The FreakUSB is a standalone, versatile wireless communications tool that is designed to be tethered to a PC or PC-like device such as a Raspberry Pi.
The 1284p is a larger processor (ATMega1284P) that still maintains Arduino library compatibility but increases the RAM by 8x and flash by 4x. This allows much larger applications to be built or even some OSes to be installed on to the FreakUSB.
Having a wireless communications device tethered to a PC allows for many new functionalities such as collecting data from other wireless sensors, controlling other wireless devices, or sniffing the wireless traffic of compatible wireless devices such as Zigbee compatible products.
Controlling wireless devices from a PC allows you to harness the computational and processing power of a standard PC to have devices do what you want them to do. Whether it’s a computer vision enabled algorithm for turning on your lights, time sync’d fading of illumination for wearable costumes, or interfacing to popular frameworks and libraries available on PCs, you can dramatically increase the functionality of your wireless communications to create jaw dropping displays or features.
You can also have your PC be the data sink, collecting sensor data from multiple devices, processing them, and cranking out beautiful visualizations in real time. What’s more, you could even use a low power system such as a Raspberry Pi with FreakUSB as a data aggregator and gateway to capture all your wireless sensor data and send it to a server on the internet.
If you simply want to check the data you’re sending over the air with your other compatible wireless devices or you have IEEE 802.15.4 devices whose traffic you want to visualize, then you can use the FreakUSB as a wireless data sniffer. In this configuration, the FreakUSB allows you to collect wireless traffic in real time and visualize it in Wireshark, the powerful open source protocol analyzer and the tool of choice for many IT professionals.
Finally if you have a pair of FreakUSB devices, you can use them to control another PC or even use a PC to send commands to a Raspberry Pi device wirelessly. You can send wireless triggers to another device to inform it to change a screen visual, execute some action, power down, etc.
If you’re looking for a low cost, versatile, wireless tool to start playing around with wireless communications, sensor networking, or IoT, we highly recommend trying out a pair of these handy little devices. You can find it in the FreakLabs Shop: