On May 3, 2006, at 7:46 AM, Matt Welsh wrote:
Hi all:
I have searched the archives and have not found much information
about running TinyOS on MacOS machines (Intel in my case).
There is some information here:
http://www.allthingsalceste.com/tinyos-on-mac-os-x/
However, there are a few details missing on this page, such as how
to get any of the Java tools to compile, how to receive packets over
the serial port, etc.
Wondering if anyone else who has dealt with MacOS can help out.
I swear I have seen MacOS machines with motes plugged into them!
1) NesC does not seem to work; I simply get
make: *** [exe0] Error 1
This seems to be the same problem reported here:
http://mail.millennium.berkeley.edu/pipermail/tinyos-help/2006-May/
016321.html
I have not tried the fix suggested in the followup.
This fix has worked for me.
2) I am unable to compile the Java tools in net/tinyos because (you
guessed it!) there is no javax.comm for MacOS. Took a look at RXTX but
am unable to get RXTX-2.0 to compile; seems that RXTX-2.0 is a bit out
of date. RXTX-2.1 might work but uses the gnu.io namespace so is
probably
not compatible with the TinyOS tools.
I don't know a good answer to this. TinyOS 2.0 has thrown off RXTX/
javax.comm because of all of the issues and uses its own serial
package (written by Cory Sharp). I haven't tried getting it working
on OS X, however, and it isn't backwards-compatible with 1.x (there
is a slightly different serial protocol).
3) The C-based Serial Forwarder in tools/src/sf compiles and seems to
find the serial port; but subtle differences in the way the serial IO
works on MacOS seem to be getting in the way of it working properly.
In general it is frustrating that the TinyOS toolset depends so
heavily
on these large, unwieldy, and non-portable Java libraries. I am not
sure
what the TinyOS 2.x effort is doing but it would be far preferable to
have a lean 'serial daemon' that interfaces to the serial port and
could
be (ideally) readily ported across many platforms; then the Java tools
only need to understand how to talk to the daemon over a socket.
I agree, that would be a useful tool. There are a few complexities,
e.g., due to how 2.x formats serial packets, but I don't think they
would be insurmountable. TEP 113 goes into the details. It would
essentially be a single-client serial forwarder. Between fine-tuning
the power management system, filling in the communication bus
support, network protocols, tutorials, the compiler, storage, and
moving TEPs out of draft, I think it's safe to say that the T2 WG has
its hands full. It would welcome contributions, however: if someone
wrote it and it worked well, I would check it in...
Phil
_______________________________________________
Tinyos-help mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.millennium.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinyos-help
