FlockLab Tutorial 1: Registration, Toolchains and Utilities
Introduction
Learn about the registration for a FlockLab user account, how to set up all needed toolchains and get an overview of the utilities that FlockLab offers.
Registration
If you do not yet have a user account for FlockLab, head to the registration page and follow the instructions to sign up for FlockLab. As the accounts are activated manually by an administrator, it might take a day or two before you get an email with your registration confirmation. Meanwhile, you can set up all the needed toolchains and get ready to start. Please do also register for the FlockLab user mailinglist which is used for questions and answers as well as for feedback and important announcements such as outages and topology changes: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/flocklab-users
Toolchains
All you basically need to let your node image run on FlockLab, is a toolchain to compile images for the sensor node of your choice. Since this tutorial is based on TinyOS for Tmotes, you need to have a working TinyOS distribution on your system. This tutorial assumes that you are able to compile code for TinyOS on Tmote Sky nodes - if this is not the case, we strongly recommend to first work through the TinyOS tutorials (at least lesson 1 of their tutorials).
The TinyOS sensorboard definitions for FlockLab can be downloaded here. The archive provides support for GPIO tracing and actuation and also includes some demo applications as well as all the files needed for the tutorials.
Tools
FlockLab offers several utilities which were created to allow users to interact with FlockLab in a convenient way. See Command Line Tool Page and Cooja Plugin.
Webinterface
Once you have an active FlockLab user account and TinyOS is ready to be used, log in for the first time to the FlockLab user interface which is located at https://user.flocklab.ethz.ch . The home page of the user interface contains a list of all the tests that you have run so far together with some information about each test. On the right side you can see a mini calendar with all scheduled tests (a click on it reveals a full calendar with more information) and the navigation menu for the website.
Test configuration XML
FlockLab uses an XML configuration file to configure tests. There is a template available from here as well as the corresponding XML schema (here) against which the XML is validated. Normally you do not need to download the XML schema as validation can be done directly from within the web interface. Explanations on the individual XML elements can be found on the corresponding wiki page.