Raspbian and BATMAN update

Just a quick post today - for anyone thinking of this project or doing something with BATMAN then a number of steps can now be entirely skipped. 

BATMAN adv is now part of the Raspbian distribution, which means there is no need to download the .ko file and install it any more.

Testing with the units has continued and i'm seeing really strong reliable results - we've replaced the wireless units with some better branded ones and things are looking good.

Just thought I'd update anyone who thought about giving the project a go - remember though, you will still need to install batctl (sudo apt-get install batctl).

Cheers

Raspberry Pi, Raspbian, Wireless and BATMAN-ADV for meshing using IPv4 DHCP

This will now be the third part of this series of posts on my blog which cover development using Raspberry Pi, Raspbian and Batman-adv. For those who may have missed the first two, check out:

Part1

Part2 

The part covers the basics on getting IPv4 to work with Batman-adv. At first, when reading the documentation I thought that a DHCP server had to be physically installed on a device running batman, but I now understand that isn't the case. 

It's pretty simple to get it working now that i've finally gotten my head around that basic fact. If you've followed the first two guides, you will have a devices which his already bridged and meshing. To get the device to pickup a DHCP IPv4 address, we need to follow the below steps:

1: Start by modifying the interfaces file: sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

2: Look for the following line: iface eth0 inet dhcp

3: If you have setup the mesh-bridge interface, add the following: iface mesh-bridge inet dhcp

or, if you have bat0 and didn't do the bridging, add: iface bat0 inet dhcp

4: save the file and exit

5: Restart the network: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

And that's it - as long as there is something issuing DHCP addresses connected to one of the interfaces (from a node which is bridged and has eth0 plugged in for example) you should now pickup a DHCP address.

Hopefully that will help someone out there. My blogging skills are poor and I never really planned for this to be a 'three part guide' as it were. If anyone reading this has issues understanding then leave a comment and i'll try and help you out.

I've gotten a few model A pi's today, so look forward to using them with the above to create wireless nodes for various projects.