Just got back from a couple of very relaxing days in Paris.
Here’s a quick impression of the 1680’s Comédie-Française (on the right):
We went there to see a nice French theater piece. And although I’m not even remotely as culturally enlightened as such a remark might suggest, I did have a great time.
Normal transmissions to resume tomorrow…
Here’s my little thank you for everyone who has supported Jee Labs in 2009 – in one way or another …
No need to hurry, January has 31 days. I’m away now, will reply and send out discount codes on Monday.
This year has been a very exciting year for me. Hardware, software, hacking, coding… I’ve been having an absolutely fantastic time – and I hope you enjoyed reading about some of these adventures.
Before the year ends, I want to apologize for the mess highlight the delightful variety of pages this has led to.
Below are quick snapshots of the headers of different areas reached through this main navigation bar:
First, there is the daily weblog, with over 350 posts in WordPress and new posts added with MarsEdit:
Next the documentation area, which looks the same, but is managed by an app called VoodooPad:
The open source code is maintained in a subversion repository, and can be browsed online using ViewVC:
The discussion forums are managed by WordPress’ little bulletin-board cousin, bbPress:
The project-oriented wiki is handled by a product I’ve had some involvement in, called ProjectForum:
And lastly, the Jee Labs web shop is hosted at Shopify (a bit weak on int’l features and progress, alas):
Six areas, and almost as many very different presentation styles!
Most stuff runs on remote servers, the rest is a copy of what’s on my machine.
A substantial portion relies on open source, but some bits use strictly commercial software.
I wish I had the time (and the skills) to turn all of these into a single consistent presentation, but I don’t…
To me, the current state of Jee Labs is a pretty good illustration of where we stand with computing at the end of this first decade of the 21st century: amazing things are possible with incredibly modest means, but it’s essentially one huge mish-mash of completely different trends, strung together with this duct-tape we’ve called the web.
Anyway – so much for technology.
See you in 2010! May it bring you lots of friendship, wisdom, and creativity to make this world a better place.
I recently ran out of the silvery electrostatic bags I’ve been using to package JeeNode kits and other stuff. So for the next batch, I decided to use bags which are biodegradable. They have a funny soft feeling to them and are actually much more flexible:
These bags come with a “Farnell” ad printed on them (the supplier of these bags) – so be it…
If you order stuff from the Jee Labs shop, you may also receive stuff packaged in small clear plastic zip-lock bags. That’s because I have them lying around anyway – they are re-used from the extension cables, which I received in packages of 1-per-bag, whereas they are sent out as 5-per-bag. Since the harm of having “consumed” these plastic bags has already been done, might as well re-use them a second time…
FWIW, I feel pretty bad about adding so much packaging to a world full of junk already. And being involved in quite a bit of transportation of all this stuff, both by getting it here and by getting it out as packages to lots of people. Atoms ain’t bits – that’s for sure!
All I can say is that I save up and batch my orders as much as possible, and use as little and as light packaging as I think I can get away with.
Just in!
Look at that fancy gold lettering – neat, huh?
And the first hand-soldered unit is working perfectly:
Here’s the new software-controlled LED:
This is in addition to the red TX and green RX LEDs, indicating USB activity.
Only thing not tested yet is the new on-board 1 Mbyte flash memory. Once that’s done, I’ll start assembling a couple of these. Will be a lot easier once the solder paste stencils come in.
Big news today for people from the US, Canada, Australia, and other parts of the world where the 915 MHz band is available for use with JeeNodes.
Paul Badger of Modern Device has added JeeNodes and a few other items to his shop – check it out:
Please be patient as Paul gets all the necessary bits and pieces ready, but this means you’ll be able to get Jee stuff with US prices and (much) lower shipping costs if you live on the other side of the big pond.
Behind the scenes, Paul Badger has been actively involved in the Jee Labs since early this year. I’m very happy that at last he’ll also be able to get involved with actual shipments.
Things are still evolving quite rapidly here w.r.t. plugs, so we’re still figuring how and when to make all the different plugs available, boards, pre-assembled, etc. The intention is to eventually provide all the same options as in the European Jee Labs Shop, but it may take some time to get there. It’s going to be a bit tricky to get it right with such a moving target…
This change also means that I’m no longer offering 915 MHz units from Europe – just 868 MHz.
On the plugs front there is some good news as well, as final versions of the Blink / Expander / Memory / RTC / UART plugs and the Proto Board are set to arrive here tomorrow. I’ll be updating the various bits and pieces and pictures once they come in, of course.
