The document describes Sensor.Network, an open data exchange platform for the Internet of Things. It discusses lessons learned from interactions with customers that highlighted common issues like data collection, sharing, and analysis. Sensor.Network aims to address these issues by providing an open API and tools for data-centric collaboration inspired by social networks. These include tags, annotations, access controls, and event notifications. The platform supports heterogeneous devices and data insertion/retrieval through a REST API. It provides views, visualizations, and the ability to integrate statistical analysis packages to enable insights from sensor data.

1. Early Lessons from Building Sensor.Network:
An Open Data Exchange for the Web of Things
Vipul Gupta, Poorna Udupi, Arshan Poursohi
{vipul.x.gupta, poorna.udupi, arshan.poursohi}@oracle.com
First International Workshop on the Web of Things (WoT 2010), PerCom 2010
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2. Overview
• The Internet is now the Internet of Things ...
data storage
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3. Overview
• The Internet is now the Internet of Things ...
data analysis
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4. Overview
• The Internet is now the Internet of Things ...
insights
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5. Overview
• The Internet is now the Internet of Things ...
actions
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6. Overview
• The Internet is now the Internet of Things ...
Sensor.Network: an open data-exchange for the Web of Things
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7. Motivation
• Interactions with many SPOTs customers - Sun Modular Data Center, MIT,
Warren Wilson College, USGS, Vodafone
• Common set of issues:
- Data collection
- Sharing
- Privacy
- Search
- Collaborative analysis
- Notifications
• Bring social networking technologies (e.g. tags, annotations, fine-grained
access control, web-hooks) to this problem space
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8. Motivation
• Interactions with many SPOTs customers - Sun Modular Data Center, MIT,
Warren Wilson College, USGS, Vodafone
• Common set of issues:
- Data collection
- Sharing
- Privacy
- Search
- Collaborative analysis
- Notifications
• Bring social networking technologies (e.g. tags, annotations, fine-grained
access control, web-hooks) to this problem space
3

9. Motivation
• Interactions with many SPOTs customers - Sun Modular Data Center, MIT,
Warren Wilson College, USGS, Vodafone
• Common set of issues:
- Data collection
- Sharing
- Privacy
- Search
- Collaborative analysis
- Notifications
• Bring social networking technologies (e.g. tags, annotations, fine-grained
access control, web-hooks) to this problem space
3

10. Motivation
• Interactions with many SPOTs customers - Sun Modular Data Center, MIT,
Warren Wilson College, USGS, Vodafone
• Common set of issues:
- Data collection
- Sharing
- Privacy
- Search
- Collaborative analysis
- Notifications
• Bring social networking technologies (e.g. tags, annotations, fine-grained
access control, web-hooks) to this problem space
3

11. Benefits
• Enables investigations into correlations that would otherwise be missed
• Enables easy sharing of data and analytical algorithms
• Enables data-centric collaboration: editing, annotation, discussion
• Frees up domain experts from the chore of setting up and managing an IT
infrastructure
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12. Sensor.Network Overview
• Embrace heterogenous
devices
• Lower barrier to usage
• Easy, RESTful API
• Fine-grained access
control
• General platform for
specialized applications
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13. “Datastream” Abstraction
• A time-series of sensor values
sampled together.
• Decouples physical sensor from
high-level phenomenon of interest.
• A datastream may be fed by
different sensors at different times
• Has associated metadata and
privacy controls
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14. REST-based API
• Sensor.Network operations may be accessed via a browser or
programmatically using HTTP operations
• Most operations require authentication--either password or API Key
Datastream creation example:
% curl –dump-header hdrs.txt –header “X-SensorNetworkAPIKey: apiKey” –request POST –header “Content-
type: application/xml” –data-binary “@Datastream.xml” “http://sensor.network.com/rest/resources/datastreams/”
<?xml version=”1.0”?>
<datastream>
<name>My Pothos Plant</name>
<description>Light and temperature readings from my office plant. </description>
<tag>light</tag>
<tag>temperature</tag>
<value><name>light</name> <type>int</type> <units>lumen</units></value>
<value><name>temperature</name> <type>float</type> <units>celsius</units> <min>-50.0</min>
<max>50.0</max></value>
</datastream> 7

15. REST-based API (more examples)
• Data insertion
% curl –dump-header hdrs.txt –header “X-SensorNetworkAPIKey: apiKey” –request POST –header “Content-
type: application/xml” –data-binary “@Data.xml” “http://sensor.network.com/rest/resources/datastreams/id/data”
<?xml version=”1.0”?>
<sampleData>
<sensorNodeId>0014.4F01.0000.01AB</sensorNodeId>
<timestamp>2009-07-30T13:31:37.459Z</timestamp>
<value>700</value>
<value>29.4</value>
</sampleData>
• Data retrieval
% curl –dump-header hdrs.txt –header “X-SensorNetworkAPIKey: apiKey” “http://sensor.network.com/rest/
resources/datastreams/id/data” –header “Accept: text/plain”
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16. Security
• Authentication
• username/password for browser-based access
• API key for programmatic access
• Authorization uses UNIX-like model based on user classes and access types
• HTTPS for confidentiality
• Target verification to avoid “alert spamming”
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17. “Task specific” Views (Dashboard)
• At-a-glance information on datastreams -- health, permissions
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18. “Task specific” Views (Map)
• Identifies geographical location with additional information in tabbed windows
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19. Visualizations
• LivePlots: Interactive visualizations, embeddable
in external web pages
• Includes standard visualization types: line plots,
bar charts, scatter plots
• Support for custom visualizations, e.g. dynamic
map trace
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20. Visualization (cont’d)
• Investigating
• “Composite” visualizations
• Privacy-enhanced visualizations
(time-delayed, low-fidelity)
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21. Event Notifications
• Provides “push” functionality
• User can receive email, SMS or
HTTP Post (webhook) on events of
interest
• Events need not be data related,
e.g. “alert me when someone adds
me to a group”
• POST to .../notifications creates a
subscription request and returns Id
• Target verification
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22. Ongoing Work
• Data-centric collaboration:
- richer, privacy-aware visualizations,
- visual annotation and editing
• Integration of statistical packages (e.g. R) as pluggable analysis modules
• Expansion of “bi-directional” capabilities:
- Device management
- General m2m communication, sleep-proxy (IETF CoRE)
• Sensor.Network as an application platform: third-party access to user data
(delegated authorization)
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23. Lessons Learned
• Enable investigations into correlations that would otherwise be missed
• Support device heterogeneity
• Open API. Support both PUSH/PULL
• Enable easy sharing of data and analytical algorithms
• Address privacy concerns
• Provide tools for data-centric collaboration, sharing
• Lower barrier to usage by domain experts
• Hide complex IT infrastructure behind a simple API
• Provide simple abstractions
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24. Sun SPOT Giveaway
• 2 Sun SPOT kits (see http://www.sunspotworld.com) available
• Email a short (less than 2 pages) proposal to
sensor.network@sun.com with the title
“PerCom Giveaway” before noon Mar 31, 2010
• Describe your project
• Why Sun SPOTs would be a good match
• How you’d share the results (e.g. report,
open source, post on http://sunspotworld.com/forums)
• What would you do with the kit long term, e.g. rotate among members of a JUG,
use to teach a class etc.
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25. Q&A
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