Friday, November 18, 2011

WiNode Works!


The first of the WiNode pcbs arrived on Thursday, and an idle half hour at Barcamp Liverpool, saw the board built up sufficiently to perform some basic tests.

Just to recap, WiNode can either operate as a standalone wireless node - or as a smart wireless shield for Nanode/Arduino.

WiNode is essentially a minimal Arduino, grafted to an RFM12B transceiver module - and in this respect it is similar to the JeeNode - and can be used with JeeNode applications. However it offers the following additional functionality:

1. micro SD card socket to provide massive datastorage capacity.
2. L293 (or equivalent) dual H-bridge - for driving motors or relays.
3. Real Time Clock with wake up alarm feature
4. I/O brought out to 3.5mm screw terminals.

Once the reverse protection diode was fitted, the board sprung into life - with the familiar Blinky sketch - but in true Nanode style with the LED on Pin 6.

The new Nanode programming cable worked perfectly - auto resetting the board correctly.

More news later - Barcamp Liverpool has been a marvelous gathering - and it's not even end of Day 1 yet.

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