DASH7 Wireless Sensor Networking Blog

Guard RFID Solutions Inc. joined the DASH7 Alliance today … based in Vancouver, BC (is anyone paying attention to all the WSN innovation happening in Canada?) and known for, among other things, work they are doing in the healthcare sector with 433 MHz.  One solution Guard markets is for infant tracking in hospitals — if you are a parent you probably remember how strict a hospital is about matching wristbands on the “right” mom or dad with the “right” baby.  This problem is even trickier when the surname of the baby/parents is a common one — Lopez  in, say, Los Angeles or Singh in Mountain View.   Human error in reading names or numbers in this case is, well, sort of the “ultimate” error.  DASH7 uniquely solves for this in a more reliable fashion (e.g. alert when an infant leaves a room with the “wrong” parent) but this also touches on a concept that we’ve been talking about within the DASH7 Alliance relating to associating people with other people or associating people with assets using DASH7.  13.56MHz prox cards/wristbands don’t have the range to do this today, but a simple upgrade of those devices to create DASH7 connectivity does the trick.  Extending this idea to assets — oxygen tanks, gurneys, ultrasound machines, etc. — and associating their use with people not only enables better management/utilization of expensive or scarce assets, it also creates opportunities for billing based on specific usage by docs, nurses, patients, et al.

The topic of healthcare is a good one for the alliance as it is interconnected with both legacy (e.g. vaccine or pharma supply chain) markets for DASH7 as well as emerging (e.g. access control) ones.  Defense ministries also run vertically integrated healthcare operations so for the DASH7 developers focusing on defense, this is yet another market-within-a-market.  Some newer DASH7 developers are focusing on medical devices which should make for even richer discussions in the future.

Pretty thorough piece by Marshall Kilpatrick at RWW … really gets to a point I have been making for some time that one of the biggest near term value props of the internet of things, particularly for B2B apps, is that of associating people with assets/things/places.  Assuming that GPS is a non-option in indoor environments like hospitals, as this article explores, what is the shortest path to “LBS-enabling” the many docs, nurses, attendants, and other personnel (don’t forget patients!)?  My contention continues to be that 13.56MHz is the incumbent technology for access control or, as some would say, “people tracking”.  I hate the term people tracking for some of the obvious Orwellian connotations, but it’s not inaccurate.  But this is more than just tracking … it’s about providing context to the location and environmental info being transmitted by the things around us … associating those transmissions with the people that are near them or using them isn’t so much people tracking as it is providing an additional layer of enterprise visibility.  Sure, there are apps where just knowing where a person is may be valuable, but it’s the context in which that information is presented that will ultimately drive value for businesses as well as consumers.  Speaking of, for consumers this is about turning your health insurance card into a (public key, encrypted) longer-range wireless device that is activated upon entering a hospital … or even an ambulance if you like … vital stats, blood types, allergies, etc. are transmitted automatically before you ever set foot in the hospital, where they are waiting and ready for the incoming patient.  This would all be opt-in —- if you are anti-data sharing for things like this … and many people are — you are free to continue using your existing non-wireless device.  If you think you might benefit from the added features of, say, a DASH7-enabled health insurance card, you can ask for it.  It might save your life … who knows.

There is a deeper and more complex thread here on healthcare — HIPAA, cold chain, asset management, billing, and much more.  In the hospital, the wifi folks have done a good job of getting traction but most that I speak to in the wifi world acknowledge the limits of the technology for apps like those discussed here.  Fortunately, DASH7 co-exists brilliantly with WiFi, including 802.11n which is to 2.45GHz technologies like IEEE 802.15.4 what water was to the Wicked Witch of the West.

The press release for Mode 2 came out just this morning, although the topic itself has been alive inside the DASH7 Alliance since February 2009 (and perhaps earlier).  The short slide deck referenced in the release (http://www.dash7.org/Mode2Summary.pdf) can help explain some of the reasons why we made the effort, and why it is a big improvement over traditional ISO 18000-7, now implicitly called Mode 1.  I will make something clear, however, that may not be an outright statement of the slide deck: Mode 2 is an important milestone in our goal to make DASH7 incredibly developer-friendly.

Silicon: right out of the gate, there is at least one low cost SoC that can do pretty much everything you need to do with Mode 2 (TI CC430).  I suspect there are several more out there that can work.  I also happen to know that there is a very nice roadmap of strikingly low-power sub 1-GHz RF SoC’s on the horizon, from multiple companies, and they will support Mode 2.

Software: Over the past several months, while we were developing the spec, I have been re-developing OpenTag to support Mode 2.  I am working furiously now to get it finished as soon as possible.  OpenTag is a fully open-source DASH7 stack.

Operational model: Unlike many other wireless sensor technologies, DASH7 Mode 2 is deeply event-driven and extremely low power.  So, some event will occur, and then communication will take place.  No other wireless standard I am aware of has been able to deliver low-latency, ultra-low-power event driven behavior.  Most of them just poll in the background, and the information you get is usually minutes old, or often even hours old.  DASH7 Mode 2 devices can work alongside normal software models — as software tends to be event-based — to provide accurate, timely information for years per battery charge.

Data interoperability: DASH7 is a wireless standard and a data standard, so when you communicate with a DASH7 Mode 2 device,  you know exactly what you’re going to get, exactly what capabilities you have, and exactly how you can use the device.  In other words, “Application Profiles” in DASH7 Mode 2 are interchangeable in a standardized way — to the best of my knowledge, no one has done this before for this class of device.  So, if you desire, you can alter the “character” of a Mode 2 device, on-the-fly, in order to excel at different tasks.  It’s kind of like teaching yourself kung-fu and how to pilot a helicopter, if you happen to live in The Matrix.  I’m very excited about this feature as I believe it has huge potential to allow a variety of cloud-based data services.

Extensibility: Mode 2’s protocol is simpler than before, and it is data-centric (as opposed to command-centric).  It is well suited to support encapsulated subprotocols, such as IPv6 addressing, sensors, crypto, etc.  It has efficient multicast query ability at the lowest level, so its routing and addressing abilities are tough enough to take on any challenge we expect to see in the next decade (at least).

Webinar: I’m told that there is going to be a Mode 2 webinar coming up soon. Stay tuned.  I’m sure there will be an invite on dash7.org any day now.

so here’s a major player in 13.56 access control (and other things) acknowledging the inevitability of NFC on smartphones and beginning the “pivot” to also support NFC, along with legacy 13.56 MHz offerings.  The importance of leaders in building automation making this move cannot be understated as we gradually move to a world where people and things are increasingly interconnected and “associated” for purposes of enterprise apps (who was the last guy in the laboratory to touch the refrigerator?) or consumer apps (tell me when any white male in the 18-24 demographic enters my store).  I’ll write more on this but the application opportunities — when you add DASH7 to 13.56 — are like an ocean.  ( I am writing this post looking at the Atlantic one from the vantage point of Isle of Palms, South Carolina — a rare example of a use case requiring untethered access on the/near the beach!)