The FCC on Thursday announced plans to set aside a chunk of spectrum for connecting wireless medical devices, reports Reuters. The allocation of spectrum for so-called Medical Body Area Networks (MBANs) is part of the FCC’s push to free up unused spectrum and will be up for a vote at the FCC’s May 24 meeting.

With wireless medical devices, doctors could monitor a patient’s vital signs at home or in the hospital via low-cost wearable sensors that are attached to the patient’s body and wirelessly connected to the machines that process and display the data for doctors. TheIEEE 802.15 Task Group 6 (Body Area Network) developed a communication standard optimized for low power devices for operation on, in or around the human body.

The Philips Heartcycle, a sensor-embedded shirt measuring heart functions, was announced last year.

The medical devices lobby pushed the FCC to give it rights to 40 MHz of frequencies, just below the WiFi band. So far the FCC aims to set aside two spectrum bands, apparently 2300-2305 MHz and 2360-2395 MHz. One band would only be valid for devices used in medical facilities. A second spectrum band could be used for remote monitoring of patients who are in their own homes.

Currently, sensors have to be attached directly to machines by wires, making it difficult for patients to leave their beds.

More info here.

The Floating Sensor Network is a project by researchers at UC Berkeley that provides real-time, high-resolution data on waterways via a series of mobile sensing ‘drifters’ that are placed into the water and monitored by cell networks and short-range wireless radios.

As the drifters are carried by the water, their GPS receivers track their movement while other on-board sensors monitor temperature and salinity levels. This data can then be used to estimate river flow and contaminant propagation in real-time and eventually be combined with other sensor data streams (USGS permanently deployed sensing stations, mobile measurements, etc)  to create “traffic maps” for an entire delta, showing the speed and depth of the water, and how contaminated the water is.

The long term vision of the project is to “put California water online, to create a system that will enable water managers and scientists to visualize the evolution of California’s water resources in real time.“

The Sacramento River is the first testing bed for the fleet of sensors that can also be deployed in response to unanticipated events like floods, contaminant spills and levee breaches.

Learn more about the project here.

Today a new startup came out of stealth mode. Called Electric Imp, they have developed a line of products designed to connect anything and everything together. and they might finally take the internet of things into the mainstream.

Electric Imp sells a series of small microcomputers that resemble SD cards. In them is a Wifi antennae and a processor. You plug them into other circuits that Electric Imp also sells, which do various things. One was designed to measure water level, for example.

By breaking the processing out of the sensors, you get a product that can be built to do whatever it is you desire. Need to measure wind speed? Hack together a mechanism for it an plug in the Electric Imp. Light level? Ditto. And Electric Imp is working with OEM’s to get slots built into commercial products, so you don’t even have to hack anything together.

Everything is controlled from the cloud by a drag-and-drop interface. Programming functionality is as easy as playing with Legos. Granted, every internet of things project seems to take this approach, but it really lowers the barrier of entry.

Don’t really care about networking your Christmas lights to the light level? Don’t worry, this technology still could impact you. Imagine using an Imp to connect a printer to the network, for example. The Imp keeps all the setting from the previous one, so just pop the card out of your old one and stick it in the new one and your printer is on the network.

But how do you connect the Imp to the network in the first place? You connect the Imp to your phone and then use your phone to connect to the network. Incredibly simple, and incredibly smart.

I’m still not convinced that the internet of things will take off. Users usually don’t like to have to work with technology, to kludge things together. As cool as the internet of things is as a concept, I can’timagine most people using it.

But if any product is going to make it mainstream, it would be the Electric Imp.

You can learn more at their website www.electricimp.com.

More info here.

Imagine a refrigerated cabinet or vending machine able to communicate its state, announcing if it is powered on, at the right temperature, well stocked, with the right product mix, at the right location, how shoppers interact with it, if it is due for routine maintenance and so on.

Now imagine millions of such machines worldwide, adding up to a sizeable business for a company.  Imagine each machine offering shoppers the ability to pay for the product in multiple smart ways through other devices (smart phones, smart cards, touch screen, etc). Imagine the enterprise being able to remotely and dynamically tune the machine with advertising, pricing, promotions, bundling, language and currency.  Imagine the machine tailoring an offer to a shopper that it recognizes as a loyal customer (if the shopper allows it).

The ability to glean real time shopper insight, optimize retail locations, make the supply chain efficient and effective and to generate a high return on assets seems like a marketing and operations dream. This smart asset scenario is well within reach of M2M.

