This blog post introduces the latest advancements in peripheral support for the CHI@Edge research testbed. It highlights the platform's holistic approach to integrating a wide range of sensors and cameras, opening up new possibilities for edge computing experiments. The post covers recent updates to documentation and tutorials, showcasing specific peripherals like the Waveshare Sense HAT-B and the Pi Camera Module 3. It also provides real-world examples of edge computing applications in fields such as precision agriculture and marine biology. Researchers are guided through the process of utilizing these new capabilities, with links to comprehensive tutorials on GPIO, sensors, and camera …

Monitoring power consumption is crucial for understanding the energy efficiency of your applications and systems. In this post, we explore various techniques for measuring power usage on Chameleon nodes, including leveraging Intel's RAPL interface for fine-grained CPU and memory power data, utilizing IPMI's DCMI commands for system-level power information, and employing the Scaphandre tool for detailed per-process power monitoring and visualization. We provide practical examples and step-by-step instructions to help you get started with power measurement on Chameleon, enabling you to gain valuable insights into the energy footprint of your workloads.

Recognizing the need for easier modification of running containers, we’ve introduced a straightforward method for SSHing into CHI@Edge containers, enhancing your development and experimentation processes. Our new tutorial on Trovi helps you create an SSH-ready base container, extending the CHI@Edge “hello world” example to enable remote access. This allows you to troubleshoot, configure, and update containers as if they were real servers. Access the tutorial via the CHI@Edge dashboard, and start developing with enhanced flexibility and ease.

In 2021, we introduced CHI@Edge, a cutting-edge testbed tailored to the dynamic needs of edge computing and IoT research. Our initial offerings included a robust selection of devices like Raspberry Pi 4s, Nvidia Jetson Nanos, and Jetson Xaviers, tailored for high-performance yet low-power edge computing tasks. Today, we're thrilled to announce the transition of CHI@Edge from a widely embraced preview to its official full production phase.

Discover how Chameleon's testbed capabilities have been enhanced with the introduction of the FABRIC Layer 3 connection in our new blog post. Learn about the powerful and flexible networking options it offers, how it simplifies the process of routing to FABRIC resources, and how it enables low-latency and high-bandwidth traffic routing between CHI@UC and CHI@TACC.

Get the inside scoop on Chameleon Cloud’s common user issues and smart fixes in our latest 'Tips and Tricks' blog, highlighting a year of learning and problem-solving.

Chameleon’s JupyterHub is a great way to organize your experiments for practical reproducibility. To overcome its resource limitations, we describe how to extend the Jupyter Server Trovi artifact so that you can run your full experiment inside a Jupyter notebook.
 

Terraform is both a command line tool, and a configuration language to build, change, and version resources from various Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. There are pre-existing providers to integrate with major cloud platforms, both private and open-source.

In particular, since Terraform natively supports Openstack, it will also work with Chameleon :)

If you have a complex configuration, involving multiple nodes and networks, across one or more Chameleon Sites, defining them in a declarative format can be easier than creating them imperatively.

The examples from this post show how to provision instances, networks, and floating IPs across multiple Chameleon …

This month's Tips & Tricks blog is an overview of one of the most critical components to experimentation on Chameleon: images! We explore everything that makes a Chameleon image unique, and how you can build your own images!

Chameleon's resources are distributed across multiple sites. If you'd like to move your work between sites, say to take advantage of different hardware, or to find available nodes, good news! It's pretty easy, and this post spells out the details.