Mesh Network Sensor Portal
An ingress into all the pertinent information about the wireless mesh network sensor pages. Provides organization and links, as well as up to date status information.
Wireless Mesh Network Projects
Here I list a few basic projects we will pursue, their status, and further information.
Backhaul Node
This will be a Xbee board that interfaces with a Laptop for now. We're using a $300 netbook. It runs a client application written in C# for logging the data and will be expaneded to submit the data to a web service periodicially.
The station may be expanded at a later data to support all ruggedized Hobo sesnors so that the Hobo stations can be replaced with mesh capable stations that have all the same features. We may also consider using an AT91SAM7X (which has ethernet MAC support built in) with Wifi or a USB based 3G modem to decrease costs if it makes sense. This could then be integrated into the Hobo Replacement (below) to make a complete embedded system for this application.
Hobo Replacement
The AT91SAM7S has numerous ADCs, Timer Counters, and Digital IOs which can be used with arbitrary sensors. It should be fairly easy to integrate the already ruggedized sensors made for the Hobo platform, or others (i.e. sensors from Cambell Scientific) and either send the data OUT via Xbee to the base station, or integrate with the backhaul capabilities.
Temperature and Moisture Station
Discussions with the Borevitz lab members has yielded two simple products which can be rapidly developed and deployed. These will form the core of our current Wireless Mesh Network Sensor Development.
Basic Microcontroller & Zigbee Board
This board will essentially be a first version of a breakout board incorporating an AT91SAM7S based minimodule from propox ( $25 assuming the samples work OK) and the Xbee modules ($25) we are currently using. Note that the Xbee pro modules with extra range are a drop in replacement, except for requiring extra power.
Air & Ground Temperature and Moisture Sensor
The basic air & Ground sensor is detailed here.
Enclosure Information.
General Information
Links to documentation, and other information of interest.
Old Details (2/13/09)
My first look into options to implement this sensing solution. Covers Zigbee/802.15.4, solar power and battery solutions for the system, and some basic sensors.
We plan to build several types of micro sensors. The first one will be the Air station.
We decided to use Xbee modules from Digi. I uploaded all of the core documentation and highlighted some of the key points I believe will be important to development.
I made a presentation which details the range of sensor solutions we can build using this technology platform.
We will use the AT91SAM7S microcontroller (uC). It's cheap, well documented (as far as embedded processors go) and I've used it for several projects. I have links to information, software downloads, and the AT91 portal on my embedded infrastructure page.
Here are the first few mini projects we are undertaking to develop a proof of concept.