The astute reader will notice that there are still a few items missing. I’m expecting a few more boards by the end of the week, but there are also some delays due to a production issue which requires some boards to be re-made. That means some boards won’t be in for another two weeks and there’s little I can do about it :(
Not to mention the fact that stupid little mistakes with boards seem to have become a habit of mine… each mistake leads to a new round trip to the pcb shop, i.e. 3 weeks on average. Which is why I’m juggling as many overlapping release cycles as I can – while trying not to make yet more mistakes!
Next month all this frantic shop stuff should be over, and I hope to get back to some “real” lab work, with more s/w coding and finishing up some of the numerous projects cluttering up my desk… eh, I mean my entire office!
Today, exactly one year ago, I discovered the Arduino platform and decided to explore it and write about my adventures. That’s when this weblog started. Within a month, it became a daily weblog – as it still is today.
Early 2009, the JeeNode was born. Like every youngster, it has kept me very busy ever since, deep into the night at times. Fortunately youngsters grow up, eventually …
So today, I’d like to announce the availability of the JeeNode v4 – the fourth iteration of the JeeNode:
The one thing you’ll notice (other than the by now “standard” blue-and-gold design) is the changed PWR/I2C header, left of the ATmega chip. It now includes the RX and TX pins, and has moved to a new location, closer to the port headers. The 4 inner pins are still the same. And it’s now called the PWR/SER/I2C (PSI) header.
The back of the JeeNode v4 has changed a lot more:
Text! Lots of clearly readable labels to indicate what all the ports and pins are. And on the far right three “check-boxes” to mark which type of radio is on the board. The white area in the middle is for writing down your own info, such as the node ID assigned to this unit – or which sketch it is running. See the updated documentation.
The JeeNode v4 replaces the JeeNode v3 as of today. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!
As you may have seen, the new JeeLink v2 USB stick was announced a few days ago.
Along with these two, I’d also like to announce that a new JeeNode USB v2 prototype is currently on its way. It has exactly the same size and layout as the JeeNode v4, but with the FTDI pins replaced by a mini-USB socket (same as what’s used in most digital cameras). The JeeNode USB v2 replaces the JeeLink v1, using a different USB connector. Like the JeeLink, it is built with SMT components:
The JeeNode USB and the JeeLink are USB devices, and have three LEDs: green/red for RX/TX activity on the USB port, respectively, and a blue LED which could be used as wireless activity indicator. The base JeeNode has no LEDs, but it’s very easy to add an activity LED between SPI/ISP header pins 2 and 8.
The two JeeNodes will of course continue to work just fine with all the plugs, but they are also a particularly nice match for the new Proto Board:
(shown here half-inserted on a JeeNode v4 for clarity)
I’d like to point out that the Proto Plug gives access to 18 of the ATmega328’s 20 I/O pins. Only two pins are dedicated to the on-board wireless radio module (INT0 and SS). To put it differently: these JeeNodes add ports as a modular way to extend and use the ATmega I/O capabilities, but their use is entirely optional: you can simply ignore all the extra supply and ground pins if you don’t need them. And you can run totally unmodified Arduino sketches on the JeeNodes and JeeLink.
So there you have it. One year old, yet already grown up: a nice little range of modules which combine low-cost wireless with an Arduino-compatible design, using a modular architecture for tying stuff to the physical world…
I’m very proud to see how far Jee Labs has come in one year, and can’t wait to put these building blocks to new uses and to see what others figure out to do with all this.
Looks like the days of innocence are over for this weblog:
Not to worry (it’s all filtered out automatically), but I still have to scan that stuff once in a while to make sure there are no false positives.
Oh well, I s’pose it comes with the territory…
It’s September 2009, ten months after I started on my “Computing stuff tied to the physical world” adventure. Arduino, RepRap, modding, trying to fit stuff together, software in a chip – my, my, I never thought it’d be that much fun!
Here’s a part that came out of an old CD-ROM drive:
What does (did) it do? Is it human? Hmmm.
Whatever it is, this thing pretty much sums up all the geek stuff I’ve stumbled upon in these past months. Weird. Designed. Fun. Mass produced. Functional. Useless on its own. And still mostly a male thing ;)
But this isn’t just about what happened so far. The fun really is the excitement of entering a new future, best described by the motto “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it” – see the Maker’s Bill of Rights.
I’ve only started to scratch the surface of all this. It’s fascinating how many people are latching on in the same way – across all ages and all continents. With websites such as instructables springing up to collect and share the huge variety of “DIY” projects and hacks. Boundless creativity, for and by everyone.
