In 2009, while Nick Warren was working as the director of program technologies at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, something bad happened to one of his colleagues—and to his workplace. “A well-dressed man walked right into the office and stole my colleague’s laptop,” he says. “And with it, he lost some critical research data.”
This, along with a burglary of his parent’s house six months earlier, sent Warren into high gear for one of his side projects: developing a wireless system to track motion. Six years later, this has culminated in Metasensor, Warren’s venture-backed startup, and the release yesterday of its inaugural products, the Sensor-1 and the Web-based Aletha software for analyzing data collected by the Sensor-1.
The Sensor-1 is roughly the circumference and thickness of three quarters stacked atop each other. It contains a three-axis accelerometer; a three-axis gyroscope; a Bluetooth radio; a microcontroller; red, blue and green LED lights; a siren; and a replaceable CR2032 lithium coin battery. The sensor stores movement data (related to linear motion and tilt) and communicates with any Bluetooth device to which it is paired, such as a smartphone, via the Sensor-1 app, or a laptop.
The Aletha platform is designed to aggregate data culled from multiple Sensor-1 devices directly (uploaded by the Sensor-1 app running on a Bluetooth-enabled device), or by importing data from the Sensor-1 app as a raw .cvs or .xls file. Metasensor is also developing an Aletha software module that users can run directly on PCs or laptops in case those machines are not directly connected to the Internet, or if security features prevent the Web browser from downloading information from the Sensor-1 devices via a Bluetooth connection. The hosted Aletha platform will serve as an aggregator for data from all of these sources, and also generates charts to visualize sensor activity. In addition, it includes analytic tools that users can access to create reports or look for trends based on sensor activity.
Metasensor is also offering an application programming interface (API) that will allow developers to port the sensor data into their own applications.
The Sensor-1 encrypts its transmissions using the AES-128 block cipher before uploading them to the paired iPhone app or Metasensor’s Web-based Aletha platform.
Warren says the Sensor-1, which costs $79, can be mounted onto or inside anything that a consumer or company might want to track, such as a laptop, a bicycle or a shipping container.
For example, a cyclist could toss the Sensor-1 into the saddlebag on her bike and set it to automatically arm itself if her phone is more than 15 feet away, and then unarm itself once the phone comes within 15 feet. Thus, if she stops off at a coffee shop and walks inside, the Sensor-1 will trigger an alarm on her phone if the bike is moved while she is inside the building. In this scenario, the owner may be close enough to run out and determine why her bike is being moved—and potentially interrupt an intended theft.
If placed inside a shipping container, the Sensor-1 will store movement data. When the container arrives at its destination, the recipient can remove the sensor and upload its stored data to the Aletha platform. Based on that information, the Web-based software can deduce whether the container moved as expected from point A to B, or whether it experienced an unexpected force that could indicate it had been dropped or toppled.
The user might also elect to mount a Sensor-1 to infrastructure, such as doors or windows, and set it to trigger an alarm on the iPhone app in the event that a door or window opens. The individual could elect to set the sensor’s lights to blink and/or its siren to alarm if that happens, or she might prefer that they remain off for non-security applications (such as tracking how many times a door opens or closes throughout the day). To conserve battery life, which Warren says should last roughly a year under typical use, the Sensor-1 can be placed in stealth mode, which automatically turns off the device’s lights and siren but still supports proximity-based alarms that the user has set. A user would probably put a Sensor-1 in stealth mode before placing it in transit, such as in the aforementioned cargo container application.
Warren also has ambitious plans under development for Sensor-1 and Aletha, based on the use of machine learning. More interestingly, Warren says, using the linear motion and tilt data the sensor collects, Metasensor will eventually be able to determine the sensor’s location within a defined space, such as a room, but without requiring multiple receivers to determine location based on triangulation. He declines to explain, however, how the room would be mapped, or exactly how much data would need to be collected before the Sensor-1 could be used in this way—essentially as a real-time location system without the need for multiple readers.
These upgrades will be available via firmware updates, Warren says, ensuring a long useful life for the Sensor-1 devices. He adds that over time, Metasensor plans to use the data that the sensor collects to pair events with people. For example, he explains, the way in which a door is opened (the speed and the angle to which it is opened) could be associated with the person (one of a pre-select group of people) who opens it.
Metasensor will sell mounting hardware, Warren reports, but the sensor can also be attached to items using an off-the-shelf adhesive tape, such as 3M‘s Command Strip.
By the end of the year, Metasensor plans to release an Android version of its Sensor-1 app. What’s more, the company is developing an app for the Aletha platform, so users will be able to access the data-analysis tools while on the move.