Big news of the week, NBitWonder is now available on flickr. From now on we will be posting photos for the website using our flickr page (and lots of photos too!) Check out our flickr page here!

Now that winter break is upon us, I’ve had some time to work on various projects.  I have spent a fair amount of time working on porting VoIP32 to C, though this code isn’t anywhere near complete yet (and probably won’t be soon).  In the meantime, though, I added a few features to the VoIP32 assembly version.

First up, a DHCP client has been added.  DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, allows a networked device to automatically configure itself with an IP address, netmask, gateway address, and nameserver address, provided a DHCP server is present.  Most routers contain a DHCP server.

Next, an ARP resolver has been added.  ARP, or Address Resolution Protocol, is a link-layer protocol that correlates IP address with MAC addresses.  IP addresses can vary based on the network to which a device is connected, but MAC address are, for the most part, permanently assigned to hardware.

Finally, an Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) client has been added.  This protocol lets the board set its own clock over the network.

Each of these protocols has been added in such a way that the board can handle a number of outstanding requests at the same time, adding to its multitasking nature.  The USB-based user interface has similarly been expanded to exercise the new options.  A copy of the updated source code can be found on the NBitWonder gitHub page, under the VoIP32 section.

UPDATE, 12/27/2010 1:47pm: A DNS client has been added as well.  This protocol lets the board resolve hostnames such as pool.ntp.org (the NTP server) to address like 128.2.1.10 (an individual server in that pool).  An example of how to use built-in functions to resolve hostnames appears in the NTP event handler, called from the main loop of the VoIP32 firmware.

The staff of NBitWonder would like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a happy and safe holiday season.  We sincerely hope you enjoy this chance to spend time with your loved ones, and we look forward to bringing you more projects in the future.

Very exciting news here at NBitWonder this weekend. We can proudly say that co-founder and close personal friend Ben Laskowski is graduating from Purdue. He will be receiving his bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering, to continue on to a professional full time job on the East Coast. Ben will continue to contribute to work done here at NBitWonder, but simply won’t be as conveniently located in the future. We’re all very happy for Ben, and want to congratulate him on his victorious weekend!

The NBitWonder gitHub page has been updated with two new repositories.

First, the VoIP32 project in its current state has been uploaded.  The files contained therein are the main microcontroller source code in MIPS assembler, the beginnings of a port to C, the CPLD Verilog source, and the EagleCAD files for both the main board and the peripheral board.  While formal documentation has not yet been produced (the project predates our documentation standards), you can follow project development as it happens here.

The LED Array project contains the EagleCAD files for both the driver and array boards as well as the source code and font files.  Documentation is a bit spotty for this project as well — though the original writeup can be found here.

Hello everyone,

For anybody trying to access the website yesterday, the server hosting our site was targeted by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and was therefore inaccessible. The site appears to be back up today, although access times are a little slow as the aftermath of the DDoS attack gets sorted out. In any event, we’re back on the air and are here to take your questions and comments.

George Hadley
Ben Laskowski
Sam Mussmann

This post was last modified on July 18th, 2011 at 11:51PM EST

To kick off the embedded development on Mac OSX series, we begin with the foundation for open source software on the Mac: fink and X11. Embedded hardware development requires good design software, and many of the best design packages are available as free or open source software. For Linux variants, apt-get is the goto method for installing software packages. For those on the Mac OS X platform, however, apt-get is not included in the system by default.

Note: use of fink and X11 requires the mac user to wade into the Terminal and the Unix guts of the operating system. If you are unfamiliar with Unix or the Terminal application, it is highly recommended that you familiarize yourself via some tutorials. Some well written tutorials are included here, here, and/or here.
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Finally!

We blogged about MPLABX, Microchip’s upcoming cross-platform IDE for working with PIC microcontrollers, some time ago. The software is still in beta, with an official release expected some time in January. At the time of the original post, while it was very exciting that MPLABX was up and coming and that it would provide cross-platform PIC IDE support, it was frustrating that certain pieces of software, namely the Microchip C compilers, were unavailable for some platforms (Mac OSX, in particular).

Today, however, I can excitedly report that all compilers for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux are now available, in addition to the MPLABX IDE. Furthermore, beta version 4.1 has been released if you are running the Windows platform. You can head over to the MPLABX download page and get started testing out the software before the January 2011 release (tutorials and other resources are available here). If you do, let us know what you think in the comments below.

UPDATE: There was some initial confusion about C18 that forced us to pull the post. The mplabc18.app that is downloaded from the above site needs to be unzipped in order to work, so try that if you’re experiencing problems.