Dr. Thorsten Kramp, computer scientist at IBM Research in Zurich, holds a
MEMSIC IRIS wireless sensor mote programmed with IBM Mote Runner. (PRNewsFoto/IBM, Michael Lowry)
To make wireless sensor networks easier to program and exploit, IBM has created a new software development kit – called Mote Runner - which provides an open and programmer-friendly platform to connect sensor and actuator motes within a wireless sensor network (WSN). Motes -- also known as wireless sensor nodes -- gather sensory information, such as temperature, movement, or light, and communicate that data across a network of wireless sensors. MEMSIC Inc, will offer Mote Runner on IRIS, one of its most popular wireless sensor motes starting in July 2010.
Why IRIS and Mote Runner?
The MEMSIC IRIS is a 2.4 GHz wireless sensor mote used for enabling low power
wireless sensor networks, such as monitoring the temperature and
electricity in a high rise office building or traffic patterns on a busy intersection.
Now pre-installed with Mote Runner, IRIS clients can benefit from:
• The use of a programming language such as Java, in combination with a
highly efficient virtual machine developed from the ground up for use in sensor
networks, providing application portability and shielding developers from the
complexities of the underlying hardware without sacrificing performance
• A simulation environment, a web-based management dashboard, and an
integrated development environment based on Eclipse, provide a user-friendly
platform for testing, debugging, and maintaining applications for MEMSIC IRIS
motes running Mote Runner. This enables advanced simulation prior to
deploying motes in the field, thus eliminating most programming errors before
deployment.
Mote Runner dashboard based on Eclipse, that provides a user-friendly platform for testing, debugging, and maintaining WSN applications.
• The Mote Runner execution engine has been designed to be very efficient in
terms of power* consumption while delivering a high runtime performance; thus
the combined Mote Runner/IRIS mote can be ideally used with energy
harvesting techniques, to utilize for example, solar power as a source of energy.
• Physical access to remotely deployed sensor motes to update them with
new functionality is not an option for many mote deployment usage scenarios,
such as installations across large agricultural areas, in a multi-story building, or
in locations with unique climates such as a rain forests or glaciers. Mote Runner
caters to this by including the ability to push or pull changes wirelessly with
minimal interruption to the established network.
"Mote Runner on MEMSIC IRIS motes is a wireless sensor network in a box,"
comments Thorsten Kramp, research staff member and co-developer of Mote
Runner at IBM Research - Zurich. “The combination of MEMSIC’s popular IRIS
mote with Mote Runner makes developing for and operating a network of motes
easy and straightforward for everyone.”
Non-commercial use of Mote Runner is free of charge and
IBM provides support to the community via the alphaWorks website.
Available via IBM alphaWorks
To encourage free exploration of the complete technology the Mote Runner
software development kit is also available free of charge for universities and
students and available as a 90-day evaluation trial for corporate users on the
IBM alphaWorks website at www.alphaworks.ibm.com /tech/moterunner
