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.

There are two main ways of performing outdoor location when tracking sensor devices in a large area such as a city. The most extended is using a GPS module to get the information sent by the satellites on the 1575MHz band and extract all the information possible (latitude, longitude, speed, direction). However, this methodology is not effective when requiring mobile scenarios where the nodes can change from a clear environment to an indoor one, such as going inside buildings, garages and tunnels. For this cases we use the information provided by the Mobile Phone Cells (Cell ID, RSSI, TA) which is captured by the GPRS module. Read the complete article.

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,...

Libelium has launched a survey to ask developers and companies which sensors they would find useful a mote to bring. They are currently working on the development of the sensor integration board for Waspmote and they want to take into account your opinion. Think in a WSN project you would like to develop and tell them which sensors the motes should have to bring. There will be a prize draw for a Waspmote Developer Kit among all the participants. The survey: http://www.waspmote.com/survey/

Continuing with the sensor integration, we have added to the SquidBee mote a magnetic field sensor based on the Hall-Effect. The sensor, capable of detecting magnetic fields of 50 mT,  provides the mote with a digital output that denotes the presence of the field; which can be used in different control and monitorization applications.

When monitoring risk situations it is important to be able to generate alarms in real time and in the same place where the parameter is detected. For this scenarios the ideal solution is to send a SMS directly to the secutity forces such as fireman brigade or policy. This article shows how to use the GPRS/GSM communication module for SquidBee and configure it to send SMS's in the same time it happens.

Once we have some SquidBees running in our sensor network it's time to add new sensors. In this articule we are going to add a vibration sensor to SquidBee. With this new sensor we'll be able to detect movements on the mote such as falls, crashes, seismic activity or even chek the amount of the  mote vibration movement to measure special events.

SquidBee is a wireless sensing mote which simultaneously measures temperature, relative humidity and intensity of light and wirelessly sends data to a central monitoring Gateway. This tutorial is intended to provide a quick assembly guide for those who want to build a SquidBee through easy construction steps.

Here we have the classic presence detector built in a SquidBee mote. We use a PIR sensor integrated with an on-board circuitry and a Fresnel lens, suitable for detecting presence from anything emitting infrared radiation up to a distance of 6m, and connect it to a wireless emitter in order to receive the corresponding alarm. The mote is also prepared to remain in a low-consumption state, resulting in a perfect device for battery-powered applications.

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.

In this article we are going to show how to improve a SquidBee mote adding GPS position using the GPS module from Libelium. To the three usual sensors (temperature, humidity and light) now we add the physical position as a sensor. With this improvement into the motes our sensor network is able to provide the coordinates of each node in real time.