There’s a surprisingly strong connection between virtual worlds and sensor networks. Many proponents of virtual worlds position them as mirror worlds — 3D canvases for visualizing what’s going on in the real world. The Eolus One initiative to model and control the energy consumption of a physical house in the virtual world is well-known to users of Second Life. The prototype, while interesting, doesn’t show how an individual might so the same thing with his/her house. Last year, the realXtend group shipped a virtual world platform that included sample code for controlling a device through an X10 controller. (See the X10manager download here and read the included readme.txt for instructions.) Although it contained no sample code for sensing X10 state, it’s easy to extend the code to read the state of X10 controllers. With this platform running inside your house you could monitor and control many devices in your home.
But what if your goal is to measure the energy use of an entire community in order to change consumer behavior? There are many wireless and power line networks Read More…
