Sensor Area Networks (SANs)

[davidbrady]

Hey Ned,

I'll have to google Goslings talk. I'm sure the video is available somewhere and it's always great fun to see early predictions (mid '90's) proved right or wrong. We know it's real because of the grassroots effort involved. Nothing this big or innovative ever came from a single or set of large corporations. It's folks sitting in their garages tinkering and wiring their houses and motorhomes that bootstraps this stuff, then suddenly, one day, we look around and say, "gosh, how did this come about, who would've thought, there's no economic model that would have supported this...". Ha! LOL

The trucker angle is really where it's taking off in the mobile world (me thinks) and they seem to really be driving the connectivity. Here's a product by Digi that does a lot: ConnectPort X5. I'd like to find a gateway in the $200 range, so the X5 is clearly out of our range, but for a flavor of the connectivity and features available take a look at the ad. Among other things it lists: cellular, satellite, GPS, and Wi-Fi connectivity, and it suggests monitoring operating health, performance, and location, plus more. IOW's the trucking world is doing it and they're doing it now and their solution is feature rich.

What we need to do is make it cheap, spin our own sensor network to control and monitor what's important to us, and provide a web content management service to let folks participate in a turn-key fashion.