Do butterflies hold the key to the next generation of chemical sensors? DARPA apparently thinks they might, and it’s just awarded GE a $6.3 million grant to further develop a project that the company’s research division began three years ago. That project was sparked by the discovery that the nanostructures from the wing scales of butterflies have acute chemical sensing properties, which GE has since been working to replicate in a sensing platform that could instantly detect a wide variety of chemical threats. What’s more, GE says that it’s sensors could eventually be made in “very small sizes, with low production costs,” which would let them be used for everything from emissions monitoring at power plants to food and beverage safety monitoring at home. Full press release is after the break.

More info here.

The tire pressure monitors built into modern cars have been shown to be insecure by researchers from Rutgers University and the University of South Carolina. The wireless sensors, compulsory in new automobiles in the US since 2008, can be used to track vehicles or feed bad data to the electronic control units (ECU), causing them to malfunction.

Earlier in the year, researchers from the University of Washington and University of California San Diego showed that the ECUs could be hacked, giving attackers the ability to be both annoying, by enabling wipers or honking the horn, and dangerous, by disabling the brakes or jamming the accelerator.

More info here.

Researchers in China have launched a project “GreenOrbs”, a WSN system of 1000+ nodes to operate in the forest for over one year. Through the experience in GreenOrbs, the researchers hope to gain insights on the challenges and design space in long-term large-scale WSNs, such as energy consumption, scheduling and synchronization, routing efficiency, link estimation, encapsulation, deployment, diagnosis, and fault tolerance.

The first application of GreenOrbs is canopy closure estimates. Canopy closure is defined as the percentage of ground area vertically shaded by overhead foliage. It is a widely-used indicator of the forest condition and has many significant uses in ecosystem management and disaster forecast. Using WSN as a technique of quantitative measurement, GreenOrbs can realize accurate and economical canopy closure estimates of vast forest.

Another application of GreenOrbs is fire risk evaluation of forest. Using sensor nodes deployed in the forest, GreenOrbs is able to monitor the local environmental factors and act as important input elements of accurate fire rick evaluation.

GreenOrbs is further designed to support forestry research through long-term large-scale observations on the forest microclimate, species interdependence, and competition among different vegetation species.

More info here.

An interesting comparison: Dash7 vs Zigbee vs Bluetooth vs WiFi vs Low Power UWB.

More info here.

At last night’s Australian Information Industry Association’s annual awards in Melbourne, CSIRO was named winner of the 2010 iAward for research and development.

CSIRO and Seqwater have developed Australia’s largest integrated intelligent wireless sensor network, which is monitoring Lake Wivenhoe and its catchment. This supplies the majority of the region’s drinking water as part of the SEQ Water Grid.

The network consists of 120 nodes, 45 of them floating, and measures water temperature through the water column. Another 70 are land-based and collect stock movement and weather data, spread across the catchment.

An autonomous solar-powered catamaran, also developed by CSIRO, travels between the floating nodes gathering data and performing maintenance.

More info here.

Z-Monitor is a free tool for monitoring and controlling IEEE 802.15.4 Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks. It provides a convenient solution for researchers and students for developing, debugging and deploying wireless sensor network applications. The tool is compatible with the IEEE 802.15.4 implementation of the TinyOS 15.4 WG and has also been tested and validated with the open-ZB implementation. Z-Monitor currently supports only TelosB motes, but it will soon be extended to a wider range of COTS platforms.

More details here.

Jason Frank films himself and fellow team members David Resseguie, Tim Garvin, and Ashley Dailey in this riveting (or use your own cliche word) behind-the-scenes look at Sensorpedia.  Enjoy.

Libelium has launched the First International Training Course on the Waspmote platform oriented to non-spanish developers. It will be carried out in English and will be 3 days long. The course will be held on days 23th, 24th and 25th of November in the Libelium headquarters – Zaragoza (Spain).

The agenda is divided in four main parts:

• Programming the mote
• Networking with the ZigBee, GPRS and Bluetooth radios
• Energy Saving techniques: sleep, hibernate
• Working with the sensors and the GPS module

Class size is limited so it is recommendable to book as soon as possible to ensure a place. Interested parties may request further information through this form.

Zolertia’s Z1 is a mote that claims to be backwards-compatible (almost completely) with TelosB/Tmotes, yet they offer an enhanced, revised mote for the requirements of today’s deployments and research.

In the following list you can see an overview of the differences between both motes.

• 2^nd generation MSP430

  • ~50% less power consumption in stand-by and off-mode

  • faster wake-up: 1µs vs. 6µs

  • 2x speed (16MHz vs. 8MHz),

  • ~2x Flash (92KB vs. 48KB),

  • 8KB vs. 10KB RAM

  • Programmable internal pull-ups.

• ~2x External Flash Memory (16Mbit vs. 8Mbit)

• Sensors

  • 3-axis digital accelerometer and temperature sensor vs. light, temperature and humidity sensors.

  • Ziglet sensors product-line under development.

• Phidgets support out-of-the-box: up to 4 sensors, and up to 5V phidgets accepted.

• 32-bytes EEPROM for individual module customization purposes (accessible from command-line)

• 54-pin expansion connector exposes most MSP430 pins in 3 regions (Analog, Digital Buses, and GPIOs & peripherals):

  • all ADC and DACs are exposed

  • USB pins exposed if required to use another USB connector different from the on-board microUSB

  • SPI, I2C i 2x UARTs

  • Interrupt and comparator inputs

• Several Customization Options in the order process (embedded or external antenna, enclosures, expansion connector soldering, battery packs, etc.)

• I2C and SPI buses do not share pins.

  
  

  
  

The 1st Workshop on the Security of the Internet of Things

Tokyo, Japan – November 29, 2010, in conjunction with Internet of Things 2010

Important Dates

Paper Submission due: 10 September 2010
Acceptance notification: 5 October 2010
Final papers due: 12 October 2010
Workshop date: 29 November 2010

Before the Internet of Things (IoT) vision takes its first steps, it is essential to consider the security implications of billions of intelligent things cooperating with other real and virtual entities over the Internet. In fact, we need to plan well in advance what kind of technological mechanisms, protocols and standard infrastructures we will need in order to protect the IoT.

Consequently, the main goal of this workshop is to spark debate on how to deal with the different security challenges that are related to the IoT. We aim to take a holistic point of view on this matter, giving importance to both the technologies that enable the IoT (such as Wireless Sensor Networks) and their interrelations.

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version for possible publication in the “Protecting the Internet of Things” special issue of Wiley’s Security and Communication Networks Journal, which is indexed in almost all important technical journal index systems, such as ISI, SCI, EI, SCOPUS, etc.

More information about this workshop is available here