Spreadsheet Interface For Streaming Sensor Data

• US 20080016436A1
• Filed: 07/14/2006
• Published: 01/17/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/14/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Zhao, Feng, Liu, Jie, Olson, Timothy K., Woo, Alec LC
• Application Number:
  US11/457,679
• Publication Number:
  US 20080016436A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/212
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/125 involving control of end-device applications over a network
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416

Abstract

Sensor nodes are programmed by representing a sensor node of a sensor network as a field on a displayed page, displaying a list of programs with which the sensor node can be programmed, and programming the sensor node in accordance with user selection of the field representing the at least one sensor node and a program from the list of programs. Also, a spreadsheet application can be configured to receive and display streaming sensor data from one or more sensor nodes of a sensor network.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a sensor network having one or more sensor nodes for collecting data; and

a user terminal in communication with the sensor network, the user terminal comprising a spreadsheet application configured to receive data streams of streaming sensor data from one or more sensor nodes of the sensor network and to display the streaming sensor data to a user on a spreadsheet.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one gateway interposed in the system between the sensor network and the user terminal, wherein the at least one gateway receives the streaming sensor data from the sensor network, converts the sensor data into platform-independent data streams, and feeds the sensor data to the user terminal as platform-independent data streams.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the platform-independent data streams comprise extensible markup language (XML) streams.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the spreadsheet application maps the platform-independent data streams to cells of the spreadsheet.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a storage database, which stores sensor data from the sensor network and selectively reads out the stored sensor data to the spreadsheet application.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the spreadsheet application is configured to simultaneously display streaming sensor data and stored sensor data from the storage database.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a packet buffer for queuing data streams from the sensor network.

8. The system of claim 7, further comprising a display thread which periodically takes data out of the packet buffer and concatenates multiple packets into a data view using extensible stylesheet language (XSL) transformations.

9. One or more computer-readable media comprising instructions for:

receiving data streams of streaming sensor data from one or more sensor nodes of a sensor network; and

displaying the streaming sensor data to a user in one or more cells of a spreadsheet in real-time.

10. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 9, further comprising instructions for generating an action panel, by which a user can select one or more sensor nodes of the sensor network from which data is to be received and displayed on the spreadsheet.

11. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 9, further comprising instructions for representing the data associated with each data stream as a unique namespace.

12. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 9, further comprising instructions for processing one or more received data streams to generate another data stream in real-time.

13. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 9, further comprising instructions for plotting one or more received data streams to generate a graph of the streaming sensor data in real-time.

14. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 9, further comprising instructions for converting the streaming sensor data from the senor network into platform-independent data streams prior to feeding the sensor data to the spreadsheet as platform-independent data streams.

15. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 9, further comprising instructions for storing sensor data from the sensor network and selectively reading out the stored sensor data to the spreadsheet, such that the spreadsheet simultaneously displays streaming sensor data and stored sensor data.

16. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 9, further comprising instructions for queuing data streams from the sensor network, and concatenating multiple packets into a data view using extensible stylesheet language (XSL) transformations.

17. A method of managing sensor data, comprising:

streaming sensor data from one or more sensor nodes of a sensor network to a spreadsheet application;

queuing data streams from the sensor network in a packet buffer;

selecting data from the packet buffer; and

concatenating multiple packets of sensor data into a data view.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein concatenating multiple packets of sensor data is accomplished using extensible stylesheet language (XSL) transformations.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising displaying the streaming sensor data in one or more cells of a spreadsheet in real-time.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising generating an action panel, by which a user can select one or more sensor nodes of the sensor network from which data is to be received and displayed on the spreadsheet.

21. The method of claim 17, further comprising representing the data associated with each data stream as a unique namespace.