Shacktopus Taking Shape

This is an intense time... driven by my old nemesis, the trade-show deadline. Actually, it's just a hamfest, but the pressure is every bit as intense as a COMDEX of the Olden Days: this is my first public appearance in years. I certainly don't expect to be done, of course, but the looming mid-June date is effectively keeping me from sinking into the sloth that characterized much of the past 3 or 4 years.

But it's not just that. Today I had a bit of an epiphany, discovering (thanks to Ned Konz) the joys of AVRStudio, a JTAG interface, and an ATmega128 development board. Damn, this stuff is cool! My last embedded environment was a serial port on a FORTH board, and while I love FORTH, it certainly didn't offer the intimacy with running code that we find in modern (and almost free) tools. And, of course, there is some serious horsepower in little $10 chips these days... along with all the things that can be hung on their ports with hardly any interface circuitry.

The architecture of Shacktopus has evolved considerably. The always-on processor is the ATmega128 (in the form of an Olimex AVR-MT-128), aided considerably by a collection of wondrous Maxim SPI devices: programmable attenuators for the matrix mixer, UARTs to generate a half-dozen extra serial ports, and I/O expanders to handle the largish collection of status and control bits (as well as a programmable active filter network to give me software-controlled high-pass, low-pass, band-bass, or notch). State machines manage a UI that spans a local LCD/keypad, remote access via DTMF tones and synthesized speech, and a remote telnet interface that arrives via the Linux board...

And that's the other system, the "Big Iron" in my backpack: a Technologic TS-7200 embedded ARM Linux system running at 200 MHz. This uses hamlib to deal with rig interface (initially the Yaesu FT-817), and also provides the full range of services one expects from a robust OS: Internet access, LAN presence, data logging, and an on-board web server that can be reached via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi from the Tapwave Zodiac that rides on my belt. That lovely PDA, and the Yaesu VX-6R that talks to the embedded VX-2R, comprises the wireless human-interface... no laptop necessary.

Connected to all this are quite a variety of interesting devices... as much as I can fit into the 12x16x3 inch polycarbonate enclosure:



More on all this in a future posting, or a proper web page for this thing that needs to be done Real Soon Now.

After the Sea-Pac show (and Field Day the next weekend), my plan is to put this new human-scale technomadic system to the test with two solo adventures: an Amtrak jaunt across the US, and a kayak jaunt of a week or so in local waters. At the same time, we'll be marketing the key components: the RigNexus board that runs all the I/O, the Li-Ion power system with SMBUS interface, and a few turn-key packaged versions for different applications. If you are interested in being an "early adopter," please let me know.

Technomadic Goodies and High-tech Wire

First, a correction: in my last update, I indulged in a rantlet (since deleted) that complained about a lack of response from RadioLabs over a month of attempting to ask some tech questions before ordering. It turned out that a link to this blog in my email sig file was getting snagged by their spam filter, and they never knew I was attempting to get in touch. This is a good reminder that email is considerably more open-loop than it used to be (for entirely technical reasons), and that jumping to conclusions about a lack of response to messages is not always justified. Correspondence since has suggested that they are very cool folks, every bit as responsive as their website suggests.

Speaking of great companies, I want to thank Technologic Systems, Wireless Cables, Buddipole, and PAR Electronics for their excellent support of this project. A full list of all system components will be on the new Shacktopus web page... Real Soon Now.

I know I've been a bit of a tease in these postings about what, exactly, this thing is. Mostly it's because I haven't had time to write about it properly... which is another one of those things that needs to happen between now and Sea-Pac in mid-June. Basically, I've decided to build my essential technomadic toolset into a convenient pack so the hard-core geeky bits are always available and not tightly integrated with a micro-trimaran. The result is a polycarbonate box designed to mate with a laptop pack, forming a "Shack To Go" that integrates lots of interesting gear into a single user interface: a Yaesu FT-817 with Elecraft T1 tuner, dedicated micro dual-bander for the DTMF remote control link, embedded ARM Linux system, TNC, GPS, speech synthesizer, Bluetooth link to my PDA, Wi-Fi board with local whip, console LCD/keypad, computer controlled audio mixing matrix and flash audio recorder, amp and preamp for local mic/phones/speakers, Li-Ion smart battery system, cell-phone interface, and suite of sensors. The case that holds this also has room for a thin laptop and various accessories, and a companion pack carries the complete Buddipole antenna package, dual-band yagi for the LEO birds, Wi-Fi yagi for those distant hotspots, and a solar panel.

I have a pathological inability to keep things simple, but this thing really is going to be fun... providing a robust set of technomadic tools that will work on ANY substrate: Microships, OPBs (Other Peoples' Boats), Amtrak, or my own two feet.

Also, I'm trying something new this time around: productizing. In the past, my survival hinged on the almost accidental spin-offs of speaking and writing gigs, keeping me afloat while I devoted my energy to building and traveling aboard gizmologically intensive machines. It took many years to build up a self-sustaining level of buzz, then I coasted on that through the mid-'90s... enough to get Microship fabrication well underway. Then a lot of time passed, the economy changed, and the project evolved a few times.

