May 4
Address block strategies
Radio addressing
Use the mesh networking capabilities of the Zigbee radio, but use some proprietary protocol so I don’t have interoperability requirements with Zigbee devices and networks. Second key advantage: no need to buy a block of addresses from the Zigbee people. Finally, I can create my own addressing system, and can sell blocks or individual addresses to experimenters wanting to make their own devices for the network.
Ethernet addressing
I don’t see any way around this. I think I am simply going to have to buy a block. I have two interesting options if I do: first, as I don’t plan to interoperate with Zigbee, and if I end up putting ethernet on every device, I can use the MAC address for the radio system. Second, I can sell MAC addresses to other people who want to make aiosphere-compatible devices to sell.
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You may want to consider the Rime stack that comes with Contiki. In my opinion, Contiki is the best OS for a tiny protocol stack and the Rime stack already is built into it. That stack has mesh networking, AODV, and just about any other feature you will need. If you don’t need Zigbee compatibility, that might be the way to go.
By the way, did I mention that Contiki also comes with a TCP/IP stack and an ethernet driver?
By the way, I’m not affiliated with SICS (Swedish Institute of Computer Science, I think), but I’m a fan of their work, especially Adam Dunkels.
Akiba:
Thanks for the pointers to Contiki, Rime and uIP. Lots of great features, but I still have a lot of reading to do to understand whether the system is easy enough for my project. I have not yet found the fully documented demo that I want for, say, the MSP430, PIC or AVR. I am studying the Tmote Sky docs now.