Introduction
============

This package provides utilities and Python modules for managing VESNA-based
wireless sensor networks that are using the ALH protocol.

In a typical setup, VESNA nodes participate in a ZigBee-based wireless mesh
network. On this mesh network each sensor node exposes a HTTP-like interface,
supporting two types of requests: GET for state-less information retrieval
and POST for state-changing actions. In addition to participating in the
mesh network, the ZigBee network coordinator node also exposes the ALH
protocol over a TCP/IP SSL tunnel or a serial line. Usually, the tunnel
terminates in an infrastructure server that performs the translation
between ALH and a proper HTTP REST interface exposed on the web.

+------+
| node | ALH -  ZigBee mesh
+------+      \
              |                      SSL tunnel
+------+      |      +-------------+            +----------------+
| node | ALH -+- ALH | coordinator | ALH ------ | infrastructure | HTTPS -->
+------+      |      +-------------+            +----------------+
              |
+------+      /
| node | ALH -
+------+

These tools support either talking to the network over the infrastructure's
HTTP interface or directly to the coordinator over the serial line.


Installation
============

To install system-wide, run:

$ python setup.py install

You also need to install Python bindings for VESNA spectrum sensor
application. You can get it at:

https://github.com/sensorlab/vesna-spectrum-sensor

See its own README file for installation instructions.


Usage
=====

After installation, the following tools are available:

  alh-reprogram -- Perform over-the-air reprogramming of the coordinator or
                   sensor nodes.

  alh-map       -- Enumerate all the nodes participating in the sensor
                   network by crawling the ZigBee mesh.

		   Can be used for visualizing the network using Graphviz
		   or network monitoring (via integration into Munin).

  alh-tx-test   -- Signal generator test.

Run each with "--help" as the only argument to get a list of available
options.

Note: if the API end-point is using basic authentication, you will be
prompted for credentials on the command line.

You can also save credentials into either a file named ".alhrc" in your
home directory or "alhrc" in the current directory. Format of the file is
as in the following example:

Host example.com
User <username>
Password <password>
# more Host, User, Password lines can follow


Several Python modules are installed as well. Refer to demo programs in the
demos/ directory for examples on how to use them and docstring
documentation for details.


License
=======

Copyright (C) 2012 SensorLab, Jozef Stefan Institute
http://sensorlab.ijs.si

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Authors:	Tomaz Solc, <tomaz.solc@ijs.si>