Billions of sensors power professor’s vision of interconnected world

Ravi Pendse, a professor at Wichita State University, sits in front of routers and switches, the tools that make the Internet work, in Wichita, Kansas.By Roy Wenzl A professor at Wichita State University (WSU) plans to create a university centre with an ambitious name: The Centre for the Internet of Everything.Step one: Plant a small garden on campus where plants will message irrigation pipes telling how much water they need.Ravi Pendse, helped by Internet companies NetApp and Cisco, hopes to create other innovations he says could put WSU in the high-tech big leagues.The garden will model how to save water and billions of dollars in the world’s crops and lawns.In the second and subsequent steps, Pendse’s students and partners would develop innovations linking computers, smartphones, social media and the billions of sensors now being attached to — everything.Pendse as a technologist has collaborated with NetApp and Cisco for years, creating technology and many WSU graduates who went to work for those companies.Stan Skelton, director of strategic planning and advanced development at NetApp, said his company hopes to work out plans with Pendse this semester to grow the garden and establish the centre.The centre will not require tax money or buildings, Pendse said; it will operate as a mobile group of students, faculty and business partners, and be financed with private money. The only expenses necessary so far: a few hundred dollars for seeds and sensors.WSU President John Bardo endorsed Pendse’s plans after he became WSU president in July.“What Ravi is talking about in part is that we’re all seeing a massive increase in low-cost connectivity ... and this allows you to think very differently about what you can do.”NetApp and Cisco are international companies that create data storage and network underpinnings for the Internet. They’ve partnered with Pendse and his students for years.“Students get firsthand experience working with an industrial partner,” said NetApp’s Skelton. “And they with their projects allow us to try riskier innovations, or projects that we might not do ourselves.”Pendse was so concerned about how to explain his ideas that he prepped for the interview for this story by writing out pages of notes and carefully arranged note cards. (He did all this with handwriting, using an ink pen.)He and his business partners think an “Internet of Everything” will be inevitable, and that WSU could help create it.Currently, he said, there are actually several “Internets.”There is the Internet that is actually an Internet of “information.” With Google and other search engines and the storage of machines and the Cloud, it has been a powerful tool humans use to organise information.Facebook, Twitter and other social media are “the Internet of people,” networking on a planetary scale.There can be an Internet of “places”: for example, WSU, Cowtown, City Hall, restaurants.Unseen by most of us, however, is the “Internet of things” — billions of sensors attached to machines or people, all with wireless capability. The OnStar driver protection system installed in many cars is a system of sensors that communicate to machines and people hundreds of miles from the car, for example.The “Fitbit” Pendse wears records his every step, whether on the treadmill or walking across campus. On the day we saw him, by 2pm he had walked more than 14,000 steps from the time he got on his treadmill.These sensors, billions of which surround us already, will multiply and play a big role in our lives, he said. Cars will drive themselves, talk to each other and to roadways and destinations, which will reply.There will be smart fabrics — if we have a medical problem, we can put on a shirt, and the shirt will talk to our doctors, giving information about whether we’re sick. Soon, Pendse said, there will be smart pills we can swallow, which will message from our intestines about whether we took our prescription, whether we’re sick, whether we have early-stage cancer.Skelton said Pendse first came to the attention of his company more than a decade ago, when Pendse and his students startled executives and technologists pioneering a way to use handheld devices (PalmPilots) to monitor and maintain data storage remotely.Skelton was at a conference of engineers in Europe at the time and saw their jaws drop when the WSU innovation was demonstrated. Up until then, engineers had to work on storage systems by hand, including at night after breakdowns.Remote technology like that might seem old hat today, but it thrilled engineers then, Skelton said.What Cisco and NetApp also noticed about the same time was that they were hiring a large number of WSU graduates trained by Pendse.One other result of this relationship with WSU: NetApp says it now has 525 employees