Serial power network

Networking microcontrollers

Jurjen Kranenborg posted the second version of his SerialPower network to the Picaxe forums in September, and I started playing with them in the middle of October. It wasn't long before I had to go out and buy some more Picaxe chips and breadboards for them to live on so I could create a network here in my home office.

My first attempts at getting the network running were made with just an 18X and an 08M connected with a diode-mixing network. It worked, after a fashion, but just didn't seem to work right, so I forced myself to wait until my new chips arrived to play with it more.

What follows is my take on the network protocol and hardware that Jurjen designed. I hope you find it useful, I've had fun learning this.

Chuck's own research network

This Puddlehaven office network example is a research network using Revolution Education Picaxe chips networked together using the SerialPower network hardware and software created by Jurjen Kranenborg and posted to his Web site, kranenborg.org.

Master node

My network master node is a Picaxe 08M running Jurjen's master node software. The hardware is almost straight out of the description in the version 2 docs, build on a breadboard and mounted on a piece of plexiglass.

Display and control node

The display and control node is the public face of my network. As its name suggests, it displays information from ohter nodes on the network and enables direct interaction with the network nodes through menus and/or the keypad.

Environmental sensor

OK, so it's just a thermometer and a light-dependent resistor, but environmental sensor sounds much cooler. The sensor node puts changes that it reads from the environment on the network so that other nodes, such as the display and control node or the (theoretical at this point) thermostat node can act upon the information.