Changelog for Contiki 2.4 (16 February 2010)

Main changes

• Significant improvements to power-saving low-power radio MAC protocols.
• Several bugfixes to uIP and the SICSlowpan code.
• New sensor API.
• Significant COOJA/MSPsim speedup.
• Two new experimental platforms: MicaZ and Sensinode 8051/CC2430.

Low-Power Radio MAC Protocols

• New CSMA MAC protocol, running on top of the low-power MAC layer protocols such as X-MAC, that performs retransmissions when it detects collisions or interference. Enabled by default on Tmote Sky.
• Significant improvements to X-MAC: the low-power operation now registers the phase of the neighbors and reduces the strobing period according to the phase of the receiver; broadcasts are transmitted more power-efficiently; frame format now compatible with 802.15.4.
• Streaming support for both LPP and X-MAC.
• New non-rtimer-based implementation of X-MAC, called CX-MAC, for platforms without rtimer support.
• New configuration option for easier tuning of low-power MAC channel check rate.
• Tmote Sky boot-up code now prints channel check rate by default.

uIP and Rime Networking

• SICSlowpan now with low-power MAC for Tmote Sky.
• Bugfix that allow 6lowpan fragmentation and reassembly with low-power MAC on the Tmote Sky.
• Bugfixes in uIP code: start timer if lost SYN; loss of SYNACK bugfix; avoid using floating point operations in IPv6 code.
• Bugfix in IPv4-over-mesh: work better over low-power MAC.
• Support for receiving IPv4 multicast.
• Runicast retransmission time configurable in contiki-conf.h.
• Improved Tmote Sky IPv6/6lowpan bridge setup.

API Changes

• Sensors API changed; Tmote Sky platform updated to match the new API.

COOJA

• 10x speed improvement through improved MSPSim integration.
• Introduced low-overhead debugging interface for MSPSim-based simulation.
• Simplified application-level simulation, with examples.
• Coffee filesystem integration.
• Improvements to Timeline and Visualizer plugins.
• Better support for MicaZ emulation.

Nightly Builds and Contiki Regression Test Suite

• Test configuration structure updated: test files are now self-contained.
• New uIPv6 routing test.
• Improved shell collect test.
• New shell netperf test.

Contiki Shell

• New shell modules: netperf for testing the communication performance between two neighbors, memdebug, with commands 'peek' and 'poke', for reading and setting memory locations from the shell - useful for debugging device drivers.
• Alignment bugfixes.

Drivers

• CC2420 now allows transmission power to be set on a per-packet basis.
• CC2420 timesynch bugfix.
• CC2420: Enabled SFD interrupts.
• Serial line improvements.
• Faster SPI driver.

Platforms

• New platforms: MicaZ (experimental), Sensinode 8051/CC2430. (experimental)
• Minimal-net now has IPv6 support.
• Significant improvements to Tmote Sky IPv6 support.
• 6502: Compatibility with cc65 version 2.13; 80 column screen on Apple2 and C128
• msb430: New SD driver written from scratch.

Other Changes

• Modules mmem and dhcpc are now compiled by default.
• New examples for email, irc, webserver, wget.
• Improved IPv4 and IPv6 examples for the Tmote Sky.
• Bugfixes in AVR ELF loader.
• Power profiling bugfix: energy was sometimes misattributed when peripheral was switched off when it was already off.
• New simplified rtimer code that only handles one rtimer.
• Rime examples now run on disjoint channels to avoid semantic interference.
• New Java-based maintenance tool for Coffee file system images.
• Improved makefsdata script.

Changelog for Contiki 2.3 (27 June 2009)

New features

• IPv6 routing layer
• Cooja TimeLine
• IPv6/6lowpan for Tmote Sky
• MSB430 port
• Many new shell commands
• Improved LPP power-saving MAC protocol
• Twitter client

uIP

• Support for UDP-based IPv6 routing protocols implemented with Rime
• New IPv6 multi-hop routing module using Rime's route discovery algorithm
• Made IPv6 routing modules easily replaceable
• Alignment problems in SICSlowpan fixes to make it work on MSP430
• IPv4 routing bugfixes
• Protosocket send bugfix significantly increase tcp throughput

Rime

• New packet queue module that keeps track of a packet queue
• collect: now maintains a queue of packets to be forwarded
• Multihop bugfix: avoid overwriting packet attributes

Duty-cyling power-saving MAC protocols

• Mac layer structure has init function to make configuration easier
• Many improvements and optimizations to LPP
• X-MAC now does not run rtimer when off, to avoid problems with serial communication on MSP430

Coffee

• Improved the garbage collection efficiency and correctness.
• Fixed a bug in file merges.

