[Commotion-dev] Commotion Wireless on Raspberry PI

[Dan Staples]

On 05/27/2014 03:12 PM, Joshua Besneatte wrote:
> Thanks! See my replies below :
> 
> On 05/27/2014 11:01 AM, Dan Staples wrote:
>> This is really fantastic! It's great to see the accompanying writeup as
>> well, so others can build off your work. (Also encouraging to see you
>> used the writeups from Jumoke--one of our GNOME Outreach Project for
>> Women applicants--as a starting point). I had previously been able to
>> mesh RPis with Commotion routers just by running olsrd on the Pi (and a
>> bunch of manual config), but haven't been able to run the full Commotion
>> client before.
>>
>> Were you able to mesh the Pi with a Commotion router, or just other Pis?
> 
> I do not have a commotion router set up yet. Just 2 laptops and 2 Pis.
> 
> I had to patch the commotion mesh applet so that I could invoke the mesh
> status window ( without the patch the "show mesh status" option is
> always disabled, unless you can connect with encryption, which is
> impossible unless you are using an atheros chipset ). I haven't posted
> the patch or the patched debs yet, but it's on my list. Is this
> something I could post on the GitHub page? How can I get involved with
> development on the linux side of things?

Definitely feel free to issue pull requests against any of the relevant
repos: https://github.com/opentechinstitute.

As far as getting involved on the linux client, there's definitely
plenty of room there. The person who was heading up the work on that
recently left, but the code as it currently stands (which is
significantly different from what's available in the Debian packages on
our website) can be found here, along with documentation:
https://github.com/opentechinstitute/commotion-client/wiki.

Basically, the new version of the desktop client is aiming to be
cross-platform (Linux, Mac, Windows), and is written is Python using the
PyQt framework.

> 
> All of these connect nicely and show internet access on the nodes
> connected to my LAN. However, when the nodes mesh together, the only
> node that shows a default route of any kind is the one actually
> connected to the LAN.
> 
>>
>> Some interesting areas for further experimentation might be to see what
>> changes are necessary to mesh with a post-v1.1 Commotion routers. The
>> more significant changes since v1 have been deterministic BSSID
>> generation, IP addressing changes, and ad-hoc encryption[1].
> 
> I ordered a Ubiquity router and some wifi dongles with Atheros chipsets.
> I will see where I can get with these when they arrive.
> 
>>
>> Another thing that would be interesting would be to compare the
>> feasibility (and maybe performance) of RPis running the Commotion Linux
>> Client versus running Commotion-router on an x86 build of OpenWRT. There
>> is a writeup of the latter from another one of our OPW applications[2].
>>
> 
> I will look into this.
> 
>> Finally, would you be okay if we re-posted your tutorial on the
>> Commotion blog?
> 
> That would make my day, if not week, if you did that :)
> 
>>
>> cheers,
>> Dan
>>
>>
>> [1]
>> https://commotionwireless.net/blog/2014/01/10/commotion-r1-breaking-changes/
>>
>>
>> [2]
>> http://raniarho.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/installing-openwrt-on-a-raspberry-pi/
>>
>>
>> On 05/22/2014 04:47 PM, Joshua Besneatte wrote:
>>> Hello Devs!
>>>
>>> I have just gotten commotion wireless working on a Raspberry Pi, and was
>>> told on IRC that perhaps some of you would be interested.
>>>
>>> I have created deb files and put together a howto:
>>>
>>> http://besneatte.blogspot.com/2014/05/commotion-pi-build-rpi-mesh-node.html
>>>
>>>
>>> https://code.google.com/p/commotion-wireless-raspberry-pi/source/browse/
>>>
>>> I hope this can be of some use. I saw RPi being mentioned in the dev
>>> roadmap... hopefully this can help save someone some time.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> Joshua Beneatte
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Commotion-dev mailing list
>>> Commotion-dev at lists.chambana.net
>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-dev
>>>
>>
> 
> 
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-- 
Dan Staples

Open Technology Institute
https://commotionwireless.net
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