The 2010 Trend Watch Sensor Survey results were published by Design News and half of the survey respondents design products for the industrial market. The balance of respondents works in industries as diverse as automotive and aerospace to packaging and healthcare.

When selecting a sensor, respondents said that reliability, accuracy and durability/ruggedness are the top three characteristics, while product support and availability are critical when selecting a particular supplier.

The file with full results is available here [pdf]

Optimizing battery life and long-term reliability involves numerous variables, including the chemistry, the cell design, the quality of mechanical components, the purity of raw materials and the manufacturing processes employed. Shortcuts in quality can negatively impact service life.

The total amount of active chemical ingredients and the ratio of each ingredient determine the cell’s nominal capacity. Predicting expected operating life solely on the cell’s nominal capacity can be misleading however, as the cell’s capacity is affected by the active components, the internal self-discharge, the application power profile and environmental factors. Since the volume of active ingredients is limited by the size of the cell, nominal capacity values often do not vary substantially. So the key differentiator often involves the inner structure of the cell and the ratio of active ingredients. For this reason, design engineers should evaluate the battery’s Equivalent Operating Capacity (EOC) to properly calculate its expected operating life, taking into account the cell’s self-discharge rate, application current profile and environmental conditions.

More info here.

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.

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.

The integrated products, now available, will allow a rich set of power and thermal data gathered by strategically-placed Arch Rock wireless sensors to be transmitted over wireless IP links and displayed on the AEM web interface, presenting users with a comprehensive view of their data centers’ energy consumption and environmental health.

The integration of PhyNet into AEM makes it easy for users to see all their energy information on a single web interface (AEM), without having to move back and forth among multiple vendors’ consoles. Arch Rock’s wireless sensors can easily be placed anywhere the user needs to collect electrical, temperature or humidity data, without the labor and cost of having to connect wires. Customers can compare the Arch Rock-collected server inlet air temperature data with AEM temperature readings from their CRACs [computer room air conditioners], determining whether they can lower energy costs by raising CRAC supply air temperatures while remaining within safety zones for server cooling. The sensor data can also be used to monitor pre-set power and thermal thresholds, triggering “event automation plans” through AEM to put servers in lower power states or shut down systems that become overheated. PhyNet is expected to be of particular benefit to the large set of IBM customers still using legacy hardware, which are not equipped with built-in sensors.

More info here.

About a year and a half ago the Samraksh Company introduced a new mote-scale radar. Th e BumbleBee is a coherent, pulsed Doppler radar offering rich information at a strikingly low price (i.e., $100 each as compared to as much as $4,000 to $5,000 each for previous mote-scale radars). The BumbleBee measures radial velocity directly allowing users to determine the sign of the velocity and measure the time structure of relative motion very precisely, even for small motions!

The company suspects that there will be high return from effort focused on conceiving applications for the BumbleBee rada as the difference between applications for the BumbleBee and traditional WSN applications is vast. To stimulate the development of applications that benefit from an understanding of the motion the company announced today that it is sponsoring an Application Idea Contest. Researchers and hobbyists who are willing to share their ideas for utilizing rich motion information, especially within the context of WSNs, with the larger community are encouraged to submit short descriptions of their ideas. Two outside judges will select winning ideas, and each winner will receive a free BumbleBee radar! In addition community members will be asked to provide feedback on winning ideas. It is hoped that this feedback will further facilitate creativity.

More info here.

Libelium

• Frequency: 2.4GHz, 900MHz, 868MHz
• Protocol: 802.15.4, ZigBee
• Power: 1mW, 100mW

These radios count with a high RX sensibility and TX power which let Waspmote to achieve long range links: 7km – 2.4GHz, 24km – 900MHz and 40km – 868MHz, which makes possible to monitorize any emplacement.
The platform is based on a modular architecture, this means extra modules can be set on Waspmote just when they are needed. The modules available are:

• GPS: latitude, longitude, altitude, speed,…
• GPRS: sms’s, calls, TCP/UDP sockets,…
• SD card: up to 2GB of memory

Following the same modular philosophy three sensor boards have been developed to be connected to Waspmote:

• Gases: CO, CO2, CH4, SH2, NH3,…
• Events: weight, luminosity, tilt, vibration, PIR, liquid level…
• Protyping: ready to integrate new sensors, includes ADC, pad area, amplification stages…

A 3 axys accelerometer has been integrated in the same board to get the maximum precision and stability in both ranges (+-2g, +-6g), which lets Waspmote to control in real time any kind of motion or mobility event.
It is powered with a lithium battery which can be recharged through a specially dedicated socket for the solar panel. This option is specially interesting for deployments in natural environments such as forests.

To get the most of all the platform features and possibilities a complete programming API is available. Both the Waspmote API and the compiler are open source.
Regarding commercial issues, the platform is Worldwide market ready: CE (Europe), FCC (EEUU) and IC (Canada).

All the information can be found at the Libelium site.

The sensor information is delivered to Meshlium using the Waspmote platform which will be in the market before the end of this year. All the code is open source. You can access to these guides in the Meshlium Development section.

According to GainSpan, its technology provides the lowest power consuming Wi-Fi single chip solution for wireless sensor networks and other embedded applications, allowing devices to run for up to 10 years on a single AA battery.

“GainSpan’s innovative technology helps address critical technology needs of the US Intelligence Community,” said Troy M Pearsall, executive VP of architecture and engineering at In-Q-Tel, in a statement. “The power requirements of Wi-Fi have traditionally limited its application in sensor networks, but GainSpan’s low-power Wi-Fi devices enable new classes of solutions that will provide key technology capabilities to both the government and commercial markets.”

More info here.

This contest seeks to identify and fund (up to 600 k USD) the best innovations using wireless related technology to address critical social issues around the world. Project proposals must demonstrate significant advancement in the field of wireless-related technology applied to social benefit use.

The competition is open to projects from universities and nonprofit organizations based in the United States, despite projects may operate and help people overseas.

The video above shows one of the awardees of the past edition, a  group at the EE Department in UCLA, lead by Prof. Aydogan Ozcan. They have devised a simple wireless microscope system that allows the remote analysis of blood sample images, captured in the field with a mobile phone equipped with inexpensive optics. The images are then transmitted wireless to a center for rapid counting/processing and the result comes back as a text message.

More information available here