More info here.

The signing follows a successful preparation period, and marks the start of the actual design phase of the five trial test sites. The projects will be implemented at Schiphol airport, in a few offices of ABB and Siemens, and in residential districts in Gorinchem, Heerhugowaard, and Goes. Intelligent energy systems, also known as smart grids, are essential for the realization of an affordable and reliable sustainable energy supply. At the same time, the Smart Energy Collective wants to offer an important contribution to the standardization that this new field requires. As of now, the Smart Energy Collective is the largest sector-transcending initiative in Europe for the concrete development of smart grids and services. Current participants in the project (in alphabetical order) are: ABB, Alliander, APX Endex, BAM, DELTA, DNV KEMA, Efficient Home Energy, Eaton, Eneco, Enexis, Essent, GEN, Gemalto, Heijmans, IBM, ICT Automatisering, Imtech, KPN, Nedap, NXP Semiconductors, Philips, Priva, Siemens, Smart Dutch, Stedin and TenneT.

Based on the implementation of five demonstration projects involving different user groups—industry, offices, existing residential districts, and newly developed districts—the Smart Energy Collective wants to test the smart grids in actual practice, as well as to provide an important impulse to standardization; the need for this is high. During a survey conducted during the first phase, it was evident that there are more than 6,000 relevant standards that play a role in the new technologies, which will be introduced to the market over the coming years. Finally, the objective is to create a common market for energy services that is of a sufficiently large scale. Working groups have been established for standardization, market mechanisms, services and business cases, smart grids, privacy and security, and ICT infrastructure, in order to establish a solid foundation for the design of the five demonstration projects, as well as for future projects.

More info here.

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Nik Sargent likes to “do things differently”. Nik is a technologist, artist, data collector, aspiring chef, and bumblebee conservationist.

Nik’s Bumblebee Project started off in 2011 with the goal of getting to know these amazing, social creatures. As he learned more, he found that the bees documented behavioral patterns were different from observed behavioral patterns due to climate change and unusual weather conditions. Nik observed countless hours of camera footage and discovered that the Queen’s hibernation schedule has been completely disrupted leading to disaster of new bumblebees and subsequent pollination which is critical to our food supply. There are many reports of a decline in pollination and is of global significance.

Earlier this year, Nik added sensors and a gateway from ioBridge to help automate and collect more data generated by these busy bees. The bee boxes now monitor temperature, track movement, count bees, and provide real-time feedback from the bumblebees by being connected to the cloud. The project looks to be evolving as new sensors and ideas will be incorporated over time.

“ioBridge is a big step forward in allowing us to automate and correlate environmental and activity data without resorting to manual CCTV analysis,” said Nik in an email interview. “It gives us the freedom not only to view and collect the data from anywhere remotely,  but also share it and tweet it – again helping to raise awareness.”

Nik was able to capture a photo of the first tweet triggered by a Bumblebee.

More info here.

The PDF can be downloaded here.

We haven’t exactly been silent over the last few months since being acquired by LogMeIn but we also haven’t spoken much about the biggest task that’s been occupying us almost round the clock: building out and relaunching the service under a new (pronounceable! spellable!! memorable!!!) name, with a completely new (cleaner! easier!! functional!!!) design, that brings with it a whole host of features and attributes that help you build Internet of Things products, applications and services more quickly, scalably and collaboratively. Pachube.com has evolved into Cosm.com. And we mean business.

One of the key lessons we’ve learned over the years – apart from the fact that few people could spell or pronounce ‘Pachube’! – is that we should be focusing on helping people connect with each other as well as their devices. We aren’t just building behind-the-scenes infrastructure. The idea of the internet of things needing a piece of equipment (a ‘patch-bay’) has become less useful than the concept of it involving shared ‘workspaces’ and ‘environments’ (‘microcosms’ and ‘macrocosms’). Cosm has an even bigger vision than Pachube: we want it to help people, teams, companies & cities build, share and make sense of their own ‘cosms’: devices, environments, communities.

There may be some hiccups. After all, a design/brand/name change is of course the biggest outward change we’ve made in more than 4 years. But we’re working to make the transition as seamless as possible. All Pachube URLs will continue to function without a hitch (if you’re logged in,this works just like this), your Pachube login details, username and password, as well as API keys remain the same, and you can still email us on the old email addresses. In pretty much every case, however, you should really replace anything that used to be ‘pachube.com’ with ‘cosm.com’.

More info here.

Full document is available for download here.