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TCP/IP to the wireless sensor node.

During a presentation about wireless sensor networks to the WSN-SIG in 2005, David Culler of Arch Rock said, “Don’t bet against IP.” Recents events seems to confirm that prognostication for wireless sensor networks. Zensys, who makes chips for “other Z protocol” Z-wave, publicly announced their intention to integrate TCP/IP with their proprietary low power wireless protocol. Their “Z/IP” protocol will be licensed. In other news, the IETF effort, 6lowpan, to merge IPv6 and low power wireless sensor networks has received attention in that a company is already open-sourcing their 6lowpan implementation. (This comes on the heels of the “free MAC campaign” where 802.15.4 implementations are being open-sourced or given away.

Moteiv releases new miniSDIO module

Moteiv announced the release of their new Tmote Mini — a mote module in the form factor of a miniSDIO card. This departure from the standard OEM module is refreshing and should lower the barrier for integration with existing technology platforms…with miniSDIO interfaces. This release follows the Crossbow release of their newest OEM module, IRIS.

Grapes, Wildfires, Mountains: Wireless sensor networks take a hike (outdoors)

It seems experiences with real world wireless sensor network applications for the great outdoors was the theme for this past week. Peter Tsepeleff, CEO Grape Networks, gave a talk at the WSN-SIG about a depoyment in several California vineyards. Peter and company deploy agricultural sensor networks to help vinters improve yield and/or quality of the grapes. A neat niche application — developed in a new unit: acreage. They figure the way to address scalability is designing and deploying their system in units of 100 square acres. Regardless of the exact number of acres, this definition of strategy, constraint, and objective — all rolled into one — for deploying an outdoor wireless sensor network is great to see.

At the latest CITRIS event Nick Sitar, Professor & Director of the Earthquake Engineering Center at UC Berkeley, talked about his experiences in monitoring wildfires and mountains with wireless sensor networks. In the wildfire deployment, wireless order carisoprodol sensor nodes were staked on poles six feet above a burning grass fire — and survived the fire! Turns out grass fires only reach 80 C or so that high above the ground. Professor Sitar’s next goal is to outfit an entire moutain face in Yosemite with wireless sensors!

So what were the common grounds between the two? Range — or more accurately how the actual operating range in the field didn’t come close to the data sheet 100’s of meters outdoor. Maybe a revisit is in order of the great work presented at Sensys 2003 about the gray areas of communication performance in wireless sensor networks as a function of distance. What happens to the range with different semi-permiable matter between two nodes, like smoke, vines, etc?

MPM: reading a blog written by things in your house

In late 2005 I figured out the next stage for my research would be “what if your house could blog” that might actually make use of an old project, tinyML, an XML schema for wireless sensor networks. The technology I work with (i.e. wireless sensor networks) provides much richer information that currently available (e.g. your monthly electricity bill). The missing piece is frequent, relevant delivery and access to that information, rather than some standalone GUI or even a slick but infrequent online bill analysis software. RSS and standard feed readers seem to fit the bill; I already read what Guy Kawasaki has to say about startups, why not read what my house has to say? So machine-to-machine (M2M) now transforms into machine-to-person-to-machine (MPM).

All of this reminded me of Neil Gershenfeld’s When Things Start to Think. So I started keeping an eye out for similar ideas. Recently, WSNblog noted that some IBM master inventor discussed the idea of “blogjects” — things that blog about their life. A little more digging and you’ll find Julian Bleecker’s Why Things Matter manifesto that uses the neologism “blogject”. An interesting commentary that discusses the coming age of machines, as well as “trans-species” interaction citing a scenario where pigeons will be our new environmental sensors, blogging about air conditions as the fly around.

But, getting back to reality…the potential for your house to become an educational resource for you presents a nice opportunity to tackle that elephant in the room — educating people about energy consumption in their house. So maybe the biggest influence for a home owner’s isn’t the government rebate for that new high-efficiency air conditioner — maybe it’s simply communication …. between home and human.

ACEEE Summer Study and Zero Energy Homes

Last week I attended the ACEEE Summer Study program. Attending an event with such a diverse attendance list is always interesting, proof of which being talks on performance contracting for homes (read: micro-ESCO’s for those in the energy world, and still not a scalable business model) and why Louisiana should be reconstructed with pre-fabricated modular homes with air conditioning to reduce energy consumption (although apparantely most pre-Katrina homes were sans A/C by preference). A good portion of the event involved zero energy homes — the concept of a energy-sustainable home using on-site renewable energy, mainly from photovoltaic panels. And while current zero energy homes (of which there hundreds in California) aren’t quite *zero* energy, drastic order-of-magnitude reductions in electricity bills are common among home owner’s. The prevailing focus on zero peak-energy communities was highlighted in a discussion section led by Lew Pratsch from DOE and Jeff Christian from ORNL — a system-level acknowledgement for residential peak energy management that I was suprised and delighted to see. So what was missing? User information. By and large, the excellent efforts to design high-performance energy efficient homes still leave the home owner out of the information loop.