So now, instead of waiting for a yet-undefined Microship expedition to ramp up PR to the point where I can make a living at it, I'm positioning this new project as a prototype and demo platform for a product line. My own Shacktopus is a low-power backpack system, but we are also making sure that every step in the hardware and software development process accommodates future marine and automotive versions. The initial spin-offs include the enclosure mated to a high-quality commercial pack, the software package, the power-management system, the "RigNexus" board that handles all the audio routing, and any random bits of custom electronics that have to be conjured to make this latest technomadic dream come true.

In other news...

After a recent posting about house-lab networking, two readers have asked me to provide more detail about the back-to-back pair of SpeedStream 5851 SDSL routers that are set up to bridge the two LANs, about 1/8 mile apart through the forest. The wiring itself is just a randomly-chosen pair in one of the three 10-conductor direct-bury phone cables that we trenched 7 years ago, and phone-grade wiring was used to connect from those to convenient SpeedStream mounting locations in the buildings. We're seeing a steady 1.5 megabit/sec link over vanilla copper (which amazes me, having grown up in an era where "3 kilocycle bandwidth" was taken as gospel where phone stuff was involved).

Here are the scripts to setup the two units, using the standard telecom terminology of CO (Central Office) and CPE (Customer Provided Equipment), even though those terms are somewhat meaningless here. The one called CO is adjacent to the Router between us and the Internet:

login admin
sys name cpe
eth ip addr 192.168.0.254 255.255.255.0
eth ip enable
rem add co
# rem setproto ppp co
rem setproto rfc1483mer co
rem setpvc 0*38 co
rem disauthen co
rem addiproute 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 1 co
rem setsrcipaddr 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 co
sd term cpe
# turn on bridging
sd speed 1536
save
reboot

login admin
sys name co
eth ip addr 10.0.1.254 255.255.255.0
eth ip enable
eth ip defgateway 10.0.1.1
dhcp disable all
rem add cpe
# rem setproto ppp cpe
rem setproto rfc1483mer cpe
rem setpvc 0*38 cpe
rem disauthen cpe
rem addiproute 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 1 cpe
rem setsrcipaddr 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0 cpe
# turn on bridging
sd term co
sd speed 1536
save
reboot

They are basically being simple bridges, not routing, not providing DHCP service... just a high-tech piece of wire. So far, the only glitches have been very minor, generally in response to doing something rude like unplugging one of them abruptly (whereupon the other seems to like to be power-cycled). Note that not all flavors of the 5851 like to do this; the -001 and -005 work, and some other versions can be re-flashed to fit, but some are incompatible. We bought 4 of them on eBay, plus the first that was a gift, before we had two that both worked and were compatible (I still have one that seems fine but for the fact that we can't seem to get it into password-recovery mode... the first $25 takes it.)

Cheers from the nomadhouse!

Corporate Personalities

For over 20 years, I have been mining industry for the components needed to construct technomadic adventure tools: Winnebiko, Winnebiko II, BEHEMOTH, Microship in its various incarnations, and now Shacktopus. I have been very fortunate to be able to conjure a sort of 3-way symbiosis of project, media, and sponsorship that has allowed me to build a career out of this without having to simultaneously "get a real job."

Along the way, I've dealt with a lot of companies... and a lot of people who represent them. I remember once, in the BEHEMOTH era, contacting an east coast vendor of panel-mount strip printers. The guy was abusive and openly hostile, basically laughing at me for having the gall to propose that they donate one and snidely suggesting that I'd be too stupid to use it anyway. I then called a direct competitor that had apparently spun off of the first company, just down the road in the next town over, and he was delighted... Fedexing one out the same afternoon. I learned from this not to take rejection too seriously, and that it all boils down to personalities.

Now, over a decade later, I'm at it again, assembling the components to build this tiny go-anywhere platform-independent technomadic toolset. And as before, I'm finding that the range of available products and the range of corporate cultures are utterly uncorrelated, and things that seem as if they should be available, in many cases, aren't.

Take development systems for embedded Linux products. I don't know how many times in the past month I've gotten excited about some nifty PXA255/270-based product or other sparkling little board that offers tons of I/O yet still understands power management, only to discover that the manufacturer wants $3-5K for a development system (or worse, openly refuses to talk to anyone who wants less than 10,000 or so units). I know hobbyists can be a nuisance, but where do they think most "outta the blue" ideas come from?

Of course, there's a counter-argument... support calls are expensive, and vendors of complex systems could easily spend all their time hand-holding if they didn't institute some effective up-front filters to make sure they only end up dealing with real engineers. That's why Ned and I haven't gone any further with the Bionode; we just don't have the manpower to handle tech support.

Most of the time, however, I've been pleased and sometimes even surprised by the friendliness of the folks behind the websites. In the past few weeks, I've received excellent support from quite a few companies, some of which have become sponsors (to be featured, of course, in the new Shacktopus pages once they go online). Technologic has taken the time to answer my newbie questions about their ARM-based embedded Linux products, a far cry from those that didn't even acknowledge my request for a quote (since I'm obviously not a manufacturer and only want one unit... for now).

My point here is that this is what tends to shape the technological future... for a huge amount of innovation emerges from the cluttered basement workbenches of mad, driven tinkerers chasing their dreams (passion being a much stronger motivation, usually, than management-decreed development deadlines). The companies that are patient with these random renegades and don't mind selling "onesies" or development tools at sane prices are the ones that end up getting their products featured in Make, Slashdot, BoingBoing, and thousands of individual project websites like this one.

That's a cheap way to build buzz, and without buzz, making it in this industry is a lot more expensive.