The EtherNode.pde sketch described in this post not so long ago has been extended a bit with some of the functionality of the RF12demo.pde sketch.

That way, an EtherNode can now also be used as sort of a replacement for RF12demo – through Ethernet i.s.o. USB: i.e. to collect data (by polling the server and scraping all new data from the home page) and to send out packets (via a GET request with a properly-formatted HTTP query string).

First of all, the configuration settings are now saved to EEPROM, so that the webserver will come back with the same settings after a restart:

As you can see, the “collect” mode has also been added. When enabled, the EtherNode will not reply with an ACK when receiving a packet. The issue here is that at most one node should respond with an ACK to broadcast packets. IOW, for each net group you use, you should normally have a single node running RF12demo or EtherNode with collect mode turned off. The others will be “lurking” (with collect mode enabled), i.e. they will be able to see all packets but they won’t reply.

Note: there is one other way to deal with collect mode and ACKs: if you have software such as JeeMon (or your own code) set up to explicitly generate an ACK, then again you should set collect mode on, so that the ATmega itself doesn’t generate the ACK as well. This is why this feature was called “collect mode” btw: the ATmega collects packets and passes it hrough, but it does not act as a full receiver which sends out ACKs.

Also new is that for debugging, you can now connect a serial console to see the full incoming requests:

The main screen hasn’t changed very much:

The only changes are a new link to a “send packet” page, and the fact that packets are now properly numbered from 0000 to 9999 (and then wrapping back to 0000).

The send packet page is new: it lets you send out a packet with up to 66 bytes of arbitrary data, to either a specific node, or as broadcast:

There is currently no way to request an ACK or send out ACKs via this mechanism. It’s just for sending out a data packet via a web request.

This is just the beginning of what’s possible with a JeeNode hooked up to Ethernet, of course. The sky is the limit, since everything else is a matter of uploading new software. Long live open source :)