Application of the IMB 400 PIR sensor for optimizing the Intel Mote2 energy consumption

Energy consumption is a critical factor in wireless sensor networks, especially for nodes running on battery power. The “Occupancy Measurement, Modeling and Prediction for Energy Efficient Buildings” [1] project developed at the ANDES lab at UC Merced uses Imote2 platforms combined with the IMB 400 sensor board to record movement of people in buildings and predict the room occupancy. The IMB 400 provides a camera to take pictures for further analysis and occupancy prediction. The PIR sensor of the IMB 400 board will be used to set the camera and the Imote2 microprocessor into deep sleep mode and wake it up again if some movement is detected. This procedure of setting the platform into a sleep mode and waking it up again saves a huge amount of energy and therefore increases the lifetime of the battery powered sensor/microprocessor node.