In an industry that sorely needs a growth spurt, Honeywell and Emerson seem to be betting that Wireless will be the next major inflection point. Honeywell had a big meeting at MCAA during the ISA Expo, but only with promises and no immediate products to announce. Emerson was not at ISA, but they had already made big announcements the week before, promising immediate shipments of a "Starter Pack".

There was a lot of brouhaha over the SP-100 industrial wireless standard. Gary Mintchell, Editor of Automation World, one of the most knowledgeable people I know in this business, commented:

"First, there's the radio layer, then the transport protocol layer (MAC), then the application layer. The radios are 802.15.4. The application layer is HART. The crux of the matter is the transport layer. Emerson bought the Dust Networks stack. If anyone else wants to play in the Emerson wireless game (put a device on the network), then they must pay for the stack.

"The price of entry into this wireless network was subject of many rumors (and not a little fear) about whether Emerson would try to lock out competitors. On the contrary, said my sources at Emerson, 'We want lots of companies to build devices for the network. It only helps all of us out, especially users'.

"It turns out all the wireless suppliers have their own proprietary protocol stacks. Partly that's a matter of definition, since the closest thing to a standard is ZigBee. Many suppliers offer a ZigBee stack but will often tell a prospect, 'Yes, I can give you the ZigBee stack, but if you really want it to work....'

"The SP-100 committees are still debating architectures. One faction (8 companies, headed by Honeywell) wants one architecture for everything from monitoring to safety and control - the most robust, secure and deterministic network possible. The other faction (17 companies, sort of led by Emerson) wants to get the technology out in the plants so that customers can begin reaping benefits; quick does not necessarily mean fragile or unsecure. Mesh networks acquire robustness as more devices are added to it.

"Thus the discussions in the committees continue."

My personal opinion is that committees are dominated by suppliers with their own agendas, and confused end-users. By the time ANY standard is announced, it is already outdated by new technology enhancements. Emerson cleverly side-stepped the standards process by guaranteeing an upgrade if that's ever needed.