COULD SENSOR NETWORKS RUN ON THIN AIR?
CASPIAN
Consumer privacy and RFID newsletter
http://www.spychips.com
http://www.nocards.org
February 2, 2007:
By Katherine Albrecht
"Imagine a patient free to move around, but with his heart rate constantly being monitored.... Removing the cables takes monitoring to a new level."
-Medical page, EnOcean website
If you're worried about ubiquitous sensor networks, the German company EnOcean may keep you up nights. Here is a description from the company's
website:
EnOcean "sensors are wireless, batteryless and maintenance free. Our groundbreaking components create energy seemingly from nothing, the slightest change in pressure, the smallest variation in temperature is enough to generate power for our ultra efficient sensors to make their readings and transmit their results.... [T]he harvesting of energy from the environment and...the use of radical power management techniques... enable our devices to run on minuscule amounts of energy. The net result is that EnOcean devices do not need batteries or an external power source, they can be deployed where they are needed, without the need to schedule retrieval for battery changing. By removing the need for maintenance we have revolutionised what is possible with wireless sensors."
Their website shows a sensor affixed to a tree.
EnOcean
http://www.enocean.com/indexenc6.html
Thanks to Bruce Sterling's Wired blog for giving us a heads up:
http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/01/spime_watch_swi.html
CASPIAN: Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering
Protecting consumer privacy and opposing retail surveillance since 1999
http://www.spychips.com
http://www.nocards.org
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