Does any one know about opensource network monitor tool for BlackBerry ?
What about RIM Network Diagnostic Tool (source is available):
BlackBerry smartphones support many different transports that facilitate reliable data communication between third-party applications and the Internet. The transports available are direct Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), BlackBerry® Mobile Data System (BlackBerry MDS), BlackBerry® Internet Service Browsing (BIS-B), BlackBerry® Unite!™ software, Wireless Access Protocol (WAP)1.0, WAP2.0 and Wi-Fi® technology. It is important to understand the differences between these transports and how and when to leverage each transport. It is also crucial to determine if a transport is available for use before trying to use it. The Network Diagnostic Tool is essentially a role model that answers all these questions and is a functional diagnostic tool for testing a URL over various transports supported by the BlackBerry solutions, as well as for displaying the values of many network attributes during the test period.
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Is it possible to associate single wireless network interface controller (WNIC) with multiple Wireless Access Points (WAP) at a time? If not: why?
I've never heard about such a feature, so I assume it's technically impossible or fairly difficult and rarely implemented. Is it really that difficult/impossible to implement driver providing such a feature? Is it software or hardware difficulty?
I assume that TCP/IP protocols' specifications doesn't limit us at all because if I attach multiple WNICs to my computer, I can easily connect to multiple APs.
If it's software difficulty, than what's the actual problem? Does Linux/Windows kernel or WNIC's drivers limits it? Or maybe system libraries (like libc on GNU/Linux systems)?
If it's hardware difficulty, what actually limits us? Antennas? Using single radio frequency at a time? If yes, than why can't we implement frequency hopping (like Kismet does)? Because of lost packets during time spent on other channels? If yes, than can we associate WNIC with multiple routers working on the same channel (I know that channel overlapping is bad)?
Note: I'm not talking about dual band routers. I assume that we consider most common WNIC and AP which both work on 2.4GHz channels. If I have to put my question into OS context, than I choose GNU/Linux context.
Yes. The basic technique is that the client tells AP 'A' that it is going to sleep and then talks to AP 'B' while A is buffering frames for it.
Microsoft research worked this out a while ago:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/virtualwifi/
Many low-level drivers support Wi-Fi interface virtualization (e.g. the BRCM wl command has options which support this).
Apple's AirDrop and MultiPeer features for OS X and iOS use a similar technique, but instead of talking to a 2nd AP they talk to a peer device.
I am searching for open source software for wireless sensors’ management in a wireless sensor network environment. More specifically, I have some 802.11-based temperature sensors which are connected with a pc using a 802.11 router. I need to put configurable open source software into the pc to manipulate the information that comes from the sensors. Any idea?
I've been using Zenoss Core Community edition to accomplish the task you mentioned. It allows you to monitor several temperature sensors, storing the information in circular databases. Once deployed, you don't need to perform too much housekeeping.
If your sensors implements SNMP (Simple Network Managment Protocol) all you need is to enable the protocol according to manufacturer specs and let zenoss to discover your devices.
You can create customized reports and trigger events based on your custom configuration (eg, send an email when temperature is over certain level).
Finally, if the monitoring info is retrieved using a different method other than SNMP, you can code custom scripts with Python, so that you help to zenoss to retrieve the info needed. Dig into the forums. Chances are the script is already available for your sensor.
If I was told I needed to create a driver for some product (say, a game controller), how would I go about creating one? Is this something you could do normally in C/C++?
And what about firmware for external deviced connect to USB? How is this created usually? Is this also done in C/C++, or some lower level language?
Thanks!
Device drivers for desktop computer operating systems are generally written in either C or C++. The operating system you would target will have some form of framework or device driver development environment. Often these development kits can be obtained free of charge.
There are books available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS X (and others) that detail the process of creating a device driver.
If your driver is related to a device on a specific hardware bus (PCI, PCI-X, USB, SCSI, SATA, etc.) you can also get books on that specific technology. An understanding of that hardware system can greatly facilitate the design of your driver.
Another good resource is the open source code for similar devices to yours. You can obtain that from the Linux kernel source or FreeBSD source and study how certain aspects of your type of device are implemented.
EDIT: I nearly forgot to mention that you will also need data sheets, schematics, and/or theory of operation information about the device itself.
I'll add to Amardeep's good answer with the following books that will help you think about the context device drivers operate in, and how they're structured:
Linux:
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Linux-Kernel-Third-Daniel/dp/0596005652
Windows:
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Microsoft-Windows-Driver-Model/dp/0735618038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277439434&sr=1-1
Mac OS:
http://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Systems-Approach/dp/0321278542/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277439467&sr=1-1
You do it in any language that can talk to the interface. If it requires poking ports or addresses directly then you use assembly or C. If there's a higher-level interface such as libusb then you can use almost any language you like.
