Connecting The Dots For Sensors

By Jeremy Caplan

How do you get disparate machines to communicate? For decades, that has been a costly challenge for anyone operating an oil refinery, pulp mill or processing plant. Sensors measuring temperature, pressure and dozens of other things that govern how smoothly a process is running have long been linked via expensive wiring, if at all. Installing new sensors has traditionally called for retrofitting a factory with new wiring whose installation can cost 10 times what the measurement gauge itself does. Many new devices can't be wired into a central system because of the way factories are laid out, so data are often gathered by someone walking around with a clipboard.

In comes Dust Networks. To connect sensors in factories, commercial buildings or any type of processing plant, the four- year-old start-up developed a small wireless hub that relays measurements along a daisy chain of stations to pool collected data. In what is called a mesh network, each station passes along data to the nearest available station, using any one of many communication channels. The mesh network solves the problem faced by other wireless systems in factory settings: being blocked by giant metal structures. The system uses so little power that stations can go 10 years without a battery change. The impact has been dramatic. "Self-organizing mesh networking is one of the most exciting innovations to come along in the process industry in more than 30 years," says Steve Sonnenberg, a division president for Dust Networks' first major client, Emerson, a $20 billion manufacturing-services company. When BP put Dust Networks' system in place in a Washington State refinery, linking the site's sensors, BP immediately discovered a problem with one machine, saving $100,000 in productivity that would otherwise have been lost.

Dust CEO Joy Weiss says that in addition to enhancing efficiency in manufacturing, wireless sensor networks can help lighten environmental loads. "Tracking a building's temperature and lighting can save a tremendous amount of money," she says.

Other uses for Dust's mesh networks are quickly cropping up. One start-up is putting Dust's wireless sensors in parking spots to measure how long vehicles have been parked and then relay that info to a central database for billing.

For now, Dust is mainly helping companies proactively monitor equipment to avoid-- or at least prepare for--costly outages. Eventually, Weiss says, Dust may find its way into home networks as well.