Beyond TEDS and these early applications in Ohio and Iowa, 1451.4 could have a vast number of uses. As mentioned earlier, the digital smarts given to analog sensors by 1451.4 will allow them to be easily integrated into networks. Networked sensors today cannot normally communicate with other devices or systems outside of their proprietary networks. But coupled with related IEEE standards that describe how data should be transmitted over wired and wireless networks, it should be possible to easily monitor 1451.4-enabled sensors over almost any network. This integration could encompass a variety of operating platforms for data acquisition, storage, and visualization, including, for example, devices such as PDAs [see illustration, "Plug and Play"].

To see the advantages of this technology, imagine you were transporting a crate of wine by sea. Currently, only a handful of thermostats—at most—control the temperature of an entire cargo hold, and uneven heating or cooling can mean that some cargo is exposed to inappropriate temperatures. A humidity and temperature sensor in the shipping crate could monitor the temperature of the wine, and through a wireless network in the ship's hold, alert the ship's HVAC system if the wine were in danger of overheating or freezing.

Once the ship arrived at port, the crate's serial number would allow a receiving dock to register and identify it automatically during unloading. The dock could also download the history of the wine's reported conditions from the ship's computer. The same crate sensor could communicate with the truck used to transport the wine to the warehouse. Any potential purchaser could get a complete record of the wine's storage conditions, reducing the risk of buying something spoiled or damaged.

Or imagine a series of sensors spread throughout a "smart building" that could be used to control environmental systems more efficiently, or even warn of structural problems [see "Smart Buildings," IEEE Spectrum, August 2003]. When the building is modified or renovated, new sensors could be integrated seamlessly with the existing system.

Back in the present day, a consortium of more than two dozen sensor, instrumentation, and software vendors has been created to promote the implementation of IEEE 1451.4 into their products. Already, some sensor types are now more common with TEDS than without, and several hardware and software platforms including National Instruments' LabVIEW are available to read and write TEDS data. And as new digital and communication technologies are introduced, they will incorporate TEDS, making possible the kind of pervasive smart sensor networks of tomorrow that technological visionaries have predicted [see "We Like To Watch," Spectrum, July 2004], and the kind of ubiquitous calibration errors that plague us now could become a thing of the past.