Bootstrapping into Wireless Sensor Network Lab

About one week after classes started, I was assigned to my would be supervisor, Dr. Mikhail Nesterenko, who is an expert here in WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks). This is the closest thing I can get into embedded systems stuff, and it sits in my domain of interest. Dr. Mikhail Nesterenko was nice to show me his lab and help me find a place to sit in the lab. He also made sure I had a table and chair for me ready, and a pc for me to work on.


So my first task was to bootstrap myself into the lab. First thing I did was delete the windows on my computer, and installed debby(debian) on my computer. Then, tweak around with it, and after it was running, tried to get my alpine--formerly pine--working on my workstation. Our email is on IMAP and I just wanted to be geeky and access my email from a text-based client like pine. Anyhow, the technical details are taken out, if you are interested about getting to use your pine over SSL, then you should go here.



The lab is the place I hang out a lot. Since there is no other place to hang out for a graduate student. Plus, I imagine, after I get a hang of WSN, I would probably spend most of my time here in the lab, doing experiments and what not. So looks like this lab is going to be my second home soon.




In the lab, there is a grid of wireless sensor networks. This grid is to experiment on a variety of network conditions. But I guess, most of the work going to be configuring and reprogramming of the t-motes wireless devices. It runs on tiny-OS, so I will have to learn how to use tiny-OS soon and start hacking on the embedded device.



The wireless device we get to play with are small and tiny. They are embedded devices meant for sensors. So it is supposed to be that small. The problem is, it will also have limited power as well as limited memory to keep your program and data. Not to mention the irregularity in transmission of wireless signals. I'm not sure what kind of research I will do first. I think I will just use up this whole semester to learn about tiny-OS, reprogramming of the embedded device as well as learn more about previous research being done. Maybe later, I will be enlighten about what to do with my research in WSN.

The WSN lab seems to be a lonely place where most of the time it is empty. There are 4 people in our group with Dr. Nesterenko as the supervisor. Good thing is, Mike, a research group member, sometimes hang out in the lab too. Occasionally, we have Tom and Najla come in and out the lab. The embedded devices can be access remotely through ssh, so we don't really need to be in the lab. Unless we want to stay in a quiet place to study. Anyhow, wish me luck in finding a research topic soon in WSN.