Telnet to your Arduino/AVR!

The other day I was wanting to check on one of my AVR's but I was upstairs and god knows it was too much of a hassle to go downstairs to where the microcontroller was. But, there were two idle computers sitting upstairs next to my lazy butt, so I had a half-day from work and decided to write an application that binds two ports: a serial port to connect to the Arduino/AVR and a TCP/IP port that I could telnet into from my wireless network or over the Internet. The application then act as a proxy between the TCP/IP network and the AVR.

To see the video better, click twice and bring it up in its own window and enlarge.  Otherwise, squint and you can see what's being typed.

So, I ended up modifying the AVR Terminal serial connection application that I had already written, and I added TCP/IP support to it. To go along with it, I wrote some firmware that provides something like a UNIX shell, giving me remote access to all the pins, fuse settings, etc. You can turn on LED's and all that stuff remotely. It even supports adjusting the clock speed in real-time and has a pseudo-password system that gives the framework for Access Control Lists or authentication for root-level commands (like powering down subsystems, etc). Here are some of the things it can do:

• Display your cpu frequency
• Set any pin to input or output
• Read the state of any pin
• Send logic 1 and 0 to any pin to turn on LED's, etc
• Power down and power up the SPI, TWI, USART, and ADC peripherals
• Read the lower fuse, higher fuse, external fuse and lock bits in real-time
• Start timers for automatically timing events and things.
• A framework for an authentication system into EEPROM
• Establish any available clock prescaler in real-time
• Written in C++ and compiled for an ATmega328P

This instructable details how you can download the software (and firmware, if you like), install it, and start accessing your AVR from your wireless home network or over the Internet.

Step 1 What You'll Need

• An stand-alone AVR or Arduino/clone (for detailed instructions on how to make your own, fairly complete stand-alone AVR system including an external crystal, decoupling capacitors, and a regulated power source, see my other instructable).
• A serial or USB connection to your host PC
• The AVR Terminal version that has the embedded TCP/IP server
• Optionally, the AVR Shell (avrsh) if you want to run firmware on your target AVR/Arduino to get access to your peripherals.

The TCP/IP gateway works with whatever firmware you may be using or want to write as long as it communicates via the UART to the PC. Unfortunately, there is not a Java version, so the AVR Terminal only runs on Windows at the moment.

Comments

[Ralphxyz]

So far this is going PC to ATmega which is great, how about going the other way?

Say I wanted to contact a time server?

Thanks for posting this.

Ralph

[nevdull]

Hey Ralph,

Well, you have a couple of options. Using the existing connection, you could read serially over the USB for comms from the AVR and then proxy that information out through your PC's internet connection, then back for the reply. Alternatively, you could use an ENC28J60 and a pulse jack to access the ethernet using a custom TCP/IP stack (say, uIP) or even attach a WIZ811 module that manages the MAC/PHY of ethernet plus has a built-in TCP/IP stack on top of it, all accessed via SPI between the MCU and the WIZ811.

Just a few ideas.

Good luck!
-gian

[Goosen]

Looks really good. Have you submitted this to the arduino forums yet?

[nevdull]

Thanks! No, I haven't submitted it to the arduino forums. I started to rewrite it in Qt and ended up beginning rewriting it in Java because it had a better COM port access system. It currently runs on Ubuntu Linux, Windows, and Mac but it's just begun.

As for source code, I'll be glad to post it up here. Look for it soon.

Cheers!
-gian
/nev/dull

[Goosen]

Is this windows only? If so can you port it to linux? If not can you post the source code?