Uzebox Forums

Do you think it would be possible to sqeeze an ethernet or wifi controller on the CPU and set up a UZEBOX Live! service for online mutiplayer games?

A setup for Uzebox live would be hard. It would require a few components. The ENC28J60 from Microchip and a Magjack or similar Ethernet port would supply the basic connection needs. The hardest part would be the TCP control. TCP is what would allow your program to the game to have an online interface.

One problem is the amount of memory this would take. Eventually you would be required to implement some kind of external memory to hold all of the programs.

Hope this gets the wheels spinning,
compman

Hi to all,

These days, I'm hacking something along these lines (not the Live! service, the Ethernet part ). As CompMan mentioned, an IP stack is possible, but not with a game engine eating up all RAM. Instead, I used the same philosophy as for the color generation, I went for the easy way, yet a cool way IMHO. The Lantronix XPort in an Ethernet module expressively designed for embedded applications. It has a simple UART interface not bigger than a RJ-45 jack! It can easily do HTTP request to any URL. Since the mega644 has one UART port, its most probably the easiest way to connect the Uzebox to the world! Oh, and there's even a 802.11b Wi-Fi version with the same interface.

The only thing is that it supports only 3.3v, so dual regulators would be required on the board, but that's a small price to pay I think.

Have a look:
http://www.lantronix.com/device-network ... xport.html

I also looked into the XPort. The one problem I had was the cost. I do not have a working Uzebox but I am also hacking together a Ethernet port. I didn't go with the XPort due to the cost. I was looking into using the ENC28J60 from Microchip and a Magjack along with a smaller ATtiny13. I was hopping to reduce the cost of Ethernet connection by going this route.

Compman

You are right, the XPort is a bit expensive at around US 55$ plus shipping. But you know, I probably burnt around 500$ experimenting and buying wrong parts...so 50$ seemed small in comparision.

On one hand, there's simplicity and the other the challenge and fun of learning how networking works. That said, you have a quite interesting solution there. I hope you share it when it works.

Cheers,

Uze

There is another very cheap alternative :

http://ewiznet.com/goods_detail.php?goodsIdx=125

15.90 $ and has the complete TCP/IP stack already build in.

Hi all. Just freshly registered. I read the article about the UZEBOX on Tigsource.com. I too would like to see an 8-bit console with online multiplayer capability. I'm a beginning game designer and a little familiar with C. One of my projects I always imagined as an 8-bit game. It's a top-down multiplayer shooter that I'm making with Pyglet. Before I found this project, I had the cooky idea of a NES cartridge that had a builtin ethernet adapter somehow, and then my game could be a real 8-bit game with online multiplayer. Hehe.

I'm also learning electronics and circuitry design. I don't think I would be very helpful at the moment when it comes to adding ethernet capabilities to the UZEBOX, however I still fully support it and will support in any way I can, the testing of it.

antibyte wrote:There is another very cheap alternative :

http://ewiznet.com/goods_detail.php?goodsIdx=125

15.90 $ and has the complete TCP/IP stack already build in.

That's a great option and it's more affordable. I will defiantly keep this in mind.

Compman

I just found a website http://tuxgraphics.org they have many web based AVR projects. I was looking at two pages in particular. One page was about creating the AVR interface and the other was about adding a HTTP/TCP interface to the AVR interface. I was thinking about making a similar interface for an Ethernet connection. This would require a second AVR chip for the communication but it may be easier.

http://tuxgraphics.org/electronics/2006 ... 6061.shtml - The AVR Interface

http://tuxgraphics.org/electronics/2006 ... 6111.shtml - The HTTP/TCP control

Compman