[Commotion-dev] RPi & Commotion

[Hans of Guardian]

On Apr 23, 2013, at 10:02 AM, Dan Staples wrote:

> 
> 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.

Definitely make Debian packages!  I can help here, and I'm a DD so I can upload them into the official repositories!  Then they automatically will go into all of Debian, Raspbian, Ubuntu, Mint, Knoppix, etc.  Let's figure out a workflow for getting these packaged up and into Debian.  Its more work up front, but it saves a ton of work in the long run.

I think that http://mentors.debian.net/ provides a nice interface for me to review packages that are maintained outside of the Debian infrastructure.  But I'm also happy to set up git repos for the packages in Debian's collab-maint.  Anyone can create an account and get commit perms.  I've recently switched to a really nice git workflow for the Debian packaging that makes the packaging based on both the upstream git and the upstream release tarballs.

.hc




> 
>> > 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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