Agile-Link wireless nodes can now stream data at rates up to 4 kHz. This increase in sample rate allows them to be used in automotive testing applications, such as impact and crash testing and vibration monitoring and modal analysis. The sensors use an open serial protocol that enables users to develop high speed applications with LabVIEW, Visual Basic and C++.

Specifications include:

- simultaneous streaming of real-time, high-speed data from up to 16 nodes;
- 2.4 GHz RF communications using the IEEE 802.15.4 standard;
- wireless communications range of 70 meters using standard antennas or 300 meters line-of-sight with high-gain antennas;
- data-logging sample rates up to 2048 Hz; and
- 2 MB flash memory storage of up to 1,000,000 data points.

For more information, visit the MicroStrain website.

The US Army was one of the first to recognise the potential applications for wearable technology and developed the Land Warrior system. This was designed to increase the ability of its fighters on the battlefield with each soldier connected to a wireless network. Relevant information about the battlefield was presented to the soldier on a helmet-mounted display and the system also monitored the vital signs of each soldier via sensors in their clothing. This data enabled field medics to identify troops in need of assistance, and prioritize care. Cross over in to fashionable Wearable computer technology has been less successful and could be considered to be hyped to the hilt, which begs the question. Where is it? Obviously there is no shortage of people with a Bluetooth headset clipped to their ear and although it is hardly haute couture, it does infer the fashionable want to wear the new technologies.

Read the complete story here.

Jennic franchise takes Anglia into wireless applications In its first move into the Industrial Security Medical (ISM) wireless market.

Anglia has signed a franchise agreement with Jennic to distribute their innovative single chip JN5121 2.4 GHz RF microcontroller that is compliant with IEEE802.15.4 and ZigBee standards. The device is targeted at integrated solutions for economical sensor networks. Anglia now offers chips, evaluation kits, modules, network stacks and development tools.

Read more here.

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EWSN’07 is over and for those who missed the event the conference presentation slides and pictures are available from the EWSN’07 website.

It was announced at the conference that EWSN’08 would be held in Italy around the same time next year and the deadline for paper submissions would be near 1st September 2007. One of the main highlights of EWSN’07 was the keynote by John Heidemann, where he talked about future research directions for sensornets.

More information about the keynote, other talks, and support documents of the BTNode tutorial given at EWSN’07, could be found here.

Some EWSN’07 YouTube embedded videos:

• Poster Session (by SICS NES group)
• Turtle at social event (by Tom Parker)
• Fence Monitoring (presented at EWSN’07 by Georg Wittenburg)

Watch out for the first international Contiki workshop in Stockholm, Sweden on the 26-27 March 2007!

Contiki is an open source, highly portable, multi-tasking operating system for memory-constrained networked embedded systems like sensor networks. All Contiki developers, researchers, users, programmers, and interested persons are hereby invited to attend.

More information about the Contiki Workshop’07 here

Advanced Linear Devices announces the industry’s first energy harvesting modules designed specifically to capture, accumulate and store power from a variety of energy harvesting sources and supply it to wireless sensor networks, remote controls and a multitude of other applications. The module’s outstanding energy efficiency is designed to make energy harvesting a reliable and long-lasting source of power and can help unshackle many applications from the constraints of battery or AC power sources.

Read more here.

The Tenet project has made a public release of the Tenet software v1.0. Tenet is software for flexibly programming a tiered network of sensors. Tiered networks consist of motes and masters (PC-class devices, such as Stargate, that run Linux or Cygwin). In Tenet, all applications run on the masters which task the motes using a simple but expressive linear data-flow tasking language.

This release includes:

• Pre-compiled Tenet binary images for the MicaZ and TelosB motes.
• Pre-compiled data gathering and visualization/diagnostics applications on the masters. Support is also provided for compiling your own applications using the Tenet API. Tenet allows users to run multiple applications concurrently.

Supported platforms include TelosB and MicaZ motes, Cygwin and Linux.
Tenet can be downloaded from here.
More details on Tenet is available here.

Microchip Technology, the only company providing an open source ZigBee protocol implementation, has now released their first 2.4 GHz radio transceiver. The MRF24J40 is intended for the 802.15.4 chip market and can now be used with the company’s zero-cost-license and royalty-free protocol stack, which is also one of the smallest in the industry. Source Code availability means designers can customize their product, using more than 200 of the company’s compatible PIC MCUs.

Moreover, the company also freely provides MiWi, a small-footprint protocol for customers who do not need ZigBee  protocol interoperability but want to use 15.4 transceivers in low-cost peer-to-peer, star and mesh networks.    

The ZENA wireless network analyzer tool further assists in the design process. A combination of software and hardware that sniffs packets from top to bottom.

MRF24J40’s samples are available. Current purchases shipping is expected for March. More info at Michochip’s website 

The Sixth International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN ‘07) will be hosting an Extreme Sensing competition in Cambridge, Massashusetts, on April 25-27, 2007. Teams will need to build a sensor system, using five sensors or less, to count people walking through a 10ft x 10ft arena.

In Phase 1, the arena will be placed in a high traffic area and all teams will sense normal foot traffic from conference attendees for a duration of 10 minutes. Points will be awarded for correct detections and subtracted for false positives and false negatives. In Phase 2, each team must try to walk through the arena 10 times without being detected by their opponents’ sensors, in order to increase their own score while decreasing the scores of their opponents. Results will be broadcast live during Phase 1, providing each team an opportunity to discern how the other systems work and how they might fail.

Documentation and source code of the competition server is already available for testing. Hardware requirements and questions to be sent to Kamin Whitehouse, who is also in charge of team registrations.  

For more details about the competition, and how to enter, click here. The grand prize will be a Nintendo Wii.