Is it possible to change the embedded web-camera in FieldServer to other digital camera with high resolution or zoon-in? 

The embedded net-camera can change to other digital camera or web-camera with Ethernet interface such as a web-camera with functions of pan/tilt and zoom-in.  However, changing web-camera may results a change of casing with a charge. By the way, commercial web-camera is a resolution of 0.30 Megapixel (640×480), so RDC-i700 Ricoh camera is suggested to use as a digital camera with a resolution of 3.00 Megapixel. 

It is possible. A soil moisture sensor of ECH2O (Decagon Device Inc., USA) as a optional sensor was attached to FieldServer directly. ECH2O soil moisture sensor can buy from Meiwa Syoji Co. Ltd. and search related information by Google.

How about the countermeasure for heat-resistance and waterproof in FieldServer?

FieldServer takes in fresh air from outside by fan and measure temperature and humidity in inlet air as a Assmann-style measurement. In general,  measuring error will be occurred from heat conduction by cables connected to sensors.  Also, troubles and breakdown will be caused by temperature-rising of casing because of generated heat from electric devices.  Therefore, the fresh air taking by fan is to cool inside of the casing and keep a differential pressure between outside and inside for preventing rain invasion when the hurricane and rainstorm. Also, solar panel attached on the casing top which is insulated by direct radiation, and the forced ventilation are high efficiency to make it a possible in suitable temperature casing inside of FieldServer.

Can low temperature trouble occurred when the overcast and rainy in Winter?

There was no troubles occurred by low temperature. FieldSevers are operating well at -15°to -30°temperature in Hokkaido, Japan and Harbin, China. Since the electronic instruments are sensitive to high temperature, FieldServer have to take a high attention to prevent at high temperature environment in Summer. Against, FiledServer is operated well in Winter because of a littlie temperature-rising. 

How about to prevent condensation? We know, the condensation is biggest trouble to electronic instruments.

Since condensation will be occurred by radiation cooling of large temperature difference of inside devices, the condensation problem can be solved by enough ventilation even generated heat by electronic devices. When the power supplied by solar panels in periodically, instantaneous powering may occur condensation by wet air and temperature difference between inside and outside in FieldServer. However, periodically power operated FieldServer is using a general countermeasure  to prevent by condensation  because of the little generated heat from electronic devices and waterproof  design of chips.  

The generation capacity of solar panels will be depended on latitude and season of the deployment.  In general, about 10 times of generation capacity of solar panels will be needed for electronic consumption of FieldServer. By the way, it is better to use more 2-3 times capacity for solar panels. As a example, 100-200 W solar panels was required to supply to a FieldServer with a embedded web-camera in 2004 Summer vision.

The FieldServer in Thai vision was developed as a royal project by National Electronic and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Thai. There is over 600 FieldServers were produced and deployed in Thailand. The research  related to FieldServer is progressing in many countries and international workshops are hold by APAN and AFITA for many times.
17th APAN Meetings/Jt Tech Workshop (2004.1.25-30)

How about the operation status though one year? is the wireless communication provided well always?

There is two types of FieldServer. One is sleep type which is operated periodically, and other one is always online type. The purpose of FieldServer is to following: 

(1) Lighting in exterior, or as a interface to provide pulse signals in safekeeping;
(2) Construct a core wireless network in high speed and broadcasting.; 
(3) As a HotSpot in outdoor to provide a ubiquitous network environment;
(4) Environmental monitoring, plant/animal observation, and equipment controlling;

Applications of (1), (2) and (3) requires to always online, so FieldServer as a standard vision is always operated though 24h at 365 days in one year.  The FieldServer in sleep mode is operated once for 20-60 seconds in an interval of 30 to 60 minutes. The sleep mode FieldServer is just for operating function (4) only and did not sold for a commercial vision in market.

Is there the AdHoc function between FieldServers? How long communication distance will be provided?

