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Southampton (pte027/04.02.2005/13:00) - British Scientists have devised a way to monitor experiment conditions from mobile phones, allowing them to leave the laboratories using mobile technology. As the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk reports, the software, called "middleware", allows different computer systems to talk to each other securely and instantaneously. The experiment is being carried out by Southampton University http://www.soton.ac.uk , where a team of chemists are studying experiment conditions from their mobile phones. Sensors in the laboratory pick up any changes in the environment so the system can alert chemists, wherever they are.
"It replaces the traditional notebook with some electronic form, but it is not just about carrying around a computer - it is much smarter than that," said Jeremy Frey from Southampton University. "We wanted to be able to monitor and keep tabs on experiments outside the labs. This is crucial because if there is an anomaly in the experiment data, it could be down to a change in temperature, light, or some external factor. The technology makes it easier for these to be spotted, flagged up, recorded, and analysed as soon as possible by experts collaborating all over the world," he added.
The team's laser experiment is looking at the behaviour of molecules at the surface of oil and water and the conditions have to be strictly controlled. Sensors positioned around the lab monitor the environment and feed data into a computer. The system can also detect when a person has entered the secure lab, which could be dangerous or disruptive to the individual and the science itself. Data can be accessed from any GPRS or wi-fi smartphone or personal digital assistant that uses Internet protocol, without having to build any other application that will let the systems translate and talk to each other. This means that it works whatever kind of operating system that the device runs on. On the device is a prototype program for scientists to be able to read the data. It has been specially developed for the project to be a light application, so that it requires little bandwidth.
"It is off-the-shelf so people don't have to worry about what happens," said Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM's pervasive messaging technologies manager. "It is like a parcel service - you just wrap it up and send it. You don't have to worry about the bits and bytes, ones and zeroes." "We can put the new sensors in, the system can talk to the broker (middleware), publish it, and anyone can subscribe to it, taking the information they want. If a particular element in or around the experiments change, it will let the scientists know immediately. It is better to be away from an experiment, but you always want to monitor them - you never know when things may go wrong," added Frey.
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