The Buzz about BumbleBee

The Application Idea Contest

About a year and a half ago the Samraksh Company introduced a new mote-scale radar. The BumbleBee is a coherent, pulsed Doppler radar offering rich information at a strikingly low price (i.e., $100 each as compared to as much as $4,000 to $5,000 each for previous mote-scale radars). The BumbleBee measures radial velocity directly allowing users to determine the sign of the velocity and measure the time structure of relative motion very precisely, even for small motions!

Applications of the BumbleBee

While the typical mote-scale sensors might be as simple as a temperature or humidity sensor, and is rarely more complex than a PIR motion detector, the BumbleBee radar provides rich information about the details of motion of targets in its environment (or the details of the motion of the environment itself).The BumbleBee is capable of measuring movements to a relative accuracy of about 3 mm in its core operational zone which is from 1.5 m to 9.5 m, with a radial velocity of 2.6 cm/s to 2.6 m/s, and with components of motion below 100 Hz which are movements that are representative of human movements. Thus the BumbleBee, although a good motion detector, is uniquely suited for a variety of motion analyses, including items like:

1. Estimating the relative range profile, as a function of time, for a dominant target within the scene.
2. Separating the returns from multiple targets with different motion patterns within the same scene.
3. Recognizing specific motions patterns associated with unique events.
4. Characterizing the motion of various background environments at various times.

For example, the Samraksh Company demonstrated the ability to differentiate humans from dogs based on differences in the leg motion. The gap between simple motion detection and attempting to infer whether the target is two-legged or four-legged based on the way it moves, is quite large, and the highest value WSN applications may well be within this gap. This platform provides a large benefit at a small cost to somewhat more simple motion analysis.

Idea Contest

The Samraksh Company suspects that there will be high return from effort focused on conceiving applications for the BumbleBee rada as the difference between applications for the BumbleBee and traditional WSN applications is vast. To stimulate the development of applications that benefit from an understanding of the motion the company announced today that it is sponsoring an Application Idea Contest. Researchers and hobbyists who are willing to share their ideas for utilizing rich motion information, especially within the context of WSNs, with the larger community are encouraged to submit short descriptions of their ideas. Two outside judges will select winning ideas, and each winner will receive a free BumbleBee radar! In addition community members will be asked to provide feedback on winning ideas. It is hoped that this feedback will further facilitate creativity.

Company co-founder Kenneth Parker said, “We hope to create a little community around the process of creating new application ideas.” The company hopes that every graduate student considering a thesis or dissertation in a closely related area will first submit a couple of ideas to the community along with hobbyists working on slightly unorthodox ideas who would be willing to share their quirky insights!

When pressed on the question of whether this is a “real” contest, Parker insisted that not every idea will be deemed a winner, but hopes there will be many.The Samraksch company has set aside 100 radars for potential contest winners in 2010.

The idea contest website is currently somewhat minimalistic, but the infrastructure is in place for creating more community services as the community develops. Users are encouraged to send their comments or request to WebMaster@samraksh.com as well as visit the 'Application Ideas' section of the Samraksh site.

Implementing Application Ideas

Originally the BumbleBee was packaged for use with the TelosB Mote platform, although users can wire the BumbleBee to almost any mote platform. User experience has shown that in order to exploit the rich information about motion more complex signal processing is sometimes required. Because the hardware support for integer multiplication on the TelosB is constrained, as it is not supported by default in TinyOS, many of these applications are better implemented on the IRIS or Imote2, both of which can support quite sophisticated integer Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms. To assist researchers in quickly developing applications that more fully exploit the potential of the BumbleBee the Samraksh Company has created interface boards so that BumbleBee’s can be connected out of the box to either the IRIS or Imote2. Winners may request interface boards for the platform of their choice.

For information on Crossbow's TelosB, Imote2 or IRIS Mote platforms, click here.
For information on the BumbleBee radar from the Samraksh Company, click here.

EcoWizard: Next Generation Energy Monitoring System

Crossbow Japan Ltd., a subsidiary of Crossbow Technology, Inc., along with strategic partner Sumitomo Precision Products Co., Ltd. announced today the availability of the EcoWizard Wireless Energy Monitoring System. EcoWizard enables users to analyze and monitor energy consumption in real-time using intuitive visualization tools allowing intelligent and efficient energy conservation.

Using leading-edge wireless sensor networking technology EcoWizard offers various energy measurement modes such as watt-hour by RS485, current transformer, and pulse inputs, while significantly reducing the installation costs associated with current solutions. The newly developed data viewer provides numerous options and increased functionality with simple graphical displays of past and present energy consumption (electricity, temperature, etc.).

Crossbow Japan, who has been supplying customized wireless energy solutions to the Japanese market for several years, has now expanded its offering to the public sector with the introduction of EcoWizard. This energy sensing and monitoring system is a cost-effective solution for users in many countries who are now faced with strict energy conservation policies and legislation. The need for a solution that quickly and easily facilitates energy savings is here. Crossbow’s expertise in sensing and wireless network solutions have shaped EcoWizard and launched an advanced system for smart and effortless energy monitoring and conservation.