Yes. There is the AdHoc function between FiledServers. In order to cover the wireless signals in the area diameter from several 100 m to over 10 km, the broadcasting function have to needed.  AdHoc network is depended to the embedded wireless LAN module. FieldServer always uses the wireless distributed system function or mesh network function. The mesh network device is used in the developing vision and wireless LAN module such as WLA-G54 (Buffalo Inc. Japan) with a access point is used in commercial vision.  The wireless signal were transmitted to 2.5 km far by using WLA-G54 with 6 broadcasting and a interval deployment of 500 m. By the way, the  1.5 km wireless communication was broadcasted once in Hokkaido without any obstacles.  It is possible broadcasting over 10 km wireless signals by using beam-antenna and extending to cover 50 km wireless communication theoretically.

The measured data from FieldServers is always collected in a package by field server agent operated on a PC cluster in Information Communication Application Museum (Dennou Museum).  The field server agent as a web-crawler is search the round for  FieldServer web in the world. The merits of the FiledServer are following: 

(1) operate the agent program to collect required information;
End-used do not need to worry how to collect, story and backup the measured information for FieldServer, they can uses the data on the homepage anytime. Field server agent can operate for the dada collection automatically in remote.
(2) let data in common positively;
Publish the data in common will be improve the application as human intelligent resources. In general, many data measured by datalogger was stored in CD-ROM of disk as closed-door information. Again, many data will be closed or lost when the researcher retired.
(3) collect the FieldServer data yourself;
Various data collection will decrease risk in data lost.
(4) apply simply data in integration
Many applications will be applied by using FieldServer data combined satellite data via MetBroker interface. The FieldServer data is also applied for Web Applications in free.

In the beginning developing stage of FieldServer, soil-mined PC as a variation vision is used to storage data in local, but was stopped because of the power shortage. In order to deploy FieldServer under a serious environment of desert in JIRCAS project, research on FieldServer with soil-mined PC as a platform application was restarted and will be finished until 2006. 

Since geographical features in Japan is complex, mesh  data in weather from AMeDAS have a large error and not able for matching the environmental data around the several 100 m in the field. It is necessary to measure the pointed weather directly instead of the mesh interpolated data.  It is necessary to measure it directly to use the mesh interpolated data. The actual measuring point will be depended on the region and purpose. In case of collection of produce history information in traceability, it is difficult to deploy FieldServer in a high density in respect of the cost  though one is an ideal in each field.  Actually, deploying FieldServer in interval of several 100 m is a realistic solution because of the broadcasting restriction of wireless LAN.

Can use telegraph pole to supply power for FieldServer?

It is possible. The electricity company can install pole and wattmeter for tens of thousands of Japanese yen. In Japan, it is easy to use commercial telegraph pole for power supply in FieldServer, because there is a utility poles along the road or in field. Actually, the power supply of FieldServer was installed in Sano farm (http://www3.j-speed.net/~sanofarm/) .

How to supply the power when the FieldServer deployed in paddy field?

Please use 12V DC power supplying to FieldServer when power cables will be pulled to paddy field. It is very dangerous to pull the commercial power of 100V with the extension cables and never do. When it is difficult to pull the power cable in paddy field, it is better to use FieldServer in sleep mode driven only with a built-in solar panels directly.

It is easy to access FieldServer data by end-users and applications as long as web in activity because of web-server. The FieldServer is not an excessive load that might not be added to the network by data communication troubles. The web crawler such as Google can collect the web data over the world, because the data collected object is web-server. So, field server agent as a web crawler can collect all data measured by several hundred or million FieldServers deployed in the world.                                Oppositely, there is danger causing by DoS attack when data received by e-mail. Actually, there is various problems that had occurred considerably serious though experiments which data was sent by using e-mail. Moreover, when each module is Web server, a connection and coordinated operation can be done very easily. The FieldServer architecture is operated well and simply by web-server. That is able to construct a sensing network and apply to mail complex applications, because FieldServer is an association of web-server based devices.
It is possible to use this technology to other applications such as the television and motor etc. that can be integrated by web-server based devices. besides the sensor net and all modules of an electronic Therefore, it is easy for troubles diagnosis, because each equipment or device will be operated independently.  Moreover, even if part breaks down, it is possible to execute it as a proxy by other modules.

