Luca Lombardo

Cloud infrastructure for museum environmental monitoring

This paper describes a cloud based architecture which has been designed for the monitoring of Cultural Heritage buildings. The architecture has been deployed in museums and basements proving its capabilities. The solution is composed of small sensing nodes with volume lower than 8 cm3 and dimensions of 2.5 cm × 1.5 cm which are capable of acquiring temperature and relative humidity for interval in excess of one year. The nodes are battery operated and communicate wireless to small Arduino-based concentrators connected to the internet and to a cloud storage. Data from all the nodes are made available to on the curators smart phones in real time so that the entire building can be monitored from everywhere. The nodes have the capability of locally storing all the measurements for quality assurance and if either the internet connection is not available or the power supply is missing, the proposed system has the possibility of manually uploading data to the cloud after having transferred them from the nodes to a battery operated PC.

Inertial measurement system for swimming rehabilitation

The occurrence of light spinal diseases due to the low physical activity of daily life is continuously increasing. Recovering form these diseases requires specific and directed physical activity and can conveniently performed in swimming pools where the apparent weight reduction due to the water helps letting patients perform the relief movements. Unfortunately a way for easily assessing the correctness of the patients movement is still missing and in most cases everything relies on the capabilities of the trainers, which must be continuously present. This paper describes an attempt to arrange a simple system suitable for a quasi on-line self assessing to the movement correctness. The proposed system is based on two inertial assemblies to be worn on the wrists and capable of sending data to a receiver installed at pool border. Data received from these small assemblies are processed to show the patients the symmetry of their movements, which is connected to the movement efficiency. The inertial assemblies are arranged by using a commercial miniaturized Inertial Measurement Unit, a Teensyduino board, and a μPanel WiFi transmitter which is able to send the data to the received during the swimming. The receiver process the data in-line so that, when the patients stop swimming to take a rest, they can be displayed to the patients as a self-assess of the just performed activity.

Sensor network for museum environmental monitoring

Museum environmental monitoring is an important issue for the artifact conservation. Many solutions have been proposed to tackle this problem, but the museum constraints prevent an easy application in several cases, especially if the monitoring has to be performed in museums where an environmental control system has been already installed. This paper describes a simple though powerful solution, which complies with most of the common constraints and which is based on small sensors implementing a BT-LE wireless protocol coupled with a receiving architecture. The sensing nodes have dimensions of few centimeters, do not require cabling and power supply, and can work unattended for several years. Data are collected by a receiving architecture, which can work either on-line, with immediate data delivery, or off-line when an Internet connection is not available. Users can browse the measurements by using their smart-phones from any place and can download the data on their personal computer. In addition they can browse locally the data also in the absence of any data connection, such as in the case of remote and or recessed sites. The proposed solution has been deployed in three museums, also in the basements, and in an ancient building proving its flexibility and capability to be adapted to the different conditions.

A compact electronic interface for electrochemical sensors

This work deals with the development of an electronic system for portable electrochemical sensing. The presented acquisition module is able to operate in amperometry, voltammetry and potentiometry modes. The system can be optionally linked to a mobile readout device (as smartphone, tablet, etc.) using the Smart Bluetooth 4.1. The system is suitable for a wide range of portable and wearable applications spreading from biomedical to environmental monitoring. The system features small sizes, small weight, and ultra-low power consumption.

A Portable System for the Monitoring of Dissolved Oxygen in Aquatic Environment

Here is reported about the development of a sensing apparatus for dissolved oxygen (DO) in water. The purpose is achieved by means of a home-made electrochemical sensor, with working probe functionalized with Ag-iron oxide nanoparticles, and a readout system based on custom electronics for sensor interfacing and ATMEL microcontroller. Oxygen concentration was varied by bubbling an argon and oxygen mixture at different partial pressure (PO2/P0) into a 1 M phosphate buffer solution (pH = 7.4). A graphical user interface (GUI), developed in Python environment, allows the real-time visualization and recording of data coming from the sensor. The system is biased by USB connection and, employed with a notebook, it can be considered as a portable stand-alone one for outdoor applications.