in Wichita, including Skelton, a 1977 graduate of WSU.Pendse and the quality of WSU students are part of the reason NetApp is here, Skelton said.By most estimates, Pendse said, about 15bn to 16bn “smart” devices — such as desk computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets — are permanently connected to the Internet. There are only 7bn people on the planet, so that’s how ubiquitous these devices are, he said. There also are currently about 50bn to 60bn sensors in the world.By the year 2020, only seven years from now, Pendse said, technologists think there will be 50bn smart devices, and 200bn sensor devices, talking to each other, doing tasks for us, doing some thinking for us.What his “Internet of Everything” will do, Pendse said, is more coherently bring all these devices in line, enhancing our world.Many people in Wichita, Pendse said, are already capable of developing many of these technologies, and creating new jobs, new industries in Wichita. It might be possible, he said, to turn the entire campus into a lab. For example, he said, parking is a huge problem, including on WSU’s campus.He wants to put sensors in every parking space, capable of communicating with every car in Wichita if necessary.Anyone who parks at WSU regularly could obtain an app for their smartphone or car. On their way to the campus, the app could talk simultaneously to every parking space on campus. The empty spaces would talk back.The technology to make this possible will be created soon, he said. Why not create it here, using WSU as the lab? — The Wichita Eagle/MCTSound advice Q & APrograms for photo editingWhat Windows program do you recommend for easy photo editing? My primary goal is to improve skin tones to give my photographs a more professional look. My hobby and my weekend passion is photography (children, wildlife and still life) so I really want to take the final product up a notch.— CRBAdobe Photoshop Elements is an easy-to-use, much less expensive version of the industry standard, Photoshop. Photoshop Elements 11 retails for a street price of around $80. Given that photography is your passion, you may want to upgrade to the full version of Photoshop someday. Using Photoshop Elements now will make you familiar with the layout of Photoshop, its workflow, and how to use many of the tools. For these reasons, it is my strongest recommendation for you and I believe it is well worth the investment. Learn more and download a trial version at http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html.There are free editing programs out there that are worth a look. Zoner Photo Studio Free has received excellent reviews worldwide and can be downloaded at free.zoner.com.GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is another free program. It is meant for more advanced users than the other programs listed here. I’ve tried GIMP and never really warmed up to it, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t, and the price is certainly right. Download at www.gimp.org.In closing, for you personally I recommend you spend the $80 on Adobe Photoshop Elements 11. Other readers may find the free programs are all they need.I recently purchased a Neuhaus Labs T-2 vacuum tube amplifier, which I first saw on your site. In researching speakers in the $500-ish range, Axiom’s M2v3 looked very interesting, and I am also considering the Arx A1b since you liked the match of the Arx leaf tweeters with the T-2 vacuum tube amplification. I want to spend around $500 or less. What are my best choices?— MW, Pennington, New JerseyThere is a real treasure trove of incredible $500-and-less speakers out there right now. I will list some speakers that I have tested with the T-2 and know to be a good match. (Readers curious about his tube amplifier can see it at www.neuhauslabs.com.)Both the Axiom M2v3 ($338) and Arx A1b ($299) are very precise, detailed speakers that mate well with the warm, lush sound of the T-2. The Arx is only available in a black cabinet, while the Axiom is available in dozens of finish combinations, courtesy of their custom shop. See Arx at www.theaudioinsider.com and Axiom at www.axiomaudio.com.Polk’s outstanding LSi7 bookshelf speaker, which has an MSRP of $799, can be purchased from Amazon on closeout for only $399, which is a tremendous bargain. The LSi7 speakers have beautiful, genuine wood side panels in a choice of ebony or cherry wood. See them at http://www.polkaudio.com/products/lsi7.Bear in mind that with the Arx A1b, Axiom M22v2 and Polk LSi7 you will need speaker stands, adding $50 to $100 to your final cost. This brings the final cost close to the $499 price of the Arx A3 towers, which could well be the best match for you. The A3s will have the same physical footprint as the bookshelf speakers, but play louder, sound fuller, and have more bass. — By Don Lindich, MCT