Hi, I am using RS485 for a project with many slaves. I would like to avoid using DIP switches or manually writing address in slave code. As mentioned, this project has many slaves, so my idea is to have a company print out many, many labels with 128 bit QR that is a UUID for each slave.
I would like to stick the QR code onto the slave, scan it and have a program upload it to EEPROM as UUID. Is there something out there that can do this or would I have to write a custom program? If so, how can I go about it?
It is an interesting problem and I'll be curious to see if someone can describe a complete process for you, for which they have experience of the entire chain.
I can only imagine a cheap PC based QR reader with PC software, AVRDUDE software, an AVR programmer to connect to your boards ICSP header and some custom PC script (say powershell) to take the output code from the scanner and prepare the input file for AVRDUDE and, maybe, trigger the write to EEPROM process.
Other possibilities are designing the sketch that you will install on these devices with an additional function to take some encoded information, say through the serial connection, to write the identifying code to its own EEPROM. This encoded information (your 128bit code) would be derived from the the PC based QR scanner.