  Structure pathology detection is an important security task in building
construction, which is performed by an operator by looking manually for damages
on the materials. This activity could be dangerous if the structure is hidden
or difficult to reach. On the other hand, embedded devices and wireless sensor
networks (WSN) are becoming popular and cheap, enabling the design of an
alternative pathology detection system to monitor structures based on these
technologies. This article introduces a ZigBee WSN system, intending to be
autonomous, easy to use and with low power consumption. Its functional parts
are fully discussed with diagrams, as well as the protocol used to collect
samples from sensor nodes. Finally, several tests focused on range and power
consumption of our prototype are shown, analysing whether the results obtained
were as expected or not.
