[Commotion-dev] RPi & Commotion

[Dan Staples]

On 04/22/2013 02:05 PM, The Doctor wrote:
> On 04/22/2013 09:47 AM, Dan Staples wrote:
>
> > OLSR to allow them to mesh multi-hop. I also had them running from
> > battery packs I got from Radio Shack :)
>
> What kind of battery packs were you using for them?  What's their
> discharge profile look like?
>

Not sure what the discharge profile is, I just grabbed the largest
capacity USB battery packs I found. It's basically one of those "Charge
your iPhone on the go!" type of battery packs. I'm currently working on
using D cells to power the RPi, but the cheap step-up converter I'm
using doesn't provide a clean enough 5V...
> > a custom Commotion Raspbian image that you can put on an SD card
> > and boot your RPi from.
>
> A few things about building on top of Raspbian:
>
> Raspbian/Wheezy is remarkably stable at this point in time.  Keep in
> mind that even if you have the experimental repository turned on,
> everything available will still be a couple of releases behind.  If
> something goes wonky, you might want to look into a custom compile of
> the package with a newer checkout.
>
> Make Debian packages for your code and build a repository for them.
> You won't be sorry.
>
> AIDE and Blueprint are good for keeping track of the Debian-level
> config files that you'll have to modify to make everything work
> smoothly.  You'll have to reconfigure more than it seems at first scratch.
>
> For what it's worth, we used the packaged version of olsrd in the
> Wheezy repository (0.6.2-2.1) with the version we built for Byzantium
> v0.3a (v0.6.4) and encountered no compatibility problems.  Your
> olsrd.conf file Just Worked(tm) with it. :)
>
> To free up compute cycles, turn off the X desktop.  You won't be sorry.
>

We have plans to package Commotion components for Debian and a PPA for
Ubuntu. I currently have a custom Raspbian image for my MediaGrid
project, which I made by mounting and chrooting into a Raspbian image,
and then installing/removing components and adding configurations and
boot scripts. But yes, Debian packages would be ideal. There's plenty of
things like X and Pulse audio that can be removed.

> > As for wifi cards, I recommend any USB cards that use the
> > ath9k_htc driver. My top choices for cards are:
>
> These are what we got to work when we ported Byzantium to the RasPi:
>
> https://github.com/Byzantium/ByzPi/wiki/ByzPi---Byzantium-on-Raspberry-Pi-Network-Hardware-Information

Useful list. Did they all work okay? Even the high powered ones?

>
> > I have only tested #1 with the RPi. I am worried about #4 working
> > with the RPi, in terms of its power consumption. But in general,
> > the
>
> If the power consumption of a wireless interface gives you problems,
> plug it into a powered USB hub.  We have a couple of setups in which
> the RasPi and wireless device are plugged into (and thus powered by)
> such a thing, and it makes for a neat development package.
>
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-- 
Dan Staples

Open Technology Institute
https://commotionwireless.net

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