System Features

• Complete Hardware Monitoring Solution - Sensors for electric power consumption, water, gas, temperature, humidity, light, etc. including pulse input wireless nodes enabling data acquisition from typical gas or water gauges.
• Multi-functional Software Package - The flash-based application is simple to operate, allowing intuitive data viewing. The graphical displays enable identification of total and individual local power consumption instantly. Data can be exported to CSV format, permitting easy report creation. The system offers real-time monitoring and data logging, with built-in alert capability when sensor data exceeds the predetermined threshold.
• Low-cost Installation - Compared to current wired systems, installation or layout changes take a significantly shorter time, leading to increased cost savings. Crossbow's XMesh enables a multi-hopping ad-hoc network between sensor nodes to relay data back to the base station. If the wireless connection is interrupted, the system will automatically re-route to ensure complete data transfer from all nodes to the base station. The sensor nodes are built on the NeoMote product from Sumitomo Precision Products who have deployed over 30,000 nodes for customized industrial sensing.

Pricing and Availability
EcoWizard is priced competitively. The system will be immediately available for purchase in November 2009. Sales inquiries may be directed to sales@xbow.com.

About Crossbow Japan
Established in 2005, Crosbow Japan Ltd. is a joint partnership of Crossbow Technology, Inc. San Jose and Sumitomo Precision Products Co., Ltd. located at the Sumitomo Precision Products’ complex in Amagasaki, Hyogo, Japan. Sumitomo Precision Products has been developing and manufacturing industrial grade wireless sensor networks under the license of Crossbow Technology, whose sales are conducted by Crossbow Japan, Ltd. Founded in 1995, Crossbow Technology, Inc. is the leading end-to-end solutions supplier of wireless sensor networks for diverse applications such as industrial automation, building monitoring, home automation, environmental control, structural monitoring and asset tracking.

The Business Value of Wireless Sensor Networks

Crossbow's advancements in the field of wireless sensor networks was recently featured in the current issue of M2M Magazine. The article deals with the business value of wireless sensor networks and how information derived from WSNs have a powerful effect on the way companies are making decisions in today's world. Here is an excerpt from the article:

A WSN consists of spatially distributed autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion, or pollutants at different locations. Each node in a sensor network is typically equipped with a radio transceiver or other wireless communications device, a small microcontroller, and an energy source, usually a battery. The size of a sensor node can vary from shoebox-size to the size of a grain of dust.

Even in this economy, companies are finding it easy to make the case for investing in sensor networking. Shana Farley, Marketing Manager, Crossbow Technologies, www.xbow.com, San Jose, Calif., concurs, saying, “Companies will see significant ROI on their WSN investments because the data they are collecting and analyzing is usually in the interest of saving money on consumption, resources, manpower, equipment, etc.”

Crossbow Technology has seen its solution used in typical scenarios such as predictive maintenance on machinery to more unique applications, such as monitoring endangered species, measuring the force of a running horse at the Kentucky Derby, and determining drought conditions in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The company’s eKo Pro Series was developed for environmental monitoring. At least four sensors can be attached to one eKo Node. Once customized to a client’s specific monitoring needs, the eKo Nodes form a wireless sensor network. A base radio with standard antenna serves as a collection point, receiving data from the deployed eKo Nodes. Field data is then transmitted to the plug-and-play eKo Gateway, a self-contained embedded Linux-based Web server device. The Gateway is pre-installed with eKoView, a secure Web interface, for viewing real-time data, running reports, and setting up alerts.

For the data to be useful, a reaction must be triggered. “It might be that a perimeter intrusion automatically turns on a camera or that a sprinkler is turned off when a moisture threshold is achieved in a crop field,” says Farley.

Wireless sensor networks are opening up a new world of monitoring, just as wireless phones did for the telecommunications industry. They are enabling companies to transform their businesses. “The main idea behind WSN is that information that was so difficult to collect in the past is so easy to get today,” says Farley. “You can collect data and make smarter decisions. You do not need wires or a person collecting data 24/7. The idea is to connect the physical world with the digital world through wireless sensor networks.”

To view the full article, visit the M2M site here or for more information on Crossbow's wireless sensor networking products, click here. M2M refers to machine-to-machine communications through remote monitoring, RFID, sensor networking, smart services, telematics, and telemetry.

Wireless Sensor Networks Under Fire

Researchers at the University of Corsica off the coast of France released information regarding development efforts they have been conducting dealing with using wireless sensor networks as a reliable solution for capturing the kinematics of a fire front spreading over a fuel bed. This work was financed by the Territorial Community of Corsica to provide reliable information in fire studies and support fire fighting strategies. To do this a wireless sensor network must be able to perform three sequential actions: 1) sensing thermal data in the open as the gas temperature; 2) detecting a fire i.e., the spatial position of a flame; and 3) tracking the fire spread during its spatial and temporal evolution.

Researchers at University of Corsica took on this challenge as the Mediterranean area is a region experiencing strong ecological variations due to global climate change. Wildland and forest fires represent an important cause of natural hazards and disasters for assets and human lives every year. Early detection and accurate tracking of the fire front propagation are key points in fire fighting strategies to minimize the damage and possible casualties. According to fire managers, the delay in detecting a fire ignition in the open is considered as one of the main factors increasing the response time of the first fire fighting actions. The resulting size of the fire to be managed as the final burning area strongly depends on this response time of the first fire fighting action.

One of the great and obvious challenges in performing fire front tracking with WSNs is to avoid the destruction of the Motes by the fire. This effort shows the ability and performance of a Wireless Sensor Network, when the Motes are protected with a thermal insulation dedicated to track a fire spreading across vegetative fuels on a field scale. The resulting experimental WSN was then used in series of wildfire experiments performed in the open in vegetation areas ranging in size from 50 to 1,000 m².

