Distributed Network Data

Build your own distributed sensor network to collect, analyze, and visualize real-time data about our human environment—including noise level, temperature, and people flow. With this hands-on book, you’ll learn how to turn your project idea into working hardware, using the easy-to-learn Arduino microcontroller and off-the-shelf sensors.

Authors Alasdair Allan and Kipp Bradford walk you through the entire process, from prototyping a simple sensor node to performing real-time analysis on data captured by a deployed multi-sensor network. Demonstrated at recent O’Reilly Strata Conferences, the future of distributed data is already here. If you have programming experience, you can get started immediately.

• Wire up a circuit on a breadboard, and use the Arduino to read values from a sensor
• Add a microphone and infrared motion detector to your circuit
• Move from breadboard to prototype with Fritzing, a program that converts your circuit design into a graphical representation
• Simplify your design: learn use cases and limitations for using Arduino pins for power and grounding
• Build wireless networks with XBee radios and request data from multiple sensor platforms
• Visualize data from your sensor network with Processing or LabVIEW

Alasdair Allan is a senior research fellow in Astronomy at the University of Exeter, where he is building an autonomous, distributed peer-to-peer network of telescopes that reactively schedule observations of time-critical events. He also runs a small technology consulting business writing bespoke software and building open hardware, and is currently developing a series of iPhone applications to monitor and manage cloud-based services and distributed sensor networks.

Kipp Bradford is an educator, technology consultant, and entrepreneur with a passion for creating new products as well as finding new applications for existing technologies. He was the founder or cofounder of start-ups in the fields of transportation, consumer products, HVAC, and medical devices, and holds numerous patents for his inventions. Kipp co-founded Revolution By Design, Inc, a non-profit education and research organization dedicated to empowerment through technology and co-organizes Rhode Island's mini Maker Faire. As the Senior Design Engineer and Lecturer at the Brown University School of Engineering, Kipp teaches several engineering design and entrepreneurship courses. He is the chair of the Rhode Island Entrepreneurship Faculty group and serves on the boards of The Steel Yard and AS220. He is also on the technical advisory board of MAKE Magazine and is a Fellow at the College of Design, Engineering and Commerce at Philadelphia University.