Want to learn more about how OpenSensorHub works? Jump in and see what it does and how it can work for you?
What is OpenSensorHub?
OpenSensorHub (OSH) is an open standards, open source software platform to support virtually any sensor, actuator, or process through the deployment of distributed, interactive sensor hubs. A major driver for OSH is to enable the interaction of sensors, actuators, and processes both within and between hubs for the purpose of supporting sensor webs, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Design Concepts
Built on Open Standards. OSH is built upon Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) and SensorThings API, standards as well as the emerging Sensor Web API.
Ease of Deployment. A major driver for OSH is to allow easy deployment and use while providing maximum flexibility for supporting virtually any sensor, actuator, or processing system. This has been done by hiding complexities inside of the core and providing simple means for connecting sensor systems to this core through the use of APIs, helper classes, and generic module support.
Scalable and Flexible. The OSH core is designed to be scalable and flexible. Instead of only residing in large data processing centers, OSH nodes are expected to be deployed on the sensor or sensor platform, on mobile devices, on a local field hub, in command centers, and on the cloud. OSH hubs and services have been deployed on Android smart phones and tablets, Raspberry Pi and various ARM platforms, on Arduino boards, on laptops and desktops, and on the Cloud.
Sensors actuators, processes. Any of these nodes is capable of supporting sensors, actuators, and on-board processing. This allows one to access real-time or archived sensor observations, to process these observations, and to task sensors and actuators on any node using standard web service requests. The real power of being able to support processing on any node is that it provides maximum flexibility for executing such processing wherever it makes the most sense, be it on the Cloud, in a local field node, or on-board the sensor or its platform.
Interoperability between nodes. Also, any of these OSH nodes can interact with other nodes if authorized to do so. Nodes can accept requests from other nodes, push observations to another node, or participate in easily-configured processes that utilize multiple nodes within a local web or on the world-wide web. Thus, observations from several nodes can be accessed by another node, used within a process chain on that node, and perhaps used to task other sensors and actuators.
Support for new or existing clients and Apps. While much of the initial efforts have been focused on providing a solid OSH Services capability, the OSH Community is also providing an open source JavaScript library for supporting OSH on the client side. These capabilities allow one to discover OSH nodes and offerings, to locate these observations on standard map layers, and to display the results in appropriate viewer windows, graphs, or directly on the map. This library allows one to easily create their own browser-based clients or to add OSH-enabled capabilities to existing tools.
Demos
Check out the video demonstrations and tutorials available on the OSH YouTube site and chose to follow that site in order to keep updated on new capabilities and demonstrations. These videos, based on real-time screen captures, demonstrate the flexibility of OSH to deal with a variety of sensor types (both simple and complex) and the power of OSH to provide geospatial awareness to the sensors, and to enable on-demand processing of the real-time observation streams.
Blog & Twitter
In addition to checking out and following the OSH video channel, one should explore and follow the OSH Blog where we publish brief discussions of new capabilities and future directions. You can also follow us on Twitter to get latest updates.
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