The wireless power sensor, developed by Redwire Consulting, Boston, MA, won the IPSO 2013 Challenge last week. Aside the fame and recognition, winning the competition also included a $10000 USD check.
The sensor that is clipped-on to an power cord measures the current flowing through the wire and sends the data wirelessly to a cloud server, hosted at lowpan.com. By using Contiki and its IPv6 stack, the sensor can send its readings directly to the cloud, without having any protocol translator boxes involved.
IPSO 2013 Challenge chairman Nick Ashworth said "The innovation, simplicity and end-to-end utilization of IP technology made this entry stand out to the judges."
The Redwire system was not the only Contiki-based system to compete in the IPSO 2013 challenge. The full list of entries can be found here.
More coverage:
This is an exciting example of what you can do by building on open standards. One *tiny* nit: the article says "Need to know how much power that flows through a specific power cord...?" Redwire's system will measure current, not power. Current times 120V can be used as an approximation for power, but it won't be particularly accurate, especially if the load has a strong reactive component (e.g. from electric motors).
ReplyDeleteThis isn't a knock on Redwire's great work. I only want to point out that the block entry could be more carefully worded.
I agree with Robert... but good work anyways
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ReplyDeleteIs the project dead already? lowpan is offline. :(
ReplyDeletehttp://www.redwirellc.com
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