TinyOS

[duragezic]

edit: I think that CVS crap finally finished without error. Only took about 5 tries and 2 hours to get this crap installed. Why can't someone just make an RPM package once or twice a year? I know Windows users want it easy, but a few steps I can do, but spending so much time trying to get crap working in some roundabout way is ridiculous. Even someone I know who is very good with linux had to spend a bunch of time getting it all installed.

 

[Crusty]

Huh?

 

[aceO07]

Just curious, what are you doing with TinyOS?

I remember the long hours trying to get that stupid thing to work or any of the software I had to use to work. Lots of google searching to find obscure references. For the most part I was using it in Windows. I used a little of it a couple of years ago. I was just playing with wireless sensor motes and networking them.

 

[duragezic]

LOL, the OP was a long message/rant about trying to get the POS to work. Open source stuff like this is usually a huge PITA, especially something like this that is packaged with RPMs so you gotta add Cygwin to the mix and overall, it was a huge PITA. Basically, someone just needed to package up the TinyOS source more recently than 2003, since the automated install (InstallShield Wizard) for Tiny OS + NesC + tools was very old and didn't have Telos Tmote support, only the older Mica. The semi-automated install was still way easier than the full manual install, but again it was useless to me since no one bothered to package up any remotely recent version of TinyOS. Somehow, I think some linux and open source geeks think this is actually a good thing that it is a huge PITA to do, like they want to spend hours just getting crap to work instead of it just working easily and actually using it.

So anyway, after several tries, the CVS checkout finally worked. Somehow, CVS checkout of TinyOS was like 250 MB of files. I don't want all of this contributed crap... when I do the checkout, just let me get the required TinyOS stuff and give me web links to contributed crap. Or hell, I don't need a nightly build, so just package the crap up into a zip a couple of times per year and don't include all this contrib junk, just TinyOS. But, that would be too easy!


The reason I got it is for an Embedded Systems Programming course. The course is just doing weekly assignments with either the Tmote Sky (NesC) or the new Sun SPOTs (Java). I took both of them cause I like embedded systems and was going to do the labs with both devices, but from the time I spent just getting the required software for the Tmote, I'm inclined to just give it back and use the Sun SPOT, a far better, easier, more professional package. Anyway, the labs start out pretty basic like just reading and displaying data from the various sensors, then some control of a robot with PWM, networking, and I'm not too sure what else.

 

[aceO07]

I love those motes. I wish I have extra cash that I wasn't saving so I could get a few and play with them again. Drop some motes here and there.. log sensors.. mesh network them.. Really fun stuff.