Check out the movie (Dutch spoken)

Another interesting question is “How do these systems communicate?” If you know something about wireless networks, you get problems when you create a large network using limited resources. This is the idea behind using smart dust. I just learned about gossip. Maybe you know about it. It’s just like real-life gossip. I hear or see something and I pass it on. After a while my message will get to a gateway where it will communicate with a computer interface. The nodes remember a set of messages, otherwise you would overflow the network with the same messages.

I was still thinking that message’s could get lost, but today a Dr. at the University of Amsterdam draw some statistics and that convinced me. It’s all about big numbers and your message will stay (somewhere) in the network.

A new of network thinking, more info, if you have a nice movie about gossip protocols, please post.

PS: next workshop I’ll bring some wireless sensor networks to show you guys around.

To see what this future world would be like, a pilot project involving dozens of volunteers in the University of Washington’s computer science building provides the next step in social networking, wirelessly monitoring people and things in a closed environment. Beginning in March, volunteer students, engineers and staff will wear electronic tags on their clothing and belongings to sense their location every five seconds throughout much of the six-story building. The information will be saved to a database, published to Web pages and used in various custom tools. The project is one of the largest experiments looking at wireless tags in a social setting.

The RFID Ecosystem project aims to create a world that many technology experts predict is just on the horizon, said project leader Magda Balazinska, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering. The project explores the use of radio-frequency identification, or RFID, tags in a social environment. The team has installed some 200 antennas in the Paul Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. Early next month researchers will begin recruiting 50 volunteers from about 400 people who regularly use the building.

“Our goal is to ask what benefits can we get out of this technology and how can we protect people’s privacy at the same time,” Balazinska said. “We want to get a handle on the issues that would crop up if these systems become a reality.”

via UWnews.org

So say researchers and developers who are finding ways to make the tiny devices much more than just a hi-tech price tag that can help shops and supermarkets track cans of beans from warehouse to store shelf.

“It all started with simple radio tags and asset tracking,” said Gerd Kortuem, “but that really only gives you an identifier for an object.”

Now, said Dr Kortuem, tiny Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags are getting smarter and more communicative as bigger memory, basic processing power and wireless technologies are added to them.

“We are trying to embed a little more intelligence beyond location by adding sensors and by networking these objects together,” he said.

Safe and sound

Dr Kortuem and colleagues are working on a project that combines smart tags and personal identifiers to keep an eye on people working on construction sites using heavy machine tools.

“It’s to keep track of how long they are used, to figure out vibrations generated by these tools,” he said. “It’s for health and safety. We create personalised health and safety records for every worker.” read complete article over on the bbc News site here