We have a range of PC demonstration programs for our microcontroller products. The programs typically connect to a USB HID chip on the microcontroller board. The USB chip acts as a communications bridge, allowing the programs to communicate with the micros over SPI/I2C/UART. The programs can configure the micros, and get back status information to display to the user.
We are now looking to build some standalone demonstrations using single board PCs. We would like to reuse as much as possible of our existing demo app source code. Ideally, we could just run them as-is.
Does anybody have any advice on the best way forward? The basic options seem to be WinCE or XP Embedded boards. WinCE boards seem to pull less power, which would be an advantage from a battery life point of view.
Our existing demos are built either in C++ under Borland Builder, or in Delphi.
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: see my answer below with info from a board vendor.
Free Pascal/Lazarus can compile some forms of Delphi apps to WiNCE/arm. Even visual ones.
There isn't a Delphi version for WinCE, so you would need to rewrite the applications. The same applies for the Borland Builder's control libraries. Only if you have used plain Win32 API, you would be able to port your application to WinCE easily. You may also encounter problems with the hardware access part. The Serial Port driver may not work as is. Also, you need to find a WinCE board that can act as USB host and provides HID drivers (this isn't very common).
In conclusion, I believe that you would be better of with Windows XP Embedded boards. These should run your applications as they are.
As an update, and for future reference, I thought I'd post the results of our discussions with a WinCE board vendor here. Caveat: I haven't actually tried any of this.
The bottom line is that there isn't a straightforward way to do what we were hoping for (i.e., re-compile our existing demo applications to run under WinCE). The reason is that the generic HID drivers and standard APIs that exist in desktop flavours of Windows just aren't there in WinCE.
To talk to HID devices in WinCE you need to implement a custom HID driver. This needs to support an interface allowing user mode applications to communicate with the driver, and to construct HID reports to be sent to the physical device. As this interface would itself be custom, application code needs to be updated accordingly.
WinCE application development is generally done using Visual Studio and the Microsoft compilers. The approach recommended to us was:
Create a custom HID class driver. This could be based on, for instance, the Microsoft keyboard HID driver.
Create an API for talking to the driver.
Use .net to create our GUI applications, and use PInvoke to actually talk to the API.
The end result of all this head-scratching is that to avoid the time and learning curve associated with this approach, we're going to go for a board running XP. We can then use our existing demo applications straight out of box. The trade-off is that we'll have to live with substantially reduced battery life.
Every indication I have, based on my experience in embedded computing is that doing something like this would require expensive equipment to get access to the platform (ICE debuggers, JTAG probes, I2C programmers, etc, etc), but I've always wondered if some ambitious hacker out there has found a way to load native code on a Blackberry device. Anyone?
Edit: I'm aware of the published SDK and it's attendant restrictions. I'm curious if anyone has attempted to get around them, and if so, how far they got.
I've seen this question pop up in a number of different forums over time. The original Blackberries were programmable in C++ but I think that RIM ran up against the problems of trying to implement a secure platform in the C/C++ compile to native paradigm.
The devices do have JTAG ports, but unless one could get hands on the RIM code as a place to start the problem is enormous.
I also have to wonder how useful a Blackberry with a replacement FOSS operating system would be, since it would not likely have the protocols to connect to BES or BIS, send PIN's etc. If one was simply looking for a the power of the hand held computing platform I suspect there are many more likely candidates available.
No, C++ is no longer a supported RIM development tool, as they phased it out a number of years ago. Client applications can be developed in Java (or one of a few 5GL frameworks), and web + sever-side apps can be developed using standard tools.
For those looking for updated information, the new Playbook os, also known as QNX, also known as Blackberry 10 (or it will be when the phones running it come out) is in fact c/c++ based, also using QML and a C++ add on called Cascades.
Unfortunately the official SDK website only seems to mention Java. According to wikipedia, different versions of the BlackBerry use different processors. Combined with the fact that RIM uses a proprietary operating system for the devices, it becomes pretty difficult to develop native code without official tools. There is also a partial API-level security restriction which would further prohibit advanced tinkering.
Just randomly searching for an answer to this and came across http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Tablet-OS-SDK-for-Adobe-AIR/Native-C-C-SDK/td-p/778009 which mentions that BB intend to release a C/C++ SDK soon, more details will be provided at the 2011 Game Developer Conference.