Cambridge's Streetlamp-Powered Wireless Network

Serpentegena writes "A joint research project by scientists at Harvard University and BBn Technologies may have spawned a new breed of Metronet. The wireless network, code-named CitySense, which will consist of 100 streetlamp-mounted nodes by 2011, will draw power off the Cambridge, Mass. public grid and be used at first for weather and pollution monitoring. The intention is to also allow 'academic researchers worldwide [...] to submit their own research programs to run on the network.' Sounds remarkably similar to the beginning of the ARPANET, except the network hosts will be running Linux."

Comments

!wireless network, but a wireless sensor network

[Tetravus]

The author of the article doesn't emphasize that the interesting thing about this network (besides it being associated with Haaaavard and therefore news-worthy to certain people) is that it's a distributed sensor network. It doesn't just pass data between nodes, each node is capable of creating and sharing data with the rest of the network. In fact, that's the only thing that's interesting about this at all. I mean, did Google force Mountain View to install new wireless node poles when they put in their WiFi or did they just piggyback on existing infrastructure? And, as someone else has mentioned, Ricochet networks did the whole city-wide data network thing in the late 90's.

So, if you've been looking for a place to test out your predictive models of chemical dispersion under real-world conditions, it sounds like Cambridge is the place to go.