flocklab

RocketLogger FlockLab Integration

The RocketLogger hardware and software proudly serves the power measurements of the FlockLab 2 wireless sensor network (WSN) testbed.

To benefit from RocketLogger software improvements and fixes, a dedicated flocklab branch is maintained by the FlockLab 2 developers within the RocketLogger repository. The page focuses on the changes made to the RocketLogger hardware and software to adapt it to the FlockLab 2 observer platform. In addition to power measurements, FlockLab 2 provides a wide range of features for wireless sensor network testing and debugging. For a complete list of features, we refer you to the official FlockLab 2 documentation.

Note: No official support or documentation for FlockLab 2 is provided via the RocketLogger repository. For any FlockLab 2 related questions, please refer to the official project website and https://flocklab.ethz.ch to get in contact with the testbed maintainers.

Hardware Adaptations for FlockLab 2

The power measurement hardware sub-system very closely follows the hardware design of the RocketLogger Cape. Notable changes compared to the RocketLogger design include:

• Reducing analog measurement front-end from double to a single ADC
  • single LO and HI current range with seamless auto-ranging
  • two precision voltage channels
• Automated routing of measurement channels to individual sensor nodes
• Remap ADC hardware for optimized GPIO assignment
• Dedicated main power supply circuit instead of powering through the BeagleBone
• Remove unused EEPROM

Software Adaptations for FlockLab 2

Also the operating system, PRU firmware and CLI interface is reused for the FlockLab 2 implementation with the following set of software changes related to the power measurement tools:

• Use Debian 9 as base operating system (provided on dedicated debian9-backports branch)
  • minimal library, includes and boot configuration changes
  • remapped PWM device names
  • use of legacy SYSFS interface for GPIO handling, with HW button functionality limited to start/stop measurements only
• Device-tree adaptations for changed GPIO mapping
• PRU firmware interfacing with single ADC only (provide 0 data for unavailable channels)
• Addition of two FlockLab 2 specific options to RocketLogger command line interface
  • --tstart=TIMESTAMP (short -t) -- Unix timestamp of the sampling start for delayed measurement start
  • --offset=OFFSET (short -x) -- Time correction offset in seconds to apply to the realtime timer values
• Drop web interface capabilities
• Customized system configuration and installation scripts
• No support for docker based system software image generation

Note: Installation of additional tools and software is not covered by the installation scripts on the flocklab branch, refer to the full setup instructions at https://flocklab.ethz.ch.