IEEE 802.15.4 Swiss Army Knife (i8sak, or i8)
============================================================
Description
===========
The i8sak app is a useful CLI for testing various IEEE 802.15.4 functionality.
It also serves as a starting place for learning how to interface with the
NuttX IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer.
The i8sak CLI can be used to manipulate multiple MAC layer networks at once.
Both a MAC character driver interface and a network interface using sockets
are supported. The MAC character driver is used in cases where networking is
not enabled and you want your application to use IEEE 802.15.4 directly. In
most cases however, you will probably be using 6LoWPAN networking support and
therefore, the MAC can be controlled directly from the socket interface rather
than the MAC character driver. IEEE 802.15.4 MAC character drivers show up in
NuttX as /dev/ieeeN by default.
When you invoke the first call to i8sak with a specified interface name, it creates
an i8sak instance and launches a daemon to handle processing work. The instance
is considered sticky, so it is possible to run `i8 /dev/ieee0` or 'i8 wpan0' at
the beginning of a session and then can exclude the interface name from all
future calls. The number of i8sak instances supported is controllable through
menuconfig.
The i8sak app has many settings that can be configured. Most options are "sticky",
meaning, if you set the endpoint short address once, any future operation using
the endpoint short address can default to the previously used address. This is
particularly useful to keep the command lengths down.
How To Use
==========
The i8sak app has a series of CLI functions that can be invoked. The default
i8sak command is 'i8' to make things quick and easy to type.
In my test setup I have 2 Clicker2-STM32 boards from MikroElektronika, with
the BEE-click (MRF24J40) radios. Choose one device to be the PAN Coordinator.
We'll refer to that as device A.
On that device, run:
```
i8 /dev/ieee0 startpan cd:ab
```
This will tell the MAC layer that it should now act as a PAN coordinator using
PAN ID CD:AB. For now, this function assumes that we are operating a non-beacon
enabled PAN, since, as of this writing, beacon-enabled networks are unfinished.
Next, on the same device, run:
```
i8 acceptassoc
```
Notice in the second command, we did not use the devname, again, that is "sticky"
so unless we are switching back and forth between character drivers, we can
just use it once.
The acceptassoc command, without any arguments, informs the i8sak instance to
accept all association requests. The acceptassoc command also allows you to only
accept requests from a single device by specifying the extended address with option
-e.
For instance:
i8 acceptassoc -e DEADBEEF00FADE0B
But for this example, let's just use the command with no arguments.
Now, the second device will act as an endpoint device. The i8sak instance defaults
to being in endpoint mode. Let's refer to the second device as device B.
On device B, run:
i8 /dev/ieee0 assoc
This command attempts to associate with the node at the configured endpoint address.
If everything is setup correctly, device A should have log information saying
that a device tried to associate and that it accepted the association. On device
B, the console should show that the association request was successful. With all
default settings, device B should have been allocated a short address of 0x000B.
If you are following along with a packet sniffer, you should see something
similar to the following:
1) Association Request
Frame Type - CMD
Sequence Number - 0
Dest. PAN ID - 0xFADE
Dest. Address - 0x000A
Src. PAN ID - 0xFFFE
Src. Address - 0xDEADBEEF00FADE0C
Command Type - Association Request
1a) ACK
Frame Type - ACK
Sequence Number - 0
2) Data Request
Frame Type - CMD
Sequence Number - 1
Dest. PAN ID - 0xFADE
Dest. Address - 0x000A
Src. PAN ID - 0xFFFE
Src. Address - 0xDEADBEEF00FADE0C
Command Type - Data Request
2a) ACK
Frame Type - ACK
Sequence Number - 1
3) Association Response
Frame Type - CMD
Sequence Number - 0
Dest. PAN ID - 0xFADE
Dest. Address - 0xDEADBEEF00FADE0C
Src. Address - 0xDEADBEEF00FADE0A
Command Type - Association Response
Assigned SADDR - 0x000C
Assoc Status - Successful
3a) ACK
Frame Type - ACK
Sequence Number - 0
The default endpoint address can be configured via Kconfig or set dynamically
using the 'set' command.
Here is how to set the endpoint short address
i8 set ep_saddr 0a:00
When setting the address, it's important to make sure the endpoint addressing
mode is configured the way you want: Use 's' for short addressing or 'e' for extended
i8 set ep_addrmode s
Device B has now successfully associated with device A. If you want to send data
from device B to device A, run the following on device B:
```
i8 tx ABCDEF
```
This will immediately (not actually immediate, transaction is sent using CSMA)
send the frame to device A with frame payload 0xABCDEF
Sending data from device A to device B is different. In IEEE 802.15.4, frames
must be extracted from the coordinator. To prepare the frame, run the following
command on device A
```
i8 tx AB
```
Because the devmode is PAN Coordinator, the i8sak app knows to send the data
as an indirect transaction. If you were running the i8sak app on a device
that is a coordinator, but not the PAN coordinator, you can force the i8sak app
to send the transaction directly, rather than to the parent coordinator, by using
the -d option.
NOTE: Currently, the indirect transaction timeout is disabled. This means frames
must be extracted or space may run out. This is only for the testing phase as it
is easier to debug when I am not fighting a timeout. Re-enabling the timeout may
effect the behavior of the indirect transaction features in the i8sak app.
To extract the data, run the following command on device B:
```
i8 poll
```
This command polls the endpoint (our device A PAN Coordinator in this case) to
see if there is any data. In the console of device B you should see a Poll request
status print out.
