Group Actions
Engagement
  • Author Author: ipv1
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 1101 views
  • Likes 2 likes
  • Comments 4 comments
Related
Recommended

[Dynamic Living-room Lights] Converting a wireless router into a YUN

ipv1

Links to Previous Posts

Preface

My project for the Internet of Holiday lights was based around our living room which was not very livable. It was a mess and with the upcoming holidays I wanted to set the living room in such a way that it would be suitable for entertaining guests. Additionally I wanted to accomplish the above mentioned in such a way that the holiday lighting becomes part of the living room and I don't need to remove it after the holidays. Hence the concept of Dynamic Living-room Lighting.

 

In the previous posts, I have review the YUN and the infineon shield and have presented an overview of the project system. I also setup the place for the lighting with some homemade arts and crafts and give a preview of the system setup. I explained the Library I made for the Infineon Shield as well as the implementation for the MoodLights and made them Dynamic. I also made a XMAS Tree with LEDs and some stuff. I connected them to the YUN and made the control for the Xmas Tree Dynamic and static. It is now integrated into the OpenHAB interface and the YUN works as a relay. I have made the minions dance using a DIY approach and connected them to an RPi. I also wrote a python script to get mentions on twitter and play music while controlling the minions. I also showed you the final build but not yet a video. post, I go back to the minions and make them learn MQTT.

 

Aftermath Report

The lights project has been appreciated a lot by guests and I am convinced that some future projects should be designed such that they can be showcased in our now IOT living room. My experiments with the Infineon shield will have to wait until such time when my wife will allow me to take the controller down. Hence I am preparing a IoT bench light around the same concept which can also serve as a notification system.

 

On the other side, I recently purchased a TPL ink WR740N wireless router which has the same atheros chip set as the YUN. I was successful in installing openwrt which is the same Linux district as the YUN. The absence of a memory card slot and io pins are felt but I have found the UART pins and hope to connect an Arduino Nano to it which will add future project prospects. I am currently trying to compile some basic programs for socket clients so that I may extend some functionality over the network and will update once I have something worth showing.

 

The router details

I got this TPL-Link WR740N on an online store for 800INR with version 4.28 on the label. The image below is of the router itself.

15%2B-%2B2

The antenna is non-removable and its a no thrills, no frills router. For the kind of BW I get here, this is no problem for surfing the internet.

 

Getting Linux

The Linux distro in the YUN is the OpenWRT which is available at www.openwrt.org and there is a whole list of routers supported. The current stable version is Barrier Breaker and to download the binary, go to

https://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_breaker/14.07/ar71xx/generic/

There is a long list of binaries which have been compiled according to manufacturer but these are all meant for the atheros ar7xx series based routers. I got the https://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_breaker/14.07/ar71xx/generic/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr740n-v4-squashfs-factory.… which is the latest at the time. Next to flash your router with the binary, no fancy tools are needed. Simply login to the router at 192.168.0.1 which is the default address or whatever you set it to be. In the system part, there is an option to update the firmware... so update it with the OpenWRT binary. Let it reboot and connect via the wired ethernet port since the default configuration is for the wlan0 to be down. Login to 192.168.1.1 and customize. Once you set the root password, you can start using SSH to login to the router as well. Below is a screenshot of that...

 

yQBZ1PBL4Ycs616yCCymOclhRYjpr5VqztOOyOvIByQ=w1024-h768-no

More to come

It was quite easy to get here and all it took was the right few steps. I am attempting to solder some serial port headers and will post again once I am good and ready. Hope this helps and if there are any inputs, please feel free to leave a comment at the end.

 

Cheers,

IP