Smart Greenhouse

The purpose of this project is to collaborate with Petaluma Bounty Farm in Petaluma, CA. The farm's mission is to grow healthy food for everyone through collaboration, education and promoting self-reliance. The purpose of this project is to explore the possibility of upgrading the existing greenhouse at Petaluma Bounty Farm to a Smart greenhouse, a self regulating, micro-climate controlled environment for optimal plant growth.

Team Lead: Alexander Sneed, Nathan Candler, Andres Rivera and Rania Saba
Status: Expected to be completed by December 2020
Funded by: None

Environmental Sensor Projects at SSU Fairfield Osborn Preserve

AITIS Laboratory is currently in process of implementing a number Environmental Sensor Network projects at the SSU Fairfield Osborn Preserve.  These interdisciplinary projects have three main objectives: (1) to improve the robustness and flexibility of the existing network, (2) to create and deploy a WiFi-base backbone so variety of IP-based sensors can be deployed, (3) to design an open-frame network where various research projects related to communications and networking can be tested.

Currently, the following projects are active:
1- SkyViewer - a sensor network that can be activated by variety of sensors, such as motion detectors, temperature,  sound, etc.
2- Indoor monitoring system - adding an indoor wireless touchscreen monitor to view weather conditions, and power consumption
3- Improve the  existing weather station and strengthening its wireless link
4- Debug the existing energy monitoring system with forced reset
5- GateKeeper - designing a monitoring system on the gate
6- Establishing a 3 node WiFi back bone
7- Exploring the possibility of combining WiFi and Fiber Optics for the backbone
8- Power monitoring system; here is a the link to OpenEnergy Monitoring
9- Water monitoring system (funded - graduate and undergraduate students can apply)
10- Installing Fiber Optics to connect the weather station to the office

See the existing projects. If you are interested in working with us please contact Dr. Farid Farahmand!

Remote Water/Power Monitoring

Average person in the United States consumes about 600 liters of water per day!  An average American household consumes 11,209 kWh per year. In fact, a US house hold uses three times more electricity for lighting, and twice as much in refrigerators than in the EU. Consider these: 1 in 8 people, nearly 900 million worldwide, lack safe drinking water; we can save up to 8 gallons of water a day simply by turning off the tap while we brush our teeth in the morning and at night (watch the water crisis!) In this project our objective is to design a simple monitoring system that can monitor our electricity and power consumption in real time. Various technologies can be considered to monitor water flow including sound and laser doppler velocimetry (LDV). 

Status: Pending
Sponsor: Pending

WiFi Balloon

In many environmental wireless networks lack of having line-of-sight can be a major issue. We are investigating the usage of using adverting-balloons or weather balloons for providing WiFi connections.

Status: December 2012
Sponsor: CCE

Intelligent Mobile Environmental Geo-Sensor (iMEG)

Sonoma County offers a rich variety of interwoven soils, elevations, and micro-climates. The aim of this project is to design a mobile distributed sensor network to measure various climate changes across the country. The iMEG (Intelligent Mobile Environmental Geo-Sensor), also known as climate pod, can record the climate conditions of different locations we visit! iMEG can be installed on moving vehicles or simply put in a backpack. The logged data can be transmitted to the server located at the Sonoma State University, which will be available to remote users to study. For more information click here. Download this temperature KMZ file example or  humidity KMZ file example to view humidity and temperature changes using Google Earth.

 Status: To be completed by before 2012
Sponsored: Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML)
Participants: Peiwen Yu (Graduate Student)

Solar-Powered Wireless Weather Station

The purpose of our project is to build the first solar-powered wireless weather station at the Fairfield Osborn Preserve. Weather stations play a critical role in Preserve programs by providing climate data relevant to a wide variety of environmental studies. While many researchers have collected data over the years for their individual projects, the Preserve has had a critical need to collect consistent reliable data from a single site to provide long-term comparisons in climate. This weather station will serve as the primary site for the Preserves long-term commitment to gathering data on changes in the environment. Read more about the project - Click here to view more pictures.

Sponsored by: Fairfield Osborn Preserve
Students: Chris Dennison and Kyler Connelly 
Status: Completed in May 2011
 

Design and Development of a Solar Power Monitoring System

The purpose of this project is to retrofit an existing off grid Solar System Power system with a wireless interface that will track system performance and provide historical performance data to better manage the utilization and future growth of power resources at the Fairfield Osborn. This is a continuing project and requires knowledge of wireless and micro-controllers. Our focus in this phase of the project is to add educational components to the monitoring system.

Here are a few things that we will specifically be focusing on:
- Making the pulling cycle changeable from the program
- Making the report time variable using a switch
- The LabView graphs should show the exact time
- Upload the data/email using modem
- Add the oil sensor
- Add email features
- Check the maintenance mode
- Add UPS
- When the system is in catch-up mode a software light should be blinking
- When the system in maintenance mode, the state must be shown in the archived data
- Create a two way communication between LabView and Zigbee
- Establish a larger wireless network.

 Status: Phase I is completed
Sponsered: Sonoma Preserve

SMS Based Sensor Monitoring

The field of research is continuing to grow with each new area and discovery. Every discovery brings researchers a new item or area to look at. With environmental studies there are still findings made daily and the more tools that are available to researchers, the more often these breakthroughs will occur. One of the challenges that are faced by researchers when doing studies in the wilderness is the remoteness of the investigation sight.
The goal of this project is to develop a sensor platform that will utilize SMS technology to transfer the values of the sensors to an off-site server. This server will then store and display the data over the internet. It is the goal to provide a platform that is flexible enough to work with a wide selection of environmental sensors and can be used at many sites such as the Fairfield Osborn preserve. An open protocol will be developed to facilitate the messages passed between the field system and the server and will have the necessary flexibility to be used for any sensor system utilizing text messaging.
We have already developed the SMS Based Sensor Monitoring platform. However, more work is required to complete this project. Contact for more information.

 Status: Phase I is completed.
Sponsered: Sonoma State University Preserve

General Purpose Data Logger with GPS

The purpose of this hand-held device is to record GPS position as well as readings from attached sensors. The device can later be connected to a PC and download all information. Google map can be utilized to map display the information.

track moving objects where installing a GPS is not practical. This device will be ideal for applications such as tracking birds, fish, small animals, learn about animals and their habitats, keeping track of moving bicycles, etc. Click on the figure for more information.

Environmental Sensors

Advances in environmental sensor, communication, and computing technology are transforming our understanding of environmental processes on a global scale. Many wildlife regions, including Fairfield Osborn Preserve ( a 450-acre field station administered by SSU’s Field Stations & Nature Preserves), can significantly benefit from implementing a distributed wireless network to transfer data. In the following projects we intend to combine low-power IP-based data acquisition systems (i.e., environmental sensors), solar technology, and wireless Internet capability to create a state of-the-art intelligent network with advanced features to assist environmental scientist to more effectively utilize cyber-technologies:
1- Utilizing a SMS based messaging platform to transfer data from various environmental sensors;
2- Designing a solar-based wireless network on the preserve;
3- Designing a utility monitoring device to monitor the power consumption on the preserve;
4- Designing an autonomous mobile robot with vision and logging capabilities;
5- Designing PigNet - tracking the pigs on the Preserve (yes, pigs!);
6- What is a smart building? How should it operate - a survey;
7- Using Google Sketch to construct a 3D model of the Preserve.
8- Using RFID technology for tracking and monitoring animals and birds in the Preserve (here are some good resources).
9- Look into Sun SPOT World and see if we can implement a mesh network in the Preserve. There are several interesting tutorials which can be viewed.