Hello to the Little Red Daemon

By Dermot Tynan, about 11 years ago.

After much tweaking and hacking with configuration files and kernel build options, I finally have a FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE kernel and install running on a Wrap board. Technically, it's NanoBSD, which is a scaled-down FreeBSD install, which boots from Compact Flash. The WRAP board is the PC Engines forerunner to the ALIX. When National Semiconductor and AMD stopped making Geode chips, the guys at PC Engines had to stop making their very popular WRAP board. I still have a few of them tucked away, for emergencies such as this.

• March 20, 2013
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I love it when a Plan comes together...

By Dermot Tynan, almost 11 years ago.

The new ALIX board has arrived. It's to the left of the picture, sitting on top of a copy of the Lyon's Notes (which is appropriate). It's running my custom version of NanoBSD quite nicely, and can see the GPS without any difficulty. The GPS unit is a BU-353 unit (the USB version) which is out of the shot. It's attached to the window, and gazing at the man-made stars. To give a breakdown of what's in that photograph, the ALIX is on the left. In the USB port is the GPS, the RS-232 cable at the top of the board is communicating with my development machine (running FreeBSD). The red CAT5 cable is connecting the board to the "house network." The Atheros CM9 radio is a miniPCI card mounted on the underside of the board. It works on 5.8GHz and on 2.4GHz. In this case, I'm using 5.8GHz because (apparently) it has better cross-water characteristics and the band isn't as crowded. The mini coax cable is at the top-left of the picture, connected to a short, 9dBi antenna. You can also see a 12v cable with barrel plug. At the top-right of the picture is a WRAP board, also developed by PC Engines. It was being used as a testbed for the operating system, but that is no longer needed thanks to the ALIX.

• May 16, 2013
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Work continues, slowly but surely.

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

It's been pretty quiet here on the blog front for a couple of months due to work and life pressures, but efforts on the hull and keel have continued unabated.

Much to report since the last post, including two transatlantic attempts (neither of which have succeeded, yet).

• August 12, 2013
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REDIS

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

After a lunchtime conversation with a friend of mine, I ditched some of the earlier design considerations around message-passing and MQ-based systems in favour of the NoSQL database Redis.

• October 26, 2013
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The rubber hits the road. Sort of.

By Dermot Tynan, over 10 years ago.

Due to other, exciting distractions (which I will mention in a later post), I haven't had a chance to keep the blog up to date. Still, work progresses on the boat, and that's the important part. Last month, with the keel now in its new position about 30mm further back along the hull, and sealed into place, it was time to add the electronics board.

• January 6, 2014
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