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BUSnet is an open-source, low-speed
multi-drop serial network primarily designed to monitor and control
devices in an RV (bus, motorhome, campervan, caravan, 4x4, boat etc)
but also at home in other environments such as home control, hydroponics
or model trains.
A simple battery-monitoring network.
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BUSnet is a reasonably large and complex system. It is fully
defined up to the application API, as well as the hardware and
mechanical specs, a feature that should allow interoperability
between devices built by different developers.
But some people just want to tinker with their
own protocol or build a custom network to control their garden
watering system. BUSnet will do this but can be an overkill.
Such a developer really just needs a reliable transport mechanism
to shift data easily between Nodes.
I'm currently working on a very simple network,
details coming soon.
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Non-techo description
Note, this section of robgray.com is quite technical, it is designed
to be read by potential BUSnet developers, not the average non-computing/electronics
person.
For a layman's view of the system see here.
What's it going
to actually do for the average person?
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Disclaimer
I must emphasise that at this point BUSnet is pretty much all
hat and no cattle. Some prototyping has been done but for the
last six months I've been writing the spec and designing things
on paper. This may continue for another six months, or as long
as it takes to get what I consider to be a stable specification.
Much as I'd love to start tinkering right away,
for a complex project like this it's important to get the design
as right as possible, even then it will probably still be 10-20%
wrong but that's better than changing a feature having made and
released PCBs.
A change in the spec at this stage is a 5-minute
event, at breadboarding stage half an hour, at PCB stage hours
or days, and after hardware has been released a bloody nightmare.
I could really use some help with this as well,
at present this entails reading what I've done and applying a
sanity test to it. Also some processor types (Picaxe is one I
know about) have to be accommodated and at present I'm designing
features based on my reading of spec sheets of chips I have no
experience with.
If you're at all interested go to this
page.
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