December preparation flow

By December 24, 2024, the work was focused on a simple engineering task: separate TX and RX, check that the receiver stream is stable, and save each short run in the same structure for later review.

Receiver node placed in a real early field setup — Live prototype example: the receiver node was marked as RX and used to check whether the capture path remained stable outside a desk-only setup.

2 firmware roles: TX and RX

1 host collector to CSV

6+ session artifacts per run

500 frame-limited smoke captures

The first step was to keep the test narrow. One transmitter created regular packet activity, one receiver collected channel measurements, and node positions stayed fixed during a short run. That made it clear what each log was being compared against.

The second step was logging. RX exposed a raw structured stream, and the host saved it as CSV together with collector events, raw output, errors, and a short summary. The goal was not a large dataset; the goal was to know whether the capture path worked the same way twice.

The third step was review. At this stage the notes stayed close to the setup itself: whether the node started, whether the stream continued, whether parsing failed, and whether the next run could be made under the same conditions.

Basic bench topology

The preparation started by separating the prototype into two clear roles: TX created repeatable packet activity, while RX joined the same 2.4 GHz network, enabled radio-channel capture, and exposed a structured stream for the host laptop. This kept the experiment readable: one node stimulates the channel, the other records it.

Simplified TX and RX placement diagram — Simplified placement diagram: one TX node, one RX node, the same access point, and a host laptop for collection.

The useful result at this stage was a controlled capture routine: prepare RX, verify the serial stream, start TX, run a short capture, and save the outputs in a session folder that can be reviewed later.

Data capture flow

Each test session could include the raw receiver stream, parsed CSI CSV, structured JSONL collector events, parse errors, raw logs, summary metadata, and host diagnostics. Short smoke runs could be limited to a fixed frame count, which made early checks easier to compare without turning every trial into a large dataset.

Capture flow from TX and RX setup to session logs and review — Development flow: stable capture and diagnosable session folders first; interpretation later.

What this gave us

By December 24, 2024, the setup was no longer just loose hardware on a table. There was a repeatable TX/RX procedure, a receiver-labeled live example, and a logging path that preserved what happened during each run.