SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies

In a move toward controlling datacenter energy consumption, Microsoft is deploying sensors that will trace work distribution to help plot for optimization

To better control energy consumption in its datacenters, Microsoft has deployed 2,000 internally built temperature and humidity sensors in several of its facilities.

The sensors use ZigBee wireless technology to transmit the data to databases that analyze the information. Data-center administrators can look at a graphical image of the datacenter that is color-coded based on temperature and at a glance see areas that are getting hot.

Ultimately, Microsoft would like to be able to distribute computational load in the datacenters based on the temperature of servers, and it is beginning to work on such a system, said Jie Liu, a Microsoft researcher working on the deployment. He showed off the devices and a view of the database at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday.

Source: InfoWorld

Carspotting: Part of a mesh network, this sensor node embedded in a San Francisco street can detect when a car parks in the spot beside it. It also monitors passing traffic. See following image credit to Streetline.

This fall, San Francisco will implement the largest mesh network for monitoring parking to date. Around 6,000 wireless sensors from the San Francisco company Streetline will be fixed alongside as many parking spots, monitoring both parking availability and the volume and speed of passing traffic. The city hopes that displaying information from the sensors on Web maps, smart phones, and signs on the street will reduce the traffic and pollution caused by circling cars.

A mesh network differs from a typical wireless network in that there’s no central transmitter: every node can transmit to every other node. Mesh networks have generally been used for environmental monitoring, or to grant wireless devices Internet access.

When sensor networks have been deployed roadside, it’s usually been to monitor traffic, not parking. In urban areas, traffic-monitoring systems have been used for congestion pricing: during business hours in downtown London, for instance, the license plates of cars are photographed, and the drivers are sent a bill. Some parking garages also have signs that tell drivers where the available spaces are, but such systems generally rely on manual car counting, not sensors.

In San Francisco, however, clusters of plastic-encased, networked sensors are embedded in the surface of the street. The main sensor in the cluster, which is commonly used to detect cars, is a magnetic one, says Jim Reich, the vice president of engineering at Streetline. Magnetic sensors detect when a large metal object locally disrupts Earth’s magnetic field. One challenge with magnetic sensors is avoiding false positives. “We rely on the magnetometer the most, but in order to fix errors, we use other types of sensors [that] give you much higher reliability,” says Reich. He won’t elaborate on the supporting sensors, but he says that the Streetline system has a high ninety percent accuracy in recognizing parked cars. (more…)

Smart home, or intelligent homes, technology is no longer just for the technophile hobbyist. It’s right on the cusp of becoming mainstream.

Of course, some of this stuff has been around since the 1970s in the form of X10, the industry standard for TV remote controls.

But new wireless standards (like Insteon, ZigBee, and Z-Wave) and cheaper chipsets have enabled two-way, low-cost communication between devices.

Source: Gulf News

BAE Systems, under an agreement with Micromem Applied Sensor Technologies Inc., will co-produce nano-sensor technology that will leverage both companies’ expertise for use in military, commercial, and homeland security applications.

As a foundry and business development partner with Micromem Applied Sensor Technologies, BAE Systems’ Microelectronics Center in Nashua, NH, will further develop Micromem designs and manufacturability for advanced magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) products. The goal is to bring the designs to maturity and begin production of gallium arsenide-based nano-sensors that offer features such as very high-speed and low-power capability, radiation-hardness, and overall robustness.

“Foundry facilities are very expensive, and development work on new products is highly capital-intensive,” said Gino Manzo, foundry director at BAE Systems in Nashua. “This arrangement will advance technology and design maturity for products developed by Micromem by giving both companies the means to produce devices for a wide range of commercial and military uses.”

Micromem Applied Sensor Technologies’ patented submicron nano-sensor, based on MRAM technology, also can be designed for use in highly accurate magnetometers—instruments used to measure the strength and/or direction of magnetic fields—and for threat-detection solutions for defense and homeland security.

About BAE Systems
BAE Systems is the premier global defense and aerospace company delivering a full range of products and services for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced electronics, information technology solutions and customer support services. With 97,500 employees worldwide, BAE Systems’ sales exceeded £15.7 billion (US $31.4 billion) in 2007.

Source: Sensors

ABB has developed a top-of-the-range wireless motion detector that does not consume mains electricity and is powered – for a remarkable 5-7 years - by just three standard 1.5 volt alkaline batteries.

Launched to widespread industry acclaim in Germany in 2007, the new Busch-Watchdog wireless motion detector breaks new ground in energy-efficient and cost-effective building surveillance technology.

Powered by just three inexpensive AAA alkaline batteries (the sort commonly used in portable electronic devices like digital cameras, MP3-players and remote TV controls), the new motion detector uses an innovative design to eliminate the need for costly wiring and reduce power consumption to uniquely low levels.

