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signpost

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Exploring what happens when you put computers on sign posts.

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Signpost
========

[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/lab11/signpost-software.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/lab11/signpost-software)

The Signpost project is a modular city-scale sensing platform that is designed 
to be installed on existing signposts. It is powered through solar energy harvesting, 
and provides six slots for generic sensing tasks. Modules have access to
a set of shared platform resources including power, communication, gps-based
location and time, storage, and higher-performance computation, and they
use a Signpost-specific software API that enables not only use of these
resources, but also supports the development of inter-module applications.

The project is driven by several core applications, but also strives to be
an upgradeable and adaptable platform that supports new applications
for scientists and cities. Modules can be added and removed from the platform
after deployment without disassembling the installed Signpost, reprogramming
the Signpost, or interrupting the other functions of the Signpost. Additionally,
by providing APIs to modules that support common operations, developing and
deploying a sensing application in a city is significantly streamlined. A focus
of this project is ensuring that domain scientists and researchers interested
in city-scale applications can effectively leverage this platform to accelerate
their projects.

<br />

Hardware Architecture
---------------------

Each Signpost platform includes a power supply that also meters energy usage, a controller that provides
storage and computation and manages the operation of the Signpost, and several module slots that support
extensible sensor modules for city-scale sensing applications. All modules are connected via an I2C bus,
and core system features (e.g. per-module energy metering) are on a SMBus network. For higher bandwidth
communication on the Signpost, each module is also attached to a USB 2.0 host.

Each module can be individually disconnected from the USB host and/or the I2C bus, as well as entirely
powered off.

Software Architecture
--------------------

Signpost sensor modules access platform resources through the Signpost API, which
is a library that sits between the user's applications and the Signpost I2C bus.
The API is easily ported, only requiring I2C master/slave, GPIO, and timers. It
currently is ported [Tock](https://github.com/helena-project/tock) and [ARM MBed-OS](https://mbed.com),
with a port coming soon for Arduino. 
Please see the [Signpost API documentation](https://github.com/lab11/signpost-software/blob/master/ApiGuide.md).

Current Project Status
----------------------

Signposts are currently being deployed on campus at UC Berkeley. We have 5 Signposts
deployed and more than 20 built and awaiting deployment approval. On
these signposts we have modules sensing audio amplitude on seven spectrum bands, 
ambient environmental markers including temperature, pressure, and humidity, RF Spectrum
monitoring from 15-2700 MHz, and a microwave-radar based motion sensor. We are 
working to build applications such as distributed traffic monitoring on the
deployed platforms.

Signpost development kits have been designed to facilitate sensor module
and software development without requiring a full signpost platform. The
development kits have the ability to fully emulate a signpost including
energy metering and a Signpost radio module.

We are working to release version 1.0 of the Signpost Software API.

Getting Involved
----------------

There are several ways to get involved with the Signpost Project! These
include building and deploying full signpost platforms, deploying new
sensor modules on our existing platforms, or deploying new applications on
existing sensor modules. If you would like to deploy city-scale sensing applications
using Signpost, please email <signpost-admin@eecs.berkeley.edu>.

Below are getting started guides for the Signpost platform.

- [Creating a Sensor Module](https://github.com/lab11/signpost/blob/master/docs/Creating-Modules.md)
 - [Signpost API Guide](https://github.com/lab11/signpost-software/blob/master/docs/ApiGuide.md)

Roadmap
-------

Developing the Signpost platform is an ongoing effort with several primary
goals:

- Designing a programming model for running applications across a network of
Signposts. This should truly simplify creating interesting and useful applications,
and not discourage development by imposing unnecessary hurdles.
- Creating a HW/SW test framework for accelerating module development.
- Deploying several driving applications on the existing signpost deployment.
- Collaborating with other researchers to serve as a foundation for city-scale sensing
and wireless research.

### History

- **April 2018**: We are presenting the signpost paper and an associated demo at IPSN 2018 in Porto, Portugal.
- **February 2018**: The [signpost paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07805.pdf) is released on the arXiv.
- **January 2018**: Signpost accepted to IPSN 2018!
- **November 2017**: Signpost demo at Sensys 2017!
- **Fall 2017**: 20 Signposts were built and deployed for the TerraSwarm Annual Review! 5 of these are still deployed
on UC Berkeley's campus, and we are awaiting approval to deploy the remaining 15 signposts. We successfully
collaborated with researchers from UIUC and UC San Diego to demonstrate audio event detection on Signposts
and high-fidelity data backhaul to a drone deployed upon event detection. Check out the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQCMqiHP2c).
- **August 2017**: Signpost presentation at the Intel Secure Internet of Things Retreat. A Signpost was transported
and successfully deployed for the 48 hours of the retreat, becoming operational in less that five minutes.
- **Summer 2017**: The first Signposts are being deployed on UC Berkeley's campus!
- **Winter 2017**: Signpost v0.2 released for the
[TerraSwarm Signpost Workshop](https://www.terraswarm.org/urbanheartbeat/wiki/Main/SignpostWorkshop).
This workshop featured the release of the Debug Backplane, initial API
implementations for signpost modules, and tutorials for getting started with
the Signpost platform.
- **Fall 2016**: Signpost v0.1 presented at [TerraSwarm Annual Review](https://www.terraswarm.org/conferences/16/annual/).
The demo included six modules (ambient conditions, 2.4 GHz RF sensing, LoRa/BLE radios,
ambient audio level, microwave radar, and air quality sensing from UCSD), data communication
over LoRa to a gateway, and a real-time UI.
- **Summer 2016**: Discussions on physical design yield a prototype enclosure and module form factor.

Related Projects
----------------

City-scale sensing platforms are a growing area of research with several emerging
approaches:

- Chicago's [Array of Things](https://arrayofthings.github.io/)
- NYC's [SONYC](https://wp.nyu.edu/sonyc/)

We see Signpost as one part of the city-scale sensing ecosystem, and
we hope to eventually deploy dynamic applications that can be distributed
across high granularity energy-harvesting nodes (Signposts) and
powered nodes such as Array of Things. Hopefully applications
such as SONYC can lower the cost of deployment by running on
Signpost platforms.

License
-------

Licensed under either of

* Apache License, Version 2.0
   ([LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
 * MIT license
   ([LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

### Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be
dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

signpost

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