Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Friday August 19 2016, @10:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the always-on dept.

Tags on a fragile packages may someday be able to say whether the goods are riding safely in the back of a truck or bouncing around in a hazardous way.

If Intel follows through on an IoT research project it demonstrated at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) this week, those tags could report on shipping conditions in real time without needing a battery to stay powered. After the package is delivered, the label might even be disposable.

Intel demonstrated a prototype "smart tag" for packages at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Aug. 16, 2016. The tag could detect motion and show it on a chart in real time. It's the kind of IoT that enterprises might not even be aware of as a device or system but could still benefit from every day. Meanwhile, for a shipping company, it might save on labor and specialized technology rollouts.

The key to this oversharing tag is what Intel calls a mote. It's a chip so small it could get lost in a jar of coarse-ground pepper. The IA-32 mote shown at IDF, built on Intel's Quark architecture, would be the brains of a tag that could incorporate motion, temperature and other sensors.

The tiny size of the processor is a big part of what makes the whole system viable, as it keeps both energy draw and per-chip costs low.

The mote doesn't talk directly to the cloud. Instead, it uses a short-range, low-power network – in this case, Bluetooth Low Energy – to a local gateway device that forwards the data over a longer-range network like cellular. The local gateway might also process or store the data first.

The mote is so small and efficient, using only about 1 milliwatt, that it can run on energy harvested from radio waves wafting through the air around it. For example, a Wi-Fi network on a truck might bathe a trailer full of packages with enough RF (radio frequency) energy to power motes on every one of them, Intel researcher Turbo Majumder said.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.