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Designing a Wireless Device that Lives Forever

posted by martyb on Thursday September 28 2017, @03:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the plant-only-in-a-well-lit-area dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Running on Rays of Light and Off-the-Shelf Hardware

We have previously looked at how to make a wireless device live for years on one tiny coin cell battery. This time we up the game and make it live forever, using solar power and off-the-shelf hardware.

We build a prototype of our device and go through the technical details involved in designing for solar power. We use off-the-shelf hardware running the latest version of the Thingsquare ultra low-power software. Light does not provide a lot of power, so we need software that can make the most of it.

[...] There are many situations in which we would like a wireless network that lasts forever:

  • Large-scale vineyard monitoring: keeping track of the vines that make up fine wines
  • Checking up on those organic crops: believe it or not, agriculture is all about data
  • Big city life: cities have parking spaces, trash cans, bus stops, trains and other urban necessities that need to be kept track of
  • The great outdoors: knowing where cattle and livestock live their lives means farmers can save money

Sounds like a great project.

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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 28 2017, @03:51PM (2 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday September 28 2017, @03:51PM (#574395)

    In only 10 or 20 years whatever protocol/wavelength/format you use for communication probably won't be supported by the current generation.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @05:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @05:43PM (#574459)

    Hey, some cities are still set up to communicate with telegraph.

    http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-S-F-still-counts-on-street-fire-alarm-boxes-3081293.php [sfgate.com]

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by RamiK on Thursday September 28 2017, @08:49PM

    by RamiK (1813) on Thursday September 28 2017, @08:49PM (#574527)

    In the grim darkness of the far future, a young string programming neural net will ask its fellow quantum programming nets while taking feedback on the kernel design, "Can we stop emulating the VT100 now?". To which, a senior would reply "0x4e6f2e0a" while a marketing AI will start a flame war saying "FTFY: 0x4e6f2e0d0a".

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