Sensor Testbed at James Reserve

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The deployment at James Reserve in Southern California was used by NEON and the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California as a testbed for embedded cyber infrastructure.

Various data acquisition platforms were evaluated and National Instruments' CompactRIO platform was selected as a candidate platform for the deployment. The deployment, a single autonomous weather tower that uploads data wirelessly onto an online database, has been operating successfully for nearly two years without any problems, providing evidence that SensorKit is a viable platform for embedded network sensing in research.

Background

The project began in early 2007 as part of a collaboration between NEON, James Reserve, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the Information Sciences Institute. The lessons learned from this deployment would later be used in La Selva in Costa Rica, home to nearly six square miles of protected tropical rainforest.

Deployment

For the setup, a tower was erected with the sensors for various weather information attached. Sensors include an all-in-one weather station, barometric pressure gauges, temperature and humidity sensors, directed and diffused active radiation sensors, among others. Data from the sensors are logged into the CompactRIO networked data collection device. Researchers could have real-time access to data as it is streamed wirelessly into the lab.

Deployment Configuration

Research

The SensorKit deployment at James Reserve examines the inter-operability of various sensors from a variety of manufacturers. With the test configuration, SensorKit has been successfully operational for nearly two years without problems, showing that SensorKit is a viable platform and an alternative to other commercially available embedded sensor network solutions.