COST - AAPELE
Castres, France, 30th June 2015

Laurent Segers - laurent.segers@vub.ac.be

Abstract

Assisted ambient living plays a more important role in our modern society. One might think of monitoring the temperature, humidity, light intensity (etc.) and by taking the appropriate actions like venting, cooling, adapting the intensity of light (etc.) in order to optimize the living conditions inside buildings. In general, the monitoring and actuation happens through smart nodes which are connected to a central control system. In this course we will cover the basis of IP connectivity of smart embedded wireless devices with 6LoWPAN. 6LoWPAN (IPv6 for Low power Personal Area Network) enables the integration of wireless sensor network nodes into the regular IP networks, and is especially designed for low power and constraint devices which can possibly operate on battery. To facilitate the development of applications, some platforms and simulator tools have been made accessible, such as the Zolertia Z1 platform and the Cooja simulator. The Zolertia Z1 platform runs the Contiki operating system, which already integrates the 6LoWPAN stack. In this course, we will discover the Zolertia Z1 platform together with the basis functionalities of the Contiki operating system. In a first step, we will focus at the possibilities to enable the readings from sensors and the usage of actuators. In a second step, we will deploy a 6LoWPAN based network using the Cooja simulator, where the IP protocol plays an important role. Therefore, we will also verify our setup by monitoring the transmitted 6LoWPAN packets. In the last step, we will build a complete network using several Zolertia Z1 nodes, a border router and a remote application. Possibilities to monitor IP based packets back and forth the network will also be shown.

Course documents

Introduction to Contiki
Introduction slides 6LoWPAN networking

Additional material

UDP server sample as a remote application
Additional driver for Contiki (digital input output)