Chris Valenta designed the R.E.S.T. platform, a modular 5.8 GHz backscatter platform with a software radio reader that could be configured for a limitless combination of sensors, antennas, power sources, and modulation schemes.
The R.E.S.T. (RFID-Enabled Sensing Testbed) was published as a flexible development platform that allowed the group to experiment with all sorts of 5.8 GHz application platforms. It was the quintessential low-power, microcontroller-based backscatter system.
Fun fact: although they did not exactly use the original R.E.S.T hardware, future group applications — the helmet shock sensor, the motion capture experiments, the ATM terminal protection system, and others — were based on the R.E.S.T.’s architecture.