GPRS using SIM900 and AT Commands

Powerup the Sim900 module
connect it to the system through serial to USB or through FTDI cable.The TTl pins for FTDI is available near to the DB9 connector.

Open any serial Terminal porogram. In Linux i use GtkTerm. Select the correct port and set
Baudrate = 9600
parity = None
Bits = 8
Stop bits = 1
Flow Control = None

 

 

The AT Commands

I am posting the commands and its reply for better understanding. I am using an Airtel postpaid sim card.
Make sure you have enough balance on Sim card.

First Command

AT

OK If your response contains this, This string should tell you all is well

This is to check if SIM is unlocked.

AT+CPIN?

+CPIN: READY If your response contains this, then it means SIM is unlocked and ready

This checks if SIM is registered or not

AT+CREG?

+CREG: 0,1 This string in the response indicates SIM is registered

Check if GPRS is attached or not

AT+CGATT?

+CGATT: 1 A response containing this string indicates GPRS is attached

Reset the IP session if any

AT+CIPSHUT

SHUT OK This string in the response represents all IP sessions shutdown.

Check if the IP stack is initialized

AT+CIPSTATUS

STATE: IP INITIAL This string in the response indicates IP stack is initialized

single connection mode,if AT+CIPMUX=1 multi connection mode

AT+CIPMUX=0

OK This string indicates single connection mode set successfully at SIM 900

This sets the PDP context parameters such as PDP type (IP, IPV6, PPP, X.25 etc), APN, data compression, header compression etc.

AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","airtelgprs.com"

OK If your response contains this, This string should tell you all is well

you need to know the APN, username and password for your service provider
AT+CSTT= “APN”, “UNAME”, “PWD”
For Airtel

AT+CSTT="airtelgprs.com"

OK If your response contains this, This string should tell you all is well

Bring up the wireless. The response to this might take some time

AT+CIICR

OK indicates wireless is up

Get the local IP address

AT+CIFSR

aa.bb.xx.yy If previous command is successful, you should an IP address in the response

comamnd returns the current connection status

AT+CIPSTATUS

STATE:IP STATUS if not this, some thing is wrong

Start the connection, TCP, domain name, port

AT+CIPSTART= "TCP","flaskprint.herokuapp.com","80"

CONNECT OK This string in the response indicates TCP connection established

Request initiation of data sending

AT+CIPSEND

The response should be the string “>” to indicate, type your data to send
Type anything after the prompt
>This is the Test Data
Now use Ctrl+Z key combination to indicate end of data sending

You should get some response back from the server. Normally some error message. But you have established the connection

To close the connection

AT+CIPSHUT

SHUT OK Indicates shutdown successful

 

For the ease of Copy Pasting retyping AT commands in sequence

AT
AT+CPIN?
AT+CREG? 
AT+CGATT?
AT+CIPSHUT
AT+CIPSTATUS
AT+CIPMUX=0 
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","airtelgprs.com"
AT+CSTT="airtelgprs.com"
AT+CIICR
AT+CIFSR
AT+CIPSTATUS
AT+CIPSTART= "TCP","flaskprint.herokuapp.com","80"
AT+CIPSEND

Happy Hacking 🙂

Weekend Hack using python and CANMate

My weekend hack using our company’s(http://www.dthoughts.com) product CANMate (a high performance low cost CAN Analyzer) along with Python programming language.I wrote a python program to use CANMate in GNU/Linux and Windows which is freely vailable.I used Pythons Matplotlib library to plot the real time CAN message from a vehicle’s OBD port.

Happy Hacking 🙂

Burning IMX28 Ltib image to SD card and booting

After successful creation of bootable image as per previous post we need to do some hack in order to get the OS booted from the IMX28EVK board.

Most probably inside ypur Ltib folder there will be a scrpt named mk_mx28_sd .This is the utility used to burn the image to sdcard it will reduce us the difficulty of partitioning etc.he BSP includes the mk_mx28_sd shell script that makes it very easy to place the build output onto an SD/MMC card. The script will write the
selected boot stream, the rootfs.

