Octopus Release
September 17, 2007

We would like to announce the release of Octopus, a new modular visualization and control tool for sensor networks, developed at UCD.

Octopus is an open-source visualization and control tool for sensor networks in the TinyOS 2.x environment. Octopus provides users with a graphical user interface (GUI) for viewing the live sensor network topology. It also allows the user to control the behavior of one, many, or all sensor nodes, such as the sampling period, the radio duty cycle, or triggering mode. The features of Octopus include:

- Designed specifically for TinyOS 2.x
- Works with MicaZ, Mica2, Telos, and AquisGrain motes
- IEEE 802.15.4 friendly
- Allows control of one, many, or all nodes at a time
- Enables user to switch between Time-driven, Event-driven, and Query-driven modes
- Enables user to switch between Sleep and Awake modes
- Enables user to select separate radio duty cycles for Sleep and Awake modes
- Provides live data plots through the Network Chart feature
- Provides a variety of options for controls the appearance and tags in the GUI
- Employs an embedded application running on the motes (NesC)
- Employs a java application running at the gateway
- Logs all received data in a .csv file for further analysis
- Provides straightforward user interface to cater to the non-technical user
- Enables developers to customize GUI and network through modular APIs


For more information, please refer to the Octopus Home Page