senSebuddy: A Buddy to Your Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

The sensor data are used by end users using various IT applications. The typical application for monitoring, querying and controlling the deployed Wireless Sensor Network is complex in nature from application development point of view, owing to various resource limitations. Post-deployment nuances like firmware update, addition of new nodes or replacement of others are not so easy task, either. In recent past, efforts have been made to minimize the complexity of end user through desktop and web-based application. However, so far, instant messaging has not been tried for communication between an end user and physical mote, where an individual sensor node (or group of them) appearing as a buddy in the instant messaging contact list and one can talk to it. In this paper we are describing a system that we developed recently with the name senSebuddy, based on instant messaging technique to monitor, query and control the deployed WSN applications. We also describe the functionality of the prototype implementation of the system with Smack XMPP API and Openfire XMPP server [7]. We have carried out series of experiments to prove that one can chat with sensor mote like a normal human being, and mote can be programmed using gtalk without experiencing any delay.