Topic for #qi-hardware is now Copyleft hardware - http://qi-hardware.com | hardware hackers join here to discuss Ben NanoNote, atben / atusb 802.15.4 wireless, and other community driven hw projects | public logging at http://en.qi-hardware.com/irclogs
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<wolfspra1l>
cladamw: good morning in the new year! ;-)
<cladamw>
wolfspra1l, hi good morning in 2012 .:-)
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<wolfspraul>
I tried building kicad on my new i7-2670QM quad-core and finally wanted to see make -j in action...
<wolfspraul>
here's what I got: make 9.01 min; -j2 4.30 min; -j4 3.24 min; -j6 3.10 min; -j8 3.06 min
<wolfspraul>
so I guess from now on I will always try either -j8 or -j4 first, hopefully won't run into too many build weaknesses...
<wpwrak>
hehe :-)
<wpwrak>
yes, make -j saves quite a lot of time. if you have plenty of RAM to cache the whole tree, even better
<viric>
you can build with parallelism based on the system load
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<wolfspraul>
viric: how?
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<wpwrak>
with -l perhaps ?
<wpwrak>
but most machines have no significant background load anyway. well, except for perhaps some runaway flash player ...
<wpwrak>
i have a script called "np" that just does killall npviewer.bin nspluginviewer incredibly handy for keeping a healthy low load average :)
<lars_>
wolfspraul: if you have 8 cpus -j9
<wolfspraul>
he. thanks! trying that same build as before with -j9 brought it to 2.38 min (without any other load), quite a bit faster than -j8
<wolfspraul>
could be caching or filesystem related though, who knows. will go with -j9 from now on...
<Ayla>
try with -j64
<Ayla>
maybe it'll compile in less than a minute :)
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<whitequark>
wpwrak: I used to have `killall -9 python' in crontab. It worked just as well
<whitequark>
at least on ubuntu
<wpwrak>
;-))
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<whitequark>
does anyone know an open standard for low-power, low-complexity wireless sensor networks?
<whitequark>
preferably less complex than both zigbee and 6lowpan
<wpwrak>
you can always do your own on top of 802.15.4 :)
<whitequark>
i.e. something where all the stack can be fit in a single Arduino (no, I'm not going to use arduinos, but that describes the limit)
<whitequark>
hm
<wpwrak>
(like i did with dirtpan. though i wouldn't call that a "standard" :)
<wpwrak>
(or simpler)
<whitequark>
interesting
<whitequark>
can you suggest any plain 802.15.4 modules? i.e. not zigbee ones
<wpwrak>
there's of course the atben/atusb design ...
<whitequark>
anything which has SPI input and ready-to-use PCB/chip antenna
<whitequark>
_and_ has a low cost
<wpwrak>
atben is pretty close. you'll make you own pcb anyway, right ?
<wpwrak>
just reuse the design
<whitequark>
how hard do you think it will be to integrate the design on my own PCB as a part?
<whitequark>
it's RF and stuff
<wpwrak>
depends. is your pcb 0.8 mm ?
<whitequark>
and I have zero experience in RF and no instruments which I can use to debug RF problems
<whitequark>
hm
<wpwrak>
instruments are useful to have. no matter how you approach it. also pre-built modules can run into all sorts of problems. without at least a spectrum analyzer or similar, you'll never know if your design has troubles
<whitequark>
the prototyping service I'm currently using (iteadstudio.com) has the 0.8mm variant, and I think I can adapt all other stuff to that
<whitequark>
well, I can't afford a spectrum analyzer, I think
<wpwrak>
if your pcb is 1.6 mm, you'd have to adjust the pcb antenna of atben. that's unfortunately a bit of trial and error (and measurements)
<whitequark>
they're expensive as hell
<wpwrak>
yes. a usrp is often cheaper. but still not "cheap"
<whitequark>
Nordic semiconductor modules are cheaper than $5
<wpwrak>
but sometimes you can find places/friends who can let you use their equipment. universities can be great places for that.
<whitequark>
but they're also feature vendor lock-in
<wpwrak>
what range requirements to you have ? and how compliant to emission standards does it have to be ?
<whitequark>
I'm looking at all of the emerging open hardware projects on the topic ("internet of things" and similar stuff), and I've finally decided that's not an option
<wpwrak>
so you don't want to do this after all ?
<whitequark>
err
<whitequark>
I was talking about vendor lock-in
<whitequark>
not the whole project
<wpwrak>
ah, vendor lock-in always sucks :)
<whitequark>
(range) 20m in a house with maybe one or two reinforced concrete walls
<wpwrak>
it may make the beancounters in the back office happy, but they're not the engineers :)
<wpwrak>
hmm. then you need a power amp.
<whitequark>
(compliance) I don't care unless it's emitting two times more than my WiFi AP. No one will notice anyway
<whitequark>
I am not going to sell that commercially, nor I want to do anything with FCC (yet). It's just a pet project just for me
<wpwrak>
don't underestimate the fragility of wlan ;-) even with the meager 2 mW my atben/atusb can put into the air, i can mess up my wlan quite badly ;-)
<whitequark>
oh
<whitequark>
oh well.
<wpwrak>
the solution is of course not to make it hog the same channel
<whitequark>
my wlan disrupts the performance of my Bluetooth mouse, so I've decided to move it to 5GHz spectrum, as it's finally allowed in Russia
<wpwrak>
but if i'm in a mean mood, i can quite easily jam my wlan with it
<wpwrak>
okay, i'm all 2.4 GHz :)
<whitequark>
but I have neighbors...
<whitequark>
hm
<whitequark>
I never thought of wlan to be so fragile.
<wpwrak>
if you implement the usual channel access protocols, then you should be fine
<wpwrak>
it will clash every once in a while, but nobody will notice
<whitequark>
does 802.15.4 phy/mac include that already?
<whitequark>
I bet it does
<wpwrak>
my jamming happens when i deliberately make it misbehave (but still at a fraction of the power)
<wpwrak>
yes, that's normally there
<whitequark>
it's fine then
<whitequark>
(range) wait, I think I screwed up
<whitequark>
the range is about circle, not area
* whitequark
gets his tape measure
<wpwrak>
if you can do with 10 m free space or maybe 2-3 m through "nasty" walls, the at86rf231 is a good chip to start with. documentation is quite complete. and you have an existing project you can fork from.
<wpwrak>
for a larger range, you'd have to add an rf amp, though
<wpwrak>
range is radius :)
<whitequark>
yeah :)
<wpwrak>
(atben/atusb) plus, you can get usb dongles with known to be good specs. or, if you have a ben, atben. that's even cheaper.
<whitequark>
I don't have any two points more distant than 6m
<whitequark>
and there are no concrete walls inside anyway