Congratulations to Tom O’Reilly (MBARI), the editor of the PUCK standard! Today, the OGC membership has voted to adopt the OGC PUCK Protocol Standard.

PUCK enables the standardized retrieval of metadata about a sensor instrument. It standardizes commands to retrieve this metadata directly from the instrument. Therefore, the simple PUCK protocol is added to a sensor instrument’s native protocol. PUCK has already been implemented by several sensor manufacturers.

At 52°North, we were able to contribute the Sensor Interface Descriptor (SID) concept to the PUCK specification. The SID specification [1] is based on SensorML and allows the declarative description of the protocol of a sensor instrument. By providing a well-defined model for such descriptions, SID can replace proprietary driver software needed to run a sensor instrument. In combination with PUCK, SIDs can be directly stored on the instrument. Having this self-description of an instrument’s protocol stored on and retrievable from the instrument itself enables sensor plug & play.

For more information on this please see this blog post as well as this one. Also, the publications [2] and [3] give further information.

 

[1] Bröring, A. & S. Below (2010): Sensor Interface Descriptors. OGC Discussion Paper. Open Geospatial Consortium. OGC 10-134. [final] [slides]

[2] Joaquin del Rio, Daniel Mihai Toma, Thomas C. O’Reilly, Arne Bröring, Antoni Manuel, Kent L. Headley & Duane Edgington (2011): Interoperable Data Management and Instrument Control Experiences at OBSEA. IEEE Oceans 2011. 6.-9. June 2011. Santander, Spain. pp. 1-4. [final]

[3] Daniel Mihai Toma, Tom O’Reilly, Joaquin del Rio, Kent Headley, Antoni Manuel & Arne Bröring, Duane Edgington (2011): Smart Sensors for Interoperable Smart Ocean Environment. IEEE Oceans 2011. 6.-9. June 2011. Santander, Spain. pp. 1-4. [final]