12Km ZigBee link with Waspmote
During the research of the Waspmote sensor platform, several tests were made using different kinds of transceivers according to frequency bands (2.4GHz, 868MHz and 900MHz) and transmission power (1mw, 100mW, 315mW).
The tests performed in the Monegros Desert (Spain) had the purpose of testing the capabilities and limits of the 802.15.4/ZigBee radios integrated in Waspmote. These results were presented at the European Wireless Sensor Network Conference (EWSN2010) last week in Coimbra (Portugal) as a collaboration between the Royal Institute of Technology – KTH, Stockholm (Sweden), the University of Cape Town, Cape Town (South Africa) and Libelium.
Among the 6 different links (356m, 639m, 1239m, 3810m, 6363m,12136m) were chosen Line of Sight (LOS) and Non Line of Sight (NLOS) configurations which were tested always using omnidirectional antennas (2dBi, 5dBi).
Read the complete article here.
Sensors Never Sleep
Imagine a job that involved sitting in front of a refrigerator 24 hours a day and checking its temperature every five minutes. It is doubtful many people would apply. Plus, what organization would want to spend the money on that person’s salary? It might be nice to be sure the temperature in the refrigerator remained constant, but is it really worth it in the scheme of things? How much would the owner be out if just one refrigerator breaks?
Try $80,000. That’s how much a research pharmacy lost when one of its refrigerators failed over one week-end. The unit contained $80,000 worth of research pharmaceuticals, which all had to be thrown out. That’s quite a loss for one weekend.
The complete article is available here.
New G-Node mote announced
SOWNet Technologies has been using TinyOS in production for a while now, and they’ve just released a new development platform, the G-Node. It has a CC1101 radio (868 MHz) and an MSP430F2418 microcontroller. The platform isn’t in the TinyOS repository, but they have put together quite a nice development kit which includes a complete TinyOS 2.0 toolchain.
Together with the Technical University of Delft, they’ve also designed a modular test bed with sensor emulation: each test bed unit consists of a mini-PC with an I/O board with dedicated SPI/I2C/UART/ADC connections for up to four nodes.
You can find more information here.
Contiki 2.4 Released
The Contiki team is proud to announce the release of version 2.4 of the Contiki operating system! Contiki 2.4 brings a number of new improvements over previous versions, several bugfixes, and an overall improved stability of the system. The low-power wireless MAC protocols have gotten an overhaul, improving power-efficiency and improved collision and interference handling. The COOJA/MSPsim simulation environment has received a significant speedup. Two new experimental platforms are included: the Crossbow MicaZ and the Sensinode CC2430/8051 platform. Many improvements and bugfixes has been made to the uIP code as well as the SICSlowpan implementaion of 6lowpan IPv6-over-802.15.4. See the changelog for full details and go to the download section to download the 2.4 release!
For more information click here
HP and Shell develop wireless sensing system for oil exploration
Hewlett Packard and Shell have agreed to develop a wireless sensing system that will be used to acquire high-resolution seismic data for the oil and gas industry.
According to Cliff Saran of ComputerWeekly, the two corporations are in the process of designing wireless accelerometer sensors, similar to the controllers used in the Nintendo Wii, but a “thousand times more accurate.”
The sensors are apparently based on microelectromechanical devices (Mems), which were originally developed for HP print heads.
“These Mems devices have been developed to take electrical signals and convert them to ink droplets,” HP spokesperson Rich Duncombe told Computer Weekly.
More info here.
HotEMNETS 2010- Deadline extended
The Sixth Workshop on Hot Topics in Embedded Networked Sensors (HotEmNets 2010) brings together wireless sensor network researchers from academic and industrial backgrounds to present groundbreaking results that will shed light on present and future research challenges.
Due to numerous request, the paper deadline has been extended.
New deadline: 1 March 2010.
For more information go to the workshop website
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