Something that may be of interest to people

djh82uk

Heya all

I was browsing the farnell site, and found this product, it's an RJ45 to serial converter, it handles all the tcp/ip side of things, can run a small webserver and generally looks pretty cool, sells for around £20 but could have some interesting applications.

Here's the datasheet

http://www.lantronix.com/pdf/XPort_DS.pdf

Anyone have some nice ideas of what this could be used for, would it even work? (I think that it will, it works on 3.3v TTL Serial)

DJH

Harrison.

Take a look at http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=650641 . There are a few other threads that have long discussions on the XPort and other embedded ethernet bridging devices. I personally think the XPort costs too much if you are not using every aspect of the device (webserver, serial bridging, GPIOs, etc). I am using a siteplayer telnet module since it costs less and does the tcp client/server stuff that most people use in the XPort.

Note that many embedded serial bridges (such as the siteplayer, xport, etc) do not have full fledged easy to use webservers. They generally require special scripting, or hacking to get going. In the case of the xport, you will need to hunt for info on how to do it and use java applets (which make it almost useless IMHO). Parallax has their PINK module which has the most realistic simple to use webserver + ftp + email I have seen in a long time. It is the most user friendly (although it does cost more than other devices).

Harrison

djh82uk

Smile sorry, thought it may be useful, will look into the others you mentioned tho, thanks [noparse]:)[/noparse]

DJH

Paul Baker

Something they do sell that many people have asked for on these forums and which very few other companies make is thier wireless version (WiPort), another feature thier products support that not many others do is 256 bit AES encryption.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

djh82uk

if you can get it to have plain ethernet via siteplayer etc then you can just use a linksys wrt54g wireless router, re flash them with linux and use them as a wifi client with a lot of stats recording available, you can even fit the pcb inside the case.

Or for somethign pretty small, wait until fon.com have their free router offer, then reflash that with linux and do the same thing.

not as elegant, but a nice cheap option, if you buy a "B" router and not a "G".

DJH

Harrison.

Funny you say that djh82uk. I have 2 fon fonera 2100 routers and a wrt54gl. The wrt54gl is running dd-wrt and is my main router. My fonera devices also run a beta version of dd-wrt and I use them in client mode so I can use my ethernet stuff anywhere around my house.

Note that embedded linux is not extremely user friendly. I had to build a crosscompile toolchain which took up like 6 gigs of HD space (I had to use virtual pc and run fedora core to compile the dang toolchain). Then you have to deal with the fact that some devices (such as the fonera) have only one serial port that is by default a serial console. You would have to recompile the openwrt or ddwrt linux kernel to not use the serial console so you can use it to communicate with your devices.

It all depends on your project. I am going for the cheapest possible route and easiest to reproduce. Loading third party firmware on a router isn't necessarily easy, not to mention it does rely on commercial products that are constantly being replaced by newer, cheaper, and sometimes incompatible products. It's also much cooler to have all the smarts and code running in a Propeller anyways [noparse];)[/noparse].

Harrison