summary 2

[James Horey]

Hey everybody,

Here's my second weekly summary. It's going to be a bit short since I just got 
back from vacation, but I did manage to get some things done. Most of the 
work accomplished was on the periphery of my main project, so let me give 
some background.

First I'm not sure I ever gave an adequate explanation of my project to the 
others here so let me start there. My research focuses on sensor networks. 
These are wireless networks of small computing devices that have various 
sensing (temperature, photometer, etc) capabilities. Some of my research 
focuses on how one goes about programming and manipulating these devices. One 
such idea is to employ a spreadsheet-like programming interface. My project 
then aims to create such an interface using KDE technologies. 

This interface (I don't have a proper name for it quite yet) has the ability 
to create and upload new TinyOS programs for these sensors. The first summary 
goes over some progress I had with various KDE technologies and in 
communicating with the sensor devices. This week I mainly worked on the 
actual TinyOS programs themselves. These are the programs that will 
*eventually* be uploaded automatically onto the devices. I have them in a 
fairly acceptable state, although more work needs to go into them. I will 
find a way to post the details of these programs soon, perhaps in a blog 
entry.

For next week, I repeat some of my todo items from last week since I ended up 
working on something else. I may also try to find an easy way to upload these 
TinyOS images onto the motes automatically using Ruby (right now, it requires 
a separate program).

-James
 

-- 
James Horey
Email:jhorey at cs.unm.edu
Webpage:www.cs.unm.edu/~jhorey
Office:FEC 301D