Mike Colagrosso

I’m posting updates to the MobiSys 2008 homepage via Twitter. You can follow mobisys08 on Twitter, and you can subscribe to the MobiSys 2008 RSS feed which redirects to the Twitter feed. I hope that being able to get updates via Twitter will help MobiSys visitors up to and during the conference in June.

I’m serving on the technical program committee of the “Wireless Sensor Networks: Platforms, Systems, Architectures, and Applications” track of ICCCN 2008. I hope to review high-quality submissions, so grab a copy of the call for papers and mind these important dates:

This Friday, 11/9, I’m giving a colloquium talk to the MCS department about my research. Here are the details, and you can also download the flyer.

Friday, November 9, 2007
Hill Hall 204 (note room change)

Large Datasets from Small Devices: Machine Learning in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this colloquium talk, I present ongoing work in collecting, processing, and analyzing data from wireless sensor networks using machine learning. Wireless sensor networks comprise small
devices with limited resources that can sense environmental conditions and relay them though its radio. Machine learning algorithms automatically improve through experience, and I use machine learning to build systems that make decisions under uncertainty and adapt to their environments. In sensor networks, I use machine learning in two ways: to classify the data collected in a sensor network as interesting or not and to optimize the low-level operation of the network itself. Both applications help sustain network operation in challenging environments, such as our installation in the Edgar Mine.

Michael Colagrosso is in his sixth year as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder and his B.S. from the Colorado School of Mines. He researches applications of machine learning to wireless sensor networks.

I’m serving as the MobiSys 2008 Local Arrangements Chair, and I also created the conference homepage. Check it out here:

MobiSys 2008

Dirk Grunwald and Richard Han from the University of Colorado at Boulder are the General Chairs. We’re holding the conference in Breckenridge, Colorado in June, and we hope to see you there.

In this screencast I give some tips for using the Readline library’s shortcut keys. I cover ctrl-p, ctrl-n, ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-f, ctrl-b, alt-f, alt-b, ctrl-d, alt-d, alt-backspace, ctrl-k, ctrl-u, ctrl-r, alt-., alt-p, alt-n, !make, locate cfp.html, vi `!!`, and ctrl-o.

Show notes and discussion

Readline shortcut keys download [30.7 MB]

This is fantastic. Kevin Klues created a XubunTOS 2.0 virtual machine for VMware Server, which is a free application that runs on Windows and Linux. This further lowers the barrier to using XubunTOS and TinyOS. If, for example, your Windows laptop is your main machine, the XubunTOS VMware image will help you work in TinyOS without rebooting to Linux or managing a proper Cygwin environment. Try it out and join me in thanking Kevin for this useful service.

Update, 9/8/07: I updated previous link to point to Kevin’s VMware and XubunTOS tutorial. You can still see his original mailing list post.

Update, 9/20/07: Kevin has created a second document, this one titled Running the XubunTOS Virtual Machine Image in VMware Player with good tips about connecting motes to your virtual machine.

Last week I created and released the second version of XubunTOS, a Linux Live CD with TinyOS installed. XubunTOS 2.0 builds on Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) and contains TinyOS 2.0.2, TinyOS 1.x from CVS, and our custom files for syntax highlighting, shell environment variables, and convenient aliases. You can download XubunTOS 2.0 from the Toilers XubunTOS page. Thanks to Chad Metcalf for helping me test it and for announcing it to the tinyos-help mailing list.

I was pleased with the response to XubunTOS 1.0, and with the second version I added the number one requested feature: an easy way to modify and rebuild XubunTOS. Even though we tried to make XubunTOS 1.0 as generally useful as possible, there are always other software packages to install or tweaks to make it that much better. Because we distributed only an ISO for XubunTOS 1.0, none of those community enhancements were possible, or at least not easy. With XubunTOS 2.0, you can easily modify the Live CD and create your own custom image.

In this write-up, I’ll give you the steps to get going on modifying XubunTOS. All the links in this article can also be found by accessing my bookmarks tagged xubuntos on del.icio.us. The prerequisites are fairly short. You’ll need Reconstructor 2.6 and its dependencies, a Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) ISO, and my Reconstructor module to install TinyOS. Place my mod-install-tinyos.rmod file in the reconstructor_2.6/modules/ directory, and launch Reconstructor with cd reconstructor_2.6/; sudo python reconstructor.py. Once you have Reconstructor running, follow the documentation on using it until you reach the Apt section. On the Apt tab, check all the available repositories, including Official, Restricted, Universe, and Multiverse. Then add a line in the Custom Repositories area for Stanford TinyOS 2.0.2 packages

deb http://tinyos.stanford.edu/tinyos/dists/ubuntu feisty main

Click the Apply button, and click the Terminal button to double check your work. The Terminal button will launch a terminal in the chroot’ed environment of the live CD. In that terminal, you can explore the files and layout to make sure everything is correct. Type

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list

and ensure that the Stanford Feisty repository line is present. You must exit from the terminal before you can return to Reconstructor. Continue on with the documentation until you reach the Modules section. In the Modules tab, expand the Miscellaneous section to find the TinyOS module like this:

Check the Execute box and then click the Apply button to install TinyOS to the Live CD. Reconstructor will pop up a terminal window that executes the shell commands in the TinyOS module. There are a few CVS checkout commands as part of the module, so you’ll have to hit Enter to proceed with the CVS login. While the CVS checkouts are by far the longest steps, the module has many commands so be patient while they execute. When the module finishes, you’ll be returned to Reconstructor, and from here you have many options to customize XubunTOS before you burn it to CD. You can write your own module (some documentation here) to run your own shell commands inside the CD image; you can modify my TinyOS module and re-run it (it doesn’t hurt to rerun the module, and the CVS checkouts are much faster the subsequent times); or you can simply type any apt-get install commands directly into Reconstructor. As always, you can click the Terminal button to double check your work, and when you’re done Reconstructor will build the ISO. If you’ve made any changes to XubunTOS, I’d love for you to tell me, and if you think your changes would benefit the TinyOS community, we can fold them into the next version of XubunTOS.

I’ve created a new section on my homepage for our wireless sensor network deployment in the Edgar Mine in Idaho Springs. Those posts are all grouped here:

http://ore.mines.edu/~mcolagro/edgarmine/

As a shortcut, you can also reach the site via:

http://edgar.mines.edu/

Our wireless sensors in the Edgar Mine are collecting temperature, humidity, and ambient light readings, and they are also sending radio beacons to each other to determine their neighbors. You can see these data on the interactive map.

See the full demo after the jump.

» More after the jump.

Several news outlets came to the Edgar Mine today to do a story on mine safety. Here is a video from CBS 4

9 news and Fox 31 also posted stories.