Please let me know (offline please) if there is interest within the user group here to allow us to schedule a lot for sale for the AT86RF212B module.
I know, we had this question already several times before , but I'm not sure
about the current state and if some of you have made new experiences in this
domain: is there any off-the-shelf hardware available that provides an IEEE
802.15.4 interface for Linux systems - preferable something like a USB stick?
I can recommend Openlabs RaspberryPi 802.15.4 radio [0]. It's for
2,4GHz, uses Atmel radio, and is very reasonably priced. Delivery by
USPS took 12 days to Poland which is not bad at all for 8$.
If yes, does this hardware work with a standard Linux vanilla kernel and which
version is required? Or does it need any custom/developer version of a driver?
How well are upper layers like 6lowpan supported by Linux in the meantime?
Vanilla kernel doesn't support 6LoWPAN yet. Up to my knowledge, the
development is currently happening in bluetooth-next branch [1].
Previously it happened in linux-wpan-next, and net-next. There is a
tutorial on Openlabs [3] which is still mostly correct.
I also started fixing old RPL implementation from Joao Pedro Taveira
to work with new branch. Results are promising, prefixes are
distributed, but multihop doesn't work yet [3].
And has anyone ever tried to connect such a device to a RIOT driven device?
I tried it with old Atmel Raven motes running Contiki. I don't have
any ARM board yet for RIOT to check.
To sum up: this option works and it's cheap to try - if you have a
RaspberryPi, you just need to spend 18$ to start developing.
we have a couple of these USB things [1]. Martin has made a few tests with them. If I am not mistaken the sticks show up on Linux as a network interface without any problems.
we have the R-IDGE 6LoWPAN router USB sticks running on Linux. We succesfully made them talk with the samr21-xpro and the iot-lab_M3.
But, currently no unicast communication was succesfull from board to stick only with multicast address as next-hop.
However, we succesfully transmitted UDP packets forth and back using multicast next-hop.
As Raphael wrote, when plugged the stick is directly recognized by Linux as NIC and shows up on ifconfig.
The 6LoWPAN specific configurations, such as setting the PAN/context or the channel, are made with a provided configuration tool (cfgtool [1]) which can be built from source.
There is also a RPL Edge router daemon available [2], which we want to test with the boards.