[LINK] Intelligent sensors watch for impending floods

Geoff Ramadan gramadan at umd.com.au
Wed Oct 25 18:18:45 AEST 2006


Grid computing/Mesh Networking is the next big thing for our industry and us.

There are two important technologies related to this.

IEEE802.15.4
Which defines the air-interface and radio technology. This is much better than 
WiFi and Bluetooth as it is designed for very low power operation... which is 
exactly what you want for wireless sensors.

ZIGBEE (www.zigbee.org)
Is a mesh networking and control protocol.

This will ensure interoperability between Zigbee compliant devices.

I can see the next wave of privacy debates and issues around this.

You can have your Zigbee compliant rubbish bin (or water meter, parking meters 
etc), talk to you neighbors rubbish bin, and it will talk to the next, and so 
one until it reaches the council.

Regards

Geoffrey Ramadan, B.E.(Elec)
Chairman, Automatic Data Capture Australia (www.adca.com.au)
and
Managing Director, Unique Micro Design (www.umd.com.au)



Howard Lowndes wrote:
> http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10360
> 
> A "grid" of smart river sensors that monitor water depth and flow and 
> can predict impending flooding is to be installed in a UK river.
> 
> By producing more accurate and concise data than existing monitoring 
> systems, the network could give locals and government decision-makers 
> earlier warning of rising trouble.
> 
> Two of thirteen sensor nodes have so far been installed along a 
> kilometre stretch of the River Ribble, in the Yorkshire Dales, and the 
> rest of the network should be in place by the end of the year. "The 
> river floods regularly after Christmas every year," says Danny Hughes, a 
> computer and environmental scientist at Lancaster University, UK, who is 
> working on the project.
> 
> The final network will contain three kinds of sensor node. Eleven will 
> measure pressure from below the waterline in order to determine depth. 
> The other two will monitor the speed of river flow – one using 
> ultrasound underwater, and the other using webcams to track objects and 
> ripples moving along the surface, from the riverbank.
> [...]
> 



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