Request oriented sensor networks have stricter requirements than conventional event-driven or periodic report models. Therefore, in this paper we propose a minimum energy data aggregation (MEDA), which meets the requirements for request oriented sensor networks by exploiting a low power real-time scheduler, on-demand time synchronization, variable response frame structure, and adaptive retransmission. In addition we introduce a test bed consisting of a number of MEDA prototypes, which support near real-time bidirectional sensor networks. The experimental results also demonstrate that the MEDA guarantees deterministic aggregation time, enables minimum energy operation, and provides a reliable data aggregation service.