Telematik Projekt: Embedded Sensor Web
Lecturer:
Liers,
Blywis,
Hutta
Location: K60
Time: Wednesday, 14:00-18:00
ECTS-credits: 8
Content
The Term "embedded sensor web" describes the future Internet, where
the networking of big machines like PCs will make only a very, very small part
of the big picture. This "Internet of things" will connect devices of our daily
use, like pencils, doors, cars, trees, .... These devices are augmented with
sensors, that allow to detect temperature, movement, current position, etc.
Combining the sensor data of a lot of small devices results in information about
the environment. If you get to know about the movement of all devices in an
area, you get the big picture of something big happening there (car being
stolen, storm passing by, ...), without the need for big and very expensive
machinery like specialised alarms, satellites for earth watch and so on.
What will you do in this course?
1) You will program our small sensor board, consisting of a microcontroller,
attached sensors and communication devices (radio modules, bluetooth). You
learn: Microcontroller and C programming, handle communication hardware,
programming small and inexpensive hardware.
2) You will make a plan how to set up a bunch of these small devices, that
builds up to a big, powerful, yet flexible distributed network. That means, you
learn: How to organize the routing between these units, how to bring the
information into the WWW and how to make sure, that the failure of one device
does not kill the complete network.
Topics
First come, first served:
Assigned topics:
- Accelerometer: Rotar & Stummbeck
- Packet Fragmentation: Reinhardt
- Burst Mode Transfer: Sokol & Rekittke
- File System: Gliech & Bureck
- Object oriented Sensorweb (custom topic): Santos & Biarozkin
- ScatterDB: Chen & ???
- Bloomfilter: Corbi & Becker
Schedule
- 17.10.2007:
- First Meeting
- Assignment of topics
- Introduction to the ScatterWeb² firmware and first steps (see below)
- 24.10.2007 - 06.02.2008:
- Supervised lab hours
- 11.02.2008:
- Hand in your presentation slides (PDF only!)
- 13.02.2008:
- Final Event: Presentation
- 20.02.2008:
- Hand in your work; deadline is 24:00!
- Return borrowed hardware
Prerequisites
Vordiplom, BSc, knowledge in Telematics
You should have some programming experience in C and a general knowledge of the build and development processes. Please refer to the given and/or alternative sources if you need to acquire these skills.
Exam/Course Requirements
No exam, but you have to attend at all Wednesdays (or make us believe that you worked at other times during the week) and present your work at the end of the semester - about 15min per student. You have to use the official presentation template.
Your (commented) source code must be handed in on schedule including:
- a short documentation of your task, solution and remaining problems (keep concise - about 1-2 pages)
- as well as the presentation slides (as PDF)
The source code has to be documentated "doxygen style".
A minimum of 120 work hours is required. This means additional work is to be done besides the lab hours.
Assignments
There are no typical assignments as every team has to work on an individual problem.
At the 24th of october we will do the first steps together in class. This should give you an introduction to ScatterWeb².
The first steps PDF file will be published here.
Online material
- You will find lots of material about ScatterWeb at http://scatterweb.mi.fu-berlin.de
- First Steps Slides
- Presentation template (ppt)
- ANSI C Reference Card (pdf)
- The C Book at http://publications.gbdirect.co.uk/c_book/ (recommended)
- Everything you need to know about pointers in C at http://boredzo.org/pointers/
- How Memory Management Works at http://www.zathras.de/ang...
- C FAQ at http://c-faq.com/
- C Elements of Style at http://www.oualline.com/style/index.html
- Writing Bug Free Code at http://www.duckware.com/bugfreec/index.html
- Numerical Recipes in C, Second Edition (1992) at http://www.nrbook.com/a/bookcpdf.php
- Material of last year's "Programmierkurs Hardwarenahes C"
Working outside the lab
To work outside of the lab or on you own computer you need to checkout the source code as descriped in class - use the VPN.
- The MSPGCC toolchain is needed to compile. Please have a look at the official website. Windows binaries should be provided as installer.
-
Linux users should refer to this guide to compile the binaries on their own. (It worked for me)
-
Debian packages are available here. (untested)
Windows users should note that Cygwin is needed. Usual problems reside in multiple incompatible cygwin1.dll files and usage of make of a version lower than 3.81.
Literature
- Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie. The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition. Prentice Hall PTR. March 22, 1988. ISBN: 0-13-110362-8.
- Peter Prinz und Ulla Kirch-Prinz. C kurz und gut. O'Reilly, January 2002. ISBN: 3-89721-238-2
- Lutz Bierl. Das große MSP430 Praxisbuch. Franzis. February 2004. ISBN: 3-7723-4299-X