Today is also the day I’d like to declare the Jee Labs Shop officially “open”. There are only a few “items for sale” to use marketing-speak. My main reason for doing this is that I want to create real stuff – and a shop with products is in a sense as real as it gets. You can buy things there if you want to get going quickly with stuff I’ve been working on, or you can make it all yourself using the information on my weblog. Everything is 100% open source, meaning that all the documentation is available for you to use / adapt / refine / extend in any way you like.
I owe my inspiration to the countless people who share and discuss their work and ideas openly on the web. The daily Jee Labs weblog is my attempt to give something back in return. It’s a drop in the ocean, but hey it appears to be appreciated :)
And I owe much my motivation to your comments on the weblog + forum and in particular to those of you who have bought stuff from the new shop. You know who you are, and you’ve made my day each and every time. Thank you for your vote of confidence!
As a token of my appreciation, everyone who has posted on the weblog or forum and everyone who has ordered from Jee Labs in the past can get a 20% discount on new orders. I don’t want to send around unsolicited emails to everyone, so please send an email to jcw <at> equi4.com to get a discount code which can be used in the web shop until September 30th.
Ok. Back to designing, soldering, hacking, coding, sharing, and posting. Enjoy!
This is to announce that I’m suspending this weblog for a month to take some time off. No new posts in the coming weeks, but you are of course welcome to browse around in everything that’s been posted so far.
This is my 217th post, i.e. over 7 months of daily posting about all sorts of embedded and wireless fun stuff since this weblog was started. A lot of different topics have been covered, from getting the wireless radio to work, via a couple of excursions into robotics, to the latest reflow developments here. I hope you’ve enjoyed all this as much as I’ve enjoyed diving in and writing about it all. I’m sure there’s a lot more fun waiting down the road, and am looking forward to get back to this after the summer.
Here’s my very latest progress on the new JeeLink. I don’t have all the parts yet, so this isn’t a complete unit, but you can see where it’s all going:
As you can see, there are a couple of solder bridges, i.e. too much paste. But the “big” chips both do appear to have lined up quite nicely and the simple parts are all fine. All I need to do is get the solder paste amounts down next time. Man, this stuff sure is tiny.
Enjoy, and watch out for those soldering fumes! ;)
There have been some changes to this weblog since it was moved to another server a few days ago. The navigation links at the top of each page now work better, for one.
Another change is that I’ve started setting up some more documentation pages, and am integrating them into this website. Here’s what you get when you click on the “DOCS” link now:
I would have loved to get some really nifty sidebar navigation in there, but for now there are simply two mechanisms to help you out: first of all there are quite a few links between pages – this is automatic, and hence very convenient for me: wherever text appears which matches a page in the documentation, that text will be linked. The other navigation feature is the “page index” link at the bottom of each page. It’s not very sophisticated, but hopefully workable for now.
Keep in mind that searching in the weblog will not find anything in the documentation pages – these are internally two completely different systems.
Needless to say perhaps, but these documentation pages are still at an early stage. They will be filled-in, extended, and updated for some time to come.
For your information: I’ll be off-line from July 15th through August 15th. It’s that time of year for me to let go and re-charge again, far away from gadgets, internets, and computer screens. Because everything has its place, including the real world.
The intention is to have the new JeeNode v3 kits and boards available before then, but it really depends on whether the latest design works properly. I hope to find out in roughly a week.
The shop will stay on-line, but please be aware that if you order anything there will be no packages sent out during that period. Right now, the shop is still in basic start-up mode. No more, no less. With a bit of luck, I can still send out some new kits before my leave.
Ok, back to some fun stuff. Here’s a mystery JeeNode …
See if you can guess what the different pieces are and what all this is for. Two hints: the chip on the right is transparent (it hasn’t been hooked up yet), and there’s a solar cell still waiting to be connected to the top and bottom leftmost two JeePlug pins.
The mystery will be solved in tomorrow’s post.
Right on the heels of yesterday’s shop announcement, I’ve now also set up a site for discussion about everything related to the Jee Labs:
Again, a very basic design with with only a limited set of features in the form of a new bulletin board called bbPress – from the makers of WordPress:
If this turns out to be a convenient and effective setting for discussions, I will remove the jeelabs mailing list at Google Groups again. With apologies to everyone who already signed up there.
To summarize, there are now three different sites for the Jee Labs, using the new domain names:
So much for the world domination side of things – now I can put on my lab coat again and get on with it.
