1-Wire LAN with an LCD

posted Mar 23rd 2010 6:10am by Jakob Griffith
filed under: misc hacks, peripherals hacks

[Viktor], one of our favorite avid hackers, has been playing around with 1-wire systems all this month. What started out as a MicroLAN Fonera has turned into an iButton interface, to a 1-wire powered hub, and finally a 1-wire character driven LCD. Anyone looking at 1-wire systems or OWFS could surely benefit from his testing.

However, if you still haven’t gotten your fill of 1-wire goodness, let us remind you of the 1-wire HVAC and IPv6 to 1-wire protocol translator.

[Thanks Juan]

Comments [14]

tagged: 1-wire, data, fonera, hub, hvac, ibutton, interface, IPv6, lcd, microlan, OWFS

14 Responses to 1-Wire LAN with an LCD

Ho0d0o/Heatgap says:

March 23, 2010 at 6:39 am

Wow, this takes some serious thinking-cap to pull off. I just barely understand how he was able to pull it off. 1-Wire LAN though? I likes I likes.

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blue carbuncle says:

March 23, 2010 at 6:57 am

Very cool! Bravo good sir! Keep up the good work :)

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The File Clerk says:

March 23, 2010 at 7:21 am

Holy Crap, I was just starting to think about this sort of thing. Can you use this to start up an rj11 cable network in a house?

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Scott Jilek says:

March 23, 2010 at 8:24 am

1-wire = awesome. I use it to monitor lots of stuff on my saltwater aquarium!

All the developers of OWFS are extremely talented/knowledgeable. I highly recommend OWFS.

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chango says:

March 23, 2010 at 8:42 am

@The File Clerk: Not directly, 1-wire is 5V multidrop. I don’t know what the typical segment length is, but I doubt you could just throw it on the unused phone line pairs running through your house and expect it to work. Someone more familiar with large 1-wire nets want to chime in?

On the other hand, OpenWRT-able routers can be had for ~$20, and the DS2480 is cheap too, so you could just dedicate an access point for each room you want a bus drop in.

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Roon says:

March 23, 2010 at 9:37 am

So is the whole 1-wire thing just like multiplexing but on a larger level?

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Pavel says:

March 23, 2010 at 10:01 am

@Roon
No, it’s more like I2C.

1-wire devices have unique 64 bit serial numbers (think of them as MAC addresses). It’s a pretty smart (though slow) network.

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fartface says:

March 23, 2010 at 10:11 am

I love the iButton and the other but I love the lie that is “1wire”

I dare people to run only 1 wire and make it work… no you cant ignore the ground wire.

and yes you can just throw it on a PAIR (2 wires) of phone wires that are unused in your house and it works. I have had it working over 350 feet on cat 3 twisted pair.

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No One says:

March 23, 2010 at 11:08 am

@fartface, you do realize that the description for 1-wire is “over one SIGNAL wire”, right?

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Maha says:

March 23, 2010 at 11:21 am

I’m slightly confused from fartface and No One. I’ve seen i2c called TWI (two wire interface) and i2c is just clock and signal. This one wire interface should be just that.. one wire. If it was Signal + ground, it would also be TWI, right?

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Alex says:

March 23, 2010 at 11:55 am

@Maha: Clock is also a signal.

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Ben Ryves says:

March 23, 2010 at 1:02 pm

I²C also needs ground (for reference) and its devices generally need a power supply too (so four wires total). 1-Wire devices can potentially power themselves from the data line.

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Pavel says:

March 23, 2010 at 5:42 pm

@Maha
Technically speaking, you don’t have to run a ground wire. Just put a stake in the dirt, or on a cold water pipe :)

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GCL says:

March 23, 2010 at 6:26 pm

@ALL
As someone who has been using the One-Wire technology on and off for the past ten years, it is all of that and more. What he’s using is an open source project called OWFS to manage his LCD display.

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