Abstract: A method and system including an architecture to build a sensor device, data logger device, or network of sensor and/or data logger devices such that each element of the device or network contains all the information, including configuration information, commands, timing information, and math needed for higher-level elements to it without any configuration, software, firmware, or driver changes or updates required for the higher-level elements. This allows introduction of new devices or sensors in a simple plug-and-play manner. Derived sensors and alarms may act as independent devices that contain all of the information needed to extract data from lower-level sensors and perform math on it to produce results that appear to higher levels as though the derived sensor was itself a physical sensor.