A fantastic performance

The group of talented Bell ringers had a very strong performance today; the bells played so enthusiastically and powerfully for the last piece that made the tower shake as never seen - by us at least

We used optimised code for acquiring and detecting the vibration of the structure at a high point this time; the SunSpots and the professional kit were looking to the particular patterns observed last week's play.

The results are very encouraging; we will have to return the professional kit soon to their rightful owners, but we are left with some new ideas of how to combine strengths and improve coverage.

Let's hope we don't take long on analysing the collected data

:-D

It has been some eventful days

The experiment using different arrangements of accelerometers showed us the dynamism of the tower when under the influence of the bells.

We were able to use some SunSpots, a couple of Beasties, and a professional kit on the latest set up. There is plenty to be said about device attachment, sensibility, range and relevance of their shared context.

Scott McNealy and a demanding audience gave us some new ideas about possible aspects to explore and a couple of pats in the back :-D

we have to spend some time analysing even more the output of the sensors, and the technique we used for driving them. It is becoming clear that some platforms have features that seem more appropriate for tackling particular problems of the whole system

Preparation for the 2nd visit to the Tower

We are preparing for our second visit to the Queen's Tower for another peal ringing event that will take place on the 14th of November 2007. This time we hope to get useful data and we have also managed to hire specialised high sensitivity accelerometers so we can compare our results that we will gather on the day.

Our experiment will be also followed by a demonstration to Scott McNealy the next day, chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, so we have been working extra hard to try and get everything ready in time :)

Peal Ringing 24th October 2007

Oh what a day!

We were present at the peal ringing event at the Queen's Tower today that marked the Commemoration day here at Imperial College.

The atmosphere was incredible and the show spectacular (not to mention very loud).

Unfortunately our first attempt at recording the sway of the tower has been compromised due to our fear of securing the sensors too tight - and breaking them. We underestimated the force of the building and the sensors were loose which produced no usable results. But this was part of our purpose of the visit, to identify where we must deploy our sensors and which methods should be used.

On the bright side, the tower was swaying a lot - actually one of the team's member complained about being sea-sick! - and hopefully we will be able to produce solid results in our upcoming trials.

We took a few pictures of the event, which can be found in this flickr image set, and we have also managed to take a couple of videos.

Planning the first visit to the tower!

Tomorrow we will be visiting the tower for the first time. It also happens that there is a Peal ringing event to mark commemoration day for Imperial College.

We hope to take some initial measurements and identify deployment locations for our sensors.

Project Approved!!

We are very happy to announce that our proposal for DOORS (Gateways and Crossroads for Pervasive Environmental Monitoring) has been approved and the project is scheduled to commence on the 1st of October 2007!

Stay tuned for more information!

Here is a synopsis of the project.

Until recently most Wireless Sensor Network activity has assumed the existence of a dominant platform for Wireless Sensor Networks; this facilitates performance analysis activities, and simplifies deployment. However, it is our experience that heterogeneous multi-party deployments will become more prevalent therefore there is an increased need for systems to seamlessly integrate and interoperate. Large Infrastructure operators such as water and power utilities have experienced similar pattern over the years which makes them particularly cautious towards early adoption of new technologies. Sensing devices with a common interface will significantly increase the attraction of their mass use and deployment.

This demonstrator project aims to collect environmental and vibration data for evaluation the structural condition of the Queen’s Tower, the 1890’s landmark at South Kensington also known by the unique Alexandra Peal of bells.

We will be using a heterogeneous network made of a combination of Beasties (Tesserae/C), Sunspots (JVM/Java) and TMotes (TinyOS/NesC) devices to collect data and by doing so, we could tackle research issues related to pervasive interoperability such as:

· The analysis of network and system performance at different levels of cooperation

· Implementing an accurate time synchronization using a global time stamp using collegiate coordination and radio signals

In doing so we wish to identify critical services and components that could enable transparent coexistence between multiple heterogeneous and multi party deployments.