Sensor Data Analytics Acceleration with Apache Edgent – Notes and Recap

Big Data, Event Recap, ,
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September Forum

We started the discussion with TexNet,a seismic monitoring program operated by the Bureau of Economic Geology at University of Texas. Additional seismometers are scheduled to be deployed this month, some apparently in Irving and North Dallas. We discussed the system topology.

The event continued with keynote speaker Brandon Swink, an IT Architect working with Apache Edgent, an open source community for accelerating sensor data analytics at the edge.

The presentation (PDF) started with an overview of edge processing and some of the advantages such as reduced communication cost and improved reaction times compared to high latency or severed connections.

Brandon then gave an overview of the current Java development environment incorporating use of existing, publicly available libraries in the ecosystem for faster development of solutions. The demonstration simulated a smart sprinkler system with a Raspberry Pi acting as the edge computer and data simulating soil moisture readings.

Getting Started with Apache Edgent
Apache Quarks on Raspberry Pi with Streaming Analytics
Connect your Raspberry Pi sensors to Watson IoT Platform with Apache Quarks

July/August Sensor Forum – Accessing Built-In Sensors on an Android Device

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Audience and Android Device with Sensor Data
August Sensor Forum

Most contemporary Android devices have one or more sensors, such as motion, humidity, and light sensors. In July, the event format was a code walkthrough of how to access sensors integrated into an Android smartphone or tablet. In July, we presented sample code and explanation of the Android sensor framework. In August, attendees brought their own laptop and Android device and created a “Hello World” Android project accessing and displaying sensor data from their device. These were joint events with the Dallas Google Developer Group.

The speakers explained the Android framework for accessing the sensors and retrieving the sensor data. A template project was provided for attendees. The attendees worked through the exercises to ultimately complete an activity that displayed accelerometer data. The presentation and workshop covered:

1. Setting up an activity to display sensor values

2. Confirming the presence of the target sensor

3. Retrieving sensor data

4. Displaying & storing sensor values

Speakers

Stacy Devino – Android Innovator at The Home Depot

Leroy Levin – Developer of RV Expenses Android app.

John Lindsay – Patent attorney and novice Android developer working towards a traffic congestion smoothing app.

References

Android Developer Sensor Overview

Selected Presentation Slides

Starting Android Project

Completed Android Project

 

June Sensor Forum – The Things Network, Low-Power Wide-Area Network

Event Recap, Wireless, ,
DFW Sensor Bytes – Local Tech Updates

Prior presenter SensorSphere, now Orbii, is a remote controlled robotic sphere with video and various sensors options, such as sound or environment. They have a launched a crowdfunding campaign which is coming to a close soon.

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June Event

We started the discussion of the recent launch of the  iSeeFlood App, launched, in part, by University of Texas at Arlington associate professor D.J. Seo. The app allows users to input flooding reports in order to help deal with localized flooding.The app adds another layer to existing flood gauges for modeling urban water flow and will work with the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere network of radars stationed across the DFW.

The event continued with keynote speaker Nik Kitson, the Dallas ambassador for The Things Network and the founder of Haxiot, a company offering LoRaWAN products.

The Things Network is an open crowdsourced Internet of Things wireless network. The Things Network ambassadors hope to convince enough inhabitants of a city to purchase and install the network equipment to create citywide coverage . It took six weeks to launch the network in Amsterdam. Planned services for the Amsterdam network include Trakkies, a service for finding your lost goods.
Getting Started with The Things Network.

 

May Event: Intelligent Use of Power in Sensor and IoT Technology

Event Recap, Power
DFW Sensor Bytes – Local Tech Updates

The City of Dallas announces partnership with Ingenu to use the M2M network in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Plasma Computing is one the partners expected to deploy applications over the network. Details such as specific applications or timelines were scant.

May Event

We started the discussion with the free Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Big Data for Smart Cities. The MOOC was created by IEEE and hosted on edX. The topics include:

  • Applications of big data to sectors of a modern city, and how it can improve the life of its citizens
  • Technologies, techniques, tools for developing Big Data applications

At the October, 2015 meeting, we discussed the FreeVolt, a device for harvesting ambient RF as a power source. Since then, they announced a first license in December, 2015 and have provided a whitepaper (PDF) on the technology.

