Getting data out of buildings is getting easier. Researchers recently used the sMAP protocol to simply and cheaply combine numerous streams of building data to obtain a complete infrastructure set for Building 90 at LBNL. Building 90, which is home to the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, has been instrumented with numerous sensors to measure variables like temperature, air flow, and power use. However, the fact that different instruments use different communications protocols was a barrier in allowing researchers to organize the sensor data in a user-friendly manner. sMAP is a CITRIS project that allows different communication protocols to talk to each other.
sMAP, which stands for Simple Measurement and Actuation Profile, is new way to integrate physical data. The project, led by Professor David Culler and his students, creates standards for transmitting physical data and describing its contents. It also provides tools for building, organizing, and querying large databases of physical information. And finally, the researchers have built a large free library of drivers for different instruments that can be used across deployments.