Subscribe
This was the last week of Christopher Tomkins-Tinch’s current co-op rotation here at ORNL. Chris played a vital role in the design and development of Sensorpedia (and several other related projects). We can’t thank him enough for his hard work and endless supply of great ideas. We wish him the best this semester at Rochester Institute of Technology and hope to have him back again this summer.
Are you interested in an internship at ORNL?
We have selected ten (10) collaborators for the initial Sensorpedia BETA test. These collaborators constitute what we believe is a good cross-section of interests: academic and scientific research, DOD security, public safety and public health, enterprise and international sensor standards development, and even bee husbandry. Their sensors and observations also cover a range of phenomena from weather and environmental effects to space-borne and airborne remotely sensed imagery.
We are contacting these collaborators individually to discuss interface provisions for their sensors and to ensure that there are no classification or privacy issues with sharing their sensor data.
Over the next few weeks we will be using this blog to highlight each of our collaborators and to describe the process each has taken to interface his or her sensor(s) to Sensorpedia.
As always, if you have comments, suggestions, or feedback we’d love to hear from you!
We have previously detailed how to read in an LM34 temperature sensor, an ultrasonic rangefinder, and a light color sensor. This guide will show how to interface with a TSL230 light-to-frequency converter.
We have previously documented how to interface two sensors: an LM34 temperature and a Maxbotix-EZ distance with Sensorpedia. For this guide we will be switching things up a bit. Instead of using a Make Controller to communicate with sensors, we will be using another popular DIY/tinkerer microcontroller: the Arduino (duemilanove). Instead of pushing our data to Twitter, we will now be generating an Atom feed and serving it ourselves.
The color sensor we will be working with is the ADJD-S371. First, a note on voltage requirements. The color sensor is designed to operate at 3.3VDC with a maximum operating voltage of 3.6VDC. We’ll want to be sure to use the 3.3[V] supply from the Arduino board. Proper calibration of the ADJD-S371 will be left as an exercise for the reader (a half ping-pong works reasonably well as an integrator) .
The wires were connected as follows:
Previously, we detailed how to read in an LM34 temperature sensor. This guide will show how to interface a Maxbotix-EZ ultrasonic rangefinder with Sensorpedia.
The Maxbotix-EZ measures the distance between its detector and the nearest solid object. It emits a sound at an inaudible 42kHz frequency and listens for an echo wave to be reflected. Based on the time between these events it is able to calculate the distance to a reflecting object.
The Maxbotix sensor is easy to interface. As with the LM34, we only need three wires: Vcc, ground, and analog output. Here are the pins we will use:
We are expecting the launch of our BETA application soon and are looking to identify a limited set of initial BETA testers. The first BETA invitations will focus on “user contributors” who have sensors and sensor data to share. The goal of the initial BETA testing effort is to identify and integrate a variety of sensor types with Sensorpedia to ensure that the core application functionality is working properly before opening a broader BETA test.
If you have sensor data that you would like share and are interested in working with Sensorpedia developers during the initial BETA testing period, please email Bryan Gorman. Please include your name, organization (if applicable), the type(s) of sensor data you would like to publish, and any additional comments about your interest in Sensorpedia. After reviewing all requests, we will send approved testers instructions for accessing the BETA application.
In addition to testers, we will be canvassing the sensor standards community for collaborators and contributors, such as you, who may have an interest in developing interfaces for IEEE and OGC sensor standards, as well as enterprise (e.g., CCSI and EDXL), legacy, and even proprietary standards. We intend to make this a collaborative and open effort with value for all those who have sensor information sharing requirements.
As always, if you have comments, suggestions, or feedback we’d love to hear from you. You can follow the Sensorpedia community through one of the following:
Thanks,
The Sensorpedia Development Team
