CSE466 Lab 6: “Introduction to TinyOS”

Objectives

The goal of this lab is to use tutorials to introduce the structure of TinyOS. In this lab you will learn the following:

The major concepts used in TinyOS programming
Basic mote communication
How to use motes to obtain sensor readings
Become familar with the the TinyOS tools

Important Warnings

DO NOT power the mote from the AC adapter and batteries at the same time. ALWAYS turn off the motes battery power before placing it in the programming board. Only one mote should be plugged into the MIB510 programmer.
Be careful when placing your mica2dot into your MIB510 programmer and sound board- do NOT bend the pins.
Some instructors of CSE378 use software that changes your windows profile to point to a network copy of cygwin, not the local copy of cygwin. To complete the labs in CSE466 you will need to make sure to use the local copy of cygwin. If for some reason TinyOS is not working please inform a TA or lab staff member and we will attempt to undo the profile change. In a few extreme cases, students' profiles have had to be wiped clean by support staff.
TUTORIALS ARE VERY OUT OF DATE, THEY CAN ONLY BE MODERATELY TRUSTED TO BE ACCURATE!!!!!

Important Notes

The type of motes you will be using in lab are the "mica2" and "mica2dot". Make sure to compile your program for the correct piece of hardware. (e.g. 'make mica2' NOT 'make mica') For mote programming you will be using the MIB510 serial programming board.
Use the number on your sound board's colored sticker as your group number in hex. Please make sure to type in your group number as a hex number in the MakeRules file in the apps directory .
A few of these tutorials may be out of date so please ask questions if you are confused.
The mica2 and mica2dot are built around the ATmega128 microcontroller not the ATmega16.
Use the default radio fequency and programming board. If you don't specify the radio frequency or programming board it will automatically choose a correct value.
Make sure your MOTECOM variable is properly set when trying to communicate to the devices over serial. The mica2 communicate at 57600 baud while the mica2dots communicates at 19200.
Only the mica2 motes (not the mica2dots) have three LEDs on board, therefore the modules that set these LEDs will only be completely functional (meaning will light all three LEDs) on the mica2
The mica2dot has a light-sensor (photo-resistor) on it, but the mica2s do not.
Some of the tutorials make reference to a "sensor board". This is a modular package that can be connected to the motes. We don't have enough available for every group (so you can skip these sections of the tutorials), but if you are interested in playing around you can talk to the TAs.

Reading

"System Architecture Directions for Networked Sensors" in coursepak
"A Network-Centric Approach to Embedded Software for Tiny Devices" in coursepak
"The nesC Language: A Holistic Approach to Networked Embedded Systems" in coursepak
TinyOS Tutorials - especially the ones you will be completing

Resources

TinyOS Tutorials
ATmega128 data sheet
avr-gcc manual
Application notes section for the AVR 8-bit RISC family

Suggested Steps

PART 1: Tutorials

Unzip apps.zip to your Z drive, creating Z:\apps\.
CAREFULLY plug your mica2dot mote into your sound board. Then plug the sound board into the MIB510 programmer and connect the power and serial cables to the programmer. Battery power must be OFF!
Launch Cygwin and use the alias "cdapps" to navigate to the apps folder on your z: drive. Type 'alias' in cygwin to obtain a list of available aliases. The aliases are provided to make navigation around TinyOS easier.
Complete the tutorial called Lesson 1: Getting Started with TinyOS and nesC including the exercises. You will need to hand in your solution to the exercises for Lesson 1.

Question 1: What is the flow of control through the modules of the Blink application? Start with main.nc and list the files in the order of their execution (this should include only xxx.nc and xxxM.nc files, make sure to include Leds.nc and Timer.nc) for the first 2 seconds of operation.

Make sure BOTH members of your group attempt to compile and install an application onto a mote using his/her login to clear up any Windows profile issues. Make sure that you have set up your group number (in hex) as per the Important notes section above on BOTH member's profiles.
Using the photoresistor located on the sound board, complete the tutorial called Lesson 2: Event-Driven Sensor Acquisition. Refer to the sound board datasheet for the pin mapping. You do NOT need to complete the exercise from this lesson. NOTE: Lesson 2 states "Notice the use of the function rcombine() in the implementation of StdControl.init()." However the recently updated version of SenseM does NOT use rcombine( ). It is confusing that the Lesson refers to rcombine() even though the function is no longer demonstrated in SenseM. The function rcombine() is a special nesC combining function which returns the logical-and of two commands who result type is result_t. NOTE: you don't have a sensor board for the mica2's, but you do have a light sensor on the mica2dot - see Lesson 4 for ideas as to how to take info sensed on the mica2dot, and display it on the mica2 LEDs.

