Wireless Sensor Networks » wsn-products

Cisco To Acquire Smart Grid Monitoring Tech Company Arch Rock

Marco Zennaro — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:42:27 +0000

Cisco this morning announced its intent to acquire privately-held Arch Rock, which specializes in IP-based wireless sensor network technology with a focus on energy and environmental monitoring and Smart Grid applications.

Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.

Based in San Francisco, Arch Rock will help Cisco accelerate the company’s ability to facilitate the utility industry’s transition to an open and interoperable smart grid and enable Cisco to offer a fully IP and open-standards based advanced metering infrastructure solution.

Arch Rock’s technology is designed to enable utilities to connect smart meters and other distributed intelligent devices over a scalable multi-way wireless mesh network. The acquisition complements the recently announced strategic alliance between Itron and Cisco to develop solutions that enhance smart-metering technology.

Upon the close of the acquisition, which is expected to follow in the second half of calendar year 2010 pending regulatory approvals, the Arch Rock team will become part of Cisco’s Smart Grid business unit.

More info here.

Libelium releases Customizable Sensor Boards

Marco Zennaro — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:46:30 +0000

Libelium has just launched a new line of services in order to offer customizable sensor boards for the Waspmote platform. The idea is developers have their own sensor board with just the sensors needed for the specific application they are developing. A list of more than 50 combinable options includes all the sensors previously integrated in the Gas, Events and Agriculture sensor boards (CO ,CO2, O2, soil moisture, luminosity…) what makes possible an incredible number of combinations.

Along with the First International Training Course Libelium opens its wireless sensor networks services line in order to make it easier for companies who want to get their own sensor solution for an specific vertical market.

More info here

Cranberry Frost Protection using Wireless Sensors

Marco Zennaro — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:42:10 +0000

What is the connection between cranberry farming, sensor technology, and computer networks? That is the question I posed to Michael Lange, president of Lange Installations in British Columbia. I now know more than I ever thought I would about how those flavorful little berries grow. It is quite a story, and it revolves around cold and moisture, two phenomena that Canadians in general, and cranberry growers specifically, know a lot about.

This is where the technology comes in. When growers protect cranberries against frost, they need to know the exact bog temperature on the canopy. Traditionally they used sensors, hardwired from the bogs to a pump station to transmit environmental information. But, broken cables often disrupt transmissions. Hard wired sensor connections are also challenging because of long distances between the sensors to the pump station. Lange knew there had to be a better way. He found it with Spinwave Systems.

More info here.

Monnit Introduces Web Enabled Temperature Sensors with Text and Email Notification.

Marco Zennaro — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:18:55 +0000

Monnit Corporation introduces a low cost wireless temperature sensor along with nine other types of wireless sensors. The sensors currently use a USB receiver at the computer level to transmit all of the sensor data to your choice of either the MonnitSphere Online Monitoring Service or the MonnitSphere Local PC computer application. The sensor data is then checked against user defined thresholds to determine if a notification should be sent to the user via email or SMS text message.

The sensors operate at 900MHz (25 Channels) and provide a reliable operating range of approximately 1000 feet depending on the environment.
Powered by a Lithium Ion 3V battery the sensors have a lifespan of approximately 4 years when set to a heartbeat of 2 hours. (The sensors hold user defined threshold values and can be set to check against those value as often as desired, and will bypass heartbeat settings to communicate if and when thresholds have been met or exceeded.)
The sensors have a small footprint (1 in. by 1 in.) and are ideal for embedded applications.
The wireless temperature sensor is accurate to +/- 0.5°C (1°F) with an operating range of -40°C to +125°C.

Monnit Corporation provides both OEM and finished products along with the software for customizing the sensor parameters and storing the sensor data. Typical deployments include Hotel Management, Building Operations, Facilities Maintenance, HVAC Monitoring, Food Services and Property Management.

More info here.

Wireless Sensing Showcase 2010

Claro Noda — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:42:53 +0000

Early prototyping has proven to be an essential methodology to evaluate wireless sensing systems. Furthermore, it offers an excellent way to assess the applicability of the technology against real user requirements and to promote its market adoption. Building on the last two years’ successful events, the Wireless Sensing Interest subGroup (WiSIG) of the Electronics, Sensors, Photonics Knowledge Transfer Network (ESP KTN) is organising a Demonstrator Showcase to provide an opportunity for industry and academia to display technology, platforms, and realistic applications of wireless sensing. The purpose of the event is to raise awareness of the current state of the art and encourage future collaborations among the exhibitors and attendees.

The Wireless Sensing Demonstrator Showcase invites innovative demonstrations from industry and academia. Demos will be classified into two categories R&D systems and Commercial Products. The event will be hosted by the Sensing Technology 2010 Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham UK on Tuesday 28th September

Both wireless sensing systems developed as ‘instruments to enable scientific investigation’ and also ‘as solutions to known problems’. Demonstrators need to be end-to-end systems with achievements beyond the state of the art at one or more of the following levels: physical level, sensing level, energy harvesting, power management, data fusion, middleware, communications, information extraction, and user interfaces.

