Page 233 - Hacking Roomba

214 Part III — More Complex Interfacing

Setting Up the SitePlayer Telnet

Since the SitePlayer Telnet silver box and the homemade SitePlayer Telnet Roomba adapter
have the same SitePlayer Telnet module inside, configuration is identical for both of them.
What is being configured is the SitePlayer Telnet module. The SitePlayer Telnet is configured
entirely through its built-in web configuration page. The SitePlayer Telnet is easier to use
because it supports ZeroConf/Rendezvous/Bonjour to announce its name and IP address to
any compatible system. On the Safari web browser in Mac OS X, for example, looking in the
Bonjour bookmarks list automatically shows the SitePlayer. For Windows, NetMedia provides
a small Bonjour Browser tool to help with auto-discovery. On Linux, there are several tools,
some built into web browsers. The SitePlayer also supports DHCP and will get a DHCP
address from your DHCP server.
Bonjour (also known as Rendezvous or ZeroConf) networking is an open source standard for
automatic discovery of network devices and services on those devices. It works by sending out
multicast DNS announcement packets on a default link local IP address. To find out more about
how Bonjour works and to get source code with which to experiment, see http://developer
.apple.com/networking/bonjour/.
To get started configuring a SitePlayer Telnet device, plug it and your computer into the same
Ethernet hub and plug the hub into your home network. That last step isn’t strictly required for
testing, but you’ll want both your computer and the SitePlayer Telnet on the Internet eventu-
ally. Plug in the SitePlayer Telnet power adapter and in a few seconds it will be on your network.
Use either Safari (Mac OS X) or the Bonjour Browser (Windows) to watch for the SPT to
show up. Its Bonjour name will be something like SitePlayer Telnet (7A12AD). The digits in
parentheses are the last three digits of the SitePlayer Telnet MAC address. Select the SitePlayer
Telnet and the browser will open showing the status page/homepage of the SitePlayer Telnet
(see Figure 11-9). If you cannot find the SitePlayer Telnet on your network, you can use some
of the debugging techniques mentioned in the “Debugging Network Devices” sidebar.

FIGURE 11-9: SitePlayer Telnet configuration home page