I’ve set up a web shop to simplify getting JeeNode kits – and whatever else comes out of Jee Labs - to those of you who are interested. The shop has its own web site:
It’s a basic design, because this is not about trying to become the next Amazon. Or acting like it. Or trying to “project a corporate image”. I’ll leave that to others.
Nah, the JLS is just a an easy-to-use shopping cart setup for dealing with PayPal and bank transfers:
No muss, no fuss. I hope you like it.
Note that there’s a Product News page in the shop, which is a blog I’ll use to announce the “availability of new products”. I won’t clutter this daily weblog with that sort of sales/marketing drivel. To track both types of news, simply subscribe to both blogs.
I’ve decided to switch to a real top-level internet domain name for this weblog, and am moving this entire site over to its new location:
Did you notice the extra “s”? Did ya? Did ya?
Actually, the weblog home is at http://news.jeelabs.org/ to be pedantically precise – but you can pick whichever URL you prefer, since you’ll automatically be redirected to the right place. Both names have been permanently tied together – inasmuch as permanent means anything on internet, that is.
The “jeelab.equi4.com” URL (no “s”, see?) will continue to work as a redirect to the new location, at least for a while so everyone can gradually adjust all bookmarks.
This change will be instant because it’s entirely virtual. This is merely a naming issue.
I’ve also adjusted the name of this blog. The “Jee Labs” plural form feels right for various reasons. Several people were in fact referring to this weblog in that way already.
Here are a few more details about the upcoming JeeNode v3 board.
First off, I said no more changes w.r.t. the pinout. Not true – the I2C/PWR pinout has also changed:
For a couple of reasons which I don’t want to go into just yet. The GND pin is now on the outside, just as on the FTDI header. Note that PWR is the incoming voltage, not the regulated 3.3V at which the ATmega operates (including those SDA / SCL pins).
The other change worth mentioning here, is that components have been rearranged slightly to make room for 2 pads to connect a battery or battery pack – along with holes for strain relief. Both leads are clearly marked “+” and “-” to avoid polarity mistakes.
The JeeNode is well suited for battery use due to it’s 3.3V design and because it has no on-board LEDs. The regulator lets you choose from a huge range of battery options (hence the soldering pads i.s.o. a fixed battery choice): 3x or 4x AAA or AA, NiMH or Alkaline, or one of the increasingly popular 3.6 .. 4.1 V Lithium batteries, which are great as long as you take care not to short-circuit them and not to discharge them beyond their advised limits.
So there you have it. The new JeeNode v3 board is just about ready to send off to manufacturing. I hope to get my hands on them early July.
There are two important pinout changes in the upcoming JeeNode v3:
So the final pinout for ports is:
The change isn’t being made on a whim – I’ve got several things plugging into ports here which will need to be changed to work with the new pinout. And it will affect everything plugged in for years to come. One of the reasons for the change is that it lets you plug in a 3-wire servo (pins 3..5). Another reason is that it is compatible with the BBB board already out there (also pins 3..5).
As before, a 4-pin connector on pins 2..5 is often all you need. The outer two pins are for more advanced uses.
As before also, pin 1 carries the input voltage to power the board, and can be anything from 3.5V to 13V. With an FTDI connector it will usually +5V. Batteries work great, anything from a 9V block, or 3x AAA/AA (both NiMH and alkaline), or even a LiPo battery.
Note also a small change in pin names: the 3.3V regulated power supply is now called “+3V” instead of the somewhat ambiguous “VCC”, and the interrupt line is called “IRQ” instead (was INT).
Every future JeeNode design will use this pinout on every port.
The new SPI/ISP header is (pin 1 at top left):
This is an “extended” ISP header. The main reason for this change is that pins 1..6 are now compatible with a standard 6-pin in-system programming connector, through which the ATmega’s fuses, flash, and EEPROM can be programmed. Note that the JeeNode is a 3.3V device, it should not be driven by an ISP programmer set to 5V voltage level.
The two extra pins are tied to digital I/O lines B0 and B1, and allow connecting more SPI devices to the JeeNode. Note that SPI is used internally by the RFM12B radio module, so these pins should not be re-configured for other purposes, although you could use SEL0 and SEL1 as general-purpose I/O lines if you want – a LED and a push-button switch perhaps.
I’ve made a few experimental add-ons using the SPI/ISP connector, such as this one. They will need to be adjusted for v3, but as with ports the same new pinout will be used for all future JeeNodes and derivatives from now on. Although some of them might not have such a connector at all.
That’s it – no more changes. Now I can “standardize” everything I want to connect to the JeeNode ports!