Using Crossbow's MICA motes and MTS420 GPS enabled sensors, researchers designed the Firesensorsock. The goal of this protection was to dampen the thermal impact from the fire on the Motes during the fire spread and contact. This shield also had to allow both a continuous emission of data and the temperature and the hygrometry inside the sock to vary on short time scales for locating the fire’s position. This innovative technique packaged the Mote and sensors to be thermally protected, preventing their destruction and extending their lifetime beyond the fire event. With this thermal insulation, the network could be reused for subsequent events. The key was to provide a protection able to preserve continuous flow of data from sensors embedded in a thermally destructive environment, namely a large scale natural fire. When sensors were covered with Firesensorsock the temperature and humidity measured during fire experiments was relative to what was measured inside the protection. The Firesensorsock consists of several layers of thermal insulation materials: a layer of simple Zetex fiber, a layer of ceramic wool and a final layer of aluminized Zetex fiber. These layers are fixed to one another with Kevlar thread. This level of protection allowed the sensor to support prolonged fire contact and also wireless communications without any disturbance. The sensing of any significant change of thermal data in the protection, due to the change of external thermal medium governed by the fire allowed for fire detection and tracking.

The sensors were triggered by the arrival of the fire and enabled the researchers to distinguish exactly the direction of the fire’s spread. The estimation of the rate of fire spread was possible because no node was destroyed by the fire in these experiments. It should be noticed that the computed rate of spread is not the same over the whole grid. This feature is consistent with real fire dynamics: indeed, according to infrared video imaging of the horizontal plot, the fire front propagates with a strong asymmetry. The sensing of the thermal data inside the sock which suddenly varies according to the presence of a strong thermal environment, i.e., a flame, leads to the opportunity to detect the presence of a fire. This point was very important for managing fire alerts in a specific areas because it determined the action of the first fire rescue team.

Because it has not been possible to follow the evolution of a fire with current systems available, this new solution was created -  the double system (sensor + Firesensorsock) provided an adapted tool for natural fire scenarios. Results illustrated that the temperature and humidity variations in the socks allowed users to relevantly determine the presence of a fire and becomes a measurement system for the rate of fire spread in the open. The different tests performed during these fire experiments illustrate the ability of the Firesensorsock system to track the fire's evolution!

Beep Beep - Mote Runner has arrived!

Mote Runner is a run-time environment for mote-class wireless sensor networks (WSN) designed by IBM’s Zürich Research Laboratory. It consists of an on-mote run-time platform based on a virtual machine introducing its own byte-code language, tools (e.g., converter, assembler) to develop mote applications in Java and C# including plug-in integration with Eclipse (for Java) and Visual Studio (for C#), a mote and network simulation environment to facilitate application development, and a Web-based deployment and monitoring framework.

The IBM Mote Runner run-time environment for WSNs, currently under development, tackles these challenges in a holistic manner. Thus, at its core, Mote Runner provides a high-level, language-friendly, resource-efficient and high-performance virtual machine that shields portable applications from hardware specifics.

Currently, IBM Mote Runner runs exclusively on Crossbow's IRIS Mote platform. The IRIS mote comprises of an Atmel ATmega1281 processor, an Atmel RF230 radio controller for 2.4 GHz communication in accordance with to IEEE 802.15.4, 128 KB of program flash memory, and 8 KB of RAM. Crossbow offers various sensor boards for the IRIS platform, of which Mote Runner currently supports the MTS420 partially, namely its dual-axis accelerometer and the relative humidity / temperature sensor.

The platform supports software development in C# and Java, albeit it only supports a subset with limited functionality. For instance, it supports no threads. Nevertheless, the software environment can be configured dynamically and be reconfigured in the field. And the virtual machine makes sure applications can be moved to motes with different hardware. The development team hitherto worked in stealth mode. But the platform will be available "in the near future", Kramp asserted.

The core requirements to reap the promised benefits of a fully business-process-integrated infrastructure for deploying large numbers of sensors and actuators are security and end-to-end optimizations for such systems. This requires a well-designed ecosystem comprising inexpensive devices, as well as simple and bullet-proof device programmability for easy integration and use by specialists of the application domain, not of the device technology.

The IBM Mote Runner system addresses these challenges with a high-performance, low-footprint, standards-based software middleware platform comprising a hardware-agnostic and language-independent virtual machine together with development and integration tooling to easily create and manage applications for open sensor and actuator networks.

For more details on MoteRunner, visit the project site here.

In a BLIP, pervasive IP has arrived.

by Martin Turon, Director of Wireless Software, Crossbow Technology, Inc.

IPv6 was invented in 1998, over ten years ago, yet less than 1% of devices use it.

Why is IPv6 important?

The first answer is "lots of addresses".

Think of your PC and the RAM memory inside. Until recently, 32-bit processors were pervasive, and you couldn't put more than 4GB (4 billion bytes) of memory in them because of the limits in 32-bit address spaces. Now most new computers are 64-bit, and they can address 18 quintillion bytes. The Internet will eventually be forced to "upgrade" its address space as well. Currently over 99% of devices use IPv4 which uses 32-bit IP addresses that are most commonly displayed as 4 bytes in decimal: 192.168.1.100. If you want to host a web server to the world, you typically claim a static IP and one of the 4 billion possibilities is yours forever. But the population of the world is 6.7 billion, so there aren't enough to go around! And what if everyone wants multiple devices that can be uniquely addressed to serve some critical information like a cluster of wireless sensor nodes?

