The Wireless Sensor Network Research Group (WSNRG) has created a small device called X-Tick to help researchers who are involved in the indoor location field to develop their own triangulation algorithms. It can be programmed to send messages with different power levels periodically or when moving its internal Joystick (events oriented). SquidBee motes can be used to retrieve these packets and to see the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) they have. You can read the related article here.

A great post written by Roger Meike about teaching physics using wireless sensor networks. He used Sun SPOTs and a little bit of science magic to give kids a ball that could tell them how high they could throw it. To achieve this, he embedded a Sun SPOT in a foam football. He set up that Sun SPOT to stream accelerometer data to the base station and then had a host side application that could tell how high the ball was thrown.

The experiment, as well as the code, can be found here.

Sensinode Ltd., a pioneering commercial supplier of solutions for Internet Protocol (IP) based wireless mesh networks, today announced the release of a new software stack, wireless router and mesh gateway for M-Bus (Metering Bus). These new products extend the power of wireless sensor technologies in both near- and mid-range applications; including Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and smart object applications in very low power distributed networks based on Texas Instruments’ low-power RF devices for 868/915 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency range in module form factor from Radiocrafts.
More information available here

MIT researchers and colleagues are working to find out whether energy from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest fires. What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation’s borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials.

More info here.

We talked about the IPSO alliance a few weeks back. There was a story on Slashdot about it as well. Check it out here.

THE Australian Institute of Marine Science has begun using one of the world’s first reef-based internet protocol networks to monitor the impact of destructive forces on the Great Barrier Reef.

AIMS solar-powered sensors are being used to monitor the Great Barrier Reef

Using waterproof Next G modems, adaptive sensor equipment and solar-powered buoys to float the devices, AIMS has installed two wireless IP networks that can transmit data in real time up to 100km offshore.

More information can be found here

The Sensors & Instrumentation KTN have pleasure in inviting you to a free knowledge exchange and partnering event on energy harvesting technologies organised by the Sensors & Instrumentation Knowledge Transfer Network on 26 November 2008 at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in London.

This event brings together organisations that are either developing or commercialising energy harvesting technology solutions with potential users of the technology. We have secured speakers from the leading energy harvesting companies in Europe and academics covering various aspects of the technology. Presentations will cover the range of different energy harvesting techniques and describe a number of different applications.

For more information and to view the agenda please click here. The deadline for registrations is 19 November 2008.

Two months after the first news about the new sensor device of the spanish company Libelium, some hardware details have been made public. The mote is going to be released under the name of Waspmote and it seems to have been designed to cover both static and mobile WSN deployments (we suppose there will be several “mote flavors” combining the different modules). An image of the sensor device can be seen in http://www.waspmote.com.

From 24 to 26 September 2008, thousands of creative minds from all over the world will come together in Amsterdam at PICNIC’08. That is three inspiring days of ideas, fun and sensory stimulation in media technology, entertainment, art and science.

In particular, there will be a session dedicated to pervasive computing. Entitled “Internet of Things” which is aimed to rise attendees awareness about the potential of embedded intelligence in objects all around us as well as business opportunities. There will be six great speakers from different industries and startups, including CTO from Sentilla, Dr. J. Polastre.

This gathering is gaining reputation as a fantastic conference and a great opportunity to meet tons of new people in IT, design, media, technology, arts, marketing etc. Last year they had almost 3000 participants for the 2nd edition, so this year it would be even better.

You will need tickets to attend PICNIC and you’d like to see some explanations here. Moreover, for the Internet of Things session a flyer is available.

Pervasive computers enable virtually any measurement to be made across virtually any environment. But how would you power your network? What if you wanted to place the computer in the middle of a field? Or in a tree? Or in the desert? Or a cave? How long would the computer run given alkaline or lithium batteries? Could it draw power from its surroundings? Could it be packaged in a reasonable size?

To this end, they are publishing a white paper that introduces solar, thermal, and vibrational harvesting methods in the context of pervasive computing. They keep the science behind the harvesting techniques at a high level, but give proper size and placement context.

More info here and the white paper is available here.