The mk_mx28_sd script should always be run from the LTIB install directory. It knows how to find the boot stream files and rootfs from this
directory.Before running the script, you need to determine the device for your SD/MMC card. Find the device id of your SD card.

ls /dev/sd?

Try issuing the above command without inserting the SD card and with inserting the SD card then you will get the device id.The SD/MMC card will be the new /dev/sdX device in the output. Where X value changes as a,b,c etc.Once you already know your card’s device, updating the card contents with a new build image

cd ~/ltib
mk_mx28_sd /dev/sdX

If you dont have mk_mx28_sd in your ltib folder then download L2.6.35_10.12.01_SDK_scripts.tar.gz from Freescale site and extract it.

cp mk_hdr.sh ~/ltib  
cp mk_mx28_sd ~/ltib  
cd ~/ltib

Here you need to do a small change in order to make the script work

Edit mk_mx28_sd script and add the ‘u’ at line 177 then the o command after. This changes cylinders to sectors.

OLD:
echo “o
n

NEW:
echo “u
o
n

Once updated to create the SD card which is at /dev/sdX:

./mk_mx28_sd /dev/sdX  

Next, set the boot mode on the i.MX28 EVK board for MMC/SD on SSP0. The boot mode DIP switch settings are shown in the table below.

Then, insert the SD/MMC card into the SSP0 card socket. This is the rightmost socket on the bottom of the EVK board.

Finally, connect power to the board and press the Power button. You will see serial output over the debug UART if you have a terminal program
running.

you will reach the login promt

Login using the username root

Happy Hacking 🙂

i.MX28 LTIB on UBUNTU 13.04

I tried Ltib installation in Ubuntu 13.04 for i.MX28 board which completed successfully

First install required packages

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential zlib1g-dev rpm libncurses5-dev m4 bison liblzo2-dev uuid-dev tcl

Configure sudo

The LTIB installation script runs several commands with sudo where the user should not be prompted for a password. sudo without password must be configured for the current user to execute the script correctly.

sudo visudo

the file /etc/sudoers is opened for editing.

The following line should be inserted in the file, where user has to be changed to your user name:

# Allow user to run commands for ltib.
user ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/rpm, /opt/freescale/ltib/usr/bin/rpm

Save with Ctrl+o, then close with Ctrl+x.

Download BSP source for Ltib for iMX281

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX281&nodeId=018rH3ZrDRA24A&fpsp=1&tab=Design_Tools_Tab#

Extract it

tar -xvf L2.6.35_1.1.0_130130_source.tar.gz

cd L2.6.35_1.1.0_130130_source

./install

The installer will ask you to read and accept a EULA and then ask you for the install directory. For this example, choose your home directory.
After the installation, there will be a new directory named “ltib” under the install directory you specified. This new directory contains the actual
ltib Perl script, config files, package specs, and utilities.

so now change directory to newly created ltib directory

cd ~/ltib

Now we must patch some files of the folder.Note that ,this must be done from ltib folder itself.

wget https://community.freescale.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadBody/93455-102-2-2825/patch-ltib-ubuntu12.04.sh

./patch-ltib-ubuntu12.04.sh

It will download ubuntu-ltib-patch.tgz

tar -xzvf ubuntu-ltib-patch.tgz

./install-patches.sh 

You can download the shell script and files from this link

https://github.com/ganeshredcobra/Ltib

Configure and Build

To configure and build your LTIB installation the first time, run this command from the ~/ltib directory:

./ltib

This command invokes LTIB with its default behavior of performing a build. Since the installation has not yet been configured, LTIB will present
the ncurses configuration screen before building. Then, when you exit the configuration screen, LTIB will build the target image.you can see installed host tools in /opt/freescale/ .