IPv6 is clearly the answer. It provides a 128-bit address space allowing for over 240 undecillion uniquely addressable devices. To put that in perspective, the soon-to-be 6.8 billion people in the world will each be able to have over 300 million subnets with over 18 quintillion devices in each one. That is a total of over 50 octillion uniquely addressable devices per person!  Note: The unallocated address pools in IPv4 are anticipated to be exhausted in 2012.

Which leads to the second answer: "government mandates".

In May 2009, the Federal CIO Council of the US government issued an official roadmap for IPv6 adoption. The report provides a detailed overview of the technology, it's benefits, tips on the various services and how to transition. It also tasks other government agencies with developing concrete plans for how they will deploy IPv6 and requires quarterly review of their progress.

"We can't keep operating in an IPv4 world when we're talking about sensor networks, wireless communications and mobile networks. We need more IP addresses - globally unique IP addresses - and that's what IPv6 provides. We need a target network architecture that's scalable, secure and stable." - Pete Tseronis, Federal IPv6 Working Group Chair and Deputy Associate CIO of the Department of Energy

Since the release of this document, a flurry of articles regarding IPv6 adoption has been written up in the press.

---

How can big IPv6 addresses fit on tiny motes?

Almost in anticipation of the recent uptick in IPv6 adoption, back in March some researchers at UC Berkeley released an Open Source implementation of IPv6 running on TinyOS 2.x called BLIP (Berkeley Low-power Internet Protocol). The BLIP stack runs on mote-class hardware, specifically the TelosB and MicaZ. How did they manage to fit a protocol that uses 128-bit addresses onto a platform with only 4KB of RAM? Well, beyond the fact that Stephen Dawson-Haggerty and other contributors are really really smart, the IETF has had a number of efforts to define ways for IPv6 to run on lossy, low bandwidth links for a while. The IETF timeline follows:

RFC 1883,2460 - IPv6 Specification
RFC 1885,4443 - ICMPv6 Internet control message protocol
RFC 3142 - IPv6-to-IPv4 translation
RFC 3315,4580,4649,4704 - DHCPv6 Dynamic, automatic address assignment
RFC 4861 - Neighbor Discovery
RFC 4862 - Stateless Addr Autoconf
RFC 4944 - IPv6 over IEEE 802.15.4 (6LowPAN) 

Drafts: HYDRO routing (part of ROLL [routing over low-power, lossy links] effort)

Papers: IP is dead, long live IP,  Extended Internet Architecture PhD Thesis by Jonathan Hui

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Why is it cool?

IPv6 running on motes is cool because it really leverages what IPv6 was designed for -- ubiquitous computing.  Imagine a day when all of your appliances and consumer electronics will be able to talk to each other and provide you real time data on their energy usage, health, etc.  The ZigBee alliance has recently signed up to define a specification for an IPv6 stack in addition to an RF4CE stack for remote controls and consumer electronics.  Similar to how WiFi is integrated into all sorts of products today and just works, ZigBee may make it so cheap, tiny devices of the future can provide direct IPv6 connectivity over low-power, low-bandwidth radios.

---

What is the status of BLIP?  When will it be released?

BLIP is a work in progress.  It is currently fully supported on the TelosB platform and works on MICAz when compiled in a memory-constrained mode.  It is being folded into the TinyOS 2.x core with a slated release date of late August 2009.  The version in contrib/berkeley/blip is the correct one to use, however, as that one will actually build without manually adding radio stack modifications that are still being negotiated.  IRIS support is in the works as well with the initial port being done by European researchers Miklos Maroti and Lars Schor.  An improved release candidate of BLIP is slated to be pushed into contrib as early as next week.

---

Where can the BLIP source code be found?  How do you use it?

1) Download Xubuntos 2.1 VMware image (Howto)
2) Start the VM, login as:
  username: xubuntos
  password: tinyos
3) Start a Terminal
4) Prepare your VM to run BLIP as follows:

- Install IPv6 tools:

    sudo apt-get install netcat6

- Update tinyos-2.x trees from CVS:

    cd /opt
    # hit return for anonymous password
    cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos login
    cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos co -P tinyos-2.x
    cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tinyos co -P tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley

- Add a simple environment setup script

cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip
cat <<-EOF > setenv
export TOSROOT=/opt/tinyos-2.x
export TOSDIR=/opt/tinyos-2.x/tos
export LOWPAN_ROOT=$PWD
export TOSMAKE_PATH="$LOWPAN_ROOT/support/make"
EOF

- Build the driver

    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x/support/sdk/c/sf
    ./bootstrap
    ./configure
    make
    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip/support/sdk/c/blip
    make

- Patch motelist to handle mib520 for micaz discovery

cd ~
cat <<-EOF > motelist-linux.mib520.patch
--- motelist-linux	2006-12-12 10:23:01.000000000 -0800
+++ /usr/bin/motelist	2009-05-19 11:28:26.000000000 -0700
@@ -61,7 +61,10 @@ sub scan_sysfs {
 
 # Scan /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb for FTDI devices
 my @ftdidevs =
- grep { (\$_->{UsbVendor}||"") eq "0403" && (\$_->{UsbProduct}||"") eq "6001" }
+ grep { (\$_->{UsbVendor}||"") eq "0403" && 
+ (((\$_->{UsbProduct}||"") eq "6001") || 
+ ((\$_->{UsbProduct}||"") eq "6010")) 
+ }
 map { {
 SysPath => \$_,
 UsbVendor => snarf("\$_/idVendor",1),
EOF
cd /usr/bin
sudo patch -p0 < motelist-linux.mib520.patch

- Download Blip.micaz.patch

 - Patch the blip contrib sources to add automatic micaz support
and fix some build issues.

