IoT solutions

Published: Sunday, 14 May 2017

Why should IoT be part of your overall business strategy? To save cost? To improve your services and products? To find new business and new market segment? To find new revenue streams? Everyone has unique drivers and needs. Independent of your business, IoT offers many opportunities.

The term IoT, as such, is applicable to all industries and it addresses an extreme broad range of applications ond solutions (Smart Mobility, Smart Home, Smart Building, Smart Retail, Smart Working, Smart Care, Smart Energy etc.). 

The basic IoT concept is simple. It means that physical objects are able to communicate to the outside world (e.g. via the Internet). This allows the object to collect information via sensors and send it out. Or the physical object receives information and processes it locally (via so-called actuators - e.g. to switch on an engine or to open a lock). The received information we store and analyze in the could. Based on customer logic it is decided how we act.

 

 

Our IoT solutions are based on the above concept. When you are aware of this you should think, imagine and fantasize on how your company, products or machines could be connected to the IoT world and how you can benefit from it.

This gives you endless new opportunities; imagine that your machines gives you a signal in case it is broken, power fails or is about to be broken (predictive maintenance). Not only in your plant but anywhere in the world. Or what about if you know where your asset is, when it is stolen or know when your truck arrives at the factory to be loaded. There are too many examples and for each company there are different wishes, therefore challenge us!

As a customer you interface to a dashboard to monitor and control (act) your environment. Dashboard examples are shown below - these are fully customizable and can be integrated in your own environment. Have a look at our live dashboard examples (see menu above).

 

 

 

Besides the dashboard you have another interface to control the logic and descriptive language on how to act. This is done via a so-called Rules Engine. A technical overview is provided below.

 

 

Challenge us!

Have you encountered a complex problem in your company. We, as IoT specialist, love to be challenged and see if we can mutually find an IoT solution that solves your problem. Our goal is to create a win-win situation, in which we strive to strengthen your business case, market position and to make you future proof. We as IoT specialist are always keen to see new challenges.

 

 

Examples

We continuously develop new devices with sensors and / or actuators as required by the customers. These new devices are normally designed after brainstorm sessions with the customer. Each customer has specific problems and individual wishes which we can realize. Our IoT devices and cloud intelligence can help in solving these problems.

Below a number of examples of battery based LoRa IoT devices.These LoRa devices fall in the LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) family and deploy the latest state-of-the-art technology (details are provided in our technological whitepaper - here). For each of these smart devices measurements are send in an interval (remotely configurable) to the cloud. In the cloud the collected data is stored as information. This information is analyzed and actions are triggered when needed.

 

Temperature, humidity, pressure

  • What: Measure temperature, humidity and pressure.
  • Act: Depending on Customer's Use Case - switch off heating, open windows, raise alarm (temp too high), preventive start to sprea salt on roads (before it starts to get icy).
  • Areas of deployment, e.g.:
    • Smart City
      • Urban Heat maps (UHI) e.g. measured by local municipality to inform citizens
      • Preventive active for public safety (spreading salt on roads)
      • Soil moisture measurements to know when e.g. plants needs to be watered or the soil humidity is abnormal
    • Factory - measure environmental conditions (in combination with air quality)
    • Logistics - remotely monitor temperature, humidity and pressure of surroundings in which goods are transported (e.g. foods, medical organ transport etc.)
    • Offices - HVAC and energy management
    • Retail - monitor shops, freezers and fridges (quality)


 

Air Quality

  • What: Measures Air Quality. Sensors available from PM2.5 to O3, NO2, SO2 etc.
  • Act: Depending on Customer's Use Case - Mitigation measurements based on reporting, evacuation of buidling, factory or area, windows opened etc.
  • Areas of deployment, e.g.:
    • Smart City
      • Air Quality Polution Index on local level (global and country e.g. on http://aqicn.org/map/europe)
      • Use as input for city's environmental policy
    • Factory - measure environmental conditions
    • Offices - HVAC and Clean Air policy
    • Retail - Monitor Air Quality in shops and stores
    • School, gymnastic exercise rooms etc

 

 

GroundWater Level

  • What: Interface to existing Water Level Data Loggers. Currently the LoRa nodes interfaces with Keller dataloggers ("peilbuizen") - interfaces to other groundwater measurement equipment (like Diver or LevelLogger) are available upon request.
  • Act: Collecting information live and be able to react immediately if needed (today's deployed Water Level monitoring systems immediate reaction is impossible as the data is retrieved manually once a quarter).
  • Areas of deployment, e.g.:
    • Water management / hydrologist
    • Municipalities,regional water authorities, provinces and other water related companies
    • Construction - able to monitor water levels constantly and be able to warn when construction work influences water level

 

 

Distance

  • What: Measure distance to an object.
  • Act: Collecting information live and be able to react immediately if needed. E.g. bin can reached a level and should be emptied.
  • Areas of deployment, e.g.:
    • Garbage collection - bin can has distance sensor to indicate fill level
    • Factories - Endless number of Use Cases in which information about the distance to good, fluids etc. can be used in optimization.
    • Water wells - measure the water level.

   

Motion detection

 

  • What: Detects motions.
  • Act: Collect live motion information live. Allows us to warn in case there should be no motion (send out a warning) or use 'no motion' to switch off heating or do not clean that room in your office.
  • Areas of deployment, e.g.:
    • Holiday parks - able to remotely monitor and switch on motion warning system in each house
    • Office - monitor motions for different purposes

 

GPS tracker and asset management

  • What: Detects location of asset equiped with IoT node.
  • Act: Collect location information live. Able to track the asset and warn in case there should be no location change. .
  • Areas of deployment, e.g.:
    • Industry- able to track all asset outside the company premises. Able to warn in case asset is being stolen (e.g. detect movement (location change) outside office hours)
    • Rental industry (cars, machines etc) - see above.

 

Car detector / parking

  • What: Detects when a parking place is occupied or taken.
  • Act: User can search for a free parking place (within a city many many cars are driving around to find a parking place)
  • Areas of deployment, e.g.:
    • Smart City / Business Parcs / Airports or other parking places in which it is important for the end-user to be able to know whether a place is free or not

 

The above examples shed some light of possibilities today. Of course many other sensors or actuators are realizable, like e.g. proximity, gesture, UV metering, sound level monitoring, color detection, illumination etc. Feel free to contact us for an appointment and I hope you can challenge us.