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The
Etherwidget project is a free hardware/software project intended
for engineers and artists who want to easily add Internet capability
to microcontroller devices. The constant push to give everything
an IP address, as well as the desire to add networking to existing
projects presents technical difficulties: Ethernet cards require
full computers, but computers are large, power-hungry, require software
to run, etc. The other option is to go with an embedded-electronics
solution. Rabbit boards are commercially available TCP/IP boards
that run a networking stack on a microcontroller (in this case,
the 8051) and control an Ethernet chip. The Etherwidget is similar
in structure, with a microcontroller and a Ethernet chip. However,
this board is meant to be 'wedged' between another microcontroller/computer
and the Internet connection. This board can be driven from something
as simple as a 8-pin PIC to a full-blown Pentium 3 desktop. The
hardware and software are completely free for use and can be manufactured
at home for a cost of about $50 each. |
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For
ease of use, this board takes care of the UDP/IP and Ethernet protocol
handling. That means that if its used on a network with DHCP enabled
(which most are) then you can simply plug it in, and start sending/receiving
packets serially. All the dirty work is done by the on-board microcontroller. |
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A
predecessor to this board was used for the MIT Solar Initiative,
a design experiment where solar panels were given the capability
to transmit data on their efficiency for real-time analysis. The
board was connnected to an ethernet-to-wireless transceiver on one
side and to a sensor-network on the other. |
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