Wireless Sensor Network Outreach: ICTP Trieste, Italy
About a week ago we had the marvelous opportunity to teach a three-day outreach workshop in wireless sensor networking and environmental monitoring at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. Our 24 students were educators, scientists and engineers from Malawi, Nicaragua, India, Ecuador, Venezuela, West Gambia, Philippines, USA, South Africa, Tanzania, Jamaica, Columbia, Ukraine, Argentina and Albania. Marco Zennaro coordinated the workshops and was tremendously helpful and generous to us. Jordan Husney lectured and taught alongside me, both of us fueled by copious amounts of Italian espresso, administered under Marco’s watchful eye.
Some of our topics included:
- Introduction to Wireless Sensor Networking
- Industrial Applications of Wireless Sensor Networking
- Fun with XBees
- Fundamentals of Wireless Sensor Networking
- Basic XBee Chat
- Doorbell Project
- Basic ZigBee Chat
- Simple Sensor Network
- Gateways
- XBee Internet Gateway (XIG)
- iDigi Basics
- iDigi via XIG
- Building Environmental Sensors
- Environmental Sensing: Outdoor Lab
Digi generously donated our time and many of the materials for these workshops. The students successfully built all kinds of networks using XBee radios, ConnectPort gateways, the XIG software, iDigi and iDigi Dia. They will take what they’ve learned back home to build a wide variety of environmental systems for agriculture, solar schoolhouses, water quality, radiation sensing, energy, emergency response and many other purposes.
Here’s some photos from our global educational venture:
I use this opportunity to thank you and Jordan once again for your excellent contributions.
Working with you was a pleasure.
Hope to continue our fruitful collaboration.