Hardware
While our research is only concerned with software and (to a lesser degree) the hardware-software interface, we do some hardware work too, typically for building test platforms or product prototypes. An important aspect of this is to maintain enough hardware skills in the group so we can deal with hardware problems quickly if they arise. A secondary (but also important) aspect is to provide training for students.
PLEB is representative of many ARM-based embedded systems. The latest version (PLEB 2) contains current sensors which allow us to monitor power consumption of a running system without external meters. This forms the basis of some of our work on power management.
The I-Box is a product prototype designed for a small Australian company. It is designed as a digital video processing platform for digital video surveillance. It is also based around an XScale processor running at 624MHz, and has various interfaces. It is designed to run L4-based operating systems or Linux.
Echidna is a device designed for measuring the power used in low-voltage computer systems such as laptops and embedded systems. It has been used extensively within the context of Power Management research.