topic Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks in LabVIEW

Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

jpk — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:27:35 GMT

Hello everybody!

I was trying to use the recently released labview drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks for Crossbow products in particular. I was trying out one of the exapmples included when I realised that they don't have any documentation included. I am specifically concerned as to what program should I load into the motes and the program that is to be loaded into the base mote. Am using a MIB510 interface board with mica2 motes (900 MHz) and MTS300 sensor boards. I tried them with TOSBase and OscilloscopeRF program and also XMeshBase_903_hp.exe with XMTS300_903_hp.exe but neither seemed to work (latter worked with Moteview though)can you please guide me as to how to proceed from here?

Also I was trying to read from the port 9001 with serial forwarder running in the background and the base mote receiving messages using the simple data client program and other examples without success. was just wondering if anybody had success or experience in working with reading the serial forwarder using labview.

Thanks...

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

mfitzsimons — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:53:52 GMT

What kind of wireless measurement are you trying to make? I have experience with the Accsense Wireless Sensor products that work very well and easy to configure. They have some easy to use routines that work very well with LabVIEW.

http://www.accsense.com/

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Ryan_V[DE] — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:50:36 GMT

jpk,

Were you trying to connect to the serial forwarder, or directly to the gateway? They have slightly different protocols, and the direct serial connection is the only one that is currently supported in the driver. You may have to close XServe / MoteView before it will work. Also, the driver was written for the 2.4GHz MICAz platform. It is my understanding that they are based off of the same XMesh protocol, but we have only tested with MICAzs. Please let me know and I will do my best to help.

Regards,

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Ryan_V[DE] — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 21:06:14 GMT

Also, the driver architechture is loosely based on NI-DAQmx, so if you are familiar with that, similar concepts apply. There are a few examples which install in the C:\Program Files\National Instruments\<LabVIEW directory>\instr.lib\Crossbow XMesh WSN\Examples directory. They should serve to illustrate the general program flow. Functionality of the individual VIs should also appear in the context help.

Hope this helps,

Special issue on Distributed Signal Processing Techniques for Wireless Sensor Networks

Dalia — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:09:54 GMT

Call for Papers

Recent advances in hardware and wireless communications technologies have made possible the design of low-cost, low-power, multifunctional sensor devices. When deployed in a large number across a geographical area, these sensor devices collaborate among themselves to create a network for distributed sensing and automated information gathering, processing, and communication. Wireless sensor networks are a special case of wireless ad hoc networks that assume a multihop communication framework with no infrastructure, where the sensor devices cooperate to convey information from a source to a destination. This revolutionary technology will present a huge impact on a broad range of applications: monitoring the health status of humans, animals, plants, and civil-engineering structures, control and instrumentation of industrial machines and home appliances, energy conservation, security, detection of chemical and biological leaks. The upcoming years will very likely witness a growing demand for intelligent sensor systems that will be networked with wireless local area networks (WLANs) and Internet for increased functionality and performance.

In general, the design of wireless sensor networks is subject to the following requirements:

low energy consumption, which is manifested in minimal energy expenditure in each sensor node and efficient usage of power-saving sleep/wake-up modes
scalability with the increase in the number of sensors with the goal to extract information from noisy spatiotemporal measurements collected at the nodes
broadcast communication paradigm and the increased possibility of packet collisions and congestions
absence of centralized communication infrastructure
possibility of frequent node failures and network topology changes

The goal of this special issue is to present the state-of-the-art results and emerging signal processing approaches for wireless sensor networks that can cope with the above-mentioned challenges. Submitted articles must not have been previously published and must not be currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Topics of interest include the following:

distributed estimation, detection, inference, and learning algorithms
clock and carrier synchronization techniques
design of distributed modulation techniques
distributed power control algorithms
performance bounds and statistical analysis

Due to the existence of a concurrent call for proposals, papers dealing with localization and tracking applications will not be accepted.

Authors should follow the EURASIP JASP manuscript format described at the journal site http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asp/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the EURASIP JASP Manuscript Tracking System at http://www.hindawi.com/mts/, according to the following timetable:

Manuscript Due May 1, 2007

First Round of Reviews August 1, 2007

Publication Date November 1, 2007

Guest Editors:

Erchin Serpedin, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA; serpedin@ece.tamu.edu

Hongbin Li, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA; hli@stevens.edu

Aleksandar Dogandžić, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA; ald@iastate.edu

Huaiyu Dai, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA; Huaiyu_Dai@ncsu.edu

Paul Cotae, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA; paul.cotae@utsa.edu

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

ScottVickers — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:13:35 GMT

I too am jumping into LabView and using Labview for Crossbow's systems. As you, I too am having issues just getting LabView to see the MIB510 board and data I can verify is there. Any insights you can elaborate on would be appreciated so I don't go stumbling down the wrong paths. The documentation I have found leaves a lot to be desired, especially a novice to Labview like me.

Scott

SVickers@wildwell.com

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

jpk — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:06:26 GMT

Scott,

The drivers that are available for the crossbow motes are a set of applications designed by Crossbow and they do not have any kind of documentation on them.

This means the motes should be running an application that Crossbow wrote and which is not open source.

