Octopus: A dashboard for sensor networks visual control

In this demonstration, we present Octopus, an interactive dashboard and visualization tool for Wireless Sensor Networks. Octopus helps developers with network debugging, network assessment, and gaining an understanding of network topology and routing patterns. For the final users, it provides a user-friendly tool to localize nodes, formulate application queries and tune parameters according to application requirements. Octopus enables interacting with the network by monitoring and reconfiguring a number of parameters of application and radio, such as frequency channel, nodes’ duty-cycle and energy consumption. A Network Chart plots live data for network analysis while a 2D Floor Plan allows node localization support. Octopus is open-source software developed specifically for TinyOS version 2 that provides a modular architecture independent from the lower layers. Therefore, Octopus can also be utilized as an effective debugging and assessment tool for new underlying algorithms and modules.