SparxLive

Enterprise Engineering Center Week of Excellency

2008-07-08T17:43:00.002-04:00

We found out today in the world festival in louvre, that we've won the Enterprise Engineering Center Week of Excellency award. I honestly had no idea what that was. But it turned out to be pretty awesome. Basically, we got a chance to go to Redmond, WA around January, 2009, to use Microsoft's best tech lab for a week for software testing purposes. They provide 1.5 petabytes of data storage, InfiniBand networking and lots of servers for us to play with. This will really help us scale up any project we have in our hands, not only limited to Reactivity.

We Lost

2008-07-05T11:19:00.003-04:00

This is official. We found out at 4:30pm today, Paris time, that we lost as a team from U.S.A. in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 World Final. The rest of the trip to Paris will be relaxation and sight seeing, as a reward of 6 months of hardworking.

Next year's Imagine Cup will be in Egypt, and the theme will be very broad, covering all the themes Imagine Cup has ever had.

Imagine Cup 2008 Software Design U.S. Final Winner

2008-04-23T15:28:00.003-04:00

We, as team Sparx from Rochester Institute of Technology, have just come back from an exciting trip in Los Angeles, where the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 Software Design U.S. National Final took place. And guess what, we've won the American Final, $12,000 grand prize and will be representing U.S. in the World Final in this upcoming July in Paris, France!

Our winning entry, Reactivity, is a sensor network built for office buildings and homes . Reactivity tries realize office automation and home automation in an effort to minimize energy waste, monitor indoor pollutions, and improve everyday interactions with environment. Reactivity provides a powerful platform for both gathering information from a great variety of sensors and controlling many different devices. Using this platform, end-users are also able to program the behavior of our sensor network in a way that is best suited for their environments. Our demo in Los Angeles showed live data gathering from a wireless demo device with luminosity, humidity and temperature sensors, and some programmed reactions like the controlling of an 110V AC socket based on the luminosity data gathered by the light sensor. You could find out more information about our product in the Wiki.

From now on, we will be trying our best to prepare for the World Final in July. Reactivity would be even better and more powerful by then. Please be sure to hold on for a ride into the future!

Advanced to Semi-Final and National Final

2008-03-01T23:23:00.002-05:00

Good news! Both our projects have advanced to the next round. Our balloon project which is the Environmental Companion Cube has recently advanced to the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 Semi-Final. We will be receiving an eBox 4300 as a development platform soon. On the other hand, our sensor network project advanced to Microsoft Image Cup 2008 United States National Final. We will be on a free trip to L.A. around mid April to present our project and compete against other nine teams from America.

Imagine Cup 2008 Software Design Project Reactivity

2008-02-01T11:56:00.001-05:00

The aim of the Reactivity sensor network is to provide enterprise and city-level networking of sensor and device control systems.

Take a deep breath. The air you just inhaled might contain trace amounts of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, suspended particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, ozone, radioactive radon, and other toxic substances. According to the World Health Organization, one of every six people on the earth, or more than 1.1 billion people, lives in urban areas where the air is unhealthy to breathe. Air pollution has definitely become one of the most challenging environmental problems of the century.

If you think air pollution is the only environmental problem around you, think again. Each year, the equivalent of approximately 10,000 million tons of coal is consumed on earth as energy. About 40% from this is based on oil and together with coal and natural gas more than 90% of the total energy consumption result from carbon atoms in these fossil fuels. The consequence will be a global warming (greenhouse effect) and a great reduction of renewable resources in the future. In reality, most of the energy we produce is wasted through heat loss and power inefficiencies. Integral to reducing environmental impact is a method of monitoring power consumption and reducing energy waste.

Software Implementation
Microsoft XML web services would provide a robust yet flexible network of environmental sensors. Possible sensors are AC current, temperature, humidity, light, sound, carbon dioxide and monoxide, and motion. Users can acquire any sensor data by connecting to any one of the nodes in the network. The network can be configured and programmed using customized rules. Different actions can be scheduled to happen once certain environmental conditions are met in the targeted environment. Microsoft SQL Server would be used to store sensor position and configuration information as well as sensor data for future study and analysis. Mobile phone users would be able to access sensor data as well as control environment remotely through a .NET device application developed on .NET Compact Framework.

Figure 1: Possible configuration for Reactivity in an enterprise environment

Applications
In addition to energy reduction in urban environments, increased benefits of a distributed sensing networks model is realized in the ability to log, analyze, and visualize data to find patterns in natural setting. By deploying cheap, low-maintenance, and modular sensor systems, data can be gathered from virtually any environment and collected via wireless network. Power in natural environments can be provided by miniature solar panels on the device.

Distributed sensing has the potential to accelerate advancements in the visualization of our environmental impact. Regions with sensor networks can be monitored continuously for light and air pollution creating extensive data logs. Visualization of environmental data can reveal distributions of environmental variables; these are keys to understanding how the environment is changing and getting feedback on energy reduction methods.

Hundreds of species of plants and animals are losing their environments to human environmental displacements. Real-time monitoring of environmental conditions could be crucial in determining what factors are affecting species decline. Ruggedized versions can be deployed in hostile conditions such as forests and aquatic environments. Due to low cost, sensors can be blanketed throughout spaces.

Team Members
Adam Risi, Zachery Shivers and Ziyan Zhou. Visit our team page for more information.

At this point, the project is completely open source and made public.