Hack a Perle 833?

[kheston]

Today I'm constructing a serial-port-driven relay circuit that I'll be using as a remote reset button.

You see, I'm administering a server that's sitting in an office two cities away that has a freeze/lockup problem. So, every time I need to press the "Hi, from Bill Gates" button, I need to hop in the car and drive for a half-hour each way. A colossal waste of time.

I'll be setting up another machine that I will log into via the Internet and "press reset" using the relay controller whose contact leads will reach into the computer that keeps freezing up on me.

This got me thinking...

I've got two Perle 833 modem routers sitting on a shelf collecting dust. They can be had dirt-cheap on eBay. Each of them has 8 serial ports, an Ethernet port and plenty of processing power. My guess is they're plenty powerful enough to do rs232 over Ethernet provided one could write the firmware to make it work.

I've done some firmware tweaking and rebuilding, but it's always after someone else has done the hard part (create a basic firmware image and a flashing mechanism). The OpenWRT project, for example. The guys that first hacked the iPhone and XBOX obviously had a book or two to read that I haven't found yet. Suggestions?

[philba]

The problem is that you will need to figure out the 833s. I suspect in the long run, it will take you far more time than you have available.

I think your current approach is probably the best. I'd use a little linux box to do the job. Mini ITX boxes can be had for inexpensive and you can run linux off of a memory card (no rotating media) so it can be pretty bullet proof. Or just a inksys WRT box...

[kheston]

I've been researching the hacking side of things and agree with your assessment about the time it will take. It seems the quick-and-dirty way is to decompile the firmware image and splice in pieces of code one wants to change (hence, not so quick and dirty). I've written some assembly and know how tedious it is...and this firmware image is huge. Who knows how many of these are still in the field, my hard work might end up benefiting only me.

Perhaps someone will find this thread and turn me onto a re-tooling kit for Perle 833s, but I'll call this idea dead for now.

I use OpenWRT for my firewall/router. Very happy with it! I could pick up another WRT54GL and use the gpio pins to control a relay or two. That's a great idea!

Pin locations for different models: http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Cus ... rdware/MMC

Remote control truck: http://yasha.okshtein.net/wrt54g/

Remote control truck with serial port diagrams: http://www.jbprojects.net/projects/wifirobot/

[Engineer1138]

Rabbit semiconductor and Digi International have a few programmable boards with webservers onboard. Plug into your router and do the deed from a browser!!

Ihave a friend who's used one of the Rabbit boards and he says it's really easy to get going.