Sensor Area Networks (SANs)

[davidbrady]

Hi George,

Thanks!

Ned Bedinger (Nedb) started This Thread in which he introduces us to the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBone.

The idea of a sensor area network for our buses to help monitor and troubleshoot and as a fun toy resonates with me. In a previous life I built networking gear and the fun of connecting devices is still there.

The idea of a self-healing mesh network is just plain cool to me. A mesh is simple a fully connected grid of devices. You can imagine that in such a grid there are multiple paths from one point to any other. It's self-healing in the sense that if one path goes down an alternate path will restore service.

This is really nothing new. What's new is having this capability for personal use using low-power low-costs tiny-form-factor battery-powered digital radios. Well it turns out there's a standards body that sprung up around five years ago to work on this. It's the ZigBee Standard. These things are proliferating.

I'll continue to post about my findings- I'm learning with you. I simply think that motorhomes are a great way to use these devices. I think it can be done w/o complexity and with reliability. The idea of identifying a trouble area, slapping on a sensor and have output displayed on your android, iphone, ipad, or laptop is just too cool!

There's a good selection of books at Sparkfun > Books, and here's one that's I bought which is a good introduction to the topic: Building Wireless Sensor Networks: with ZigBee, XBee, Arduino, and Processing.