
MacroFab Engineering Podcast #151
Why Mesh Networking Matters – Brandon Satrom
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Brandon Satrom and the LANoT
Parker talks with Brandon Satrom of Particle about the future of IoT and then design and prototype an IoT device.
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December 19, 2018, Episode #151
- Brandon Satrom
- Developer Advocate for Particle, an IoT platform company
- The founder of Carrot Pants Press, a company dedicated to educating makers
- Loves to talk about Javascript, open source, microcontrollers, robots, and what ever new shiny tool or technology that is currently distracting him
- On the MacroFab Engineering Podcast Episode Number 122, Brandon discussed the Particle Photon and built an IoT breathalyzer with Parker live on the podcast
- What is currently distracting Brandon now?
- Why mesh networking matters (as opposed to putting Wi-FI and Cellular radios in every IoT device)
- Existing mesh networking standards (Z-Wave, Zigbee, Lora)
- Closed vs. Open standards
- Thread/OpenThread and why Particle built OpenThread into 3rd gen devices
- What is OpenThread?
- Mesh Christmas Tree project
- 5 device network with a gateway and 4 edge devices
- Particle Blog detailing more about the project
- One edge device publishes multicast messages to all other nodes, which light up neopixel strips when those messages are received on each device
- The goal was to see how low latency UDP-based mesh messaging was
- Researching theory around “the color of sound” and added a mode to the firmware that converts the frequency of a played note into a corresponding rgb value on the color spectrum. Kinda.
- Working today on a mode that ties the Adafruit Neotrellis into the network to create a “tree synth” mode where you can mash buttons and make the trees light up
- Questions from Jarret from our Public Slack Channel
- Could you have a sportsgame of some sort, and hand out each spectator a little LED/LCD with mesh chip, and have all 10k systems attempting to figure out where they are in the stadium, and maybe also connect to a base station, so they all receive color information and turns the audience into a huge display?
- Reminds Parker of the North Korean “displays”
- What is a good distributed power system for mesh networking?
- I’ve started logging metrics for my indoor garden, but currently I’m using a million phone chargers plugged in everywhere and that kinda sucks
- Could you have a sportsgame of some sort, and hand out each spectator a little LED/LCD with mesh chip, and have all 10k systems attempting to figure out where they are in the stadium, and maybe also connect to a base station, so they all receive color information and turns the audience into a huge display?
- Update on the Carrot Pants Press?
- Lastest kickstarter was a success!
Visit our Public Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!

Brandon Satrom of Particle and Carrot Pants Press.

Brandon Satrom giving a talk at the ISTA conference.

Particle mesh controlled Christmas tree lights build by Brandon Satrom.
About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Related Podcasts

Brandon Satrom and the LANoT
Parker talks with Brandon Satrom of Particle about the future of IoT and then design and prototype an IoT device.