    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip
    patch -p0 < ~/blip.micaz.patch

5) Use your prepared VM to build and deploy BLIP:

- Enable the BLIP build environment:

    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip
    source setenv

- Build the UDPEcho app and base station for telosb and micaz:

    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip/apps/UDPEcho
    make telosb blip
    make micaz blip

    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip/apps/IPBaseStation
    make blip telosb
    make blip micaz

- Connect a TelosB via USB, and flash it with the base station code
(Install FTDI drivers if needed)
(Accept TelosB device when dialog appears)
(Right click USB device in lower right of VM and select connect)

    motelist # find ttyUSB port to use
    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip/apps/IPBaseStation
    make blip telosb install,64 bsl,/dev/ttyUSB0

- Connect a MicaZ via USB, and flash it with the remote node code
  (Install FTDI drivers if needed)
  (Accept MIB520 device when dialog appears)
  (Right click USB device in lower right of VM and select connect)

 	 
    motelist # find ttyUSB port to use
    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip/apps/UDPEcho
    make blip micaz install,1 mib520,/dev/ttyUSB0

6) Fire up Linux network driver to communicate with BLIP network:

- Start the ip-driver

    cd /opt/tinyos-2.x-contrib/berkeley/blip/support/sdk/c/blip
    sudo ./ip-driver /dev/ttyUSB0 telosb
    # password: tinyos	 
    # blip console commands:
    # blip:xubuntos-tinyos> help
    # blip:xubuntos-tinyos> log WARN
    # blip:xubuntos-tinyos> routes	

7) Use standard IPv6 tools to access the remote BLIP nodes:

    # Ping - base station and remote node
    ping6 2001:470:1f04:56d::64
    ping6 2001:470:1f04:56d::1

    # Access shell on remote node
    nc6 2001:470:1f04:56d::1

Note that BLIP ships with support for pinging a node with standard the ping6 tool, shelling into a node with netcat (the shell is a custom one, not ssh, type help to see available commands), and over-the-air reprogramming of nodes with a deluge-like interface.  BLIP is an exciting software development for the TinyOS community and users of TelosB, MICAz, and soon IRIS platforms.  We encourage you to try it and track its rapid development.

Martin Turon is Crossbow's Director of Wireless Software. Not only an expert in the field of wireless sensor networks, Martin has been instrumental in simplifying the WSN user experience with advancements in interface and server tools using his background in video game design, mobile phone software and operating systems. He is the current Chair of the ZigBee WSN group which is working to establish the standard for low-power routing while leading the Wireless software development team at Crossbow for future product enhancement. Martin obtained degrees from University of California, Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He has also studied Artificial Intelligence at University of California, Los Angeles and received a certificate in Math for Financial Engineering from Haas Business School. Martin is an avid lover of indie rock and performs with various ad-hoc musical projects.

Who said it ain't easy being green?

It seems that everywhere you turn you are being encouraged to go green. I hung out with a friend the other day and she was wearing a shirt that said 'Green is the new black.' The idea of being environmentally friendly has taken our world by storm. The Discovery channel brought us Planet Earth to give us a closer look at the different environments on our planet and how little by little we are altering and damaging it. Musicians from around the world held a 24 hour concert called Live Earth to capture an audience of millions and educate them on how to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. There are more and more hybrid cars on the road and most products you buy sport the small leaf logo advertising that they are environmentally conscious. President Obama has assembled a dream team of environmental experts and specialists to focus on clean energy and climate change issues.

If you look around, you realize that our society is truly looking to conserve resources and use the technology and knowledge we have to ensure we are saving the Earth. Crossbow's eKo platform is a truly breakthrough product that revolutionizes the way we use the resources in our environment. Imagine saving water but increasing your yield and the quality of your harvest? The eKo platform is a device that not only stems from the knowledge and genius of taking any environment and making it smart, but also from knowledge of our world and how it works. The ease with which the nodes can be deployed favors leaving an environment intact without having to run wires and cables disrupting the natural flow all around. The system has been deployed in various applications ranging from the standard vineyard/ orchard/ crop monitoring, to greenhouse gas monitoring in nurseries, to measuring the snow pack/run-off to determine what type of drought conditions regions can anticipate, to structural integrity, to water level measurements, to contamination of watersheds for environmental protection and much, much more.

As we continue to see this product deployed around the world, the consistent theme is that the platform is so easy to use and leaves users with a higher understanding of the their environment. By integrating the various sensors offered with the eKo platform, users can determine when disease conditions could occur. Instead of having to spray chemicals over their entire crop, growers can pinpoint which block, row or plant is in danger. By knowing and monitoring the environmental parameters that cause these conditions, not only can they be avoided but the use of unnatural elements and chemicals can be prevented preserving the natural state of the area. The ability to gather this data, analyze it and make decisions is all available in the eKoView web application that comes free with the eKo system. Bringing this type of data collection to the internet has transformed the notion of connecting with the world around you. It is truly an eKo-centric solution to the environmental issues we face today. It seems fitting that this type of technology would come from a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, city of St. Francis patron saint of the environment, and the heart of the Silicon Valley known for its high technology advancements.

