Build your own distributed sensor network to collect, analyze, and visualize real-time data about our human environment—including noise level, temperature, and people flow. With this hands-on book, you’ll learn how to turn your project idea into working hardware, using the easy-to-learn Arduino microcontroller and off-the-shelf sensors.

Authors Alasdair Allan and Kipp Bradford walk you through the entire process, from prototyping a simple sensor node to performing real-time analysis on data captured by a deployed multi-sensor network. Demonstrated at recent O’Reilly Strata Conferences, the future of distributed data is already here. If you have programming experience, you can get started immediately.

• Wire up a circuit on a breadboard, and use the Arduino to read values from a sensor


• Add a microphone and infrared motion detector to your circuit


• Move from breadboard to prototype with Fritzing, a program that converts your circuit design into a graphical representation


• Simplify your design: learn use cases and limitations for using Arduino pins for power and grounding


• Build wireless networks with XBee radios and request data from multiple sensor platforms


• Visualize data from your sensor network with Processing or LabVIEW