Update of IoT-LAB tools

07 May 2018

We would like to inform you about tools updates we made on the IoT-LAB SSH frontends.

GNU Toolchain for ARM

Version 7.2 of the GNU Toolchain for ARM is now installed in /opt/gcc-arm-none-eabi-7-2017-q4-major in addition to the actual one, version 4.9, which is still used by default. To know more on how to use it or set it as the default version, see the IoT-LAB wiki.

IoT-LAB CLI Tools

For a better user experience, we released a new version of IoT-LAB command-line tools (v2.5.3). It mainly consists in renaming, adding a common prefix to the different commands.

Thus now you should use:

  • iotlab-experiment (experiment-cli)
  • iotlab-node (node-cli)
  • iotlab-profile (profile-cli)
  • iotlab-auth (auth-cli)
  • iotlab-robot (robot-cli)
  • iotlab-ssh (open-a8-cli)

All legacy names are always available to ensure compatibility with old scripts and tools. A deprecated message is printed when using legacy commands.
Of course you are encouraged to update.

Paris site is IPv6 ready

27 Apr 2018

We are pleased to announce that the public IPv6 service on the FIT IoT-LAB testbed as been extended with the Paris site.

As a reminder, five sites implement now this service:

You can find more details about global IPv6 subnetting by reading the IPv6 documentation.

Moreover, on the Learn page, you will find some tutorials to learn how to use public IPv6 addresses with Contiki or RIOT.

Join the first FIT/Grid5K school

23 Feb 2018

FIT and Grid5k infrastructures join their strengths to allow even more IoT experience into the newly SILECS infrastructure.

As a first step, we are proud to announce the first joint school in which you will enjoy all testbeds, facilities and possibilities we offer through presentations, tutorials and challenges.

Please, join us in Sophia Antipolis, on the French Riviera ! Registrations are open, and free !

For more information, please visit this link.

See you soon there.

Lille’s new physical topology released

16 Feb 2018

We are proud to announce the availability of the Lille new deployment: sparser, at the building scale. The whole 256 M3 nodes are available again*.
But that’s not all. We took advantage of this operation to add a new type of board in this deployment. We deployed 9 Zolertia Frirefly (3 per floor), bringing sub-1GHz communications alongside 2.4GHz.

Why?

In its original deployment, released in 2014, the Lille nodes were deployed over a 225 m2 area, hosting 256 M3 nodes. The nodes were dispatched over a regular 2D-grid, plus a few number deployed vertically on wooden poles.

The main drawback of this deployment was the density of the network – each node was able to communicate directly with any other node. Thus, we considered beneficial to propose an actual multi-hop network where the nodes are not all in range of each other. That is why we decided to make our deployment sparser and re-deploy more than half of the nodes.

How?

The final scenario adopted is, in addition to the original dedicated room on the third floor, a distribution of nodes through offices, corridors, meeting or storage rooms across the three floors of our Inria Lille building, providing a connected network. Figures attached shows an overview of the new topology. Furthermore, offering such a topology, provides an actual deployment at a building scale.
Details, maps and pictures will be updated soon on the Lille’s deployment page

We hope it will answer your needs and experimentation scenarios.

*Be careful, coordinates of the nodes changed, and nodes ids too. Thus, experiments conduct with the same set of nodes ids, will not be ran with the same nodes and could bring different results than before.

Reducing WSN430 nodes support

15 Dec 2017

We will gradually reduce WSN430 nodes support after good and loyal services during ten years on the IoT-LAB testbed.

Originally, we had four sites with different hardware nodes:

  • WSN430 v1.3b (TI CC1101 radio chipset) on Grenoble and Strasbourg sites
  • WSN430 v1.4 (TI CC2420 radio chipset) on Euratech and Rennes sites

Since Thursday 30 November:

  • we stopped WSN430 v1.3b nodes on the Grenoble site
  • we stopped WSN430 v1.4 nodes on the Rennes site and shut down this site

Since we have an issue on the consumption monitoring software, which appears not consistent, and we no longer have the skills on this software, we deactivated this monitoring feature at the same time (i.e. WSN430 Profile management). On remaining WSN430 (i.e. in Euratech and Strasbourg), you are still able to launch experiments, flash firmwares and start/stop/reset nodes.

Next summer:

  • we will stop WSN430 v1.4 nodes on the Euratech site and shutdown this site

The Strasbourg site will continue to provide WSN430 v1.3b nodes until further notice.