Meshlium is a multigateway router with a completely modular design. Main characteristics are:

- High power (600mW) Wifi 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios modules
- Mesh topology (open source protocol)
- GPS module (new Mesh possibilities)
- ZigBee module (act like a gateway for WSN, up to 1600m range)
- Bluetooth module(communicate with mobile devices)
- GPRS module (communicate with cell networks)
- Google Maps Integration (the Mesh network with the GPS module is mapped automatically)
- Car/ban/truck connectors (you can connect at any 12V or 24V lighter)
- Battery connectors (ready to work with stand alone batteries)
- Solar panel module available

It has an open source Manager System which let the user control everything inside Meshlium through any web browser. It has been created with the intention of developers can add their own plugings and built their own applications on top of it. There is a special section so that community and developers can share and improve their work. It can be used with SquidBee motes to build WSN.

More information is available here: http://www.meshlium.com.

The Duke Award goes to Sentilla! The prize has been given by James Gosling, the father of Java, and is the biggest award that a company can receive. The Duke Award is the only award given out at JavaOne, a conference with hundreds of exhibitors and over 15,000 attendees.

Congrats to Sentilla and the Sentilla team. They have achieved something that no other company has done–putting a full Java system on 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. They have opened this world up to Java programmers, a huge accomplishment. They have put Java on the world’s smallest computers. Java runs with no compromises — they have not pared anything back. If your application runs on any other certified Java ME system, it will work with Sentilla.

More info here

In recent years some companies have been adopting “condition-based” or “preemptive” maintenance, with remarkable implications in some cases, as in ships and planes. What it means is that instead of bringing fleets in periodically for inspection, service is scheduled as needed.

Now Sentilla seems to be lobbying airlines to help ensure, efficiently and conveniently, that each aircraft has proper wiring that guarantees continuous communication between the cockpit and critical controls. Moreover, the process seems to be motivated by recent FAA regulations.

By attaching wireless computers to the wiring on planes automated failing notifications can be read by a maintenance servicer. This means that we don’t ground fleets; instead planes are serviced as they need. This is good for both airlines and passengers; planes are only taken out of service as needed, saving money and reducing the inconvenience for passengers.

More on Sentilla’s blog

If you missed the Sun Labs Open House, then here’s your chance to see the Sun SPOTs ‘Lightning Talk’ from the Open House:

Big Project: Sun SPOT

Kronos - a global provider of human capital management solutions - has selected GreenPeak’s low-power wireless mesh networking technology for one of its wireless terminals. Hortimax, a Kronos VAR, is active in greenhouse harvesting management systems. In one of its projects, a harvest administration system is used to monitor the activity and location of individual mobile harvesting carts.

This solution is based on the Kronos wireless terminal and uses GreenPeak’s wireless mesh technology to transmit data from individual mobile harvesting carts to routers, which enables the data to be gathered and analysed in a central co-ordinator unit.
The wireless technology allows the monitoring of individual pickers’ efficiency.
Compared with the old situation, where only the average picking weight per corridor and not per individual picker was known, the new system was able to increase overall greenhouse productivity by 15%.

More info here.

Sensinode Ltd., a pioneering/commercial supplier of solutions for IPv6 over wireless mesh networks, today announced it has joined the Texas Instruments (TI) Low-Power RF Developer Network. The technology innovation and licensing company, focused on enabling the Real-Time Enterprise, will present its solution on April 17, 2008 at the Texas Instruments booth (#1708) at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif.

Leveraging TI’s high-performance, IEEE 801.15.4-compatible RF system-on-chip, CC2430/31, Sensinode supports the growth of the emerging market for low-cost, small form factor NanoRouter USB and NanoSensor devices by providing customers with advanced design solutions for the WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) environment.

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Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) introduced the first product from the company’s new Z-Accel family of 2.4 GHz ZigBee-certified network processors. The CC2480 provides engineers complete ZigBee functionality without them having to learn the complexities of a full ZigBee stack, making it easy to integrate ZigBee into a wide variety of applications, such as home and building automation and industrial monitoring and control, with minimal development effort. The device also allows customers the flexibility to work with any host microcontroller (MCU).
“The CC2480 ZigBee processor drastically simplifies the design of a new low-power wireless product, or the addition of wireless into an existing product, by allowing customers to separate the application code from the networking component of their systems,” said Art George, Senior Vice President of TI’s High-Performance Analog business unit. “TI continues to deliver innovative products, software, and support so that customers can design advanced low-power wireless systems with shorter development times and lower production costs.”

More info here.

After receiving CE Mark approval last week, Biotronik, a developer of wireless remote monitoring technology for patients with cardiac devices, announced today the world’s first implantations of the new Lumax 540 implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) and cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator (CRT-D) devices in 11 hospitals in seven countries.

The new Lumax 540 platform is part of Biotronik´s most technologically advanced tachycardia product portfolio, providing extended therapy options- for individualized patient device programming as well as Biotronik Home Monitoring technology for wireless remote monitoring of patient’s cardiovascular status. A comprehensive set of diagnostic capabilities are further technical advancements included on the Lumax 540 devices to help physicians identify clinically relevant atrial fibrillation and early detection of worsening heart failure status.

More info here.

Axcess International Inc., a leading provider of wireless business-activity monitoring solutions, announced the “industry’s first Smart Wireless Sticker.” It provides automatic item identification, locating, tracking, protecting, data logging, and condition sensing for items up to 1000 ft. away, at a cost of less than $10 per sticker. The “wireless computer on a sticker” combines traditional bar codes, Electronic Product Code (EPC) RFID, long-range RFID tracking, and wireless sensing in a small electronic label easily adhered to most any object. It is designed to enhance data management in product manufacturing, product automatic identification in shipping, automatic inventory and protection of enterprise assets, and visibility into the condition of perishables and pharmaceuticals throughout the shipping process.

More info here.

From Crossbow’s blog:

Embedded programming has historically involved pulling out your C compile, and writing detailed code that needs to carefully manage limited memory resources, hardware interrupts, and low-level bus interfaces. The benefits brought by newer high-level languages such as Java and C# have lagged entry into this space by about 5-10 years. The delay can be attributed to limits to memory and processing speeds within the space due to aggressive cost requirements, and a lack of tools and software support for embedded platforms compared to PC/server platforms. More recently, the J2ME and Windows CE platforms have made Java and C# respectively available to smart phone and PDA application developers. But both of these environments continue to limit the amount of control the developer has over low-level interrupts and hardware resources. The Microsoft .NET Micro environment that powers the Crossbow Imote2 .Builder kit allows programming an embedded device with C#, while providing native control over hardware resources such as the I2C, SPI, and UART buses. Programming a native IEEE 802.15.4 radio driver for example is possible in this environment, and the full source code for such an implementation is provided.

More here.