Their application does not serve my purpose which is to read data from my own custom application loaded into the motes. I then decided to read directly from the serial port to which the MIB510 is connected to and it works pretty good. You just need to know the correct format of the data that your application on the mote uses so that you can parse it in lab view. A good place to start is the Basic Serial write and read.vi example in labview and this document.

http://www.octavetech.com/pubs/TB5-01%20Deciphering%20TinyOS%20Serial%20Packets.pdf

Please let me know as to what kind of application that you intend to use in the motes and if u need any more help.

Phaneeth

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:25:15 GMT

Hi all ,

I am a newbee to NI and Labview and currently doing research in Wireless Sensor Networks . I would like to simulate my Wireless Sensor Network in labview .. I have also downloaded the drivers crossbow_xmesh_wsn from the internet .

I am unaware of how to use labview to create my gateways and nodes and to make use to labview in creating these devices .

can any one please help me on this ..

Regards

Anil

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Ryan_V[DE] — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:49:23 GMT

Hi Anil,

Do you physically have the Crossbow hardware? The driver you downloaded is for interfacing with said hardware. No configuration should be necessary. Once you run an application, the driver will begin receiving commands from the serial resource you specify. It will automatically detect nodes as motes send out their packets. There is a VI for acquiring IDs of the attached devices, which you can then use those node IDs to read from them individually, or as a group. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

mfitzsimons — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:11:40 GMT

Anil,

I don't have experience with Crossbow but can help answer questions about Accsense. Are you in the Chicago area? Are you doing this for school or work?

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:45:47 GMT

Hi Ryan,

thanks for the early reply ..

Yes I do have the physical crossbow hardware .Can you please let me know more about the VIs which are already present in the Lab , where can I find them .
Also I am not able to view the attachment which you have mentioned.

Regards

Anil

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:48:35 GMT

Hi mfitzsimo
thanks for the reply, I am currently working on crossbow , if I have any querries in Accsense I will surely buzz you .
Currently I am in Houston , Texas and persuing my masters in Computer science .
I am doing this for my research work in Wireless Sensor networks

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Ryan_V[DE] — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:24:44 GMT

Hi Anil,

What school are you attending? If you do not already have them, the VIs can be downloaded here. Be sure to put the top level folder (Crossbow XMesh WSN) into your LabVIEW directory's instr.lib folder. If you are familiar with DAQmx programming, the structure is very much the same. We don't have much in the way of examples, but there are some available here:

C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.5\instr.lib\Crossbow XMesh WSN\Examples\

They should give you an idea of how to use the API. Finally, the individual API VI should be available in LabVIEW's Instrument IO palette. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Regards,

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:45:05 GMT

Hi Ryan

thanks for the info.. i will check the same and revert incase of any issues ..

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:44:52 GMT

Hi Ryan ,

I am currently trying to run the files which I have downloaded , however in my mind I have got few querries .. They might be trival ..but i am not able to get things figured out in my mind .

Once this is connected and starts working , how would my Labview application interact with the hardware .?

How will labview interact with the user ? is ther going to be another interface after the labview which will be used to interact with the users ?

How exactly labview is going to work in this case? . what role VI's are going to play ?

I know these querries might be trival to most of you guys ... but i need to ask them to have a clear undustanding of what i am going to built !

thanks !

Regards

Anil karamchandani

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:11:15 GMT

Hi all

Any info on the above ? .. pls help

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Ryan_V[DE] — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:55:10 GMT

Hi Anil,

In this driver, LabVIEW interacts with the sensor network gateway at the lowest level. It sends and receives packets of information over the serial port. For received data, it buffers it until requested by the user (in the form of a read, etc.). It also provides parsing of the messages and conversion of the raw binary data into engineering units. From that point on, all aspects of your program are up to you. The example I referenced simply displays packets as they come in to the gateway and are forwarded to the host PC. It is quite simple to turn this into a graph to plot trends, or save it to a file. LabVIEW is a full-featured programming languange (and more!) which should allow you to create just about any kind of application you can think of. Perhaps if you give us more information on what it is you are trying to do, I could provide some general suggestions.

Regards,
Ryan

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:08:23 GMT

Hi Ryan / all,

I have downloaded the Labview drivers for the gateway(MIB 520) and sensors(MTS 310) .
In my current setup ,Gateway MIB 520 is connected to my PC where Labview is installed via a COMM port ie serial communication and the sensor MTS 310 is mounted on the Gateway .

The drivers which i had downloaded is kept at the location C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.5\instr.lib in the directory Crossbow XMesh WSN

Now when i click on the project Crossbow XMesh WSN.lvproj i see a project explorer window .
In the window when i click on any of the VIs (eg Read Data and Display Health.vi)
and run the same i get an error
Error 8003 occurred at WSN Send Generic Stream Message.vi . Possible reasons :
Engine is not responding .An unexpected terminal error occurred.

May be i am not using the examples in the right manner . can any one guide me thorugh this please
thanks

anil

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

anilhk — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:30:16 GMT

guys ,

any luck !

Re: Labview Drivers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Nitin_T — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:44:58 GMT

Hi Anil,

You are using the VIs properly. The examples should run without any issues. I would suggest checking the COM port to which you've connected the device. See if it is on COM1, because the software (see Block Diagram) by default selects it. You can select the right COM port and try executing the program once again. I hope this helps! Let me know if there is anything else I can help with or clarify. Have a great day!

Manuscript Due	May 1, 2007
First Round of Reviews	August 1, 2007
Publication Date	November 1, 2007