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Introducing (and interest check) AirTalk: Wireless plug-and-play LocalTalk dongles

LaPorta

Well-known member
Personally, I’d say just add it to a list in documentation under “known incompatibilities.”
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
After a long comedy of errors, I have finally got AirTalk working with the AsanteTalk. This is the last device I was really worried about compatibility with (that I know of so far), so I'm going to try to get some production-design boards made up soon. Wish me luck!
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
Look what's arrived! First batch of production boards, I hope: this one seems to work, but I'll have to do more careful testing over the next few days as I can manage the energy.

66898425108__9770372D-A083-4BC1-A176-140B483720D2.JPG
 

Ajaxermd

Well-known member
I think this is the moment to unveil something I've been working on for the last few weeks. This is AirTalk (thanks to @Cory5412 for the name). It aims to allow wireless LocalTalk networking (over WiFi) that feels like LocalTalk: so, no necessary configuration (aside from selecting the WiFi network). It's a visitor from an alternative future.


It also uses the same LocalTalk-over-UDP transport that Mini vMac does, so it can be used to network between Mini vMac and real hardware:


What little configuration there is is done (or will be done when it works properly) through the Chooser (now you know why I have been writing RDEVs):

As you can probably tell from the board, this is currently in a "late prototyping / just pre-alpha" stage where I'm using an esp32 dev board. I'm intending to produce a slightly more practical revision of the board (e.g., smaller, using SMD components, having ADB power as an option as well as USB) if there is interest. Not sure at this point quite how that'll be happening, since I'm not a product engineer and I don't really want to have a product, but I'm sure I'll work something out.

This only exists because of previous work by @tashtari who build the TashTalk LT transceiver and @demik whose Quack project taught me a lot about FreeRTOS. Major thanks to both of you.

What do people think?


IFAQ:
  1. Is this a new LocalTalk to EtherTalk gateway?
    Nope. Instead think of this as a long LocalTalk cable that just happens not to physically exist. LT to EtherTalk bridges are hairy things; they are either routers which require configuration or bridges that don't work in the presence of routers and which are very picky about how the network is configured. I'm going to plug one of these into my AppleTalk router to do routing from LToUDP to EtherTalk, personally.​
  2. Can this be used on a LocalTalk segment with multiple computers on it?
    Yes, although I haven't stress tested this yet. It isn't like a USB wifi dongle which plugs into only one machine, you can use it to bridge a whole network to WiFi. Any computer on the LocalTalk segment can configure it through the Chooser.​
  3. How does it perform compared with LocalTalk?
    Once again, I haven't properly tested this yet, but initial results are: transferring bulk from Mini vMac to a LocalTalk client on a segment on its own (so just the computer plugged into the dongle), I was getting close to the theoretical maximum throughput for LocalTalk. When both ends of the connection are on WiFi, sustained transfers are good, but latency is noticeably higher compared to "real" LocalTalk, simply because WiFi latency is higher than LocalTalk latency. This noticeably affects things like how quickly folder windows populate, because there's multiple roundtrips involved in getting that information.​
  4. What does it require from my network?
    Not much. All you need is a WiFi AP that can shunt IP multicast around properly. Most of them can, and if zeroconf/mDNS/Bonjour work on your network, then it'll be fine.​
  5. Will there be a version with wired Ethernet instead?
    Maybe. Do you want one?​
  6. Are you looking for alpha testers?
    I will be looking for a couple of alpha testers on the order of weeks. If you've got a good variety of LocalTalk peripherals or a largish LocalTalk network and would like to do some testing for me, let me know.​
  7. When will this be finished?
    When it's finished. I'm not going to hold myself to timescales here; I have a dayjob and other things in my life as well and I'm not intending to turn this into work. But I'll try to keep people updated as it goes.​
  8. Does the back of the board say 'eeeese' on it?
    Yup:​

 

Ajaxermd

Well-known member
I’d love a couple of these, especially if it can talk to a MiniVmac back on my main modern Mac. despite heroic efforts I’ve never been able to get even my 10.4.11 Cube to talk to my MacTV or IIfx.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I’d love a couple of these, especially if it can talk to a MiniVmac back on my main modern Mac. despite heroic efforts I’ve never been able to get even my 10.4.11 Cube to talk to my MacTV or IIfx.
Use 10.3 and it will work properly.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
67053390985__1C75179A-A3A1-4E11-9F73-E66FBB4898A3.JPG

Progress photo: I'm about halfway through finishing assembly and testing of the first "production" batch.

The next, incredibly mundane, challenge: getting hold of enough cardboard boxes and packing material...
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Wow, man....I can't believe that you managed to get finished boxes! How did you pull that off? They look great!
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
Wow, man....I can't believe that you managed to get finished boxes! How did you pull that off? They look great!

Following the best engineering practice: I cheated. These aren't actually very nice—photographs flatter them—they're just two more PCBs without any components on and just with a bit of printing. One sits on top with some nylon standoffs, one sits underneath, and just stops stuff falling on the board. A bit of a temporary/bodge measure. In person you can see that they're just PCBs. But they do the job.

A rather nicer box is on the way from another forumer, though...
 

Scott Squires

Well-known member
I'm the shadowy person doing the enclsoure that cheesestraws has been hinting about. Attempting here to do a snow white inspired design. It's intended to be 3d printed. Here's a render of the overall dimensions. There are details remaining to add such as holes for the ADB ports, holes for the LEDs, and mounting structure for the LED board.

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