Battery lifespan can be extended even more - to 10 years - by using lithium iron disulfide cells instead of standard alkaline batteries.

Industry benchmark

ABB developed the product in collaboration with Busch-Jaeger and MEMS Inc, a Swiss-based company founded by former ABB engineers. Busch-Jaeger is an ABB company and a world-leading brand in low voltage building installation products and solutions. Its range of Busch-Watchdog motion detectors is widely considered the benchmark in detection capability, reliability and esthetic appeal.

Equipped with an exceptionally powerful lens and broad range of functionality, the Busch-Watchdog detects any moving object within an unparalleled 16 meters of the detector. Unrestricted by power connections, the new wireless variant brings complete freedom of placement to users. It can be attached to a building, garage, perimeter wall, porch or ceiling.

The innovation is based on low power-consuming components and embedded system technologies in three interconnected modules compromising sensors, radio communications and microcontrollers.

The microcontroller supports several power-down modes that allow the detector to go into various states of ‘sleep’ during daylight, gradually waking up as the light fades. Full recovery is instantaneous (a few microseconds) if a moving object is detected.

Busch-Watchdog wireless motion detector is one of several wireless products in the Busch-Jaeger portfolio.

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Alanco Technologies has announced that its subsidiary Alanco/TSI Prism, a provider of real-time RFID tracking technologies, has won a $3.3 million contract to create an RFID-based inmate tracking system for the Washington D.C. Department of Corrections.

The Alanco/TSI Prism system, which will combine Alanco’s TSI Prism RFID system with Wi-Fi compatible RTLS technology from AeroScout, will be installed at a Washington DC jail complex housing over 2,000 prisoners and staffed by 450 DOC employees. The system is intended to increase safety and improve inmate accountability.

Source: RFID News

The New Zealand government has pledged $23.3 million (New Zealand dollars) to create a system of mandatory RFID-tagging for all of the country’s farm-raised cattle and deer by 2011. The funding for the biosecurity project will cover its set-up costs, with a new tax likely to be levied to support operational costs.

Under the proposed National Animal Identification and Tracing project, each farm animal will be assigned a unique code that will be stored in a database alongside details such as the age, sex and breed of the animal, its owner, its herd of origin and the identification number of the property on which it is located. The project would also create FarmsOnLine, an online database that will store up-to-date electronic maps of farms along with their contact and stock details.

The system will assist in tracking animals in the event of disease outbreak, but could also be used by farmers to improve farm management, and by retailers to provide consumers with more information about meat’s origin.

The mandatory nature of the system will require new legislation to put it into permanent effect, but officials believe they can get the system up and running before such legislation is passed. Trials of RFID tags are under way at a dozen farms in New Zealand.

Source: Link

To build the most robust and secure wireless devices, suppliers build according to an approved standard. Wireless Internet communications, for example, all comply to the familiar IEEE 802.11 (b, g, and n) standards. Currently, both the HART Communication Foundation (HCF, Austin, TX) and ISA (Research Triangle Park, NC) are involved in putting forth an industrial wireless standard at the basic “bits and bytes” level (i.e., sensors) (see sidebar, “Which wireless?”). HCF released its standard, WirelessHART (HART generation 7), in September 2007. To date, ISA is continuing to develop a draft of its standard, officially noted as ISA 100.11a (often referred to as SP 100).

Both organizations aim for global acceptance, including by the pharmaceutical industry, which thanks to the move toward quality by design, is preparing for increased in-process monitoring. Both HCF and ISA agree that a wireless standard is the right step to advance process automation and communication. Both are aware they are competing to achieve the same objective. And of course both would argue that their standard is the most beneficial, robust, and secure. Read more on this article.

Cephalon Inc. has selected OAT’s RFID solution for serialized shipment container tracking, extending its SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure for RFID reach to operational processes and workflows. Cephalon is an international biopharmaceutical company that has been testing RFID technology for the past three years to improve supply chain efficiency and visibility. RFID serialized container tracking will support efforts to combat counterfeiting as well as improve process execution.

OAT’s RFID solution was integrated with SAP Solution for RFID to enable serialized shipping container tracking and to set the foundation for tracking drug pedigrees. Cephalon has architected SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure as an extension of its core ERP processes for serialized product and containers to enrich standard processes around deliveries, advanced shipping notices, pick/pack/ship and handling.

This new project extends this architecture further and leverages the combined OAT and SAP solution to enable distribution center-based processes and workflows to track serialized shipping containers. OAT commissions and associates the RFID tags with specific containers and records the containers’ contents and attributes; SAP solutions provide process oversight, number range management and OAT provides operational workflow management. After processing, OAT reports back the shipping container’s EPC number and the details of its contents, enabling SAP business processes such as pharmaceutical advance shipping notices to be carried out automatically.
Source: RFID News