WiSAR Lab Development Mote
The WiSAR Development mote is derived from the commonly available Tmote Sky. It was developed by the WiSAR Lab to be able to measure the current consumption of various components. It uses the same MSP430F1611 microcontroller and CC2420 radio, but with additional jumpers to allow isolation of each component on the board and to make it easy to perform current measurements on them. It does not include the Tmote Sky's USB interface and instead programming is carried out using the JTAG interface. This removes the additional current consumption of the USB circuitry, due to the switches and buffers necessary to avoid current flowing backwards to the USB circuitry. This also reduces the cost of the board.
The WiSAR development mote incorporates a betatherm thermistor, a photo- synthetically active radiation (PAR) sesnor and passive infrared (PIR) sensor, giving the ability to track human presence within each room. The PAR sensor measures the photo-synthetically active radiation which is the range of light visible to the human eye.
The ability to isolate components and measure current consumption at various points within the circuit is very useful when optimising the current consumption of the motes. This development board also allows for the easy connection of external sensors via I/O pin outs and the flexibility to integrate various types of sensor.
Pictured above at the 2010 IT&T Confernce hosted by WiSAR Lab are David Tracey of the WiSAR Lab and the Tanaiste Mary Coghlan showing off a WiSAR Lab development Mote.