In order to guarantee the stabilization and high speed, FieldServer did not used OS. The microcomputer H8 3067 with clock frequency of 20MHz was assembled in field server engine. This microcomputer can be rewritten by object-oriented C language in CPU on Windows or Linux.
Therefore, it can be make speed-up and power-saving possible in FieldServer without OS.  As a client, it is enough as long as web in activity.
For software developer, FieldServer with OS will be easy to update or redevelop the related software, but there is a difficulty for developing device driver.  driver though OS is convenient for a soft developer. For firmware of FieldServer developed by assembler and C language, it is earlier than developing device driver if there are an assembler and knowledge of C language.

There is a program embedded to FieldServer for responding measured data in real time on web. Anyone can use any Internet browser to access the data without any special software.
In order to store data or images periodically and operate applications corresponding to sensing values , field server agent as a web clawer was developed by JAVA and XML. Please contact to  administrator for getting field server agent or asking any questions.       Free software related to web-camera can be used to observe field automatically with the web-camera embedded to FieldServer. It would be better to be able to use it as a alarm system when the change occurs on the screen.  There is several software in  free which is searched by search engine for safekeeping observation.

The FieldServer data is collected by field server agent in National Agricultural Research Center (NARC).  If the VPN and  port forward in FieldServer can be accessed by NARC, the data collection service will be provided. The collected data is accumulated in the storage servers in the Information Communication Application Medium, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries for publishing as a common intelligent resource with the exception of article data and patent data in press.                                         It is necessary to operate the field server agent in local area when not connecting continuously with the Internet for the profit-pursuing purpose and the data closed-door. An agent box which is a compact PC is being originally provided in market for data collection of FieldServer in local area.

Is there manual for configuration of FieldServer network?

Wireless LAN architecture in FieldServer will be depended on specification of wireless LAN as an access point product. The network configuration is also depended on the network products. Wireless LAN modules using WG-AP110 (Planex Communications  Inc.)  and AirStarion Pro (Buffalo Inc.)  were used in vision 1.0 and vision 2.0 in FieldServer, respectively. It is necessary to peruse these manuals for constructing and configuring the FieldServer network. Other settings are general knowledge that can refer in various technical books and network equipment manuals.

Field server engine is a developing device in our research term, so end-used can not buy the device in market. Right now, we are testing performance of the field server engine for a long-term operation. Please use the commercial PICNIC to make FieldServer yourself.

There is possibility of attaching wireless LAN in the field server engine because of the one-chip of wireless LAN. However, since IEEE802.11a （54Mbps）,  IEEE802.11n, and next generation technology such as WiMAX, UWB will be on market after IEEE802.11b/g, it is better that FieldServer uses continually the commercial wireless LAN. Finally, there is a challenge to integrate the wireless LAN to the field server engine as a one-chip device.

How should I do though the FieldServer wants to be produced and to be sold? 

This is unnecessary to pay anything for making FieldServer yourself. However, since various new technologies such as case structure to measure temperature with a high  accurately are developed and applied for patent in progress, please connect to National Agricultural Research Center with the patent use permission contract.

Can buy FieldServer from National Agricultural Research Center?　

FieldServer was developed by research project about 「Database ・ Modeling Cooperating System」 in National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), National Agriculture and Bio-oriented Research Organization (NARO). The FieldServer is difficult to put on the market, because NARO are a research organization changed from national research center to incorporated administrative agency.

Elab Experience Company can provide a purchase service for FieldServer research. The selling is contacted by Elab Experience Company and Mecs Company. The National Electric Works, Ltd. (FieldServer Division) is panning to sale a commercial vision of FieldServer from April 2006.  Please use FieldServer by self-responsibility because FieldServer is in research and development for testing.

Field Server Forum (FSF) is a group organized by researchers and companies related to research and development FieldServer technology from Apr., 2005. Please access HERE to refer the related information in detail.

Have the possible to attach special sensors to FieldServer?

Where is better to ask to configure FieldServer network?  There is no any experiences to configure LAN or other networks.

The basic knowledge such as the Ethernet, TCP/IP will be required in configuration of FieldServer network. The security of the FieldServer is always configured in router. Please ask the system house of FSF members to help you in the configuration. Of course, there is a technology support for mailing list of FServerJ.