Something like an embedded thermostat goes nowhere unless it is part of a consumer's system that they can control, or a building-automation system that can be manipulated. So when we look at a wireless-sensor network, we really look at it as the whole network, rather than just a device in a network. |
The big story over the last three-to-four years is that much of the wireless-sensor and control-network space has been about the network stacks, radios, and microcontrollers they are built on. |
This is where the problem starts, because you have a microcontroller developer on one hand charged with the task of creating a thermostat, but the network really becomes meaningful when a programmer or an enterprise can manipulate it and put different applications on top. |