Moving Sensor Data Onto The Internet With SensorML

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to this Sensors article, a new XML encoding scheme may make it possible for you to remotely discover, access, and use real-time data obtained directly from Web-resident sensors, instruments, and imaging devices. By describing sensors using SensorML, anyone can put sensors or sensor data online for others to find and use. And because it's XML-based, it means all this data will easily be searchable. "For example, searching for particular kinds of sensors and data in a particular geographic region, with data collected within a particular time window, will be easy. This has significance for science, environmental monitoring, transportation management, public safety, disaster management, utilities operations, industrial controls, facilities management, and many other activities." In this column, you'll find a summary of the Sensors' story which contains more technical details about the technology. And if you're really interested, please visit the SensorML homepage."

Comments

SensorML

[Jason1729]

They didn't shorten it to SML because everyone will pronounce it smell. Then half their FAQ will have to explain that smell sensors don't exist yet.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:SensorML

[Soko]

They could have justifiably named it Sensor Equipment eXtensible Markup Language. Imagine the FAQ for that one, though.

Soko

Re:SensorML

[rmolehusband]

Also, the functional programming language which made my university existence sheer hell, Standard ML already exists as is widely (within long beardy circles at least) known as SML.

Re:SensorML

[Vengie]

Actually, they didn't shorten it to SML because that is Standard ML.

SML/NJ *cringe*

Disclaimer: I took a compilers course with Zhong Shao, who together with Appel of Princeton, made ML into a useable language. CURSE THEM BOTH.

Well, this makes for some interesting Flash Apps

[JasonKey]

With Flash's native XML interfaces, looks like some fun with graphing coming up. Anyone have any examples of this in use yet?

An application

[utopyr]

<I>
<have fallen="true">
<can>
<get up="false">
</can>
</I>

Re:An application

[Anonymous Coward]

that should be:

<I>
<have fallen="true"/>
<can>
<get up="false"/>
</can>
</I>

trust

[kilf]

It might be difficult to establish trust for these technologies. If I want to know the temperature in some distant city, how can I be sure that the sensor I address is correctly calibrated, or not resting near a air-con outlet? In fact, there would be no way to tell if the damn thing even exists- it could be a textfile sat on the sever or the local tourist office...

Re:trust

[SteveDob]

Surely, unless you knew for certain that individual sensor results could be trusted, and possibly not even then, you would sample several devices in, or near, the location of interest.

Re:trust

[Bertrum]

And so you would use the data you get accordingly. The problems you foresee already exist for any kind of data gathering. Unless you do it yourself, you don't know how accurate it is (and even then you can delude yourself).

Re:trust

[Anonymous Coward]

...
</sensor>

Yes, Possibilities...

[Dracos]

Just think of what could be done when Lego updates Mindstorms to use this.

Re:Yes, Possibilities...

[AntonyBartlett]

Just think of what could be done when Lego [lego.com] updates Mindstorms [lego.com] to use this.

Yes, I'm sure there are many many imaginative ways of encoding the three bits of sensor data that the Mindstorms RCX can recieve as XML

000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
Those are all the possible states. Add tags to taste.

Cute post, except smell sensors DO exist.

[jerryasher]

Google on smell sensors faq

Smell with a digital sensor

cyrano sciences

How Smell Sensors Work

. . .

world.sensors.find("Osama")

[Anonymous Coward]

This will incredibly simplify work of many
people:

if sensor=world.sensor.find("Saddam"):
print "Saddam is alive!"
for msgtype in voice,sms,im:
CIA.leavemessage(msgtype,"Saddam is at"+sensor.location)
else:
print "Saddam is dead!"
CNN.call("Saddam is dead!")

What?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an outrage. What about the First Amendment? Our civil rights? I'm opposed to sensorship of any kind!

Why oh why XML?

[leandrod]

Why XML with all its verboseness and hierarchy?

What I want is a relational or SQL schema. Then a much slimmer data transfer format would be possible.

Sure enough I can get XML data and input into a more useful SQL or relational database. But why go thru a verbose, hierarchical format, I can't see enough reason.

Re:Why oh why XML?

[jon077]

Wait! Hold on, back up. HTML is XML, so it obviously is working for the majority of data transfers. Secondly, why would anyone give direct access to a DB? The slow connections of a DB are not suitable for presenting data to the public. I am sure many of the Web Services, extract the data, then cache it, or write it to disk, then present the same data to the world. Sure a better solution to XML may exist, but it is not reading directly from a DB. For now, Vive Le XML.

Re:Why oh why XML?

[Anonymous Coward]

XML has provided a set of rules for developing file formats. If you have ever had to sit down and think about how to make your information available to other people to use in their applications it's great. If you are dealing with semi-structured data like recipes it is ideal.

Yes it is verbose and overkill for highly structured data but until someone develops/markets a method of developing file formats that are not verbose more suited to machine transfer its the best I am aware of.

I do think we need this extensible binary formatting language or what-ever it would be, but until then XML is allowing groups of people to agree on standard file/data formats a lot quicker and easier than starting from a blank piece of paper.

Islay

Feasibility of small implementations?

[dtmos]

From perusing the SensorML site, SensorML seems geared for satellite-based geosensing and other applications for which significant computing resources are available. I'm interested in small wireless sensor networks, which have very limited computing resources (usually just an 8-bit 8051 or HC08-based MCU, running at 4 to 8 MHz, with about 5k ROM and 1k RAM available). SensorML seems to have a lot of optional fields that could perhaps be eliminated for a "stripped down" version suitable for these types of sensors but, while I'm not an expert in the field, it's always been my understanding that XML=bloat. Can anyone comment on the feasibility of SensorML for small embedded applications?

Re:Feasibility of small implementations?

[khuber]

Unless your embedded devices run web servers it probably doesn't make sense. You would just have another computer reading raw data from the embedded devices and then publishing that as SensorML instead.

-Kevin

Web Services Based LabView Next?

[AlabamaMike]

Seems to me that National Instruments could use this recommendation to develop a web services based version of LabView. It'd be cool to have a loosely coupled, geographically independant sensor network that one could run experiments against. Now if we only had RemoteHandsML.

Re:Since when...

[khuber]

Since never. What about discovery? The article is full of XML hyperbole. The connection they didn't explain is that _if_ this stuff is tied into the SensorWeb, you could have those capabilities.

This article should have really been about SensorWeb since SensorML is just an implementation detail.

-Kevin

Re:Since when...

[jargon]

And because it's XML-based, it means all this data will easily be searchable

*boggle* XML doesn't exactly lend itself to searchability.

I mean, there exists XML:DB, but it is FAR from optimal for searching. Certainly not "easily searchable."

Unless, of course, they are accustomed the the data being processed being unlabeled; then I guess some standard markup might be useful.

Wow, lookit that!

[mwood]

They've invented...SNMP.