Power profiler

• Support for flash read and write

Shell

• New commands: netstat (show TCP connections), sendcmd (send command to a node), download (download file from a node), neighbors (show neighbors), unicast (send a unicast packet to a node), tweet (send Twitter message), sensortweet (send Twitter message with sensor data)
• New block size option to "read" command

Cooja

• Cooja TimeLine, new visualizer that shows radio communication and interaction
  
  
  
• New watchpoints on MSPSim-based nodes, visible in the TimeLine
• Simulation resolution changed from milliseconds to microseconds
• Simulation scripts are now integrated with the simulation configurations for easier scripted simulations
• Scheduling now fully event-based, resulting in faster simulations
• Various user interface updates: Cooja menu system, log and radio listeners, and source-code debugger

MSP430

• Default MSP430 CPU speed increased from 2.4 MHz to 3.9 MHz
• mspgcc memcpy bug workaround added

Tmote Sky / TelosB / Sentilla JCreate port

• Support for IPv6/6lowpan
• New bridge tool for seamless integration of IPv6 sensor networks and general-purpose IPv6 networks
• CC2420: optional timestamping with incoming packets
• New RSSI scanner example application
• Webserver now displays an Ajax-style spinner icon when loading sensor data

Atmel Raven port

• Bugfixes for the USB stick module
• HTML code moved to flash ROM and made W3C compliant
• Wildcard to display all files in file-stats cgi script

Instant Contiki

• Updated to latest Ubuntu packages
• Sentilla JCreate compatibility
• jpcap installed

Changelog for Contiki 2.2.3 (24 March 2009)

New features

• Checkpointing: stores the current execution state of a node in a CFS file from which it later can be rolled back (currently only on the Tmote Sky/TelosB/JCreate platform)
• Per-packet power profiling: allows fine-grained breakdown of a node's power consumption on a per-packet basis
• Announcements: announcements, such as route announcements and neighbor discoveries, are made independent of the applications and protocols, to allow rapid neighbor discovery and improved routing in face of mobility
• Deluge: a network protocol that disseminates a file to all nodes in the network

New platforms

• Sentilla JCreate (see the tutorial here)
  
• Meshnetics ZigBit

Shell commands

• udpsend: sends a UDP packet to a specified receiver
• tcpsend: sets up a TCP connection to a specified receiver
• irc: participates in on-line IRC discussions
• The 'ping' command from 2.2.2 was renamed to 'rime-ping'
• The 'sniff' command has a new option, '-a', that displays packet attributes for sniffed packets

Internal changes

• rimebuf module renamed to packetbuf
• serial module renamed to serial-line
• CC2420 additional link-level CRC made optional; CC2420 time stamps made optional
• RSSI, link quality, and timestamp are now provided as packet attributes; Packet attributes now specify radio transmission power.
• Raven apps moved from apps/ to platform/avr-raven/apps/

Bugfixes

• httpd-cfs bugfix: TCP connections were prematurely timed out
• The previous random_rand() function was not random enough - switched to libc rand() instead
• Bugfixes to the collect protocol

Coffee changes

• Compiled code size decreased by 1kb.
• File metadata structures redesigned to improve file I/O semantics and to enable faster opening of files

CFS changes

• cfs_seek can now move file offsets backwards and to the end of the file.

Cooja changes

• Contiki motes more tightly integrated into the Contiki build system
• Added test editor for creating non-GUI tests

MSP430 changes

• Periodic resync of DCO to ensure stable CPU timing
• Set CPU to low power mode only when the UART is not transmitting
• Added ability for interrupt-driven UART transmission
• Unified the tick timer and real-time timers and both now uses timer A

x86 changes

• Multi-threading library now 64-bit compliant

Changelog for Contiki 2.2.2 (17 November 2008)

New features

• uIPv6 - the world's smallest fully compliant IPv6 stack
• SICSlowpan - IPv6 over 802.15.4
• Atmel AVR Raven port
• 802.15.4 MAC layer for the Atmel AVR Raven
• Two new shell commands for HTTP interaction: wget and httpd
• COOJA simulator significant speedup
• Improved integration between COOJA and MSPsim
• Automated testing mechanism in COOJA
• Binary packages for Tmote Sky/TelosB and Atmel AVR Raven

Bugfixes

• Major bugfix in the protosocket code that could cause packet corruption during retransmissions, and affected all TCP/protosockets-based apps
• Bugfix in Coffee EOF handling

Changelog for Contiki 2.2.1 (6 September 2008)

New features

• Better data presentation in the Contiki collect program
• Reduced power consumption for broadcast traffic with X-MAC
• Improved network performance for data collection

Bugfixes

• Fixed a severe bug in the data collection protocol that could make the network stop responding
• Added workaround for a problem with the CC2420 radio under high traffic load
• Bugfix in the Coffee flash file system

Changelog for Contiki 2.2 (12 July 2008)

