Across my desk (3)

Ultralow-voltage energy harvester powers wireless sensors from waste heat (Part 1 of 2)

Ultralow-voltage energy harvester powers wireless sensors from waste heat (Part 2 of 2)

… ultralow power wireless sensor nodes + energy harvesting technology = completely autonomous systems (powered by local ambient energy instead of batteries) …

… effective energy harvesting system requires a clever power-management scheme to convert the miniscule levels of free energy into a form usable by the wireless sensor system …

… microprocessors and analog sensors that consume only microwatts of power and small, low cost, low power RF transceivers are widely available - the missing link in enabling practical energy harvesting has been a power converter/power management block that can operate from one or more of the common sources of free energy…

… LTC3108: thermal energy harvesting (powering wireless sensors from a thermoelectric generator - TEG) … TEG is attached to the machinery, with a heat sink on the cool (ambient) side …

Sense Networks

… Macrosense - platform for analyzing large amounts of mobile location data in real-time to drive relevant recommendation, personalization and discovery …

Connected Home at CES

… GE Nucleus - energy display (under development, expected in the third quarter of 2011), connected to a smart meter it shows real time or over time energy consumption, Nucleus acts as a networking hub with ZigBee to communicate with a smart meter …

… ThinkEco - additional plug which fits over ordinary power plugs and is equipped with a Zigbee radio, USB stick in a PC is used to see the energy usage and control …

… LG featured its array of smart appliances (washer, dryer, refrigerator, robot vacuum cleaner) (proprietary smart technology, Wi-Fi connection) …

Big data and smart cities

… LIVE Singapore! project @ MIT SENSEable City Lab - exploring the so what? aspect of WoT , which is how to actually build something useful on top of all these sensors (see also ) …

… have seen most IoT/WoT projects applied to smart buildings and home automation, and other mobile interaction scenarios, but it is worthwhile to consider how this fits the bigger picture and think of more meaningful scenarios … LIVE Singapore! project aims to build a scalable platform for real-time data processing and sharing …

… cities are a goldmine of data, and who can derive most meaningful information out of this mess of data, will be happy …

…  see also: 2011 Watchlist: 6 themes to track, Lift11 talk: Vlad Trifa on the internet of things, Partnering to build smarter cities …