Hi > Thank you very much for your response :) The robomote project is very > interesting and I'll definetly keep my eye on its progress in the future. But > unfortunately I've not been able to find concrete answers to my questions > relating TinyOS on the project page (maybe I've not looked well enough) - > I'll keep searching :) >
I missed this mail the first time around. Let me take a stab at your questions. My comments are inlined. > > > I'm working on a project where we are building small modular robots, > > > where > > > each module contains two halfs able to rotate about a common center. > > > Each half contains an ATmega8 and an ATmega128 (communicating through > > > I2C) and the two halfs communicate via the ATmega128's through a serial > > > channel (RS485, actually). All boards are custom made for our purpose > > > and are thus not Mica, Mica2 etc. Each module is able to communicated > > > with other modules through IR diodes with the Blaulogic Pico-IrDA stack > > > (http://blaulogic.com/ > > > pico_irda.shtml) as protocol. > > > > > > Now, until I read "The nesC Language: A Holistic Approach to Networked > > > Embedded Systems" by David Gay et. al., we were convinced we were going > > > to use the AvrX real-time kernel (http://www.barello.net/avrx/) for our > > > modules but TinyOS/nesC seem to fit our needs in a much more elegant > > > way. The original plan was to use C++ as programming language for easy > > > porting to a standard PC for simulation purposes (just changing > > > hw-layer) and for creating an "event" model - thus creating the > > > abstraction with AvrX and C++, that TinyOS already seems to contain if > > > I'm not mistaken. > > > > > > I have downloaded TinyOS 1.1.0 and nesC 1.1 (seems I have to update a > > > few of > > > the utils, though), and browsed the web for information, but I'm still > > > in doubt on a few points and this is where I hope you can help me. > > > > > > 1) How difficult is it to "port" TinyOS to my platform? Is it just a > > > matter of using platform/mica128 for my AT128's and making changes to > > > platform/mica128 when using the AT8's? Or is it platform/avrmote? Or > > > what has to be done? In the installation procedure there is a lot of > > > talk about serial port communication and Java applications - are these > > > things needed? The java apps are surely not needed. Im not sure if something would break if the serial communication was removed. At a glance, it seems like you'll have to port both platform/mica128 and platform/avrmote. Also there are other devices under platform/mica2 which you'll need to have to make most applications work. > > > 2) Is it possible to link a TinyOS application with a C-library (the > > > Pico-IrDA library in particular)? And with a C++ library? I dont see why not. > > > 3) nesC generates one inline C-code file for a TinyOS application, > > > right? Would it be possible to somehow use this code directly on a > > > non-TinyOS platform - I'm thinking PC with Linux or Win - and link it > > > with other C and C ++ code (for simulation purposes)? Im not sure what you mean by use it on a non-TinyOS platform. If you just want to link the generated C-file, on a linux box, that already happens when you do 'make pc'. > > > I really hope some of you can find the time to answer me since I have a > > > few people to convice in the not so distant future if it turns out > > > TinyOS can be used for our project. Otherwise we'll stick to AvrX as > > > planned... One question is whether it is all that useful to port TOS to your platform. The way the robomote was designed, there is minimal interface code that runs on the robomote. There is a mote that sits on it, running tinyos and working as its controller. You can get more details in our working paper. http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~robomote/papers/open.pdf Do feel free to email me if you have any more questions. KAR. _______________________________________________ Tinyos-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.Millennium.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tinyos-users
