News and Events

Mar 30, 2010 SWITCH runs the academic network in Switzerland and is our internet provider for the Jungfraujoch field site. The SWITCH Journal reports on the PermaSense project in the March 2010 issue.

Mar 18, 2010 SWITCH changed the internet access to Jungfraujoch to a direct fiber connection to Berne so now we have 5 msec latency from ETH to Jungfraujoch. Wow what an internet connection high up in the montains!

Feb 16, 2010 20 Minuten reports on the PermaSense project in their monthly column "Studentenecke".

Jan 15, 2010 The Jungfraujoch field site has been waiting on a servicing trip for two months now to upgrade faulty PermaDozer software on the sensor nodes. Musti, Roman and Jan spent two days up high with ropes, laptops and down jackets while watching the Wengen downhill races from the distance on the Joch. All nodes are back to normal operation now.

Dec 17, 2009 Just before the end of the year the PermaSense data interface is just getting ready to go public. Check out http://data.permasense.ch to see our live sensor data on the internet. Currently we are still testing and fixing the last issues, but you should see more and more coming over the next couple of days. The PermaSense data inferface is built on GSN with PSbacklog and a custom metadata handling and data conversion software.

Dec 15, 2009 Arcteryx has published a press release announcing cooperation as clothing sponsor of the PermaSense project. We are truly thrilled about this and hope to be wearing the flashy new 2010 colors on our fieldwork in 2010.

Aug 20, 2009 Following the Wireless LAN installation the cameras finally came to the mountain. Mountainview is taking pictures at a breathtaking 12 Mpixel every 3 hours and the webcam can be access in a daily/weekly lapse mode as well as with single images. At the moment the mountainview images are accessd from Matthias Keller's webpage.

July 18, 2009 Our first summer trip to Zermatt was dedicated to the installation of a long-range Wireless LAN link from Klein Matterhorn to our field sites on the Hoernliridge. The access point was is mounted on the precipitation radar on Klein Matterhorn (thanx Maurizio) and links to Hoernlihuette and the Hoernliridge field site where we installed a new base station, weather station and camera.

May 27, 2009 Hilti sponsored a brand new TE-7A LiIon powered cordless hammer drill (their best piece) for the PermaSense project. It arrived this week and we are truly thrilled with this new tool. It will be of good service on our next field campaigns. Thank you very much!

April 31, 2009 PermaSense has a prototype of the new high-resolution imager mounted on the rooftop testbed on the ETZ building in Zurich. It is built based on the new linux-based PermaSense BaseBoard and can communicate with our sensor nodes and also via Wireless LAN or GSM/GPRS/EDGE. It is pretty heavy (We even had to pay overweight when taking it to Ireland to demo at the EWSN demo session!), but since it doesn't move and you only install once, that's ok. Check out our automated and battery powered 12 Mega pixel images here: Mountainview Demo

March 19, 2009 After 5 months of continuous and mostly flawless operation Andi and Jan went to Zermatt for a look around, some field servicing and installation of another two relay nodes higher up on the ridge. All in all our Matterhorn field site looks great and is well set for the upcoming spring measurement season. The recent high winds really swept the mountain faces clean and there was only little snow and ice around even though it is mid-winter.

February 24, 2009 The Swiss National Science Foundation published a press release and featured the PermaSense project with the picture of the month for March, 2009. Among the media reporting were ZDFheute.de, Tagesanzeiger, News, Le Matin, Computerzeitung (on the title page), Greenpeace and Radio Oberwallis.

February 02 - 04, 2009 Installation of the Jungfraujoch field site. After the foen storm ceased, 10 sensor nodes, 3 relays and a Wireless LAN base station were installed at the high altitude research station Jungfraujoch. The PermaSense project now has two field sites operational. Overall, the Jungfraujoch is much easier to install and deploy since we have power, internet, a workshop and all nodes can be conveniently reached by rappelling off the platform of the Spynx.

November 19, 2008 Mid-winter maintenance on Matterhorn (Jan & Lorenz): A hardware problem at the base station was repaired and the system restarted. At the same time all 15 nodes were replaced. The new nodes have an upgraded memory with 1 GB capacity. This should ensure that no data will be lost in the future - even in severe weather conditions.

August 27 - 29, 2008 PermaSense retreat 2008: One day of installation of the final solar panels on the Matterhorn site and 3 days of chatting and planning in the alpine athmosphere of Zermatt.

August 21, 2008 PermaSense FOEN site visit 2008: Troubleshooting of the solar power system. Added new BP solar panel as a quick fix to replace the fragile flexible panels.

August 08 - 09, 2008 Field service of the Matterhorn base station. Removed a defective solar panel.

Juli 23 - 26, 2008 Installation of the full network and base station on the Hoernli rigde of the Matterhorn at 2400m a.s.l. by Andi and Jan.