Cytheric Master's >> Project

Botanical Garden Soil Sensor Network

[As of Jan 2008, the current version of this page is hosted by the iMPACT Lab.]

Our project is to establish a wireless sensor network at the Desert Botanical Garden to measure and report on soil conditions. Our goal is to collect salinity, moisture, and temperature readings from a few locations in the garden's Wildflower trail area. We then plan to store the sensor data in a database and make it available through graphical and textual presentations on the web.

The figure below shows the system architecture overlaid on a map of the study area. We plan to use just a few sensors that connect in a single hop to a base station gateway. Sensor data is stored in the garden's internal network. More details are available in the page links below the figure.

Development Roadmap

Below are the steps we are taking to develop the system.

Date Description
Nov 2006 - Jan 2007 Transmission Range Testing
Initial tests to learn if we can put a sensor mote anywhere in the study area and expect it to communicate directly with the base station.
Report (pdf)
Development notes
Feb-Apr 2007 Transmission Range Over Time
We extend basic transmission range testing for unattended operation to validate its performance over a period of days.
Report (pdf)
Development notes
May-Aug 2007 Add Soil Sensor to Mote
Acquire and calibrate soil sensors, then integrate them with the wireless mote module.
Development notes
Aug-Oct 2007 Forward Data to Network Storage
Send arbitrary data from the base station via Wifi to a storage site on the regular, wired network for safekeeping.
Development notes
Oct 2007 Sensor to Storage Integration
Test the complete pathway from data collection on a sensor mote, transmission to the base station, and then forwarding to regular network storage.
Winter 2007-08 Data Query and Display
Query the stored data for time based display of data.

Other Items

Learning TinyOS -- Notes on how how we set up TinyOS.
Historical Information -- Earlier ideas for the Master's project.
What's New
Pushed back development dates. (9 Aug 2007)
Added report on transmission range over time. (15 May)
Added development roadmap. (25 Jan 2007)
Reorganized for Desert Botanical Garden sensor network. Added transmission range testing. (21 Dec 2006)
Added Zigbee/WiFi Test Idea. (19 Jun)
Added RFID Test Idea. (9 Jun)
Researching existing localization technologies. Also adding to relevant work as I stumble across interesting reports. (6 Jun 2006)
Page last modified on 09 Jan 2008
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