Residential energy management research featured on ABC7 news

The residential energy management research here at UC Berkeley was recently featured on ABC 7 news. The segment (available here) features the REM system. The segment makes an important point that energy convservation at the residential level is about “picking up pennies” — system-level conservation relies on many houses conserving “incremental” amounts of energy, as described by Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute. The surge in interest about energy-related technologies is highlighted by the July heat wave that affected most of the United States, resulting in numerous power outages and deaths across the country — interest that is also catching on in the venture capital world as “energy efficiency looks sexier”!

Andy Wheeler discusses Zigbee, Ember, and debugging at WSN-SIG

Andy Wheeler, CTO of Ember, discussed the latest Zigbee developments at the latest WSN-SIG meeting. According to Andy, the upcoming Zigbee standard release will do away with cluster-tree topology and support a mesh-like topology of router and end nodes. However, Zigbee router nodes will still not support duty-cycling, rather they must be “always on”. Bad news if you’re hoping to have that battery-powered network any time soon. As well, Zigbee is working to further define, well, what Zigbee means (at least for product purposes). There is Zigbee compliant (of which several tests define), Zigbee compatible (of which several types of compatibilities depend on multiple application profiles), and even Zigbee certified (of which depends on the type of compatibility and compliance but may also include other “custom” features) — oh, all of which have their own logos. If only the simplicity was inversely proportional to the length of that last sentence. So, how is Ember staying ahead of the game? Andy cites Ember’s development tools as a key differentiator. And I must say, the Ember Insight debugging/dev tools look impressive, spanning from chip to application. That’s a good thing for developer’s working on Zigbee ceritifi…complian….compatib….well, making Zigbee products.

On a side note, the WSN-SIG is expanding, geographically (Boston, Southern California) and in website content. If you would like to contribute, please contact Giovanni Tripodi at (wsnsig at melanetworks.com).

Intel Digital Home group does residential energy management

I had the opportunity to visit the Intel Digital Home group and see first hand their efforts in residential energy management and home automation. They have integrated wireless digital eletrical meters with Windows Media Center on an Intel platform, resulting in a visually impressive and technically interesting advanced HVAC automation prototype. For the last year or so, they have tested pre-cooling in a Folsom, CA house with success. The system also enables critical peak period load shedding, including HVAC and pool pump. Such a practical solution from an “entertainment” centric group! I think this great example of the availability and opportunity with readily available technologies to tap the large resource of residential “negawatts.”

Thoughts from the National Town Meeting and Symposium on Demand Response

From theory at MobiSys to practicality at the National Town Meeting on Demand Response, June has panned out to a very full month of meetings. I spent Monday understanding the practical side of Demand Response at the National Town Meeting and Symposium on Demand Response. This event proved to be a gathering of who’s who in the DR playground, with many opinions bouncing around during the panel discussions. Standards, or the lack thereof, seemed to be the theme in many discussions throughout the day. Spanning from hardware performance requirements to XML data structures for DR events, it was apparent that much of today’s activity lacks coherent guidelines on actually how to implement DR in a scalable and extensible manner. And while standards can facilitate adoption of technology, the overwhelming concensus that the process of developing these needed standards as a commercial endeavour is troubling — should the next generation of electrical grid reliabilty be left to such market forces — I sure don’t want a “VHS” system. With that said, the positive attitude of all the people I was fortunate to meet during the event set the tone for progress. And for a researcher at UC Berkeley, a very educational experience in the “real world”!

MobiSys 2006 discusses Wearables, Mesh, Cellphones, and Wireless Sensor Networks

Three days at MobiSys’06 have been a whirlwind through wearable computing, mesh technology (mostly in WiFi), cellphones, and wireless sensor networks. The two keynote speakers captured much of what MobiSys is about. Dan Siewiorek from Carnegie Mellon University discussed the history of wearable computing using many design iterations he has been through over the years. Dan showed design patterns that have emerged from the different wearable applications, such as user impatience with rebooting and data access while standing as opposed to sitting. A key obersation was too much virtualization can adversely reduce awareness of what’s really going on around the user. Erik Ekudden, VP of Technology for Ericsson, provided an interesting overview of three “waves” of communication that frame the mobile space. Erik suggests the mobile industry is entering the third wave of communication that ecompasses the “Internet of things.” All told, the evolution of wearables and mobiles provides a rich set of lessons for the emerging WSN space, especially in the consumer/residential fields.