Word: wireless
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the bin is full, sensors trigger gears that then compact 180 gal. of waste into 40-lb., easy-to-collect bags. An LED display indicates when the trash is ready to be picked up. Poss has plans for that system to be replaced by a wireless one that will signal when the can is full...
...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...
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...
Some advances barely get noticed. Those new game boxes? Lots of ink. Not so much the new chips that run them. So it is with this year's Technology Pioneers. Consumers will flip when they see MicroOptical's video goggles, and they'll dig Ruckus' wireless router. In rural India, where Drishtee is taking computers to the poorest people, the benefit is obvious. But Dust Networks' self-organizing mesh networking system is pretty cool if, say, you work in industry. So too are the paper batteries of Enfucell or the flexible sensors of DeepStream. Sensors are a real big deal...