I turned a light on using my cell phone the other day, and helped to create a revolution in wireless sensor networks. Sending a packet from your cell phone to a light may not seem like much, but this packet was an internet protocol (IP) packet, the same kind of packet that has made email and search engines work for decades, the same kind of packet that made Cisco and Google and Facebook the giants they are today, the same kind of packet that revolutionized our lives.

What’s so magical about this kind of packet? It’s in a standard, flexible form, so that anyone can create it, and anyone can consume it. So once we get cell phones controlling lights in our homes with IP packets, then anyone with a clever software idea can use that same mechanism to control the lights too. Maybe it’s software on your home computer, that turns the lights up in the morning and down at night, or maybe it’s a browser at the hotel, that lets you check to see if you left the lights on when you went on vacation. There’s a funnel full of applications that filter down to the IP packet format.

And once you have IP-enabled lights, then anyone with a clever hardware idea can send information over the internet too. Maybe it’s the controller in your garden, that checks the internet to see what the weather forecast looks like before watering the lawn, or maybe it’s the energy sensors on all of your appliances that automatically log your power consumption so that you can reduce your waste, your footprint, and your bill. There’s a whole pyramid of sensors and actuators that will filter up to the IP packet format.

IP connects it all, and as the WSN industry shifts to that mindset, we’ll see the same explosion of innovation, and unpredictable applications and benefits, that we saw shortly after the first computers started speaking IP.

So download that lighting control app, or dream up a better one, and help start a revolution!

Kris Pister
Dust Networks CTO
View all blog entries by Kris Pister