Senior Member
Joined: 06/06/2011
Location: AustraliaPosts: 174
| Posted: 12:16pm 26 Jun 2011 |
Well, nearly.....
After I argued strongly in another thread not to include ethernet in the Maximite, I sat down and thought about it again.
RossW made some good points
The main problem that I saw was people say "Add Ethernet" as a throw away line, but what do they really want? Ethernet opens up a whole hornets nest of protocols and the like, so saying "add Ethernet" doesn't really mean much on its own.
I still argue that adding the complexity of Ethernet and a few protocols (TCP,UDP,SMTP) would be too much for the Maximite its self, so I looked at doing it outboard.
So I am pleased to announce the Maximite Ethernet interface goes into production tomorrow, for release in about 10 days time.
However, there is one big short term gotcha. Until the Maximite supports serial comms it cant talk to the ethernet interface. So Geoff I think every properly setup 4WD should have an inbuilt CRO and Logic Analyser for developing serial comms....
Having said that the unit does have a conventional serial port on it as well to allow development with a PC instead of the Maximmite, so the keen people could get started with that.
So how does it work?
Essentially it is a serial to IP converter (and back again) It does have some other tricks like an inbuilt Web server, SMTP for email and 3 GPIO pins.
From the Maximites point of view it's just talking serial data in and out one of its ports, which gets converted to IP (TCP or UDP) by the interface. This in turn can be sent/received by a PC. If you run the virtual Comm Port software the data will appear on that virtual comm port. For the more adventurous, you can open a socket directly to the interface and communicate that way.
It is also possible to load custom web pages into the interface and interact that way, via a web browser.
I will be adding more information over the next few days to my website, so if your interested, drop by and have a look.
Cheers
Rohan
Rohan Hamer
HAMFIELD Software & Hardware Solutions
Makers of the Maximite Expander.
http://www.hamfield.com.au