Shepherd Nova

Shepherd Nova is the public instance of the Shepherd Testbed - a distributed platform for rigorous experiments under repeatable energy-harvesting conditions.

The Paper introducing Shepherd Nova was published in the proceedings of the 23nd ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys 2025).

Direct Link: https://testbed.nes-lab.org/

What does the testbed offer?

• 10+ observer-nodes for distributed operation

• nRF52-Targets with additional MSP430 that can be used as FRAM for checkpointing

• consistently replicate real-world spatio-temporal energy availability across multiple experiments

  • replay of energy environments in combination with

  • an energy harvesting-component called virtual power source to supply power to the targets (optional)

• record power traces at a rate of 100 kHz with separate values for current & voltage (optional)

• timestamping with sub 1us accuracy across the testbed

• recording of target-GPIO with up to 1 MHz and 9 / 12 channels (optional)

• decoding of UART at configurable baud rate (optional)

• patching of node-ID in ELF target-firmware (optional)

• embedded logs, including an extensive warning-system that supervises & diagnoses every critical element during operation

• tooling in and around the system (batteries included)

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Contents

• News and upcoming Events
  • Past Events
• Instance at TU Dresden
  • Deployment
  • Link-Matrix
  • Changes in near Future
• Account & Access
  • Getting an Account
  • Quota
  • Registration & Access
• Getting started
  • Installing the Tools
  • Defining an Experiment
  • Reduce Size of Result-Files
  • Adapting the Firmware
  • Scheduling an Experiment
  • Getting the Data
  • Analyzing the Results
• Infrastructure
  • Building a Chain of Trust
  • Observer Logs
  • Unittests & Quality Assurance
  • Time Synchronization
  • Virtual Power Source & Harvester
  • Calibration
• Energy Environments
  • Static Environments
  • Dynamic Environments
  • Real-World Environment
• Virtual Power Source
• Targets
  • nRF52 with MSP430FR as FRAM
• FAQ
  • Maintenance
  • Limitations
  • Trusting the Results
  • Lifetime of Data
  • Web-API
  • Contributions
• Help

About

• Contact
  • NES Lab
  • Physical address
  • Team
• Disclaimer
• Privacy Policy
  • For what purpose will personal data be processed?
  • Who is responsible for data processing and to whom can data subjects turn?
  • Which personal data will be processed?
  • What is the legal basis for processing personal data?
  • How long is personal data stored?
  • Will personal data be transferred to third parties?
  • What are the basic rights of data subjects?
• Acknowledgments