On Monday 04 June 2007 11:27:17 Brian Lloyd wrote: > What we really need is a general purpose device that interfaces on > the network and may be easily addressed by software.
It's not widely known that the Linksys WRT54G series wireless routers have two serial ports that are brought to a board connector at logic levels. There are no RS-232 level changers on the board and it follows that Linksys doesn't support them in the firmware. http://openwrt.org This site has open source GPL firmware that runs an embedded gnu/linux system, replacing the Linksys firmware. It runs on many wireless routers, not only Linksys. The two serial ports are supported as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1. I was disappointed to find that my WRT54G is version 5 and has only half the flash and ram that versions 1 to 4 have, and consequently is minimally supported by OpenWRT. So I replaced it with a WRT54GL, Linksys's acknowledgment that there are tinkerers in the world who want the original flash and ram back, at a higher price of course. There is a serial over Bluetooth standard. All that's needed is Simon's HRD to invent, or use a serial over Wifi and connect our serial enabled radios to a router's serial port. With the router's firmware open source and clever people so minded, operating the radio over the network isn't so distant a dream. Then there's Tentec's Omni VII, an already network enabled transceiver with an Ethernet connection, easily added to a consumer network. I think Elecraft missed an opportunity in the design of the K3 regarding networking. Ian, G4ICV, AB2GR, K2 #4962 -- _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
