This paper presents an experience report illustrating the design of the uPart tiny low-power sensor network platform: from the analysis phase over the definition of the application, design and construction of hardware, the implementation of the software and network to the application set-up. uPart sensor nodes were given away in the conference badge to 500 voluntary attendees of the Ubicomp 2005. In our demo application, uParts were able to recognize activities of attendees of the Ubicomp 2005 conference. Design was carried out under serve time and budget restrictions. The paper focuses on reporting design decisions and presents tech-nical details of uPart hardeware, firmware and applications. It also shows first qualitative experiences with the run of the system at the conference. The outcome of the paper is a general meta-guideline for designing sensor network systems under similar conditions.

This paper presents a sensor-based, networked embedded system, referred to as the particle computer system. It is comprised of tiny wireless sensor nodes, capable of communication with each other, as well as connectivity with backend, PC-based systems, thereby facilitating software development and data analysis in an integrated systems package. The core design principles of the sensor nodes enable operation in very mobile settings and truly ad-hoc, peer-to-peer interoperation without the intervention of a master or explicit middleware layer. The two main system properties highlighted in this paper are: 1) information distribution to all components within the system and 2) the usage of a common communication language in all system components. This language has been proprietarily developed for the particle system and is known as ConCom. As a result of these system properties, we have found the particle system to be very extensible and applicable in many everyday scenarios. The paper presents insights to the implementation of the particle computer system, including software development and data analysis capabilities, and the overall system integration.