Hi All,

Just to let you know that I started today a Kickstarter campaign featuring a set of boards based on an OpenWRT and AR9331 SoC WiFi module, the Domino.IO:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70 … for-things

More information also available at: http://domino.io/

I am posting here, as everything started with posts in this OpenWRT forum 3 years ago:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=36471
http://squonk42.github.io/TL-WR703N/

The small size and capabilities of the TP-Link TL-WR703N router pushed me (and a lot of other persons too) to use this pocket router for enabling WiFi IoT projects.

1 year ago, I partnered with the nice people from GL Technology (manufacturer of the GL.iNet pocket router https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=47715) in order to deliver a set of boards that are both cheap, capable and expandable:

• The Domino Core is the core AR9331-based WiFi module at the heart of all the other boards. We want it cheap, so it is @ $10 for early birds, target price will depend on volumes, but will be kept as low as possible

• The Domino Pi is a development board featuring a Domino Core module, a DC/DC power supply, an integrated USB <=> UART bridge and a printed PCB antenna

• The Domino Qi Mini is also based on the Domino Core, but also features an ATMega32U4 MCU and is fully Arduino Yun compatible, although 1/2 price of the original one and crammed into a much smaller form factor

• The Domino Qi is a base board adapter for the Domino Qi Mini, that transforms it into a full-sized Arduino board shield, so that you can re-use all your existing shields

But besides these hardware boards, we also want to promote services for makers to help them transform their ideas into marketable products: it is not easy to approach Chinese manufacturers to industrialize a prototype board into a mass production one, not counting for part provisioning, assembly, quality control and shipping...

With this campaign, we would like to create such full life-cycle services for makers covering all these aspects at an affordable price.

Don't hesitate to comment on this and please spread the word around you!

(Last edited by Squonk on 14 Apr 2015, 10:17)

Thanks Squonk!

Hope our products and service can support makers' projects!

Just'to let you know that our Kickstarter campaign is funded, hurry up if you want a maker-friendly Wi-Fi module (Atheros AR9331) at $10!

Of course, it is based on OpenWRT!

Thanks for making this very interesting set of products available, Squonk. I somehow missed your first posting. I've added my pledge, and hope to see you reach the "stretch" goal. This appears to address many issues which prior off-the-shelf openwrt-capable products have not (though GL-iNet has been a good step in this direction). 

If I recall correctly from the long thread you linked to, the chip does not directly support I2C. Have you bit-banged I2C with the Domino?  Can it support fast I2C?

(Last edited by lizby on 3 May 2015, 13:34)

Hi lizby, thanks!

The AR9331 features a very good WiFi RF part, among the lowest power consumption so far. But this comes at the expense of other functionalities: there are only a few hardware peripherals beside it. This can be explained as any digital stuff added close to some sensitive RF design would almost certainly generate spurious and degrade the RF quality.

This is why Atheros chose to limit the number of digital peripherals to the bare minimum: SPI (but optimized for Flash memory access, not GP), UART, USB (but with clock derived from master clock, thus the USB issues with WiFi channel skipping...), I2S and Ethernet switch.

So no I2C or other fancy peripherals, even GPIOs are not 3-state!

But you can of course bit-bang I2C over GPIOs, even when they are not 3-state: the driver is changing pin direction instead of setting it high/low, in order to accommodate for other devices driving the bus at the same time. However, you are then somewhat limited by software speed, and won't reach fast I2C performance, unfortunately.

Hurry up to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70 … for-things if you want to get an AR9331-based router module at the special KS price of $10. There are only 4 hours left!

Sqwonk,

I'm interested in your Domino io for my product and would like to discuss some business opportunity.  Please contact me.

The GL store doesn't have all the hardware described in the kickstarter page. Some questions:

1. Where can I find the Qi mini board and baseboard?

2. Where can I find the Domino Pi dev board kit and tiles?

Is this stuff being manufactured, or is it not?