About Us

HKUST-NIE Social Media Lab was first established in 2012. The lab focuses on researching big data system and analytics, cyber-physical interactive media system, and Internet of Things (IoT) systems and infrascturcutre for smart cities. BLE beacons have recently been highlighted as potential building block for IoT infrastructure. However, due to their limited power source, periodic battery replacement operation proved to be tedious and exhaustive. Therefore, HKUST NIE Social Media Lab presents HKUST SolarBeacon, the first open hardware sustainable IoT. Lab members involved in this initiative are shown in the right.

Open Hardware Beacon

HKUST SolarBeacon is the first open hardware energy harvesting beacon utilizing ambient light as its primary energy source. With HKUST SolarBeacon we look forward to promote construction of IoT infrastructure that is more smart and sustainable.

What We Provide

We provide open source designs for registered members who wish to create energy harvesting beacon under an open license. We provide everything from 3D printable packaging designs, Bluetooth circuit design to software for free.

Related Works

Followings are some of the most recent works on IoT infrastructure carreid out.

K.E. Jeon, T. Tong and J. She, "Preliminary design for sustainable BLE Beacons powered by solar panels," 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), San Francisco, CA, 2016, pp. 103-109

K.E. Jeon, J. She and S. Park "Design principles on solar powered BLE beacon for IoT infrastructure," 2017 IEEE Internet of Things Journal Special Issue on Smart Cities and Internet of Things (submitted)

K.E. Jeon, J. She and S. Park "Hybrid energy harvesting BLE beacon design leveraging on solar and wind power," 2017 IEEE 18th International Symposium on A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM) (submitted)

S. Park, J. She, T. Yang and K.E. Jeon "Proximity-based push notification system for interactive mobile applications," 2017 IEEE 18th International Symposium on A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM) (submitted)

R. Fisher, L. Ledwaba, G. Hancke and C. Kruger, “Open hardware: a role to play in wireless sensor networks,” in MDPI Sensors, Vol.15, No.3, pp. 6818-6844, Mar. 2015.

R. Faragher and R. Harle, “Location Fingerprinting With Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons,” in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol.33, No.11, pp. 2418-2428, Nov. 2015.

M. Radhakrishnan, A. Misra, R. K. Balan, and Y. Lee, “Smartphones & BLE Services: Empirical Insights,” in Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), pp. 226-234, Oct. 2015.