When you invoke ./ltib the screen will be like this and a log file will be created inside the ltib folder

If there is any dependency problem the the building process may stop like this

Here the issue is that zlib is missing then you must install zlib

Then you will get the first time configuration window


Because the i.MX BSP contains only the i.MX platform, you don’t need to change anything on this screen.
When is selected, you can hit the return key to exit the current screen. On most main screens, exiting will bring up the following dialog
asking if you want to save changes.Here, use the right and left arrow keys to select between and . Press return to activate your selection. Selecting will cause LTIB to not continue to the following step. We must save the configuration when asked. This will bring up another sub-platform screen

The first option available on this screen is used to choose the sub-platform type. For the i.MX platform, the sub-platform is the specific chip family combined with the board type. For the i.MX28, this is the EVK board. The second option on this screen, under the Choose the packages profile item, lets you select the default set of packages. Individual packages can be enabled and disabled later, as you need. The default choice is sufficient for now.
If you need to change the sub-platform later, use the command:

./ltib -m selectype

Move the cursor down to the Selection item below the Choose the platform type line and press return to open up a platform selection
menu,

Select the imx28 platform, which is near the top of the list, and press return to return to the main screen.Exit the sub-platform selection screen and save the configuration. This will bring you to the main LTIB configuration screen.

Here you can change the settings such as packages kernel version build parameters etc

After modifying the parameters you must exit from configuration menu saving the settings and run ltib again without any arguments

./ltib

Possibly you may get an error like this

Can’t get: gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.i386.rpm at ./ltib line 2560.

CONFIG_TOOLCHAIN forced a full rebuild
Installing: gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.i386.rpm
Testing network connectivity
OK GPP:
 
Try gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.i386.rpm.md5 from the GPP
http://bitshrine.org/gpp/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.i386.rpm.md5:
21:59:11 ERROR 404: Not Found.
Try gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.i386.rpm from the GPP
http://bitshrine.org/gpp/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.i386.rpm:
21:59:11 ERROR 404: Not Found.
Can't get: gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.i386.rpm at ./ltib line 2560.
Died at ./ltib line 2560.
traceback:
main::check_toolchain_setup:2560
  main::pre_build_checks:1465
   main:569
 
 
Started: Sun Mar  3 21:17:48 2013
Ended:   Sun Mar  3 21:59:11 2013
Elapsed: 2483 seconds
 
 
Build Failed
 
Exiting on error or interrupt

To fix this error chnage the toolchain configuration

./ltib -m config

in the Toolchain selection choose “ARM, gcc-4.4.4, multilib, neon optimized” instead of default “ARM, gcc-4.6.2, multilib, neon optimized, gnueabi/eglibc2.13”.

One more serious error that you will encounter is this

Couldn’t link to symbol lroundf@@GLIBC_2.2.5

To avoid this error you need to edit makefile.rules of elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0.tar.gz

cp /opt/freescale/pkgs/elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0.tar.gz ~/Desktop
tar -zxvf elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0.tar.gz
cd elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0/
vim makefile.rules

Inside that file there is a line that reads

 LIBS = -lstdc++

change it to

LIBS = -lstdc++ -lm

to add the standard math library to the build.

After editing compress the folder back to tar.gz and place it in pkgs folder

tar -zcvf elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0.tar.gz elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0/
cp  ~/Desktop /opt/freescale/pkgs/elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0.tar.gz

Now delete the old file from BUILD folder.Else you will get an error saying delete that file.

rm -rf /opt/freescale/ltib/usr/src/rpm/BUILD/elftosb-2.6.35.3-1.1.0.tar.gz

Now again start building using the command

./ltib

After sucessful build you will be seeing this

After you have completed a build by using LTIB, you will have a target root filesystem in the rootfs directory inside the LTIB install directory. For instance, if you installed LTIB in your home directory, there will be a ~/ltib/rootfs directory containing the target rootfs.
Inside the ~/ltib/rootfs/boot directory, you will find a set of .sb files. These are the boot streams that the i.MX28 ROM interprets to boot the system.

Happy Hacking 🙂

Avr LED Blinking

This program explains hello world LED blinking program.In this program an LED is connected through a resistor to PINB0.

