Jordan Husney, Ted Hayes and myself have written an XBee Internet Gateway for the ConnectPort X2 so that any microcontroller-powered device prototype can connect directly with the Internet. This system is now in use at ITP and in several other locations. Plain URLs sent from an XBee radio (Series 2 XBee ZB or Series 1 802.15.4) radio are processed by the Gateway, retrieved from the Internet, and results are returned to the sender.

After nearly two years in the ‘Arduino Business’ (its more like the ‘Arduno Hobby’ actually), I finally got my self a pair of XBees! Kept in a box for a month, but this weekend I’ve unpacked the hive and put them to make some honey.

This weekend me and a friend (Ian Gallina) set up the XBees as ‘Coordinator’ and ‘Router’ and put the ‘router’ on a shield with a pack of sensors (temperature, light and presence) collecting data from my living room and sending it over the air to my laptop. The idea was to save the data in a database so that It can be used to make graphs or publish it in a website showing the environment status for the room. Anyway, I probably won’t do it, for I need my Arduino for other hacks.

The XBee ZNet 2.5 modules from Digi are more advanced than the popular XBee Series 1 modules, but they require a little additional work to set up. This tutorial will guide you through reflashing two XBee ZNet modules with the appropriate firmwares and setting them up to communicate with eachother.

We needed a datalogger that provided a timestamp, and that would last 2 weeks in the woods. Using a laptop would require a generator or humongous battery. This Instructable shows how to make a datalogger from an Arduino and datalogger shield connected to a TelosB wireless sensor board and a battery that is large, but not wheelbarrow large. Your data goes onto a SD memory card on the datalogger for pickup later (whenever you have to change the batteries on all the wireless radios in your network, for example). The main challenge is getting the serial signal out of the TelosB before it gets translated into USB. We could probably have reprogrammed the TelosB to output the serial on another pin, but why program when you can solder? 

Z-Monitor is a free tool for monitoring and controlling IEEE 802.15.4 Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks. It provides a convenient solution for researchers and students for developing, debugging and deploying wireless sensor network applications. The tool is compatible with the IEEE 802.15.4 implementation of the TinyOS 15.4 WG and has also been tested and validated with the open-ZB implementation. Z-Monitor currently supports only TelosB motes, but it will soon be extended to a wider range of COTS platforms.