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.

On Friday, Systems Planning Corp (SPC) announced that it joined the DASH7 Alliance — read the press release here — marking an important moment for not just the alliance but also for the evolution of DASH7.

Among other things, SPC markets a solution called GlobalTrak that provides GPS as well as  cellular or satcom-based backhaul to provide asset visibility for wide area logistics applications.  Adding DASH7 to their solution provides not only the connectivity to DASH7 networks they are seeking, but SPC becomes the first alliance member with a focus on providing “mobile” read capability for DASH7 networks.

Think of what SPC is doing as a foundational implementation of more mainstream (perhaps I mean to say, consumer) integration of DASH7 with cellular networks.  Specifically, the ubiquity of mobile handsets that will serve as mobile DASH7 readers.  SPC is not in the handset business (to my knowledge) but the issues SPC will be addressing in the course of their DASH7 implementation will in many respects be directly applicable to how the broader cellular industry addresses DASH7.

But the fundamental problem that companies like SPC solve is that of the challenges of fixed reader infrastructure.  Fixed infrastructure — like plumbing, electricity, ethernet, fire hydrants, and traffic lights — is expensive to implement, has significant ongoing maintenance costs, and … get ready for the shocker … is fixed.  For some customers, fixed infrastructure is mandatory and a legitimate business requirement.  And often, it’s expensive.

Mobile reader infrastructure will address the vast majority of our infrastructure needs across many vertical markets and applications.  Cellular is just too ubiquitous and the integration of DASH7 with cellular is just too inexpensive and easy to do.  So companies like SPC offer a way to “temporarily” add DASH7 read visibility to an area — albeit in a fairly targeted manner for logistics apps.  A DASH7 “reader” affixed to an SPC GPS/GPRS device “reads” DASH7 tags in the vicinity and then transmits the resulting tag location/sensor data back to the cloud via the wide area backhaul provided by GPRS (cellular).

This is not very different from the way DASH7 will be integrated into smartphones, although I sort of doubt companies will place DASH7-enabled smartphones around a warehouse in the same way they deploy fixed readers today (it is certainly possible and probably economical relative to fixed infrastructure).  Instead, a company full of people wearing smartphones that are DASH7-enabled will enable all or some of their team members’ smartphones to, in effect, become mobile readers.  We call this “just in time networking”, where a company might not have the 24×7 coverage of a fixed reader network, but for a fraction of the cost of a fixed reader network the company can have similar visibility into its operations but perhaps on a more time-limited based (e.g. when people go home at night).

JIT networking is a shift in the IOT paradigm from where it sits today vis-a-vis RFID, barcoding, and even cellular “M2M” solutions.  The idea that dynamically changing “mobs” of people can “illuminate” an area of a warehouse or — more excitingly — an amphitheater or a shopping mall — with DASH7-enabled smartphones brings the possibilities of the IOT to a much greater audience than would ever be possible with fixed infrastructure.  And only DASH7 — not wifi, not bluetooth, no 802.15.4 — has the right mix of low power, low latency, long range, and low cost that make it the ideal complement to cellular technology.  That DASH7 can be inexpensively added to 13.56 MHz NFC chips that are already being deployed en masse in smartphones makes this argument all the more clear.

Two companies, Shopkick And Novitaz, are approaching the problem quite differently.

Novitaz is using some proprietary 433 MHz / 125 khZ active RFID solution, and Shopkick is using some flavor  of inaudible audio signal that leverages the microphone on your handset.  The Shopkick approach  is novel, but very limited in its ultimate range of apps … e.g. the audio signal is a one way signal so the technology is not two way (duh), so it’s functioning more like a very short range one-way paging network constantly blasting a single unique identifier, which is then relayed to the host via cellular.   The “beacon” in the store needs to be plugged in to a wire for power, so mobility will be a challenge.  Still, it’s great to see investors getting into this game and also to see a model where it’s clear that infrastructure (e.g. beacons) will need to be placed inside retailer locations to make this work really effectively.

I don’t know Novitaz, but it may not surprise you to hear that their infrastructure choices are fundamentally more extensible at least in terms of radio frequency since a 433-MHz equipped device can then function as a tag or a reader, can engage in tag-to-tag comms, can engage in a variety of other apps that the audio approach cannot.  Further, 433 is the frequency that will be used for many applications that will be linked to your mobile handset — social media apps, ticketing, permits, smart energy and building automation systems, and even your automobile.  If they had a standards-based solution (hint, hint) I would bet on the Novitaz approach, at least architecturally.  Novitaz seems to have already figured out that 433 will co-exist nicely with 13.56MHz loyalty cards, also something that Shopkick will find difficulty with.

Just another bit of validation to our previous discussions here about mobile advertising and the potential for DASH7 to fill this void.  This article references 13.56Mhz oyster cards, which have a very small range of just a few centimeters, so I have no idea how a billboard will read anyone’s card, but obviously we’re able to accomplish some amazing things via DASH7 for this application.  Not only given the “goldilocks zone” that 13.56 and 433.92 MHz live in, but also because DASH7 is ideal for tracking the internet of moving things (more on this later) due to its extremely low latency.  So while a bluetooth or wifi device can take many seconds or even minutes to “lock on” to another device, a DASH7 device, especially one running Mode 2, does so in matter of a couple of seconds or less.  This is huge for something like the outdoor media industry, where people, cars, trains, buses, and bikes are all “moving” nearly all the time and will not just “sit still” while a bluetooth-enabled billboard tries to lock on to the customer.

Still, hats off to the IBM folks for taking this step …

Married to all this opportunity is once again the issue of privacy — and by the comments in the article referenced here, there is more than a little bit of delirium that needs proactive attention.  The DASH7 Alliance is actively developing its security story and when we deliver it, it will be an excellent one, I believe.  I am sure it won’t be enough for every privacy fanatic in the world, but it will be opt-in and use the state of the art in modern cryptography.  Stay tuned for more details …

This was a long-time coming, but the next volley in the mobile payments war has been launched.   Telcos aligning with banks, rather than trying to compete directly with them, is the faster way to bring this to market.   Expect counter-strikes from Visa/Mastercard as well as certain handset vendor(s).

Fortunately, the technology being used here is 13.56 MHz, which bodes very well for DASH7 and helps defray the $10-$15 COGS hit for adding NFC as described in the article.

Good writeup from Claire Swedberg.  Note: we actually began the Mode 2.0 process last year, not this year.

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.

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!)