GainSpan, a Wi-Fi sensor company, today unveiled an ultra low power wireless sensor network that utilizes Wi-Fi. GainSpan’s semiconductor and software solutions are said to deliver the benefits of Wi-Fi with 5-10 years of battery life for applications like temperature and condition monitoring of industrial equipment.
The GainSpan GS1010 SoC is an ultra low-power System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution that leverages the widely deployed Wi-Fi with existing management systems, including enterprise network management systems, as well as existing SCADA industrial and building automation systems.
GainSpan solutions are designed to support a broad range of applications and can be incorporated into products that may be used in:
- Industrial motor monitoring
- Buildings, to save energy, improve indoor air quality and safety
- Food and drug manufacturers, to monitor temperature of goods
- Utilities, to automatically read meters and monitor infrastructure
- Monitor street and traffic lights
- Bridges, to verify their safety
- Mining, to accurately track real-time movements of miners
- Data centers, to monitor and control temperatures and energy usage
- Hospitals, to track patients, wheelchairs, diagnostic equipment, and staff
GainSpan’s product line was designed for long battery life and flexibility using an embedded 802.11b/g radio, two 32-bit ARM7 microcontrollers, real-time clock and power management unit, FLASH and SRAM memories along with multiple I/Os, and support for location awareness.
Compared to most Bluetooth and Zigbee chips, WiFi sensors have longer range with lower cost. Power has been the sticking point. The GS1010 is sampling now, with production quantities available in December 2007, and is priced at $15.00 in 10,000 unit quantities.
Related Bluetooth, RFID and Zigbee stories on Dailywireless include; Grape Networks, Spy Squirrels, Sensors Expo 2007, Open Source Zigbee Net, MaxStream ZigBee module, RF-ID Giants Merge, Realtime Tracking: WiFi is the Ticket, RFID Tracking via Dutch Umbrella, Active ID & Temperature: On the Road.
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