ben-wpan: commercial description
Werner Almesberger
werner at almesberger.net
Tue Jun 7 12:51:14 EDT 2011
With the atben and atusb boards inching towards tuxbrain's shop, it's
time to write a proper product description. I thought of the following
items. (More comments at the end.)
First, there would be a part that's common for atben and atusb, with a
few placeholders for device-specific details/clarifications.
<device> is a wireless IEEE 802.15.4 sender/receiver operating in the
2.4 GHz band, <device-specific>
Technical specification:
- Transmit power up to 3 dBm (2 mW)
- Built-in antenna
- Standard data rate 250 kbps (non-standard and with reduced range,
up to 2 Mbps)
- Typical indoors distance between sender/receiver XX m
<more>
- Linux drivers, hardware design, firmware, and test software are all
Open Source and available under Free licenses (GPLv2+, LGPLv2.1+,
CC-BY-SA 3.0)
- Note: IEEE 802.15.4 is not compatible with WiFi(tm) or BlueTooth(tm).
You need a pair of IEEE 802.15.4 devices for communication.
The atben-specific part would be:
<device> = atben
<device-specific> = designed to give the Ben NanoNote short-range
wireless connectivity.
<more> =
- Plugs into the Ben's 8:10 card slot
- Requires product-specific Linux driver
- Note: this is not an SDIO(tm) device and will only work in
products specifically supporting it.
The atusb-specific part would be:
<device> = atusb
<device-specific> = that provides IEEE 802.15.4 connectivity via USB.
<more> =
- USB(tm) Full-Speed device
- Requires product-specific Linux driver
- AVR(r) microcontroller with 32 kB flash memory (currently 24 kB
used)
- Note: firmware currently only supports Linux
Some remarks:
- I kept the technicality at an intermediate level. If it's considered
too much, one could drop the following items without significant loss
of information:
- transmit power
- built-in antenna
- list of licenses
Also not entirely vital are:
- "Plugs into the Ben's 8:10 card slot"
- "USB(tm) Full-Speed device"
- AVR microcontroller
- there's a relatively long list of compatibility notes. I think we
need those to make it clear that this isn't just some WLAN or BT
device, or that it'll work in someone's Windows PC.
- I left the maximum distance open. The devices from the production run
will be a far more reliable base for such measurements than my
prototypes, so I hope tuxbrain can provide that data. For reference,
my own results were:
http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/wpan/tmp/apt-wa.pdf
- I didn't mention higher-level protocol support (IPv4/dirtpan and
IPv6/6LoWPAN), because area is still under construction.
- we also need to say something about the case, e.g., whether this
will be a kit of board + sugru, or what else was decided.
Please comment.
Thanks,
- Werner
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