The University of Washington and Intel Research MSP is a small-form factor mobile computing device that features a 400 MHz Xscale processor, 32 MB of memory and a diverse collection of sensors.  It runs Linux and is extensible.

Sensing. Seven sensors are included in the base platform: 3D Accelerometer, Microphone, Barometer, Humidity, Visible light, Infrared light, and Temperature. To support experiments in location and inertial sensing, an optional daughter card provides: 3D magnetometers, 3D gyros, 3D compass, and USB host. This option increases the size of the MSP and its power usage. To support extensions of the MSP with new sensors, there are also extra serial connection and extra GPIO pins.

Storage and networking. To allow large data sets to be collected, we have equipped the MSP with a removable MiniSD card capable of storing 2 GB of data. For communication, the MSP includes a Bluetooth radio capable of communicating in both the RFCOMM and the PAN profile, allowing it to both connect to IP networks via Bluetooth access points and to pair with devices like smart phones and PDAs.

Software. The MSP runs standard Linux with complete support for multitasking, IP networking via Bluetooth or USB and a flash file system. We have developed a flexible feature extraction and classification run-time library that uses a simple XML configuration file for specifying a set of sensors, sampling rates and algorithms. The resulting computations can be streamed to storage over the network or to a custom program running on the MSP. To make MSP program development as easy as possible, we have configured a Linux VMware image with the MSP cross-development environment.

Usability. The MSP is small enough to wear on a belt clip, weighing only 115 grams and measuring 6 cm on its longest dimension. Depending on the computing workload, the MSP runs between 10 and 20 hours on a single charge. The MSP charges in under 2 hours with its external charger without shutting down the system

Mobile Sensing Platform in case

Exposed MSP with inertial daughter board

MSP clipped to belt