Self powered wireless network debut!

Dust Networks will demonstrate a SmartMesh® IP 6LoWPAN wireless network running on harvested energy at the IDTechEx Wireless Sensor Network & RTLS Summit in Munich(D) this week. For the first time anywhere, all of the nodes in the network, including the IPv6 routing nodes, will run on energy harvested from a variety of devices including the Micropelt TE-Power thermogenerator and the Cymbet™ EnerChip™ CC rechargeable solid state battery trickle-charged by a small off-the-shelf daylight powered solar collector.

“The SmartMesh product family provides a unique convergence with energy harvesting because all of their mesh network nodes can run on harvested energy,” said Burkhard Habbe, Vice President of Business Development for Micropelt GmbH. “With the further decreased power requirements of Dust’s new SmartMesh IP technology we can now run even more applications on thermoharvesters at rather low gradients, eliminating both wires and battery maintenance.”

“By combining EnerChip solid state energy storage solutions with Dust Network’s Eterna™ technology, Cymbet’s customers are able to deploy completely self-powered wireless sensor networks,” said Steve Grady, Vice President of Marketing for Cymbet Corporation. “The overall power requirement is so much lower than with competing wireless products that this is a  maintenance-free, extremely compact, eco-friendly networking option.”

“It appears that much of the WSN growth likely in 2011 will be due to market demand for solutions to overall network connectivity and battery-free operational constraints,” said Kirsten West, Principal Analyst with West Technology Research Solutions, an independent market research and consulting firm that follows emerging wireless technologies and the products and industries which will adopt those technologies.

“The practical impact of Dust’s focus on low power 802.15.4 SoCs and networking is evident in this multi-vendor demonstration of self-powered wireless sensing” said Brenda Glaze, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Dust Networks. “With no wires to install and no batteries to change, the initial and on-going costs of installation and maintenance are slashed.”

The standard SmartMesh IP Evaluation Kit provides everything needed to demonstrate wireless mesh network performance, data monitoring, digital actuation, and event notification.