Computing stuff tied to the physical world

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Of JeeNodes and JeeLinks

In Hardware on Oct 18, 2009 at 00:01

There’s a new JeeLink coming…

DSC_0543.jpg

No external connections, just a little antenna wire sticking out. Uses a 10 ppm crystal to accurately keep track of time and has 1 Mbyte of flash memory on-board so it can collect data in unattended mode. This new JeeLink’s only purpose is to attach to a computer for communicating with JeeNodes and several commercially available RF controlled devices (KAKU, FS20, etc). It has three LEDs: RX, TX, and ACTIVITY.

The above will be called the JeeLink (v2) – I’ve just sent off my second prototype to the pcb shop. Quite a few tweaks and tricks were needed to fit everything into such a tight enclosure:

Picture 1.png

The current JeeLink (v1) is also going to change. First of all, it’s going to be called the JeeNode USB (v2) in the next revision since it really is a JeeNode, but with the FTDI-USB adapter added-on. Other changes will be mostly to make the standard JeeNode and this new JeeNode USB even more compatible with each other.

  1. have you checked out the atmega16u2 and atmega32u4 (& friends)? might help you get rid of the FTDI chip in future revs!

    ladyada 18 October 2009 at 12am

  2. Hi – yes, recently saw those, but I had already squeezed everything in for this new JeeLink… And while the FTDI adds to the cost, it does help keep full compatibility with the Arduino IDE for now. I’ll definitely keep it in mind for future revs, that FTDI chip is still giving me trouble with reflow – I almost always have to fix up solder bridges.

    jcw 18 October 2009 at 1am

  3. Nice! Can’t wait to have one of those!

    Pedro Ferreira 18 October 2009 at 10pm

  4. Will you include OOK reception?

    http://www.hansinator.de/rfm12lib/ RFM12_RECEIVE_ASK

    claims that bij hooking up the ARSSI to an interrupt can be received

    Rinie Kervel 19 October 2009 at 5pm

    • This is very interesting, thanks for the link.

      I can’t include OOK / ASK by default, since the required signal is not available on the external RFM12B pins, it has to be added by attaching a special wire. But I’ll definitely try it out at some point – it’d be really nice to have a way to receive FS20/KAKU/KS300 messages with just a JeeNode.

      jcw 19 October 2009 at 6pm

  5. Update – tried to get the OOK/ASK decoding to work, but no matter what I do, I don’t see any signal. Will probably need to get the scope out on that one…

    jcw 19 October 2009 at 11pm

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