Ultraviolet Radiation is involved in many biochemical processes, in the case of human beings in the production of vitamin D and melanin, but overexposure may result in highly harmful effects, such as erythema, sunburn and even skin cancer. For this reason Libelium has recently integrated an Ultraviolet sensor in the Waspmote platform to control the UV Index which may be harmfull for humans.

The new Waspmote Agriculture Sensor Board enables up to 14 environmental parameters to be monitored in a wireless sensor network. This sophisticated monitoring brings extreme precision to crop growing in vineyards and greenhouses by enabling irrigation and climate control to be matched to local conditions.

During the research of the Waspmote sensor platform, several tests were made using different kinds of transceivers according to the frequency bands (2.4GHz, 868MHz and 900MHz) and the transmission power (1mw, 100mW, 315mW).

The tests performed in the Monegros Desert (Spain) had the purpose of seing the capabilities and limits of the 802.15.4/ZigBee radios integrated in Waspmote.

Among the 6 different links (356m, 639m, 1239m, 3810m, 6363m,12136m) were chosen Line of Sight (LOS) and Non Line of Sight (NLOS) configurations which were tested always using omnidirectional antennas (2dBi, 5dBi). Read more.

Libelium has officially launched today the Waspmote platform. The research efforts have focused on providing a minimum consumption (0.7uA in the Hibernate mode), and at the same time, maximum performance and capabilities. It comes with three sensor boards which let deploy any kind of aplication using their integrated sensors: CO, CO2, O2, CH4, luminosity, temperature, water level, pressure,...

Since we are often unable to connect our SquidBee to a main power supply, we needed to find the best way of powering it while minimizing maintenance operations, such as battery changes. Sun provides a clean, cheap, infinite power source, so we have developed a board to take advantage of this by attaching a solar cell to our mote.

Maybe one of the most important feature of the motes in a wireless sensor network is the time a mote is able to be working without charging its battery. In this article we are going to develope a code on SquiBee using the sleep features and cyclic waking up. With this working mode we are gonig to save a big amount of energy.

We have developed a SONAR mote for detecting presence and measuring distances up to 6.45m. It is constructed from an integrated ultrasound sensor placed into a SquidBee mote which wirelessly outputs range values whenever there is any moving object within the monitored area.