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Mountainview – Precision Image Sensingon High Alpine Locations

Matthias Keller, Jan Beutel, Lothar ThieleComputer Engineering and Networks Lab

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich

The work presented in this poster was supported by the National Competence Center in Research on Mobile Information and Communication Systems (NCCR-MICS), a center supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant number 5005-67322.

Problem Statement

System Concept

NCCR_MICS

Future: Precision Image Sensing for Geophysical Research• Measurement of the temporal variability of snow cover• Detection of movement of ice and rocks• Offline post-processing• State-of-the-art environmental research asks for a high image quality,

especially in terms of spatial resolution

Considerations• Integration into existing wireless sensor network architecture• An extra transmission channel with a decent data rate is necessary for

transferring RAW image data with a size of up to 40 MB per image• System must still be powered from batteries with optional solar power

System Integration• Health monitoring and main power control are implemented on the

same sensor nodes that are used in the existing architecture• Camera control unit is mainly built out of the same components as the

base station of the sensor network• Full integration into Dozer network topology

System Operation• Low-power TinyNode activates full-featured Gumstix embedded PC• System can be activated at any time by setting an argument of a

beacon message of the Dozer protocol – allows intelligent activation pattern, i.e. on current weather conditions from extra sensor

• Camera unit is interfaced by libgphoto2 over USB• Wi-Fi link (54 Mbps) is used for image data transmission

http://www.permasense.ch

Matterhorn Hoernligrat in 2003 (left) and 2008 (right)

The PermaSense Project – Today• Two wireless sensor network deployments (Matterhorn since 07/2008,

Jungfraujoch since 02/2009)• Long-term, low-power operation with TinyNode motes running Dozer• Collection of geophysical parameters such as temperature and water

pressure

Challenges• High-altitude (3.500 meters a.s.l.)• Severe weather conditions (wind speeds up to 200 km/h)• Broad range of temperature cycles in enclosures (-40°C to 60°C)• Limited energy budget (batteries, solar power)

Matterhorn Mountain with sensor nodes (red)

Features• Both software architecture and mechanics are compatible to

basically all recent camera models• A lens port mount allows the installation of standard lens

ports. Lenses of different geometries are supported by install-ing a matching lens port

• Temperature and humidity within the enclosure are controlled by integrated sensors and actuators

• Power consumption of heavy users is minimized by power cy-cling

Overview of embedded components

Existing system architecture with added imaging unit (left most box)