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Broadband-Hamnet™ Forum :: Hardware |
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Subject :ESP8266 and BBHN/HamNET..
2015-07-16- 18:27:46
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Subject :Re:ESP8266 and BBHN/HamNET..
2016-01-15- 09:20:37
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| KE7HIA |
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Joined: 2015-11-12- 15:40:28
Posts: 3
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I've been working with the ESP8266 at work for some products we are developing. It's a pretty amazing chip for the price. It has an integrated microcontroller that can run user code, so it can be a nearly stand alone device.
That said, it's slow and its got only a tiny amount of RAM and Flash compared to a router and will never, ever be able to run Linux like the routers do. On the other hand, its amazingly cheap, small, and power consumption is very low.
While it isn't going to work as a full node, I think it could still serve some very interesting purposes. For example, a keychain style device that you could carry that would periodically search for BBHM nodes, connect to them, then log the time for you.
Adding to that, and more interesting to me, would be the idea of a sort of sneaker-net relay system. This little keychain would look for nodes, connect, and if the node has any outgoing (very short!) messages, it would grab those. Then the next time it saw a different node, it would pass those messages along, while grabbing any new messages. It could be set up to step through any nodes it sees and repeat the process, so if you had one of these that could always see two nodes that could not see each other, it could pass small amounts of traffic between them. As Hams carried these things around, they would act as the conduit for this sorta slow packet traffic, if that makes sense.
I don't know enough about how BBHN works to start something like this, and I'm too busy anyway (maybe someday). Though I could probably help a little. In particular, I am experienced at PCB design and manufacturing. (See PortableSDR.com for an example of my work)
P.S. For a small cheap board that could run the full BBHN, check out the GS-Oolite boards. I've been able to get them for about $13/each: http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=gs-oolite |
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Subject :Re:ESP8266 and BBHN/HamNET..
2016-01-15- 09:33:47
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| KE7HIA |
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Joined: 2015-11-12- 15:40:28
Posts: 3
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oh, the forum doesn't respect spaces between paragraphs? What if I do twice as many?
I had an addition idea: Whenever the keychains are plugged in, they could switch to a more active mode where they spend most of their time broadcasting their presence to other keychains, so message passing could happen even without any BBHN nodes being involved. They would probably still want to switch to their normal mode periodically for message passing described above.
And another thing: There is a successor to the ESP8266 coming out soon called the ESP32. I haven't memorized all the details, but one notable addition is BlueTooth Low Energy, which would make talking to phones a lot easier.... not that WiFi is hard.. anyway, BT could be used for configuration, etc..... That's all, thanks for listening! |
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Subject :Re:ESP8266 and BBHN/HamNET..
2016-01-19- 10:41:58
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Subject :Re:ESP8266 and BBHN/HamNET..
2016-01-26- 09:43:56
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| w0ako |
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Joined: 2015-02-23- 07:15:52
Posts: 5
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I have a handful of home IoT projects that involve the ESP8266. In most cases they are connecting to a standard wifi network. I created one prototype that connects to a wifi network behind the mesh, and has a web server running on the ESP8266 chip and serves up temperature/humidity data from an attached DHT11 sensor. Would be pretty amazing to see one purposed as a hsmm mesh node. RAM should be just enough. There is also a ESP32 coming out later this year that has similar functionality at double the specs, but probably still <$10 (hope). |
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Subject :Re:ESP8266 and BBHN/HamNET..
2016-02-19- 11:07:07
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| AE5K |
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Joined: 2014-02-26- 15:38:54
Posts: 5
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Hi W0AKO and others...
Just browsing around to see if the ESP8266 had been used in BBHN or similar mesh network. I'm just getting my feet wet with them, but I've been out of touch with the mesh network stuff due to medical and accident problems. I'm interested in developments along this line of thinking, and I might be able to help out a little. (Getting old and my accident caused some brain damage) Let's hear what others have been doing on this, even if just still in the thinking stage. About 2 years ago, I played around with a bunch of WRT54's, and just now starting to resurrect the project. I think the 8266 and future chips might be the way to go "cheap". 73 de Don, AE5K (northern Arkansas) |
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Subject :Re:ESP8266 and BBHN/HamNET..
2019-03-31- 16:01:34
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| KB5VSM |
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Joined: 2012-04-26- 20:51:24
Posts: 2
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This link might be of interest to configure the ESP8266 for mesh networks: https://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16449
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