This is part 2 of a tutorial I wrote on using network serial ports on a Linksys router. In part 2 of this tutorial I am going to show how to get a UDP based network serial port running on your Linksys WRT54GS dd-wrt powered router.
This is an animation of netcat receiving a Locosys GPS NMEA datastream via UDP.
The nice thing about Linksys WRT54GS routers is that you can get them for about $25 on eBay. You need to check the model number to make sure it has enough ram to run the full version (standard generic) of dd-wrt and have plenty of memory available to create a JFFS storage partition. You can check out the details and specs of your router model on the dd-wrt router database.
You need to start by following the all the steps on my first blog post to get a working TCP based serial link before you try this tutorial. Part 2 of this tutorial also expects you to have created the JFFS partition and installed the custom build of netcat from the first tutorial. Also, you need to confirm that you are able to remotely connect by TCP to the serial port on your Linksys router and read data from the port.
For this tutorial my Linksys WRT54GS router already has the 10 pin 0.1" serial port header connector soldered onto the circuit board and the router is running dd-wrt with a local IP address of 192.168.1.30
The Linksys WRT54GS router has two serial ports. One of the serial ports is easy to use and the other serial port is tied up with the serial console on the router.
When you are working with source code it is nice to have the code properly indented. You can automatically reformat your unindented C / C++ files in Notepad++ to have proper indentation using the TextFX and NppAutoIndent plugins.
When using the mikroC compiler it is best to have your indentation done using 2 spaces instead of the tab character. For this task it is handy to have Notepad++ automatically convert the tab characters into spaces.
Today I had a delightful parcel arrive in the mail - my prize from the 2012 Winter Warmup RetroChallenge. The gift was sent all the way from Scotland by Royal Mail and arrived in West Dover in only 10 days. The prize was a PSION series 5 PDA that was generously donated by Dale ( wgoodf ). Thanks Dale!
This was my first time using a PSION PDA so I really appreciated Dale's tip about the battery hatch being located behind the hinge on the back. Without that tip I'm sure it would have taken me ages to find it.
The PDA has a touch sensitive greyscale screen with a green coloured backlight, a foldout keyboard, a built-in microphone and speaker, and a stylus. The PSION 5 comes with a few apps such as a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a database program, a dictionary and thesaurus, a day-timer, scientific calculator, communications program, an audio recorder, and a sketching program. The side of the PSION PDA has a CF card slot that makes it easy to transfer documents onto the PDA from your desktop computer.
Here I turned on the PSION Series 5 PDA for the first time.
Today I completed the alpha version of my IRIX soccer game for the 2012 Winter Warmup RetroChallenge. After seeing the @retrochallenge twitter stats on the other RC entrants, I made the decision to ship the alpha version without all sorts of extra bells and whistles. I didn't want Fahrfall to be the only one to complete a retro game for the contest!
The alpha version of the game is designed for two players.
Here is a photo of the new textbook A SURVEY OF MATHEMATICS WITH APPLICATIONS 9th Edition
Yesterday I got my copy of the new textbook A SURVEY OF MATHEMATICS WITH APPLICATIONS 9th Edition from Pearson.
This new edition of the textbook was published on January 6, 2012 and has special meaning to me because it features a photo of my prototype sierpinski fractal antenna design in the chapter on Non-Euclidean Geometry and Fractal Geometry (page 555). I have always found fractals interesting and I am really proud that Pearson selected my image to use in their textbook.
As I flipped through the textbook today I was impressed with the improvement in the quality and readability of math textbooks since I was a student!
This textbook has been updated with modern references and provides quite a few real world math problems for students to study. The graphic design of the textbook is top-notch with excellent colour illustrations that will help to explain mathematic concepts to the reader.
Here is a photo of page 555 from the math textbook that features my fractal antenna image.
Here my name, Andrew Hazelden, is listed in the credits section of the textbook.
This is my January 16th progress update for the 2012 Winter Warmup RetroChallenge. For the competition I'm working on creating an IRIX based soccer game using OpenGL on a Silicon Graphics O2 computer from 1997.
This last week I created the game artwork in Photoshop. The soccer game will have two players and features a hand drawn 2D soccer ball. I drew the animated soccer ball sprite in Photoshop by rotoscoping over an image sequence.
I used the MediaConverter program on IRIX to convert the soccer ball image sequence to a movie.
This is frame 1 of the animated soccer ball sprite.
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