Today as we recognize Earth Day it is important for people to embrace the new technologies looking to preserve and help conserve our planet's resources. A system like eKo provides users with a solar powered wireless device thus removing the need for battery replacement and disposal. It's sealed enclosure allows it to weather the elements ranging from snow covered mountains to the heat of the California sun. It's ability to interface many types of sensors make it a requisite part of any environmental monitoring deployment. eKo provides a platform that can be used to create smart water grids, detect air pollution, do conservation studies, perform chemical detection, ensure water quality, monitor urban environments, etc. The ability to capture data in these and many more applications wirelessly and easily will help us move towards a future Earth that is cared for and that can be healed with proper conservation of its resources. Thanks to the convergence of technology and environmental awareness in eKo - It is finally easy to be green!

For more information on the eKo system, contact Crossbow Technology at eko.sales@xbow.com or at 1-800-XBOW-TEC.

Testbed Testing

Wireless sensor network testbeds are critical for understanding and meeting the technical challenges of networks deployed in real world scenarios. Hardware and software testbeds have become the preferred basis for experimenting with embedded wireless sensor network applications. They provide a means for developing and evaluating sensor network technology in a controlled and instrumented environment. Experimentation with current hardware and software platforms, allows users to not only demonstrate applicability in real environments but also to validate prototypes. Compared to field deployments, the testbeds yield substantial efficiency in instrumenting potentially long-lived experiments, which is valuable in the debugging, validation, and integration phases of reliable wireless sensor networks. Universities and labs across the world have set up networks of hundreds of nodes using a Mote platform from Crossbow's suite of wireless sensor network devices choosing from simple platforms such as the TelosB to advanced devices like the Imote2.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo, SUNY and Georgia Institute of Technology have written an article focused on the the idea of taking wireless testbeds to the next level by incorporating multimedia and characterizing the challenges of wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs). The availability of low-cost hardware has enabled the development of WMSNs, i.e., networks of resource-constrained wireless devices that can retrieve multimedia content such as video and audio streams, still images, and scalar sensor data from the environment, along with standard wireless sensor networks. Research is being conducted on prototypes of multimedia sensors and their integration into testbeds for experimental evaluation of algorithms and protocols for WMSNs. Open research issues and future research directions, both at the device level and at the testbed level, are discussed and tested constantly.  Network testbeds allow the effectiveness of algorithms and protocols to be evaluated by providing a controlled environment for measuring network performance.

Every testbed utilizes a specific Mote platform that is optimized for that particular testbed's focus. The wireless sensor platform is chosen based on its available capabilities to allow for multimedia integration. A WMSN is a distributed wireless system that interacts with the physical environment by observing it through multiple media. Furthermore, it can perform online processing of the retrieved information and react to it by combining technologies from diverse disciplines such as wireless communications and networking, signal processing, computer vision, control, and robotics. Applications in the real world that would benefit from WMSNs were categorized into the categories of surveillance, traffic monitoring and enforcement, personal and health care, gaming, and several elements of environmental and industrial monitoring by researchers at SUNY, Buffalo and Georgia Tech. Testbeds allow the observation of the performance of the WMSN in a controlled environment. Hence, the effect of different types of inputs, physical operating conditions, and subjects for sensing can be studied, and the functioning of the devices in the testbed may be changed appropriately for accurate measurement. A few WMSNs developed are outlined below:

A visual sensor testbed was developed as part of the Meerkats project to measure the tradeoff between power efficiency and performance. Results revealed that there was significant energy consumption in keeping the camera active, and writing the image to a Flash memory followed by switching the camera off conserved energy. There was also a finite instantaneous increase in the energy consumption due to state transients. Researchers were also able to determine that the processing-intensive benchmark resulted in the highest current requirement, and transmission was shown to be only about 5% more energy-consuming than reception.

Expandable, vision-, and sensor-equipped wireless robots with MICA sensor motes for networking were designed in the Explorebots testbed architecture. The target localization experiments on the testbed, composed of these mobile robots, used on board multimedia sensors such as custom-designed velocity and distance sensors, motor movement control, an in-built magnetic two-axis compass, and sonic sensors. By processing the sound and light sensors outputs, the robots were guided towards the target source.

The Mobile Emulab network testbed provided a remotely accessible mobile wireless and sensor testbed. Robots carried motes and single-board computers through an indoor field of sensor-equipped motes. A remote user could position the robots, control all the computers and network interfaces, run arbitrary programs, and log data in a database. The path of robots, which was also equipped with Webcams, could be planned, and a vision-based system provided positioning information with an accuracy within 1 cm.

IrisNet (Internet-scale resource-intensive sensor network services) was an example software platform for a heterogeneous WMSN testbed. Video sensors and scalar sensors were spread throughout the environment and collected potentially useful data. IrisNet allowed users to perform Internet-like queries to video and scalar sensors that spread throughout the environment. The architecture of IrisNet was two-tiered: heterogeneous sensors implemented a common shared interface and were called sensing agents (SAs), while the data produced by sensors was stored in a distributed database that was implemented on organizing agents (OAs). Different sensing services were run simultaneously on the architecture. For example, a set of video sensors could provide a parking-space finder service, as well as a surveillance service.

