List

Hardware Being Used

This page lists all of the hardware being used with the RESN project. The kit has all been purchased from a UK reseller of Crossbow products. Crossbow produce a range of wireless sensors as well as programming boards and other essential hardware.

All of the images on this page are roughly to scale. Here are a UK postage stamp and a US quarter to give a sense of real world scale.

The Mica2 (bigger) and the Mica2Dot are both wireless sensor boards. They do not actually come with built in sensors but have connectors for adding off the shelf sensor boards or adapters which make them easier to attach third party sensors to them. Each board runs software built on top of TinyOS. For the RESN project the software for the motes was all written at the University to gain expertise in developing WSN applications. Both types of motes use 433MHz to communicate. Mica2 datasheet. Mica2Dot datasheet.

This is a serial programming board, it is used to upload software to the motes. It is possible to use a USB to serial adapter on PCs which do not have the legacy interface. As well as uploading software the board can allow a PC (or other device with a serial port) to communicate with a mote and the associated wireless network. In this way the board can act as a gateway to the motes. MIB510 datasheet

A second type of programming board that uses an Ethernet interface. The protocol used is serial over TCP/IP over Ethernet. So very little needs to be changed on a PC to switch from using the serial board. Of course the benefit of this board is that it can be communicated with via University wired network and so it can be more flexible with regard to where it is positioned. A normal Wi-Fi games adapter could be attached to the board to give it 802.11 capability further increasing its utility. MIB600 datasheet.

This is the Stargate processor board with a daughter card attached. This is a more powerful gateway which runs embedded Linux. It has a 400 MHz, Intel PXA255 processor and is basically the same kind of hardware you would find in a PDA. It has a PCMCIA, compact flash and the correct connector to plug in a mote. The daughter card gives it an Ethernet, Serial and USB port - so if you buy a Stargate you almost certainly want to buy the daughter card too. The board obviously is extremely flexible, with a full Linux OS running on it there are a great many possibilities for what can be achieved. Stargate datasheet.