Shepherd Nova#

Shepherd Nova is an open source research testbed, designed to help you build and test battery-free systems. Whether you are developing new algorithms or communication protocols, our distributed platform provides the reliable conditions you need to get results.

Shepherd is a distributed platform for rigorous experiments under repeatable energy-harvesting conditions. In simpler terms, the testbed helps explore ways to eliminate the need for batteries and their potentially harmful chemistry.

🎉 Welcome!#

If you’re new here, don’t worry — Shepherd Nova is designed to make advanced experiments simple and accessible. You get a professional test environment with sensible defaults, so you can control the steepness of the learning curve.

Our system was presented at MobiSys 2025 (the 23nd ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services). We’re proud to offer this platform to researchers and developers like you.

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

✨ What makes Shepherd Nova special?#

For Newcomers#

  • No hardware lab required — Access a professional testbed from your desk.

  • Guided Setup — No deep hardware knowledge required. We provide tools and documentation to get your first experiment running quickly.

  • Everything included — From power management to logging, the testbed handles the heavy lifting.

  • Focus on your code — Upload your firmware, define energy conditions, and let the system do the rest.

For Professionals#

  • Precise & repeatable — Consistently replay real‑world energy environments across experiments.

  • Customizable power-supply — Parametrized configuration of virtual harvesting and power supply stage.

  • High‑fidelity measurement — Record voltage and current at 100 kHz, with sub‑microsecond timestamping.

  • Flexible I/O — Capture GPIO signals up to 1 MHz, decode UART, and more.

  • Smart supervision — An extensive system monitors and diagnoses every critical element during operation, embeds the logs in the results and therefore creates a new level of transparency.

🧪 Testbed capabilities at a glance#

  • 10+ observer-nodes for distributed experiments

  • nRF52-Targets with an extra MSP430 (usable as FRAM for checkpointing)

  • Virtual power source for replaying energy environments

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

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

  • timestamping with sub-µs accuracy across the testbed

  • GPIO capture (12 ch, up to 1 MHz), UART decoding, embedded logs

  • Auto-patching of node-ID in ELF firmware

  • tooling in and around the system (batteries included)

🚀 Get started in three steps#

  1. Read the documentation — We provide step‑by‑step guides for your first experiment.

  2. Prepare your firmware — Build for nRF52 targets (MSP430 optional for advanced use).

  3. Run your experiment — Define energy traces, upload, and collect results.

🛠️ What do I need?#

  • an email-account to register your user-account for the testbed

  • a host system that is capable of running python (v3.10 or newer)

  • internet access to work with the web-API

📄 Learn more#

Sitemap#

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