May 15th, 2012
This past week or so I have been reading papers concerning the creation of a node time-slot schedule for my WSN work on my Ph.D. Nothing to exciting really, just getting to grips with the maths behind and working out how to build a schedule from network parameters.
In other news, I worked on ‘Mills on the Air’ last weekend from two locations; The Upminster Windmill (GB2UW) and The Royal Gunpowder Mills (GB2RGM). Both were very good events, but special note goes to the Gunpowder Mills for the nature of the site. It really is very interesting!
Last night Lorenzo, Gul, Teddy and I went to see Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, which turned out to be a good film. I had seen good reviews from it, and they turned out to be well founded.
I am just waiting for Dr Neil to arrive at the office to conduct some research into the Postgraduate Admissions Portal, the software development project I have been involved with as a Student Rep. I think they just want to see a student use it and gauge how easy/hard it is to use.
Until next time, farewell!
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April 30th, 2012
The last few days I have made no academic progress at all. I am stuck, and cannot figure out how to proceed. I need to start creating the schedule section of the MAC and this is where the trouble starts. The existing program is ready to support the framework, but I cannot find any good solid examples of how others create their schedules. Most of the existing MAC papers are pretty sketchy about how it all works; this makes me sceptical about their results – do they really work?! Still, I’ll get there. Friday saw me help Yiannis’ MSc students with Contiki. I think it went well, but feedback from Yiannis will tell.
In other news I bought a Yaesu VX-8G. A Amateur Radio transmitter with GPS built in for sending APRS frames. This was bought at the Kempton Park Rally, 2012.
This weekend, 28 and 29 April, I was at LEFARS helping with their Foundation Course weekend, which went pretty well.
I have also been playing with flashing OpenWRT onto a Netgear DG834G v3 wireless router. I managed to flash the device okay, but the version I flashed has no support for Ethernet (some kind of bug) so I need to think of an ingenious way to get the newer firmware onto the device and flashed – this may take a while!
In other news, little has happened. Look out for an update soon. Must. Update. More. Often. 
Posted in Contiki, Course, Electronics, Loughton & Epping F. ARS, Radio | No Comments »
April 21st, 2012
Just a short note, mainly from fear of forgetting to update. This week saw very good progress with the PhD. The program is now at a stage where it is ready to send the schedule out to all other nodes. The election for leader is implemented and reaches 100% concensus very rapidly. That’s pretty much all. I am currently looking at ways to design the schedule in a simple manor while maximising bandwidth.
In other news, the website now has a new skin, the GuMax skin, running on MediaWiki 1.18.2. I also updated to use memcached (whatever it’s called) as it’s supposed to add improvement. Maybe this’ll stop PHP complaining it can’t find Xcache despite it supposedly wanting APC. Never mind.
Posted in Contiki, PhD, Website | No Comments »
April 17th, 2012
It’s been months since I last posted here. Getting on for 2 months! That’s worrying. Since then, a lot has changed. I’ve bought a new car:
That’s been the main thing. I’ve had a really bad cold. The radio club, BRES, has finally closed, with members moving on to two new clubs, LEFARS and Havering ARS; I joined both. I’ve worked on a few projects, and done various other smaller tinkerings. Easter has happened. I updated the menus on the website. However, I’ve done very little on my PhD. And tomorrow, that must change.
I mentioned the cold; that’s kept me from working on my PhD since the Easter break finished. I’ve felt very bad and run down from that. The thought of sifting through code to find the small bug just made me feel queezy. Tomorrow the fun starts. So this was just a heads up that things would be changing and I need to get back into the swing of things. Yiannis isn’t going to put up with this crap any longer, and to be honest, I don’t expect him to – He shouldn’t have to. So goodnight world. Expect an update soon! Night!
Posted in BRES, Car, Clubs, Electronics, Family, Havering ARS, Loughton & Epping F. ARS, PhD, Radio, Social, Website | No Comments »
February 24th, 2012
So this past week nothing much has happened academically… After getting the Linked List working last week (see previous posts) I discovered that Contiki already had a linked list algorithm and I had missed it (due to poor documentation). Following an example for the native linked list methods, I managed to get myself completely lost. I built the linked list into my existing program only to find that the program always returned nonsense data. At this point, I broke away, and started writing a very simple test environment for the linked list and to my relief it worked. Now all I have to do is figure how this differs from my original implementation within the convergence program, and we’re in business. Fingers crossed it won’t take to long!
