The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Red Wing Technologies, Inc. (www.redwingtechnologies.com), a $750,000 Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer grant to fund development of a low-cost, nonintrusive home monitoring system for elderly and other at-risk persons living alone. The company's patent-pending "Electronic Concerned Neighbor" is a system of sensors distributed throughout a person's home to monitor activity or inactivity and take action if a significant change in routine indicates a problem. Red Wing Technologies received two prior NIH grants to fund research and confirm the technical feasibility of developing the Electronic Concerned Neighbor. The latest grant will fund product development.

While the ZigBee specification has been ratified, the product certification process is yet being developed. Still, vendors continue to fill the pipeline with products that are "ZigBee ready"—i.e., conform to the IEEE's 802.15.4 standard—and to make other announcements that will position them as leaders in this space.

In compliance with the time schedule established many months ago, the ZigBee Alliance (www.zigbee .org) has ratified the first ZigBee specification for wireless data communications. ZigBee is the only standards-based data communications protocol specifically designed to enable low-cost, low-power, wireless sensor networks. The spec finalization is the culmination of two years of worldwide development and interoperability testing by the more than 100 member companies within the ZigBee Alliance, and it promises to make wireless sensing and control networks a widespread reality. In fact, that ratification was the basis for rosy projections of wireless sensor growth that futurists and market researchers have made. For instance, ON World Inc.'s (www.onworld.com) projection of 465.58 million RF modules implemented for sensor networking by the year 2010 was based on the assumption of Q4 2004 ratification of the ZigBee spec. And by the way, ON World estimates that ZigBee-based modules will account for nearly 78% of..

It's happened. The event upon which rosy projections of wireless sensor growth is based—completion of the ZigBee spec—has taken place. If the futurists and market researchers are right, we're about to rocket up the hockey-stick slope to wireless utopia.