With the MyriaNode V3 available, gathering sensor data has finally become a real option. The new MyriaNode has four LED's, of which 2 can be used as a light sensor, a temperature sensor built into the processor, and it can be extended with an accelerometer. Though these sensors are of course not yet the type of sensors we would wish to employ in the end (think rather of PIR, Sonar, less crude light and temperature sensors, humidity, electrical current, etc.) it offers some way to experiment with sensor fusion and pattern recognition algorithms.
With the MyriaNodes running MyriaCore and organizing themselves into a communicating network, and a sniffer grabbing all interesting messages from the air and storing them on a desktop computer, it is time to turn to some scenario's to solve. And lo and behold, these are abundant:

• COPD use case: The COPD use case is the use case in the ALwEN project that has to be solved in the end. The objective is to create a Body Area Network that monitors a number of vital signs of a COPD patient (COPD is a disease of the lungs much like asthma, except that the effects are quite permanent and often deteriorate) and notifies a network in the environment of important information. This information may then be forwarded to for instance care-givers or relatives, or the network may decide to act autonomously and for instance inform the patient that he or she has to take it easy.
  
• Greenhouse Monitoring: Greenhouse monitoring is one of the two scenario's in the STORM project. The objective is to use a wireless sensor network to observe environmental conditions important to the growth of whatever plant is growing in the greenhouse. These conditions include temperature, humidity, air pressure, light intensity, etc. The goal of the network can subsequently be to report all data to a central database for analysis, to report only in case some condition has reached some critical value, or to act autonomously by for instance switching on the sprinklers or switching off the lights.
  
• Assisting the Elderly: One main issue in keeping elderly in their own home as long as possible, instead of elderly homes, is how to observe whether the person is still healthy and capable of living independently. A WSN could help by monitoring so called Activities of Daily Life (ADL's), to determine whether a person's situation is deteriorating, and if so, how fast, by actively assisting the elderly in these activities, or by reminding them to perform them. Additionally, it could call for care at home and automatically register the type and duration of care delivered.
  
• Cool Kastje: The first scenario solved with respect to the CCF2 Independent Living. Where WSN related activities mainly focus on the sensor network itself, little attention is given to how information contained in the network can be made accessible to humans, or how it can be actively presented to humans. The Cool Kastje scenario was a first attempt to construct a complete chain from individual sensor node to human being. A fridge (Dutch: koelkast) was outfitted with a node measuring the temperature and spreading this temperature in the network. A sniffer node connected to a desktop would analyze the temperature, and make a call to an ASK-system (www.ask-cs.nl) if the temperature was too high. ASK would consequently call a fixed person and inform him or her that the fridge was left open.
  
• Kees-opsluit-Case: An infamous scenario, still high on the list of to be solved scenario's. One of our colleagues tends to be locked in at night because he works in the attic and people don't realize he is still there when they lock the door. The goal of course is to detect if there is someone in the building and make this information available at the front door, so that people know whether to lock the door or not.
  
• Koffie Case: Noone likes to queue up for getting coffee, thus it should be possible to view from upstairs whether the coffee machine is currently in use or might soon be in use. Thought this may not be the most intricate of scenario's to solve (a simple electrical current sensor would suffice) the scenario mainly serves to be an interesting yet solvable one with the sensor we can currently employ: light and temperature.

It may be obvious in the above list the the first three scenario's are rather ambitious, while the last three are more low-profile. This is exactly the way it is meant to be: it is highly surprising to see how little attention, despite the enormous amount of work on wireless sensor networks, is given to actual implementations of WSN's. It is our firm belief that all the theoretical work on modeling the behavior of WSN's and coming up with theoretical applications is useless if you are not familiar with the harsh and unpredictable reality that you will face in the end. Better to get your hands dirty and test every theory and every idea in the real world on a real network and in that way gradually, step by step, build your architecture. Thus, the first three scenario's could be seen as the Valhalla that we hope to achieve by taking the baby steps (be sure not to underestimate them though, to quote Andries: "het is weerbarstige materie") that are the last three scenario's.