The event continued with keynote speaker Greg Naizer of Lattice Semiconductor. Greg started with general trends and power consumption issues in the IoT space. He continued with some use cases in minimizing power consumption, where the focus was including a FPGA between the microcontroller unit (MCU) and a sensor or other device. The FPGA could be designed for some level of pre-processing in order to allow the typically higher power consumer MCU to remain in a sleep state for more cycles. For example, where a smartphone application calls for “always-on” voice commands, the  intermediary FPGA may perform pre-processing for the initial word of a voice command sequence prior to waking the processor.

Audience question and answer concluded with mention of the Lattice programmable boards which might be used for testing in such situations.

#IoTDFW

April Sensor Forum – DFW Startup Showcase and Happy Hour at Dallas Startup Week

Event Recap

This month was a co-hosted event with the IoT track of Dallas Startup Week 2016 and & the Communication and Vehicular Technology society. The goal was to showcase DFW technology and promote interaction between the IEEE, established companies, and the startup communities. Each startup had a table to exhibit their company. Some companies setup demonstrations, some had products, and others had videos and other literature.  About halfway through the event, each company gave a brief introduction of their technology and status to the audience. Startup companies included optical and noise sensors, connected vehicles, computer vision, and connectivity platforms.

#IoTDFW

Exhibiting Startups Included

Orbii – A remote controlled robotic sphere with various sensors

WCSystems – Photo sensors with a wide range of optical sensitivity

Nimbii – Real-time vehicle monitoring for shuttle buses

nimbii at DSW16

NoiseAware – Noise monitoring for vacation rentals

Vinli – A connected vehicle platform

Vinli at DSW16

haxiot – Low power wide area network connectivity for IoT

haxiot at DSW16

Spacee – Enabling touch-enabled vehicles

spacee at dsw16

Kubos – Open-source space flight software

kubos at dsw16Rumy – A remote extension for thermostats

rumy at dsw16and others.

 

March Sensor Forum – Intelligence at the Edge, The Intel Quark Line

Event Recap,
March Forum

We started the discussion with the announcement of an upcoming deployment of particulate matters sensors in Dallas. Prior presenter David Lary is leading a pilot project called Geolocated Allergen Sensing Platform, or GASP, that will deploy a network of new, advanced sensors to detect asthma-aggravating particulate matter and pollen at ten schools in the Dallas area. The sensors also will gather air-quality data such as location, temperature, pressure, humidity and levels of six other pollutants. He credits the strong involvement of the Applied Research Center as well.

We referenced last month’s discussion of Oral Roberts University’s mandate that incoming freshmen wear and sync FitBit data. Recently, Qualcomm teamed with UnitedHealthcare for reduced insurance premium for employees who wore fitness tracker and had a confirmed level of activity.

Audience watching Intel Quark discussion
Audience watching Intel Quark discussion

The event continued with keynote speaker Adam Prengler of Intel. Adam started with a general outlook of the IoT space: by 2020 the forecasted 50 billion “things” will generate 300% more traffic across “fog” and “cloud”; by 2018 the network will be 50% constrained which will determine data to be stored, processed, analyzed and acted upon at the edge, in what effectively means that “the edge is the gateway”. Adam talked about Intel’s direction in standardizing the IoT Gateway for several goals, like performance benefits with near real-time analysis at the edge; manageability via remote upgrades and faster, more flexible deployment. He then continued with a discussion of the Core/Atom/Quark processor base, delving into details about the Quark 32-bit SoCs family, ex. D1000, D2000, Quark SE. These are small form, low power, integrated security devices that enable customers to create a plethora of solutions, from wearables (with ultra low power D1000, which the Curie uses) to deep learning industrial applications (with Quark SE). Adam closed with information on the IoT Solutions Alliance that has to date resulted in 48 Quark solutions.

The event ended with our host, Aligned Data Centers of Plano, giving members in attendance a quick facility tour.

