2024-25 Loom: Modular Internet-of-Things Sensor-Actuator System for Rapid Prototyping

Your team will play a critical role in developing our ongoing mega-project called Loom: a development environment for low-power Arduino-programmable microcontrollers. Loom accommodates a range of integrated components including sensors, various datalogging formats, internet connectivity (including Wi-Fi and 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE)), radio telemetry, timing mechanisms, debugging information, and power conservation functions. Additionally, Loom includes unique applications for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. By establishing modular, reconfigurable, and extensible functionality across components, Loom reduces development time for prototyping new systems. Bug fixes and optimizations achieved in one project benefit all projects that use Loom, enhancing efficiency. Although not a one-size-fits-all solution, this approach has empowered a small group of developers to support larger multidisciplinary teams designing diverse environmental sensing applications for water, soil, atmosphere, agriculture, environmental hazards, scientific monitoring, and education.

Objectives


Your team will collaborate with Loom developers to identify new key features like:

  • mesh or star network communication protocol for networked sensors and actuators
  • make more robust crash and failure recovery modes to enhance modularity and hot swapping of devices
  • enhance features that enable users to reconfigure devices mid-operation without reprogramming the devices themselves.
  • Make an MQTT based subscription feature to enable users to set states of actuators on the network. 

Motivations


We want to reduce the time between an idea for an internet-connected widget (sensor or actuator), and physical product. To do this, we made a modular and reconfigurable structure to connect and make devices, like LEGOS but for IoT. This system plays an essential role enabling developers to build custom sensor-actuator platforms for environmental monitoring and education.

Qualifications


Minimum Qualifications:

C/C++, VS Code, GitHub best practices, highly motivated

Preferred Qualifications:

Arduino IDE familiarity, MQTT, Node, Node Red, MongoDB


Details


Project Partner:

Chet Udell

NDA/IPA:

No Agreement Required

Number Groups:

1

Project Status:

Accepting Applicants

Website:
https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/24/11/3466
Keywords:
CDatabaseEmbedded SystemsHardwareNetworkingConsultancy
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