MSI MS-9803- User Manual

ViSE: Virtualized Sensing Environment

http://vise.cs.umass.edu

University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Prashant Shenoy, Mike Zink, David Irwin, Jim Kurose, and Deepak Ganesan

1

ViSE Hardware System Overview

ViSE is a mult-sensor/multi-user sensor network testbed in Western Massachusetts. The testbed will consist of 3
nodes with physical connections over long-range 802.11b with directional antenna as well as a backplane connec-
tion over a commercial cellular network. Each ViSE node is custom-built and consists of a number of different
hardware components, listed below. In addition to listing each component and a brief summary of its capabilities,
we also list relevant external links that include more information. Where appropriate, we elide certain details of the
node hardware including cabling, custom-built power boards (e.g., for the Gumstix backplane), external enclosure
connectors, etc.

In addition to the specific hardware components, the position of each node is an important part of our testbed’s
profile. We currently have one node positioned at the top of a firetower on Mount Toby in Amherst, MA. This
node is roughly 10 km from one node on the UMass CS Building and one node on the MA1 Tower on the UMass
Campus. The Mount Toby node is able to communicate with both the CS building node and the MA1 Tower node.
The CS building node and the MA1 Tower node do not have line of sight and cannot communicate directly over
802.11b. A server inside the CS building is able to connect to the CS ViSE node over 802.11b. The MA1 Tower
ViSE node has a wired Ethernet connection. These two servers will be the primary entry points for GENI user
network traffic to/from the ViSE nodes.

1.1

Computational Hardware

•

Motherboard

. MSI GM965 Mini-ITX form factor. The motherboard supports Core 2 Duo Mobile pro-

cessors and the Celeron M using type Socket P (478 pin) with a 800/533MHz front side bus. The chipset
is an Intel GME965 northbridge and ICH8M southbridge. The board includes 2 DDR 533/667 SDRAM
sockets. We use the motherboards Wake-on-LAN feature to power the node up and down using an external
microcontroller—the Gumstix—described below.

More information may be found at http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms 9803.

•

Processor

. 1.86 Ghz Intel Celeron M (Merom) CPU 540.

More information may be found at http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms 9803.

•

Memory

. 2GB of DDR2 667 RAM.

•

Gumstix Backplane

. Each main node has a Linux Gumstix connected via serial and Ethernet to the main

node to serve as a backplane. We are using the Gumstix Verdex Pro. The backplane connects to commercial
cellular. Our current plan is to initially place only one cellular-connected on Mount Toby, which is physically
inaccessible during the Winter.

Details of the Gumstix are at http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product info.php?products id=209.

•

Adlink Data Acquisition Card (DAQ) PCI-9812

. We use an ultra-high speed analog input card to read the

high-bandwidth data produced by the radar.