In other news, I have a WSPR implementation with GPS syncing that transmits pre-encoded frames. I now need to get the device to calculate data from input strings, and encode that so that we can use the GPS to provide the QRA locator. The Tetra GPS I have is a little flakey, too. The location data bounces around a lot and it doesn’t seem to settle. I have a spare antenna so I will try that later.
Tonight I’m off out with Lorenzo, Gul, and others to see 1984 in the Bloomsbury Theatre. Fingers crossed it’ll be good!
Over and out!
Posted in Contiki, PhD, Radio, Social, WSPR | No Comments »
February 17th, 2012
Yesterday afternoon I managed to finish the Linked Lists program. It’s surprising how much more obvious hard parts of a program become after some sleep. I pretty much figured out what I was doing wrong on the way home; the next day it was just an issue of fixing that, and then the few little bugs that it threw at me. Now it’s good to go. Today I will try to implement that on Contiki. In between getting lunch with Nicola.
I’ve had a few nice QRSS spots recently, too. This weekend I will be preparing the transmitter in a waterproof box to be put at the bunker for a week or two – see how many spots we get there… Watch this space…
Last night saw a discussion around the Barking Radio & Electronics society, where it was voiced that the current members wished to bring forward the closing date to Easter 2012. Next week will see equipment valued and an EGM the week after, where equipment will be sorted out and distributed amongst all members. I’m sure it will be an interesting evening.
Posted in BRES, Blood, Contiki, Lunch, PhD, Radio | No Comments »
February 15th, 2012
So this week I have been trying to perfect a linked list. In an object orientated programming language, a Linked list allows you to create an object that resides at a known place in RAM. Then each sequential object allows you to link to the next element in the list. Each object contains a pointer to the next object along with the parameters associated with each object. In my case this will be the node parameters. It is therefore possible to break links, insert and remove objects, etc. It allows for a dynamically changing list. But it doesn’t work. And I don’t have an object orientated language; I have standard C.
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February 9th, 2012
This is the first post in a long while, but progress has been slow. Today I spent most of the day working towards getting the battery status read out of the node in order to start forming beacons. I demonstrated a simple spinning network to Yiannis last week. Since then, I have been reading other MAC specifications to see how other protocols implement beaconing; how the data is contained, and so on.
Just now I am working out how to pack the battery status into the packet payload in the most efficient, yet expandable way. Progress is slow, and most attempts result in the processor crashing & restarting. Not fun.
Today saw a meeting for the UCL Engineering Postgraduate Research Application System; a faculty initiative to upgrade the PhD application process, and as a PhD Student who has just gone through this process, and with strong views about it, I was asked to become involved. We essentially talked to software company employees to create postit note based stories to help them ascertain what it is the “system” needs to do. Key emphasis was placed on the PhD Students and the Academics, with most of the problems and complaints input by admin staff. A follow up session is arranged for Monday, 13th Feb 2012.
Things have worked out well with the generator for use with portable radio work; Dave and I have managed to work a few people from the bunker recently, but missed the 144 MHz UKAC contest due to illness. Still, we should be on form for the 432 MHz contest next week.
Posted in Contiki, Course, Meeting, PhD | No Comments »
January 24th, 2012
So today I developed a network system which waits a random time after receiving a packet before transmitting a new one. This was an investigation into my initial network discovery techniques. I want to test the nodes on the DAQ system to measure the power requirements for this system, and to get a good idea overall.
The TelosB nodes were ordered by John today, so Yiannis tells me. Also, some SMA connectors turned up on my desk? I assume these are for the TelosB motes when they arrive.
A short Youtube video of the MAC in the simulator can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNZNJc6aUyc.
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January 20th, 2012
Just a short update. Today I made yet more progress. It’s becoming worrying. I managed to measure the times required to change channel on the CC2420 using a scope. Pretty basic stuff. Figure is about 130uS. Meeting Nicola for a coffee very soon, and then off out with the lads tonight for some food and bowling. Should be a good night!
Posted in Contiki, Food, PhD, Social | No Comments »