Crossbow Announces IMB400 Imote2 Multimedia Board

Building on its popular Imote2 advanced wireless sensor platform, Crossbow Technology announced the new Imote2 Multimedia Board (IMB400), an integrated camera sensor board that simplifies the capture of rich media content for wireless sensor network applications. The IMB400 board adds rich media capabilities to wireless sensor platforms. 

Ralph Kling, Chief Architect for Crossbow Technology said “For the first time visual and audio data can be easily added to wireless sensor applications. This opens up new possibilities for wireless sensor applications, including for example, surveillance, machine vision, object tracking, animal behavior surveys, and elder care monitoring in locations and environments that would otherwise be too costly to observe with traditional monitoring systems.”

The Imote2 Multimedia Board offers a compact, power efficient solution due to its integration of camera, audio and motion detection functionality into one platform. The built-in camera can handle high-quality images with resolutions up to 640x480 pixels and 30 fps, along with audio at sampling rates of up to 48kHz.
Instead of using compute intensive image analysis to detect motion, the IMB400 uses a Passive InfraRed (PIR) sensor to pick up movement, which then activates the camera allowing for its operation as a low power device. These images can subsequently be stored, locally processed and transmitted with accompanying sound.

In addition to the PIR sensor, key subsystems include a color image and video camera chip along with an audio capture and playback CODEC. The board is supported under TinyOS, with future support planned for Linux, SOS and the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework. For more information and to order this exciting new platform, visit Crossbow's site here.

Comments

[Z. Cihan TAYSI]

I'm planning to use this board in my project. I need to know if is there any driver available for Microsoft framework ?

thanks.

Answer:
At this time the IMB400 is not supported by the Microsoft .Net Microframework. Current support is available through TinyOS.

[Vasi]

Our university bought this module.
Unfortunately we can not use the multimedia board because it is hard to find applications for streaming content from this board. The board comes with no software (no tools for deployment, no applications to run on the board). Some software support for this board would be grate!!!

Response:
There are TinyOS and Linux drivers available.
See here:
http://www.xbow.com/Support/wobjectDetail.aspx?id=50160000000LW4hAAG&type=Solution&page=0
and here:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/imote2-linux/
We hope that helps. Please let us know if you need any further assistance.

[Frank Agyei-Ntim]

This is really wonderful
I would love it if Crossbow can give me an evaluation node of this multimedia mote (Imote) to try on my project
Thanks

Response:
Please take a look at Crossbow's new WSN-Imote Hardware bundle. This package provides customers with all the tools to get an Imote2 sensor network up and running including the Imote2 Multimedia board. Geared towards research and academia, this kit is available for a steal!