In the design and implementation of SensEye, a multiple-tier network of heterogeneous wireless nodes and cameras, was created to test surveillance applications. Each tier comprised nodes equipped with similar cameras and processing ability, with increasing resolution and performance at each stage. The lowest tier consisted of low end devices, i.e., MICA2 Motes equipped with 900 MHz radios interfaced with scalar sensors, e.g., vibration sensors. The second tier was made up of motes equipped with low-fidelity Cyclops or CMUcam camera sensors. The third tier consisted of Stargate nodes equipped with Webcams that could capture higher fidelity images than tier 2 cameras. Tier 3 nodes also performed gateway functions, as they were endowed with a low-data-rate radio to communicate with motes in tiers 1–2.The aim was to efficiently undertake object detection, recognition and tracking by triggering a higher tie into the active state based on a need basis.

The WMSN-testbed at the Broadband Wireless Networking (BWN) Laboratory at Georgia Tech was based on commercial off-the-shelf advanced devices and had been built to demonstrate the efficiency of algorithms and protocols for multimedia communications through wireless sensor networks. The testbed was integrated with the scalar sensor network testbed, which was composed of a heterogeneous collection of Imote and MICAz motes from Crossbow. The testbed allowed the integration of heterogeneous devices in experimental testbeds and some succesful examples in developing APIs and system software for WMSNs.

These are just a few of the various wireless sensor network testbeds found worldwide. Crossbow's vast portfolio of wireless sensor platforms provides researchers and government/commercial users with the equipment they need to set up a lab for their wireless sensor course or to verify their specifications prior to real world deployment of their wireless sensor network. For information on how to set up your own WSN testbed or for details on Crossbow's wireless sensor network platforms, contact sales@xbow.com.

Robocopters and Motes

Crossbow's Motes were featured last month in an article on IEEE Spectrum. The application featured showcases how the Motes can be used when deploying mobile distributed communications networks.

The meter-long helicopters lined up under the fluorescent lab lights at the Berlin Technical University might look like overgrown toys, but they’ve got a little more under the hood. These are flying robots. They take off, land, and scout terrain autonomously and are being wired to deploy ad hoc communications sensor networks. And unlike any other robocopters, they can work together.

Researchers expect they’ll be used to distribute sensors that would help coordinate firefighting efforts or search flood zones, to track or find people and vehicles, or to shoot movies and cover sports events. Hoisting communications gear, they could one day help channel radio, Wi-Fi, or mobile phone traffic where infrastructure has been wiped out by an earthquake or other natural disaster.

Several groups around the world are working on miniaturized robot helicopters with advanced intelligence, notably in California, South Carolina, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the UK. But the Berlin team believes it is the first to write software and build systems that get multiple robot copters to collaborate. The project brings together a half-dozen institutions and companies from across Europe.

The copters’ control systems allow small craft to work together in lifting loads and scouting environments. Coordinated, the copters can lift weights that would normally require larger, exponentially more expensive machines. Estonian robotics engineer Konstantin Kondak, a professor at TU Berlin and one of the project’s leaders, says that having three or four copters in the air, each sharing the load while tethered by a rope to a single object, creates too many contrary forces for a set of human pilots to handle: “If you try to do this flying manually, it is not a stable system. You have to correct at all times; it’s too much.” But autonomous robots, making instant and coordinated adjustments, can do the job, he says.

Each robot must account for the location of the other helicopters, the forces coming from them, and the load on the rope, to jointly lift something. The helicopters’ coordination comes from a system that integrates four software modules for stabilizing the copter: one for navigation, one for exploration, one for obstacle avoidance, and one for processing orientation, horizon, and position.

The robocopters are good for much more than just lugging things around. Project manager Aníbal Ollero, a professor of engineering and automated systems at the University of Seville, in Spain, says that a flexible, easy-to-transport team of choppers makes for more efficient scouting because they automatically divide an area among themselves.

They’re also faster at another important task: deploying distributed communications networks by dropping off sets of tiny sensor nodes. These nodes combine a data processor, a radio, a battery, and—depending on what needs measuring—temperature, light, radiation, location, or chemical sensors. For the autocopter project, off-the-shelf nodes from wireless-sensor firms Crossbow Technology and Ambient Systems were optimized and linked by data-routing experts at universities in Stuttgart, Germany, and Twente, Netherlands. Just a few centimeters across and 7 millimeters thick, the individual nodes transmit over a range of just 25 meters, but as a network they pass radio messages to one another to get to a central unit (or hovering robocopter). Hundreds of thousands of these nodes could be distributed by robot to survey a forest fire or flood zone for rescue efforts, according to the researchers.

Final trials for the project get under way, far from the Berlin winter—this spring in southern Spain, Ollero says. If all goes well, helicopters will deploy a sensor network, track mobile objects and people, follow movement inside and outside of buildings, and capture it all with high-end airborne cameras.

For more information on Crossbow's Mote platforms, visit www.xbow.com.

Sensors Help Keep the Elderly Safe, and at Home

The New York Times published a front page story regarding how sensor technology is changing the face of home health care. The article discussed how increasingly, many older people who live alone are not truly alone. They are being watched by a flurry of new technologies designed to enable them to live independently and avoid expensive trips to the emergency room or nursing homes.