#include <avr/io.h>
#include <avr/delay.h>

int main()
{
	DDRB |= 1<<PINB0;
	while(1)
	{
		PORTB |= 1<<PINB0;
		_delay_ms(100);
		PORTB &= ~(1<<PINB0);
		_delay_ms(100);
	}
}

The above program makes PINB0 blink with 100ms delay.
Compile and upload the hex file.You can use the blow make file for the whole process

CC = avr-gcc
OBJCOPY = avr-objcopy
OBJDUMP = avr-objdump
AVRDUDE = avrdude
REMOVE = rm -f

MCU =atmega8

TARGET = blink
SRC = $(TARGET).c

AVRDUDE_PROGRAMMER = dapa
AVRDUDE_PORT = /dev/parport0 
AVRDUDE_WRITE_FLASH = -U flash:w:$(TARGET).hex

elf:
	$(CC) -mmcu=$(MCU) -Os -o $(TARGET).elf $(SRC)
hex:
	$(OBJCOPY) -j .text -j .data -O ihex  $(TARGET).elf $(TARGET).hex
flash:
	$(AVRDUDE) -p m8 -P $(AVRDUDE_PORT) -c $(AVRDUDE_PROGRAMMER) $(AVRDUDE_WRITE_FLASH)
clean:
	$(REMOVE) $(TARGET).hex $(TARGET).elf $(TARGET).c~

When your program name changes change name of the TARGET variable in Makefile.
Use the commands in sequence

make elf

make hex

make flash

HelloWorld in action

Happy Hacking 🙂

Plotting real-time data from Arduino using Python

The below Arduino sketch reads the values from analog pins A0 and A1 and prints it to the serial port.
This is the code

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(9600); 
}

void loop()
{
  // read A0
  int val1 = analogRead(0);
  // read A1
  int val2 = analogRead(1);
  // print to serial
  Serial.print(val1);
  Serial.print(" ");
  Serial.print(val2);
  Serial.print("\n");
  // wait 
  delay(50);
}

The serial port sends values in this format

Using python and Matplotlib am plotting this data as a function of time.I wanted to display this as a scrolling graph that moves to the right as data keeps coming in. For that, I am using the Python deque class to keep and update a fixed number of data points for each time frame.

import sys, serial
import numpy as np
from time import sleep
from collections import deque
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

# class that holds analog data for N samples
class AnalogData:
  # constr
  def __init__(self, maxLen):
    self.ax = deque([0.0]*maxLen)
    self.ay = deque([0.0]*maxLen)
    self.maxLen = maxLen

  # ring buffer
  def addToBuf(self, buf, val):
    if len(buf) < self.maxLen:
      buf.append(val)
    else:
      buf.pop()
      buf.appendleft(val)

  # add data
  def add(self, data):
    assert(len(data) == 2)
    self.addToBuf(self.ax, data[0])
    self.addToBuf(self.ay, data[1])
    
# plot class
class AnalogPlot:
  # constr
  def __init__(self, analogData):
    # set plot to animated
    plt.ion() 
    self.axline, = plt.plot(analogData.ax)
    self.ayline, = plt.plot(analogData.ay)
    plt.ylim([0, 1023])

  # update plot
  def update(self, analogData):
    self.axline.set_ydata(analogData.ax)
    self.ayline.set_ydata(analogData.ay)
    plt.draw()

# main() function
def main():
  # expects 1 arg - serial port string
  if(len(sys.argv) != 2):
    print 'Example usage: python showdata.py "/dev/tty.usbmodem411"'
    exit(1)

 #strPort = '/dev/tty.usbserial-A7006Yqh'
  strPort = sys.argv[1];

  # plot parameters
  analogData = AnalogData(100)
  analogPlot = AnalogPlot(analogData)

  print 'plotting data...'

