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.

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

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.

• 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.

Cyber-physical systems are systems with a tight coupling of the cyber aspects of computing and communications with the physical aspects of dynamics and engineering that must abide by the laws of physics.  The objective of this conference is to be a primary forum for reporting state-of-the-art advances and innovations in theoretical principles, tools, applications, systems infrastructure, and testbeds for cyber-physical systems.

Contributions should emphasize the cross-cutting, system-wide themes. Sectors of applicability include, but not be limited to, transportation  (automotive, aerospace, marine, rail), SCADA systems (electricity generation including smart grids and the like, other utilities), smart physical infrastructure (smart bridges, buildings and highways), energy efficiency (energy-aware buildings), environmental monitoring, defense systems, intelligent medical devices, tele-operations and robotics.

Submissions must be a maximum of 10 pages, in 2-column format, and use font sizes of no less than 10 pt.  Instructions for submission can be found at the conference site.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Theoretical foundations of CPS
- Modeling, Analysis and Synthesis Techniques
- Architectures for Cyber-Physical Systems
- Building blocks for Cyber-Physical Systems
- Systems Abstractions, Services and OS Support
- Evaluation approaches and metrics
- Novel CPS applications
- Detailed Case Studies

Important Dates:

Submission Deadline:        November 7, 2010
Acceptance Decisions:       January 5, 2010
Final Manuscript:           January 28, 2011

Authors are invited to submit poster and demo abstracts (4 pages, Springer format, 9 or 10 point font size).  Accepted abstracts will be included in the proceedings published by Springer in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).

Posters should demonstrate early work in areas of interest similar to those listed in the technical call for papers. Good posters describe exciting ideas for which some preliminary results are available.

Demonstrations should showcase innovative research and applications related to the technical calls for papers.  The initial submission should include an appendix describing as detailed as possible what you intend to show. The appendix should be removed for the final submissions.

More info will be available here.

The Internet of Things is what happens when you take everyday ordinary objects and put Internet-connected microchips inside them. These microchips help you not only keep track of your belongings, but many of these devices sense their surroundings and report it to other machines as well as to you when you most need it.

From RFID to the Nabaztag Bunny to Arduino hobbyists, innovation is growing at a rapid rate. Our collection features popular videos about how to make your own objects, as well as overviews, interviews and lectures. The intent of these devices is to make our lives easier, yet as David Orban suggests in the eighth video, this is not guaranteed. Issues of data-overload and a lack of privacy may interfere with how these devices ultimately help us. As the growth of this trend continues you’ll be seeing many more videos about the Internet of Things.

More info here.

NEWS: Details on registration fees

Accepted participants of the doctoral colloquium must register for Sensys (if applicable at the student rate), no additional fee will be charged for the participation in the doctoral colloquium. Participants can also apply for Sensys travel grants.

Accepted participants of the doctoral colloquium in difficult financial situations who would otherwise not be able to attend, have the option of registering only for the doctoral colloquium at a rate of 120 USD. This does not cover participation in the main conference. We require a letter from the advisor of the student explaining the difficult financial situation.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline: August 30, 2010
Notification:        September 20, 2010
Camera-ready copy:   October 18, 2010
Colloquium:          November 2, 2010

ORGANIZERS

Chair:
Kay Roemer, University of Luebeck and ETH Zurich

Panel:
Tarek Abdelzaher, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Pedro Marron, University of Duisburg-Essen
Gian Pietro Picco, University of Trento
Cormac Sreenan, University College Cork
Andreas Terzis, Johns Hopkins University
Eduardo Tovar, Polytechnic Institute of Porto
Thiemo Voigt, Swedish Institute of Computer Science

The SPAN lab, led by Prof. Neal Patwari, has significant expertise in radio channel signal processing for location estimation in wireless networks, including the 2008 ACM MobiCom Best Student Research Demo Award, a 2009 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award, and significant popular press, including articles in MIT Technology Review, ScienceNOW, Wired, Discover, Der Speigel, and The Economist.

This postdoctoral position would expand the state-of-the-art in the capability of wireless networks to perform localization, for both emergency situations, and for everyday logistics applications.

More info here.

More info here.