Crossbow's wireless sensor network technology has been used in a plethora of various research and project deployments on the capabilities of integrating wireless sensor network technology for elder care. Recently, researchers at Kalasalingam University in Nadu, India published their project details in the Jan/Feb Issue of Telemedicine and eHealth on using the IRIS and Imote2 platforms for home health monitoring. The issue they address is real as the increasing demand on public health care due to the aging population has become a major problem in developed countries. With the increasing number of elders relying on home care, better monitoring and analysis systems are crucial for maintaining and improving the quality of life for the elder patients. The concept of health monitoring is advanced by which health parameters are automatically monitored at home without disturbing daily activities. The proposed system is a network that supports various wearable sensors and contains on-board general computing capabilities for individual event detection, alerts, and communications with various medical informatics services. The purpose of their system is to provide extended monitoring for elderly patients under drug therapy after infarction, data collection in some particular cases, and remote consultation for elderly people.

With the advancement in ubiquitous computing techniques, researchers at Kalasalingam University proposed this new system for health monitoring at home to assess the elderly peoples’ health status. The integration of sensing, information, and communication technologies allowed elderly people to be constantly monitored. Moreover, constant monitoring would increase early detection of adverse conditions and diseases in elderly patients, potentially saving more lives. The proposed healthcare system was built upon a global medical information system made up of three main components: (1) Various sensors of different types to monitor physiological signals of elderly patients, their environments, and their activities with sensor nodes kept in the patients’ home; (2) Sensor nodes to transmit the signal from sensors to central servers through a base station; and (3) Central server for management of a knowledge database related to patients and responsible for broadcasting messages and alarms to healthcare professionals and caretakers. The system proposed a technique for monitoring elderly patient status at home and detecting critical situations for the purpose of alerting the doctors as well as the caretakers. It consists of a front end, the patient station, and the server.

The Patient Station, consists of an IRIS (XM2110CA) sensor node, Crossbow's newest 2.4GHz Mote platform for ultra low-power, long-range wireless sensor networking that receives information from the physiological sensors. The 3D camera kept at home was connected with the Imote2 platform (IPR2400CA) to visually monitor the elderly patient in the home environment in addition to the physiological signals. The Imote2 sensor node is aimed at applications involving data-rich computations, where there is a need for both high performance and high bandwidth, which require greater processing capability and low-power operation with a low duty cycle to achieve longer battery life. Sensor nodes are responsible for sensing as well as the first stage of sensory data processing in the data communication. The received signal from the patient station was transmitted to the central server for analysis. Researchers found that the benefits of the IRIS mote included excellent radio frequency range, substantially lower sleep current, and double the program memory of other Mote offerings. By Integrating a high-performance, low-power PXA271 Intel processor and an 802.15.4 radio with a built-in 2.4-GHz antenna, the Imote2 provided a platform for digital imaging applications.

Researchers placed sensor nodes equipped with flex sensors on the chest for ECG, and on the right hand for heart rate and acceleration measurement. The IRIS sensor node placed on the body was responsible for collecting physiological data and movement data from the sensors and transmitting it to the central servers through the aggregation node. The aggregation sensor nodes do not act merely as data collecting and forwarding points. Instead, they make decisions whether the information should be stored for future use, relayed as they are, or modified by applying computation and aggregation with other data.

The server, which is the core processing element, received the patient’s data from the patient station through the base station and stored the data into the patient database, while performing long-term trend analyses and prediction. It dispatches the critical events detected by sensor nodes to healthcare professionals. Moreover, it coordinates and controls the overall functionality of the system. This system can also give the alert to the doctors via a personal digital assistant (PDA) or cell phone. The sensor nodes could be programmed to awaken the node whenever an abnormal signal is detected and transmit the data to the server and then return to sleep mode. When an abnormality was detected in the sensor node, it would automatically turn on and transmit the signal to the central server and simultaneously alert the caretaker near the patient. The server, which is the core processing element, received the data regularly from the sensor nodes for analysis. The analysis was done using Crossbow's MoteView, and operates under TinyOS, which offers a built-in library for data acquisition, processing, analysis, and display.

The central servers were programmed with two algorithms. First was the threshold based algorithm, which attempted to identify the physiological parameter values that were potentially harmful or indicative of immediate danger to the patients. The algorithm detected the upper and lower threshold values from sensors output and alerted medical personnel and caretakers when the patient was not physically capable of requesting help. Second was the inactivity detection algorithm for detecting rapid movement or lack of movement of elder patients from accelerator output. The sensor node was programmed through the central server in such a way that if lack of movement/ action is detected, it awakened the Imote2 device connected to a 3-D camera fixed in that specific room to send the status of the elder patient to a central server. Upon detecting an anomalous event, both algorithms would sound an auditory alarm from the central server to emergency departments and alert the caretakers near the patients.

In this implementation, researchers at Kalasalingam University were able to connect two different systems, that is, the patient record database and the Web portal, through the use of well-defined Web services. Patient information was transmitted over SOAP, a secure and encrypted form of XML. The WSDL (Web Service Definition Language) for these Web services is published to a community of authorized users. This Web-service based approach for inter-system communication gives the system the flexibility to operate with third-party software in the future.The proposed system used a wireless sensor network technology within the residence in order to increase functionality, security, and quality of life.

As the Times put it, 'The future of these technologies, and the terabytes they gather, can involve unprecedented information about the whereabouts and well-being of older people.'