Angelos WSN platform

Archive
1

I just wanted to take a moment and get everyone caught up on my latest project – a NETMF-based WSN platform based around an STM32F4 + CC1101 combination.

The platform, named Angelos, is going to offer a wide variety of motes that are capable of measuring different phenomena. Right now, appliance current sensors, sound spectrum sensors, mechanical vibration sensors, and light/temperature sensors (pictured) are in development.

Another major component of the project is to provide RSSI-based localization ability. The motes, operating in the 900 MHz ISM band, are capable of communicating with Texas Instruments Chronos watches, which allows us to deploy these sensors in a clinical setting to monitor patients’ activity.

I’ve already contributed some of the code to the NETMF Community Ports project, including device serial number support and CC1101 driver support (plus a generic WSN_HAL library category that can support other devices).

Look forward to some low-power optimizations soon!

5 Likes
2

@ jay - very cool

3

Very neat line!

4

yes very neat

5

Cool. So, do they just run plugged into a USB port or is that just for programming?

6

Some of them are bus-powered (like the one pictured); others are powered by a LiPo battery (with integrated USB charger).

7

To really complete this, you need to create something like this that could receive all the signals from a single board.

http://www.ghielectronics.com/community/forum/topic?id=11783

8

I’m not sure what you mean?

Every mote has a transceiver, so obviously any mote could be programmed to act as an access point (which would coordinate network traffic, and is usually the designated “receiving” device that sensors communicate readings to).

For my application, I actually have a “base station” that’s effectively a GSM gateway – it encapsulates all of the sensor readings and sends them over a GSM cellular link to a centralized server.

Or are you talking about a Gadgeteer transceiver module that would work with the platform?

9

Yes :slight_smile:

10

Pshhhhh, way ahead of you.

BYOA (Bring Your Own Antenna) design with RP-SMA connector:

New design with tuned chip antenna:

11

There’s no managed driver (just a native one), so unless you want to reflash your device with custom firmware, you’d have to write a managed driver for it.

The CC1101 was a total breeze to work with (once I fixed the broken SPI code in the STM32F4 firmware).

And this thing costs about $8 to make (single-quantity pricing!), so it’s cheap, too.

1 Like
12

@ jay - very cool project

13

And there’s the awesome bit, at that price, they’ll run out the door. Put me down for a pair of them, minimum

14

Hi, jay, do you sell these platforms?
Do you finished the cc1101 drivers?
User can simply develp application by using VS and your cc1101 drivers?

15

Yeah, I have CC1101 drivers. They’re in my NETMF Community Ports repository for anyone to enjoy.

The platform has full support for .NET Micro Framework 4.3, so yes, applications are developed in Visual Studio.

I hadn’t planned on selling anything, but if there’s enough interest, I would consider doing a production batch and selling them to people.

One side project I’ve been working on is over-the-air debugging, which would allow for deploying (and live debugging!) applications in Visual Studio using the transceiver as a transport.