New features

• Significantly improved command line shell with Unix-style pipelines, concurrent command execution, network-wide command execution, collect sensor data, see the power profile, network communication using the Rime stack, and file system interaction. The shell can be used over a serial line or over Telnet/TCP/IP.
• Coffee: a flash ROM file system.
• New program for displaying sensor data and network statistics from a network of wireless Contiki sensors.
• A simple network time synchronization mechanism.
• Instant Contiki: a full Contiki development environment in a single-file download. A VMWare Ubuntu Linux image with all necessary Contiki development tools installed.
• The Chameleon architecture for the Rime low-power radio stack. The Chameleon architecture that separates protocol headers and protocol logic. Packets are now tagged with packet attributes that follow them through the stack. [Dunkels et al, SenSys 2007]
• New experimental low-power MAC prototol: LPP, Low-Power Probing. [Musaloiu-Elefteri et al, IPSN 2008]
  

Example applications

• New AJAX-style web server example for the Tmote Sky / TelosB boards showing the current sensor readings and power profile on a web page that is continuously updated.
  

Kernel

• Improved process initialization handling that reduces event queue size.
• Moved power profiling module (energest) from lib/ to sys/
  

Libraries

• Added function for computing CRC16 over a data array
  

Rime

• Bugfixes and improvements to many protocols in the stack: neighbor discovery, trickle, data collection.
• Changed several module names into more descriptive ones: ibc -> broadcast, uc -> unicast, etc.
• Added a sniffer module functionality that allows callback functions to be called on all incoming and outgoing packets.

CFS

• Bugfixes in handling of CFS_APPEND flag.

uIP

• New configuration option that turns IP forwarding on or off: UIP_CONF_IP_FORWARD

MAC

• Bugfixes and improvements to X-MAC code: radio is turned off when sending broadcasts, broadcasts do not send probe packets.
• Added a string name to the struct mac interface to allow printing the name of the current MAC protocol for debugging.

MSP430

• Bugfixes in watchdog driver.
  

Tmote Sky / TelosB

• Updated CC2420 driver, changed name from simple-cc2420 to cc2420.
• Added experimental CC2420 AES encryption support.
  

ESB

• TR1001 driver now uses Rime statistics
  

Win32

• wpcap driver now handles IPv6 interfaces too.

6502

• Leveraged new cc65-2.12.0 apple2enh C-Library feature (using
  Language Card bank 1).

Changelog for Contiki 2.1 (3 December 2007)

New features

• Energy profiling that provides measurements of how much energy is spent, and where
• Power-saving MAC layer for low-power radios based on the X-MAC protocol
• New platforms: MSB430, C64, enhanced Apple //e, PC-6001 (w/ 32kB RAM) and PC-6001 mkII

Build system

• All compiler warnings removed from the core code
• New parallel reprogramming mechanism for Tmote Sky that allows simultaneous reprogramming of all Tmote Sky boards connected to the PC

Example applications

• New energy profiling demo application for the Tmote Sky platform
• New Tmote Sky sensor and energy profiling data collection example
• New ESB demo applications
• Several new Rime examples
• Multi-threading library demo application
• CFS-based webserver

Kernel

• The service paradigm was removed because it was not as useful as was originally intended
• Machine-neutral multi-threading library implementation
• The rtimer module was updated; but we have found bugs when using multiple concurrent rtimers that will be fixed for the 2.2 release.

Rime

• Rime now maintains (optional) statistics
• Rime modules uabc and uibc changed name to polite and ipolite. The tree module changed name to collect.
• New hop-by-hop reliable multi-hop unicast forwarding module: rmh.
• Unicast multi-hop forwarding modules mh and rmh now invoke the upper layer protocol when doing forwarding, to allow user-defined routing protocols.
• The data collection module, collect, now uses the number of expected transmissions to the sink as the routing metric instead of hop count.
• New API for MAC protocols and radio drivers.
• Rime address size is now configurable.
• Routing table entries now refreshed upon every lookup.
• Bugfixes to the reliable single-hop unicast module, ruc.
• New reliable single-hop block transfer module, rucb.
• The reliable network flooding module, trickle, has been rewritten with the nf module.

CFS

• CFS service paradigm removed - all CFS drivers are now regular C functions.
• Prototypes updated to better match POSIX

CTK

• CTK service paradigm removed - all CTK drivers are now regular C functions.

uIP

• Packet driver service paradigm removed - all packet drivers now register themselves actively with the TCP/IP stack (the single packet driver service client)

MSP430

• Watchdog timer support
• A/D converter interrupts turned off because of too many interrupts; work is underway to fix.

Z80

• Z80 architecture-dependent multithreading library and native uIP checksum calculation
  

Tmote Sky

• New parallel reprogramming system
• SHT11 driver

Win32

• As an alternative to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 there is now a build fully integrated with the Contiki build system using Cygwin & GCC

C64, enhanced Apple //e

• Generic Ethernet packet driver with dynamically loading, self-modifying Ethernet card device drivers for the CS8900A and the LAN91C96

PC-6001

• Multithread, serial communication, and SLIP networking are supported.
• Various build configurations enable running on very memory restricted environment.