Question 2: What are the events generated during the execution of the Sense application? For each basic event coming from the hardware, describe the fountain of execution that is triggered (list each of the events and commands that are issued from each hardware event and the interfaces they move across).

Complete the tutorial called Lesson 4: Component Composition and Radio Communication including the exercises. You will need to hand in your solution to the exercises for Lesson 4.
Complete the tutorial called Lesson 3: Introducing Tasks for Application Data Processing including the exercises. You will need to hand in your solution to the exercises for Lesson 3.
Complete the tutorial called Lesson 6: Displaying Data on PC including the exercises. The "extra credit" section is optional and will not be worth any extra credit in this class. You will need to team up with another group to get a third mote to attempt the "extra credit".
You and your partner might want to complete the first part of Lesson 5: Simulating TinyOS Applications in TOSSIM to learn how to debug with TOSSIM. TinyViz is not working as described in this tutorial and problems have been reported on the help list. Therefore we will not be using it in this class to avoid unnessary complications. Feel free to attempt to experiment with TinyViz but the course staff will NOT support TinyViz.

PART 2:

In Part 2 of the lab you will control the tri-color led over a wireless network. The motes will act as a wireless communication conduit and you will control the color of the LED with the accelerometer on your breadboard. You will need to add the MoteConn class to SPI/USB control to send mote packets to the SerialForwarder provided in TinyOS.

Goal: Use the accelerometer, potentiometer, and button on the ATMega16 breadboard to control the TriColor LED on the SoundBoard_1 similar to the light control in Lab 3. The interaction should be the same as in Lab 3, which means the LED's color should only change when the button is pressed.

Create a new folder in your apps directory for your solution to part 2. In this folder you will want to create your application files and a dimmer module (HPLTriLEDM.nc) to control the PWM. Your application should consist of a configuration file (LightNode.nc) and a module (LightNodeM.nc) that receives radio packets, parses the light value from the radio packet, and sends the light value to HPLTriLEDM.nc to output the correct brightness. You will also need to create an interface(TriColorLED.nc) to issue commands to your dimmer module. NOTE: Leave all files in your application directory as the compiler will look in the local directory first before moving on to tos/system, tos/interfaces, tos/platform, and tos/libs. This will avoid problems with files being deleted when you log off.
Implement your LED dimmer module (HPLTriLEDM.nc) in TinyOS using Timer 1 of the ATmega128. Refer to the ATmega128 microcontroller datasheet and the SoundBoard_1 datasheet to determine how to control the tri-color LED. Your LightNode application should update the tri-color LED based on the last RGB value received from the radio (use AM message type #33). You should send update packets approximately every 250-500ms. NOTE: We suggest using TOSH_INTERRUPT instead of TOSH_SIGNAL to make sure your program doesn't interfere with anything important in TinyOS.
Modify your SPI/USB code to use the MoteConn class to transmit the desired light level in a TinyOS radio packet with AM message type #33. The light level being sent over the radio should be controlled by your accelerometer. MoteConn is a simple class that opens up a connection to the TinyOS SerialForwarder and allows you to send packets. MoteConn needs to link to ws2_32.lib. Instructions on how to link MoteConn to ws2_32.lib in MSVC are provided in MoteConn.h. Here are the MoteConn Files

SOMETHING TO CONSIDER: We could have easily created a small handheld USB device using the same USB/ SPI chip, ATmega16, and accelerometer. These chips come in smaller packages that could be soldered to a small printed circuit board to create a small device. This device could be put into some sort of packaging and receive all necessary power from the USB port creating a nicely packaged controller.

Deliverables

Turn in your code from the exercises in answers to the two questions above. All your files should contain comments that include: both partners' full name, login, student number, the lab number (e.g. “Lab 6, Lesson 1”), as well as important words about how your code works.

Turn in your solutions for exercises in Lessons 1, 3, and 4.
Turn in your diagrams for questions 1 and 2.
Demonstrate Part 2 working to a TA and hand-in all the modified TinyOS files. (i.e. LightNode.nc, LightNodeM.nc, HPLTriLEDM.nc, TriColorLED.nc)