| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Courtney Hohne OutCast Communications +1 415 392 8282 dust@outcastpr.com
99.9% Reliability Makes Wireless Mesh Networking Viable for Industrial Monitoring and Building Automation Hayward, Calif., – October 25, 2005 – Dust Networks, (www.dustnetworks.com), a leading provider of enterprise-class, low-power wireless mesh networking systems, today announced the availability of SmartMesh-XR™, its latest product built on the Dust SmartMesh™ technology platform. The SmartMesh-XR system provides customers with the highest reliability and lowest power available on the market today, meeting the stringent requirements found in industrial monitoring and building automation applications. Additionally, SmartMesh-XR offers a suite of new features that ensure unmatched ease of installation and network manageability.“Manufacturing operations demand highly reliable systems, a fact especially true of networks and sensors. This need is most pronounced in process manufacturing where sensors must serve without interruption for years in hostile environments and inaccessible locations.” said Harry Forbes, senior analyst at ARC Advisory Group Inc. “A wireless network that can provide this level of reliability with battery-operated devices would have a significant opportunity in the process control market. Dust Networks clearly recognizes this opportunity, and is responding via their new SmartMesh-XR product.” OEMs and solutions providers have made it clear that they require wireless mesh networking products they can “set and forget.” Dust Networks SmartMesh-XR system meets these demands by providing: Highest Reliability: SmartMesh-XR systems deliver at least 99.9% end-to-end data reliability in real-world industrial and commercial building environments. Frequency agility and continual network healing ensure that this level of reliability is maintained for the life of the network – not just the first few months after installation. Lowest Power: SmartMesh-XR utilizes a synchronized communication protocol to enable extremely deep duty-cycling and unmatched power efficiency. SmartMesh nodes consume as little as 25µA of current and even heavily -burdened routing nodes, handling traffic from dozens of neighbors, typically consume less than 200µA – over one hundred times less than other mesh networking solutions. This opens new classes of applications where powered routers are not feasible or practical. Easiest to Install and Maintain: Because there is no differentiation between routing and sensing nodes, a SmartMesh-XR network is truly self-forming and self-configuring. SmartMesh-XR nodes are placed where needed and wireless connectivity, routing redundancy and frequency agility is handled by the network – no specialized RF skills or site surveys are required. And once a network is installed, SmartMesh-XR provides a rich set of management, maintenance and troubleshooting interfaces to eliminate surprises and costly truck-rolls. “By focusing on make-or-break reliability and power consumption requirements we are leading the charge to make wireless mesh networking viable for industrial automaton and building control,” said Rob Conant, vice president of marketing and business development, Dust Networks. “SmartMesh-XR drives real business benefits by providing reliable, trouble-free access to information in the physical world that was impractical or impossible to reach before.” New Features, New Barriers Broken In addition to delivering industry-leading reliability and low power, SmartMesh-XR includes new features that drive down power consumption and maintenance costs and set new standards for ease of network installation and management. These features include: Expansion of up to 250 nodes per manager: networks can now be expanded to 250 nodes per manager and all nodes can be upgraded or reconfigured remotely with new over-the-air software update capabilities. This is especially valuable when nodes are deployed in environments that are inconvenient or inaccessible. SmartMesh Vital Signs™: an easy-to-use dashboard for monitoring network health, providing alerts when network reliability is at risk, such as when a node has a weak radio link or only a single link back to the rest of the network. Send on event capabilities: nodes can now send data only when that data represents a change-of-value that warrants an alert according to pre-set conditions. This allows nodes to respond locally to the event rather than waiting to receive a response alert from the control system. Sensor duty cycling: enables nodes to wake up attached sensors when a reading is required, extending sensor life and reducing overall power consumption. Charge accounting lifetime model: ensures very accurate battery life measurement at each node; as a result, users can plan battery maintenance proactively to reduce downtime and expense. An Open, Standards Based Solution SmartMesh-XR is built on industry standard IEEE 802.15.4 radio chipsets. Dust Networks has combined the strength of the 802.15.4 standard chipsets with frequency hopping, time-synchronized mesh networking to provide the industry’s first standards-based networks that meet the high reliability requirements of industrial monitoring and building automation applications. The open XML-based application programming interface (API) of SmartMesh-XR enables application developers, service providers and integrators to quickly build sensor network applications. Dust Networks is committed to aligning with key industry standards and advancing the adoption of reliable, low-power networking solutions throughout the market with open, standards-based SmartMesh-XR products. Dust Networks is a member of the HART Foundation, the Wireless Industrial Networking Alliance (WINA), the ZigBee Alliance, and ISA. “Our focus as a company has been to deliver products with the highest reliability and lowest power demanded by our customers for wireless monitoring and control,” said Joy Weiss, president and CEO of Dust Networks. “Now that we have achieved that goal we are working with our customers and industry groups to open up our technology and drive toward standards that will make it easier for solution providers, integrators and OEMs to develop new products, lower costs, and drive broad adoption of wireless mesh networking.” To learn more about SmartMesh-XR and how OEMs and solution providers can develop products and services using wireless mesh networks contact us at www.dustnetworks.com. About Dust Networks Dust Networks provides reliable, low-power wireless mesh networking systems to solution providers, integrators and OEMs for enterprise-class monitoring and control applications. Dust Networks' SmartMesh-XR™ combines sophisticated mesh networking software and low-power wireless nodes to provide unmatched reliability, low power and ease of implementation. Dust SmartMesh™ technology enables unprecedented access to information about the physical world, allowing companies to monitor and control processes and systems for increased efficiency and enhanced profitability. For more information, please visit www.dustnetworks.com. ### |
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