They are particularly encouraging demonstrators in the areas of body sensor networks, environmental monitoring, industrial monitoring and control, security and surveillance as well as assisted living. The demo proposals will be reviewed by a committee and the delegates of the Sensing Technology 2010 Exhibition. The ‘Best Demo Award’ will be awarded in each of the two categories based upon both the technical and innovation contribution.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline:     Sept 1, 2010
Acceptance notification:   Sept 10, 2010
Camera-ready deadline: Sept 20, 2010
Demo Registration deadline: Sept 15, 2010
Showcase date:              Sept 28, 2010

Registration and more info here

Web of things, Opensource and WI-FI

Marco Zennaro — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:52:05 +0000

The OpenPicus project officially has the first Wi-Fi module released. It’s small and integrates the Microchip PIC24F (256K Flash, 16K Ram) and the new Microchip Wi-Fi certified module.

FlyPort (name of the module) runs the Wireless Stack (TCP/IP version 5.25 from Microchip) and the Application layer. It’s provided with a comfortable 26 ways Male Pinheader connector to let you prototype and test easily.

Programmer has full control of the Wi-Fi module, Low power modes are available. Flyport act as powerful webserver (you can run even Ajax apps like graphic libraries) or it may send you email or send data to a remote server.

Claudio Carnevali, founder of the OpenPicus project, says: “We believe FlyPort is a revolutionary device and we’ll be able to achieve a price under 30 Euro soon. Wi-Fi is the natural wireless platform for the Internet of Things, because it doesn’t need any gateway and expecially when your application can control the RF transceiver to save energy”

More info here.

DASH7 Alliance Announces Developer Tools for DASH7 Certification

Marco Zennaro — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:10:58 +0000

The DASH7 Alliance, a non-profit industry consortium that promotes the use of the ISO 18000-7 standard for wireless sensor networking, today announced the release of the DASH7 Certification Suite, a set of test tools to assist developers building DASH7 hardware products.

The suite includes conformance and interoperability scripts for devices built to the ISO 18000-7 (DASH7) standard that will help ensure interoperability regardless of vendor. Use of the DASH7 Certification Suite is required to complete official DASH7 Certification testing (launching this fall) and also to use the DASH7 Certified trademark. The DASH7 Certification Suite is available free of charge to all DASH7 members.

“The DASH7 Certification Suite builds on the conformance and interoperability processes established for passive RFID,” said Ted Osinski, Director of RFID Programs at MET Laboratories. “Similar to our experience with UHF passive RFID, the importance of a DASH7 test suite cannot be overstated as we now know that ‘self certification’ results in many fatal errors and end users must insist on DASH7 Certification to protect their DASH7 investment.”

More info here.

Hi-Power Vibration Energy Harvesting with Low Power WSN

Claro Noda — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:26:44 +0000

Perpetuum and Dust Networks have recently demonstrated that energy harvesting-powered wireless sensor networks are a practical reality even in the most demanding applications. Industrial condition monitoring systems can have high volume data transmission requirements and the consequent impact on power budgets is significant. However, the combination of Dust Networks’ low power SmartMesh WSN products with High Power Vibration Energy Harvesters from Perpetuum, delivers an effective solution to meet market needs, as demonstrated at the Sensors Expo conference in Chicago, Illinois.

See press article here (pdf)

Best of Sensors Expo Award for Waspmote

Marco Zennaro — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:16:45 +0000

The WSN field has been recognised this year in the Sensors Expo by the hand of the wireless sensor platform Waspmote in the Data Acquisition Products category. It is the first time the organization takes into account the added value of an open source programming environment a long with a modular hardware configuration. As the same Sensors Mag editors pointed out “Libelium’s technology for its rugged open-source modular wireless sensor networking platform”.

More information about the Sensors Expo Awards here.

Active RFID applications using IEEE 802.15.4

Marco Zennaro — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:10:24 +0000

At the recent IDTechEx conference Wireless Sensor Networks and RTLS Europe in Munich, Colin Faulkner of the UK fabless semiconductor company Jennic spoke on Active RFID Applications Using IEEE 802.15.4. These are strong candidates for energy harvesting. He described their capability and illustrated this with tags having low power consumption when not transmitting data – less than 2uA of current. They use broadcast data transmissions to pass data to local reader(s). They do not associate or join the network of readers and are therefore completely mobile. They transmit a unique 64-bit ID and battery voltage and temperature are measured using the on chip temperature sensor. Taking the sequence number and number of CCA failures, performance statistics can be calculated. He described potential use in container trucking, care for the elderly, retailing etc. The Jennic JenNet proprietary network permits star tree and linear topologies.

More info here.