Tthe October 2, 2007 deadline to submit an abstract to the Coastal Sensor Networks session at the 2008 Ocean Sciences Meeting (to be held in Orlando, Florida) is approaching rapidly. There was a lot of energy at the first Coastal Environmental Sensor Network conference encouraging a continued sharing of discoveries, applications, and developments. The Ocean Sciences Meeting in Orlando is a perfect venue. This conference is a joint meeting Sponsored by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), The Oceanography Society (TOS), and the Estuarine Research Federation (ERF), and will be held on 2-7 March 2008.

Abstract submission and additional conference details are available via the following web link: www.aslo.org/orlando2008. Submissions may be for oral or poster sessions. The abstract submission deadline is midnight (23:59 US, CDT) on Tuesday, 2 October 2007, but participants are encouraged to submit early.

Texas Instruments has released v1.0.0 of the SimpliciTI network protocol, a proprietary low-power radio frequency (RF) protocol targeting simple, small RF networks (less than 100 nodes). SimpliciTI network protocol (see structure) was designed to ease implementation with minimal MCU resource requirements. It runs out-of-the-box on TI’s MSP430 ultra-low-power MCU and CC110x/CC2500 RF transceivers and is provided as source code under a free license, without royalties. Developers are encouraged to adapt the protocol to their own specific application needs. A new release with power management embedded in the stack is due in Q4 2007.

Hardware? The new TI eZ430-RF2500 platform combines 16-MHz 16-bit MSP430F2274 microcontroller with CC2500 RF transceiver chip on a removable target board. This development tool is designed for low-cost, low-power, and low-speed sensor and control applications. The CC2500’s packet handling support is limited to CRC checking, which is adequate for many applications, as are the 64-byte FIFOs. This radio chip has a range of configuration options, including different operating frequencies in the 2.4-GHz band.

The eZ430-RF2500, claimed the world’s smallest low-power wireless development tool is priced at $49, it includes a USB emulator to program and debug your application in-system and two wireless target boards.

Perpetuum, the world leader in vibration energy harvesting, announces its PMG17 vibration energy-harvesting microgenerator can readily be used to power the Texas Instruments CC2420 single chip RF transceiver and MSP430 16 bit ultra-low-power microcontroller. As a result, sensor node manufacturers can now design battery-free sensor systems using the IEEE 802.15.4 standard even for the most data intensive applications such as condition monitoring.

A vibration energy harvesting sensor node designed around the CC2420 by Perpetuum engineers is capable of sampling 2kbyte of vibration data and transmitting it over 100m (line-of-sight) every 60 seconds when only 0.025g of vibration is present. At this incredibly low level of vibration the PMG17 energy harvester produces up to 1mW, while at 1g the output is around 50mW, enabling the node to measure and transmit continuously. The node can be configured to measure and transmit much smaller data sets, such as temperature, more frequently or larger data sets less frequently, depending on the application.

An application note to aid engineers designing self-powered wireless condition monitoring systems is available for download from the Perpetuum website.

More details here.