It’s all a matter of timing

So, phew!

I re-bombed parabuntu onto the SD card.

What the problem was earlier was the security key had changed but I was forgetting to say YES to option for saving the new key (I had quite a lot of red wine last night so don’t be so hard on me 😉 )

When I powered up the Parallella again, I wasted no time and jumped in with:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth0

---- inside of nano ---

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.150 // your parallella IP here
netmask 255.255.255.0 // your netmask here
gateway 192.168.0.1 // your gateway address here
dns-nameservers x.x.x.x //your dns server list here

--- exit and save ---

sudo reboot

Happily now running on the static IP set … phew!

Now to work.

Target environments will be erlang/elixir and chapel.  Yet, ePython for poking around.

I am reading back into my threaded interpretive days to look at a minimal FORTH runtime to run on the Epiphany.  There has been chatter on the parallella groups about J1, but that is a HDL (read FPGA) FORTH.  I think many people chattering haven’t worked in FORTH so much of the chatter is unproductive.  I am thinking a GForth running on the ARM side that assembles, rather than cross compiles, to a hand built threaded interpreter on the matrix.  I am not sure how feasible that all is but it will be  a good instrument for learning the nuts’n’bolts of Epiphany.

Many lessons can come from the struggle, yes?

This, idea is no more or less I worked on during a project, in Canada, where I noted the DSP software the team was using was already using a threaded processing chain.  The idea then of control loops and conditional inside of that was a soft sell.

So, in FORTHeze no outer interpreter running on the Epiphany.

 

New way to stuff erlang/elixir onto embedded arm

YES, it is “designed” for RaspingBreathberryDoodlePi BUT worked a treat for OPiZ.

See the following link.

Hmmmm …

… so the sage seems to be continuing.

I was able to get erlang going on the OPiZ.  I tossed up whether I was going to put RabbitMQ or emqttd onto the gadget – going for emqttd since it didn’t need to carry all the protocols you can play with using RabbitMQ.

I am hoping that was a good choice – go figure emqttd appears to have grown up and so is getting bloated it seems.

The other side though is during the make the OPiZ kept losing connection with github.  Not really sure how to debug this, it is either flaky networking on OPiZ part – given the problems with ssh.  The other side is that it is day time in northern hemisphere and github is not friendly to the southern hemisphere about this time at night (19:00 hours central standard time Australia) as the servers choke.   I have previously, on my PC, not been able to connect to github – putting it down to skewing of services.

 

It has just occured to me …

… what a coincidence.

The Parallella and the Odroid-C1 PCB are same size (almost).  Is that Feng Shui, synchronicity or serendipity?

Pity the post holes don’t line up.

It occurred …

… that after all the fluffing around with TTB on the inherited RaspingBreathBurryDOodlePi, I did rather prefer my mix I built originally on one of my ODROID-W.

Still, now I have got the additional ODROID-C1 it makes more sense for use as the house automation server.

The reason is that there is a UPS module that I can get from HardKernel that will help with survival requirements (given the blackouts we occasionally get in sleepy little Adelaide).

I do rather like the 7″ touch display you can get for the C1 as well.  Although, that isn’t strictly necessary since we will browse into the node-red running on it.

 

Erlang on C.H.I.P.

Well, with github and nerves-project.org down (for some dangblasted reason) I tried building Erlang on one of my C.H.I.P. from instructions here (for RaspbreathyPiklette).

Sorta stuck after that as … github is down.  Git can’t find it, ping can’t browser can’t.  The site reports up and running but still can’t connect.

 

Finally!

So, sorted the BlackWidow and likely the YellowJacket connectivity. The socket approach seems to be the better option, and that is TCP based, so porting of mqtt code might still be possible – although the application is simple enough so a Python adaptor on the host between the boards and the mqtt server would do just as well.

Now, the other side is that I opted for moving from emqttd to RabbitMQ as the mqtt broker.  This is due to the fact that there is likely a way to get RabbitMQ talking to Spade agents via XMPP (with some work).  This might be a way of integrating Profeta agents into the picture without deep integration into Spade that I have been currently investigating.

Not to mention likely being able to use the same inter-agent communication for eJason base experiments.

Essentially using mqtt as a ‘blackboard‘.

Setting up the ODROID-W

A second package turned up in my PO box from Hardkernel.  It was the extra ODROID-W for my parts drawer and also the connector sets I forgot to get.  Trying out the ODROID-W plus base board was a little hard without the connectors, yes?

Ah! That’s better.

A little soldering etc. then bomb Rasbian onto an SD card, then dump the Erlang and, yes, the blinking LED experiment.

This weekend I promised myself.  I have already put lighting up a Beaglebone Black with the cross-compiled Erlang experiment I put together on my 32bit Debian box.  I just need to sort the SD card reader/burner on that machine.

The box that turned up also included four button cells for the on-board RTC (you know the one the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have).  So, I had forgotten I had ordered those, I ordered 8 button cells from them to get connectors for the board for the lipo cells, not the other day.  So it means I can sort out battery power for the board ahead of schedule.  All good.

Batteries smatteries

Gag!

I ordered a couple of extra ODROID-W without base board – just to have on hand for those spontaneous projects.

I haven’t ordered any batteries from Hardkernel due in no small part to the problems ordering batteries from overseas and the hassle with conniptions about lipos and fire.

So, I thought I would buy batteries locally.  They have JST and not  Molex 51021-0200 connections but I thought I would just add a jumper to the battery.  Ordered Molex jumpers to find, go figure, they are too big!

So now I have to sort out batteries from Hardkernel – if and only if they can send them.

The saving grace will be they sell button batteries for the RTC that have the right Molex connector.  Worst case I have to buy 8 of those to get the 4 molex connectors I will need for my ODROID-W boards.

POSTSCRIPT

So, to get the molex connectors from Digikey they will cost $0.34 (that is 34 cents) for ten.  Then $34 (that is 3400 cents) to post.  Why? They’d fit in an envelope with a stamp!  I ended up ordering 8 RTC button cells from Hardkernel.  They have the same connector so I will snip 4 and piggy back the connector on the batteries I bought.  If you think about it that is necessary because the batteries still need charging and the new molex connectors will not fit the charger – catch 22.

No real biggy.  Most RC batteries have two connectors, one for charger and one for power train.

Erlang on BBB

So, tried to set up nerves-sdk on my 64bit Debian box.  Had trouble sourcing i386 libraries so I chickened out and jumped on my 32bit Debian box.

Slow build but I got a linux image for the BBB cross compiled with erlang and elixir (no less) so I will look at putting the image on a card to see if the thing took.  I need to get an FDDI serial cable for my BBB to talk to the erlang onboard so soon.