Educational Videos

Great on Forest fire detection & prediction.

Why not just use satellite imagry to detect forest fires, it's much easier and less expensive

If lightning strikes anywhere near the tree, the cmos electronics will be destroyed....

If you are creating a biochemical, ion-based DC current,  you are moving charge across electrodes that may produce a bi-product, such as a gas or a precipitate.   PH, of course is a relative scale for the degree of alkalinity or acidity.   The movement of charge is nature's attempt to stabilize/balance charge distribution. The low voltage is produced by a slow acid/base reaction.   In the case of platinum the electrodes are non-reactive, but just as putting dc current through water can create hydrogen and oxygen, there must be some sort of recombinant reaction in response to tapping out current.  Does anyone at MIT have any ideas as to what bi-products are being generated?

Fire lookouts detect quicker than satellites!

Cmon.. this is silly...  ok so you got a few microvolts out of the soil...  how is that going to run any kind or wireless device... so if you use Zigbee or Dust technology.. you are going to need a boatload of these things probably more then 4 per acre (to get a reliable link) and then each hop degrades... and Platinum and manpower isn't cheap to do all this.

If thieves will steal a 2000 lb copper statue from a park to sell for scrap metal, they will probably steal your entire forest for $10.00 worth of platinum foil.  Not everyone is an appreciative rocket scientist.

You guys need to look at NEW technology!

There are long life power storage and very low power wireless nodes out there. ZigBee is a joke unless you need interoperability. These guys can optimize the protocol & minimize on time and with a energy source to harvest from power these things for a LONG time! And how often does this thing need to report every hour or something?

Some day these things will be on every bridge & building reporting on the structural health they're attached to and scavenging their energy from solar, vibration or tension.

A few more clever electronics can really supplement their power. Since they have to run a long wire along the trunk anyway, why not take advantage of the potential difference between the top of the tree and the ground? Under some conditions they may get the same potential or more from a ground loop.

Okay. Not a bad idea...but how many tree's will you need?

Plus what is the environmental impact?

I do see an upside...perhaps this can be used in an urban environment to help power cell phone networks. Still going to need so many trees though. Why not have devices strategically located to detect fires.

here is the research article:

www.plosone.org/.../journal.pone.0002963