Arduino Archive - Blog

Making Use of Low-Cost Air Quality Sensors

February 25, 2013 by DustinDemuth Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Citizen Science, Sensor Web Tagged With: Air Quality, Arduino, sensebox

Last year the sensemake.rs community started their AirQuality Monitoring and Sensing project on kickstarter. In september the Institute for GeoInformatics (IfGI) and 52°North held a workshop together with the designers of the platform to discuss further use and evolution of this project (see post). We had the great luck to receive 20 beta devices of the AirQuality Egg.

In the last months, we tried to convert the existing approach of “balcony-mounted” devices to a more autonomous solution. Instead of the nanode-rf we connected an RFBee Wireless device (based upon an ATMEGA 168) to the SensorShield. Like the nanode, the RFBee has an Arduino bootloader and can be programmed to fit your needs. The solution we propose is equipped with a GPS receiver to provide a location; a LiPo battery and a solarpanel provide power to the sensor-platform. By adding these components, the AirQuality Egg turns into a sophisticated Wireless Sensor Platform. Data are sent to gateways which forward it into a Sensor Observation Service (SOS).

AirQualitySenseBox Mesh Network

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RESTful GeoServices SenseBox – first beta released

January 7, 2013 by DustinDemuth Leave a Comment

Filed Under: GSoC, Sensor Web Tagged With: Arduino, Feature Service, GeoServices, sensebox

The first beta for the 52°North RESTful GeoServices SenseBox can be downloaded from the SVN. This beta is the continuation of the Google Summer of Code Project “GIS link to the Web of Things“. The GeoServices SenseBox implements the Feature Service of the OGC GeoServices REST API draft in version 0.0.4 on an “open-hardware” microcontroller plattform.

The platform is capable of reading sensors and storing their measurements, as well as providing a simple web server. A RESTful interface provides easy access to the measurements and delivers them as features. When a feature or layer is queried, the platform responds with a JSON object containing that feature or layer.

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GIS linked to WoT

August 27, 2012 by Sidhant Hasija Leave a Comment

Filed Under: GSoC, Sensor Web Tagged With: Arduino, esri, GeoServices REST API, Javascript, JSON, KML, sensebox, Sensor Web, web of things

With this blog post Iwould like to wrap up my Google Summer of Code work for 52°North. And since pictures say more than a thousand words, I prepared a video about my project “GIS link to the Web of Things“.

The video aims at introducing the Arduino SenseBox’s various features. The final version fulfills the pre-development objective of the “GIS link to the Web of Things”. “Things” refer to the Local Sensor Module of Arduino which is bridged to standard GIS software, such as Google Earth and the ESRI JavaScript API-based clients. In layman language, the SenseBox stores sensor measurements and other information locally and provides it to client software via the Geoservices REST API in JSON or KML encoding.

Features

The SenseBox features can be divided into three functional parts:more >

Linking GIS and WoT – The Video

July 11, 2012 by Sidhant Hasija Leave a Comment

Filed Under: GSoC Tagged With: ArcGIS, ArcGIS Explorer, Arduino, Google Earth, GPS, KML, video, web of things, wot

This blog post presents the progress of the Google Summer of Code Project GIS Link to the Web of Things. The purpose of this project is to enable a user to communicate with “things” in the WoT paradigm using available GIS and geobrowser software running on a computer or mobile platform. The methodology of communication uses regular HTTP GET requests to which the server hosted by the thing responds with a KML file. KML is an open XML standard for geographic visualisation and is well suited to carry geographic information. The file received is then displayed by a KML viewer, such as Google Earth or ArcGIS Explorer.

The video demonstrates how I programmed an Arduino Mega 2560 with web connectivity provided by an Arduino Ethernet Shield to respond to specifically structured requests from Google Earth. The response is a KML file and depends upon the type of GET request. The vision is to program such a server on thousands of digital devices and control them from a remote location using GIS software. The applications of such a scenario can be vast and promising.

GIS Link to the Web of Things Demo Video

To be more specific, the readings of multiple sensors attached to the Arduino platform are internally stored in a csv log file. Sensor readings alone are insufficient to provide a complete picture of the sensor state. Therefore date, time and geo-coordinates obtained from an on-board GPS unit are also stored with each sensor measurement. Upon request from the client, multiple Placemarks (one for each measurement) are embedded into KML file along with the timestamp information so that a user can easily filter out the information he/she wants while interacting with the timeline user interface.

The work above proves the concept, but still defines just a first step and a lot of innovation and improvement lies ahead. Moving on further, another possible way to maintain the link is through the GeoServices REST API and JSON exchange. In that way, a smooth exchange of data between ArcGIS GIS software and web enabled things can take place.