 

 

 

February Forum – Advancing the Industrial Supply Chain – Sensors, Devices & Smarts

Event Recap
DFW Sensor Bytes – Sensor Tech Happenings

Plasma and Texas Instruments announce partnership where Texas Instruments will offer its customers Plasma’s C2M™, a platform that enables rapid connection of IoT devices, sensors, databases and other sources of data such as social media.

February Forum

We started the discussion exploring the possible timeline of adoption of some IoT technology. The example was Oral Roberts University’s mandate that incoming freshmen wear and sync FitBit data. The discussion highlighted the short time frame between FitBit’s relatively recent strong market position and the mandate.

The keynote speaker was Kelson Elam of Genesta. Kelson discussed approaches to deployment and use of sensors, IoT, and data in the supply chain. He sprinkled in use cases and demonstrations throughout the talk.

Genesta Demonstration
Kelson Elam demonstration

One attendee commented on the presentation’s focus on both technology and its return on investment.

 

 

 

January Forum – Distributed Sensor Networks and Machine Learning for Societal Applications

Event Recap,
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DFW Sensor Bytes – Sensor Tech Happenings

Some Dallas companies at CES 2016:

Dallas Startup Week 2016 is April 12-16

  • Imran Charania is the track leader for the IoT track. He is seeking volunteers to help organize the IoT sessions that will be offered during Startup Week.
  • John Lindsay is the track leader for the legal track. You can contact him with potential legal topics of interest.

Max of Dallas Young Makers is seeking mentors for additional tracks, hopefully a robotics track.

January Forum

We started the technical discussion on the formal announcement of 802.11ah aka “HaLow,” an 802.11 based protocol targeted towards IoT devices. Attendee Moses Asom discussed some of the protocol details and his experience with some the chipsets, which includes sub 1 GHz spectrum, limited mesh communication, target wake times, and contention & interference minimization.
(Editor’s Note: Video of Ed Hightower’s recently presentation at IoTSlam on Low Power Wide Area Networks is available.)

The keynote speaker was David Lary . Dr. Lary is a professor at UT Dallas. The discussion started with an overview of projects at the UTD MINTS, the Multi-scale Integrated Intelligent Interactive Sensing Consortium. We first focused on the project which explored the connection between environmental health and particulate matter, which included inputs data sets of sensor arrays, health outcomes, population density, and other disparate sets. Unexpected results included a regional correlation between mental health and temporal environmental activity. We then focused on a project which explored irrigation study, which included Google earth satellite image input. The image processing exploited the absorption regions of chlorophyll to detect the extent of “greener” vegetation areas in the image, which was correlated to water volume. Unexpected results include water waste in the form of leakage in irrigation systems.

Dr. Lary also provides independent consulting services in this space at http://www.datadrive.io/ and http://machinedatalearning.io/ .

December Forum – Security Considerations in Sensor and IoT Deployments

Event Recap
Security Panelists at Sensor Forum
Security Panelists at Sensor Forum

This month featured a panel of speakers on Security Considerations in Sensor and IoT Deployments. Panelists included:

Kevin Henson of Cyber Defense Labs
Mart Nelson of Avistas

We started with how information leakage might lead to undesirable situations. Leakage of seemingly innocuous tire pressure might lead to inferences of the number of vehicle occupants (Am I looking at you, Volkswagon?) or security systems in the vehicle.

We discussed some foundational security principles, namely confidentiality, integrity, availability and their application to the sensor/IoT realm.

In order to promote thought of security, early in the innovation process as opposed to later “bolting on” security, we focused on two early stage technologies. The first was a directional vehicle to vehicle communication system. A raised security concern was possible false signals, with a possible mitigation being changing the spectrum or SYN-SYN-ACK based communication. The second was a sensor array being considered for Smart Cities deployments. A raised security concern was spoofed data due to local or physical access, with possible mitigation being comparison of data with other sensor types or other sensors arrays.

An audience member inquired of encryption in small memory footprint devices.

Micro-speaker Kent Dial spoke on use of sensors in airport refueling compliance systems.

Resources

Top Ten Internet of Things Vulnerabilities
libsodium – A library of common crypto functions for developers