The biggest obstacle to large scale implementation of wireless sensors in manufacturing is the battery. If you are going to put sensors in hard-to-reach areas, then you don’t want to have to go back often and replace batteries–for example a vibration sensor on every motor in every hidden location.

If this product works as billed, it is truly a breakthrough in that application. British company Perpetuum has launched “the world’s first truly effective” vibration energy harvester to power wireless and battery-free devices capable of sending large amounts of data from many types of industrial equipment.

RLW Inc of State College, Pa., selected the Perpetuum microgenerator to power its S5NAP wireless sensor nodes. These devices have been used to demonstrate that the PMG7 can readily provide the necessary energy for even the most demanding sensor applications such as accelerometers.

The complete story here.

Dust Networks has announced their SmartMesh-XT wireless sensor networking system. The Networks’ SmartMesh-XT family of products consists of motes and managers in both the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz bands.
Every mote in a TSMP-based network acts as a router, enabling simplified network installation and extremely high reliability. As a result, SmartMesh-XT products achieve >99.9% reliability in the face of harsh RF environments and battery-operated motes typically live for more than 5-10 years.

More information here.