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Risks of wireless pioneering
June 19, 2008

I just returned from Phoenix where I was attending Honeywell's User Group (HUG). There were many new releases at the meeting, some of which applied to wireless. Honeywell has made some changes to its OneWireless program to keep it in line with the coming ISA SP100.11a standard. We'll discuss the specifics of that in greater detail in coming weeks, but the largest change in my thinking has to be the fact that they are accommodating the standard's use of the 802.15.4 radio. That has to be a huge disappointment for Honeywell.

Both Honeywell's OneWireless and Emerson's SmartWireless programs were launched very aggressively before relevant standards were completed. Both companies were clear that they were not creating proprietary programs (at least not intentionally) and would make certain that early adopters would have the ability to migrate to the standardized platform as the standard was completed. The message was that we will protect you if you buy now and things change. Both companies took the risk that things could get complicated if the standard development didn't go exactly as they hoped, and both companies look like they will have to pay the price, at least to some extent.

Emerson hoped SmartWireless would become WirelessHART for all practical purposes, but the latter became more elaborate and proved to be more difficult to migrate than anticipated. Last year Emerson was talking about abandoning its original SmartWireless platform and moving existing customers to WirelessHART so as not to support two parallel and incompatible platforms. However by early 2008 the company said it would maintain the earlier offering and support both. I can't help but think that has proven to be a disappointment internally.

Honeywell has argued that the 802.15.4 radio is not an efficient bandwidth user and chose a frequency hopping design as the basis for OneWireless. However, last year it's product managers knew some companies would want the 802.15.4 and planned on supporting the less desirable approach for customers that insisted. Now the SP100 committee has chosen the 802.15.4 radio as its standard, which Honeywell will now make the standard radio of OneWireless. This has to be a huge disappointment. The company will continue to support the frequency hopper believing it to be better, even though it now becomes the alternative technology.

Both companies are supporting their early adopters while bringing themselves into line with standards, as they promised. If you are already a wireless instrumentation user or are leaning that way, you should thank both because the risks they have taken have advanced wireless technology much faster than it would have moved otherwise.

Posted by Peter Welander on June 19, 2008 | Comments (0)