Waspmote - The sensor device for developers

Friday, 11 December 2009 17:13

Waspmote, presented as "The sensor device for developers" by Libelium a Spanish company specialized in sensors and wireless modules, is an electronics platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. An Waspmote board consists of an Atmel Microcontroller ATmega1281 with complementary components to facilitate programming; it is a ZigBee-enabled wireless mote-sensor platform with open source code and a GNU/Linux-compatible IDE; Waspmote-IDE with a GUI like Arduino IDE. The entire development environment is opensource software and the Waspmote development kit includes demo boards for lot of sensors, including GAS, position and others generic hardware that can be customized to fit any need with lots of communication options (GPRS, 802.15.4, ZigBee and long-range radio). In addition, Libelium offers three add-on sensor boards:

Gases: to detects CO, CO2, CH4, SH2, NH3, and more, designed for pollution, farm/hatchery emissions, chemical process control, and forest fire control applications;
Events: to detects weight, luminosity, tilt, vibration, PIR, liquid level, and more, designed for security, emergency response, and logistics control;
Protoyping: for general purpose board for testing out new sensors, includes ADC, pad area, and amplification stage.

Libelium web site shows how to use the Gas Sensor Board to measure in real time small variations of Oxygen and CO2 in order to detect a fire, how to use the Events Sensor Board to detect water flooding or which sensors use to detect presence of people for security applications. with Sensor Board. An open source API for C programmers is available for GNU/Linux; it's possible to see the API (click here to browse API libraries). For more information, click here.