web of things Archive - Blog

The Parcel on the Web Challenge

March 20, 2013 by Ann Hitchcock Leave a Comment

Filed Under: 52°North, Sensor Web Tagged With: internet of things, sensor, tracing, tracking, web of things, Web-based

Have you ever ordered some nice piece of technology or other expensive things online and couldn’t wait until it reaches you? Have you been curious where the ordered parcel currently is? And once it reaches you, did you want to know what happened on it’s way to you? Was the parcel exposed to temperature changes, unhealthy for the contained goods? Has it even been fallen down?

Those kind of questions were the motivation behind a recent project we conducted together with con terra, Cassini, and (most importantly) a bunch of dedicated students from the Institute for Geoinformatics. Answering such questions in a larger scale could help in future e.g. insurance companies to better assess the current risk in insured goods travelling around the world. Thus, we have collaborated with the Provinzial insurance company in this project, who gave us valuable comments, requirements, and feedback.

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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.

Intelligent Farming by Applying the Web of Things Paradigm

May 30, 2012 by Sidhant Hasija 2 Comments

Filed Under: GSoC, Sensor Web Tagged With: AgriSenseBox, Google Summer of Code, GSoC, web of things

Agriculture in India boasts it is the single largest economic activity in the country, employing about 40% of the population and feeding just over a billion people. By 2030 the Indian population will account for 18% of the total world population. In order to provide good quality grains and cereals to their home, farmers need to employ intelligent and cost efficient farming practices which maximize production while minimizing the use of precious resources such as water and nutrients.

This can be achieved by deploying sensors and applying the principles of the Web of Things. The immediate goal is to provide growers with the ability to precisely monitor and control the use of water and nutrients to plants in these production settings, based upon daily plant requirements. An example of such a Web of Things application is AgriSenseBox – an instance of the 52°North SenseBox project.

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