Had a wonderful time in Barecelona, admiring Gaudi’s fantastic architecture such as the roof of “La Pedrera”:
You might not have noticed my absence since the daily Jee Labs weblog updates went on as usual, based on posts which were prepared in advance.
Anyway, it’s good to be back …
Today is my birthday. Regular broadcasts resuming tomorrow.
That’s me, a couple of decades back, around the time when the PDP-8 came out. No chips, no personal computers, no Internet, no Google, no mobile technology.
All prerequisites for the JeeNode :)
Today I’m releasing a first version of the open source JeeMon home monitoring application, along with a demo dataset. Warning: this is an early alpha version – all features and bugs are still likely to change, a lot!
There are builds for Windows (x86), Mac OS X (x86 and ppc), and Linux (x86 + x86_64 + some embedded systems, such as the JeeHub’s MMnet1001 module).
It takes 3 steps to run this demo – there is no installation:
Here is the debug output this generates on my laptop:
And here’s a Windows screenshot with similar output:
Now point your browser to http://localhost:8888/ to see what JeeMon has to offer.
When started for the first time, JeeMon downloads a few extra files from the internet: “Jee-demodata”, “Jee-library”, and “Jee-library.update” (under 2 Mb total). These files are obtained from public servers at Dropbox, I do not track downloads or statistics.
On every subsequent startup, JeeMon looks for updates and refreshes the “Jee-library” file if there is a new version, so by simply starting JeeMon again a few days later you can track its development progress. To disable automatic updates, delete the “Jee-library.update” file.
I’m releasing this code to give you an early glimpse into the Jee Labs kitchen – and to gauge the interest and figure out how to improve JeeMon. If the demo works for you, great. If it doesn’t, you can either try to figure out what the problem is, or delete all the Jee-* files and try again at a later date. The new mailing list announced yesterday is open to anyone wishing to comment and make suggestions.
Let me reiterate that this JeeMon alpha release is for infinitely curious and technically interested people, not for those looking for a finished home energy monitoring solution. Running this JeeMon demo is bound to raise more questions than I can deal with – but it’s all open source, so feel free to explore this as much as you like.
Whatever. Enjoy …
Update – the demo dataset now contains data since 2009-01-01, i.e. a total of over 3 months of readings.
For those who want to share their interest / questions / ideas w.r.t. any of the Jee Labs projects, I’ve set up a mailing list at Google Groups:
See http://groups.google.com/group/jeelab/about – if you don’t want to sign in to Google to join this list, let me know and I’ll add your email address manually.
Update – the mailing list has been replaced by the Jee Labs discussion forums at http://talk.jeelabs.net/.
This blog has reached its one hundredth post – whee!
If you follow this weblog regularly, you may have noticed that there is now one post per day, day-in-day-out and always at 0:01 CET. This is not because my working days and hours are so regular – far from it – or necessarily always late, but because this self-imposed daily schedule helps me stay focused.
It’s all supported by a bit of automation in WordPress – I simply try to keep a handful of posts scheduled “in the pipeline”, so that these writings aren’t driven by some sort of daily deadline panic. On some days I have nothing to say – and I don’t – while on others I’m pleased to find that I can touch on a couple of topics, some of which are hopefully of interest to you, dear reader.
Speaking of whom… it’s always nice to hear from you. I’d love to read about what interests you in this “Computing Stuff Tied to the Physical World” as the title of this weblog says, as well as your suggestions on how to further improve this weblog.
So much for the intermezzo on this first day of spring (for the northern hemisphere that is). Tomorrow’s post will resume with a photo, graphic, or sketch – as always.
Enjoy your reading!
PS. FYI, I recently added a bit more background info about me on the About page.
In case you missed that last image of my new Arduino’ish / wireless’ish design, here it is again:
It’s simple, it works, and I hope it’ll become useful as building block for all sorts of tasks around the house. The previous post has all the details.
And now it has a name: I’m calling this a JeeNode.
I’ve also added a Projects page to this blog (near the top), to more easily find related posts.
I’ve “moved” this blog to http://jeelab.equi4.com/ – but it’s all smoke and mirrors really: underneath, it still redirects to the http://jeelab.wordpress.com/ site which continues to host these pages just as before.
Update – I’ve also changed the blog title to match the domain name. Less confusion. See the about page for further details.
This weblog was moved from RapidWeaver (which doesn’t scale, sigh) to a hosted one using WordPress. Right now, I’m now using MarsEdit to manage this blog.
All older entries have been moved over, but not all links and source code listings have properly made it across the transition. The original blog is still archived here.