  # open serial port
  ser = serial.Serial(strPort, 9600)
  while True:
    try:
      line = ser.readline()
      data = [float(val) for val in line.split()]
      #print data
      if(len(data) == 2):
        analogData.add(data)
        analogPlot.update(analogData)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
      print 'exiting'
      break
  # close serial
  ser.flush()
  ser.close()

# call main
if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

The program must be run in this format

python showdata.py /dev/ttyUSB5

Instead of ttyUSB5 add your ttyUSB device.And this is how the plot looks like.

Happy Hacking 🙂

Configuring in NO-IP in Raspberry Pi

Create an account at no-ip.com and set up a new host/redirect. Set up port forwarding and DDNS on your router.

Download No-Ip client

sudo wget http://www.no-ip.com/client/linux/noip-duc-linux.tar.gz
sudo tar -vzxf noip-duc-linux.tar.gz
cd no-ip-2.1.9-1
sudo make
sudo make install

Create new file in /etc/init.d called noip2

sudo vim /etc/init.d/noip2

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: testnoip
# Required-Start:
# Should-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Stop:
# Default-Start:  2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:   0 1 6
# Short-Description: Test daemon process
# Description:    Runs up the test daemon process
### END INIT INFO

# . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions	# uncomment/modify for your killproc
case "$1" in
    start)
	echo "Starting noip2."
	/usr/local/bin/noip2
    ;;
    stop)
	echo -n "Shutting down noip2."
	killproc -TERM /usr/local/bin/noip2
    ;;
    *)
	echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
	exit 1
esac
exit 0

Make script executable and run at startup

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/noip2
sudo update-rc.d noip2 defaults

Reboot the rPi

sudo reboot

Happy Hacking 🙂

Raspberry Pi change keyboard layout

If different letters appear on-screen from that which you typed, you need to reconfigure you keyboard settings. In Debian, from a command line type:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Or do it the cli way,From the command line type

sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard

Then find where it says

XKBLAYOUT="gb"

and change the gb to the two-letter code for your country…
Basically almost all indian keyboards are us based so you can change it to US..

You may need to restart for the changes to take effect.

Happy Hacking 🙂

Send TV Remote signal using Arduino

First decode the tv remote and get the hex code for each button..This code will do that…

#include 

int RECV_PIN = 11;

IRrecv irrecv(RECV_PIN);

decode_results results;

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
irrecv.enableIRIn(); // Start the receiver
}

void loop() {
if (irrecv.decode(&results)) {
Serial.println(results.value, HEX);
irrecv.resume(); // Receive the next value
}
}

Copy the codes for the button say for channel up is 80BFA15E…ok to send this code connect an IR Led to pin no 3..

 

Check whether the remote model is NEC or SONY and use this code to send the value

#include <IRremote.h>

IRsend irsend;
const int buttonPin = 2; // the number of the pushbutton pin
//const int ledPin = 3;
int buttonState = 0; // variable for reading the pushbutton status
void setup()
{
// pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
// initialize the pushbutton pin as an input:
pinMode(buttonPin, INPUT);
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {

buttonState = digitalRead(buttonPin);

// check if the pushbutton is pressed.
// if it is, the buttonState is HIGH:
if (buttonState == HIGH) {
// turn LED on:
irsend.sendNEC(0x80BFA15E, 32);
}

}

Now when the button is pressed the channel will change..If the remote is sony then use irsend.sendSony…

 

 

Happy Hacking 🙂

Arduino IR Remote identification

Download IR remote library from the following link

https://github.com/shirriff/Arduino-IRremote

Unzip the download.Rename it as IRremote and put it in arduino’s libraries folder.

To detect the remote

Set up a TSOP sensor like the above schematic…

Load the example code from File -> Examples -> IRremote -> IRrecvDemo then click the “Upload” button.Click the “Serial Monitor” button to bring up a window that will allow us to see the codes being returned to us by the Arduino. Start mashing buttons and you should see a lot of numbers scroll by like in the image below.

The ones that start off with FF and then have numbers or letters are the codes we are after. A FFFFFFFF is a continuation code and the 0 on its own line is a read error.

Happy Hacking 🙂