The Tablets are an ideal choice, they are easy to use and have all the communications and built in screen, extremely reliable and mass produced, making them very cost effective. They come in various types including rugged versions, ideal for engineering and maintenance.
The next problem was making the Sensors easy to use. We did this by using very Smart industrial communications; sadly this was not compatible with Consumer Smart Tablets. Our Engineers solved this by using the co-ordinator. The co-ordinator links the two industrial and consumer technologies together. This allows us to provide all the industrial benefits of sophistication, reliability, low power, mesh networks and enhanced communications distances not available to consumer devices and accessibility with consumer orientated user friendliness expected by the general public. Simply the Tablet acts as a logger with Display.
Our Engineers then developed the Smart Logger, again this is designed to be easy to use and is plug and play; the Smart Logger just doesn’t have a screen like a Tablet, so there are no user interface and instantaneous values to view on the Smart Logger, all data has to be viewed online. The Smart Logger is aimed firmly between the consumer and engineers usable by both, as the Smart Logger Box can be discreetly placed in unsecure environments. Our Engineers have made the Smart Logger as user friendly as possible, with a focus on an online accessible user interface for data viewing.
Then you have the Engineers Smart Station, aimed at large monitoring and control networks of up to 64,000 Smart Box Sensors (Coming Soon)
Consumers are not restricted to using a Tablet and Engineers are not restricted to using the Smart Logger; they are merely tools to get the job done. Engineering wanting a mobile monitoring solution with flexibility and a huge range of Sensors to choose from, then a Tablet would be suitable, as the tablet is ideal for rapid deployment and collecting measurements with the intention of moving the system at a later date. Same with consumers if you want a fixed system and do not require the viewing of instantaneous data provided by the tablet screen, then a Smart Logger would be your ideal choice.
The online interface will depend on the level of sophistication required by the person doing the monitoring. Typical interfaces would be aimed at keeping home and consumer monitoring easy and informative and the industrial and engineer interface sophisticated, with lots of tools, thresholds, alarms and control functionality.
Monitoring Anything (Sensor Application)
The genius is not the technology it is the idea. Make monitoring accessible to everybody to monitor anything.
Can Joe public monitor what they like with the existing equipment available? Build an all purpose monitoring solution that they can define. Monitor how much their pets drink and eat, monitor a gate or door being opened, monitor their swimming pool chlorine, pH and water temperature, monitor tomatoes in the greenhouse, the humidity and soil wetness, the cat flap, create thresholds, set alarms and monitor anything that has a known sensor.
We want to make Smart Boxes accessible to everyone to monitor anything and to achieve this, monitoring has to be made easy. That is only one part of what we want to achieve; the real focus is to allow consumers and engineers to monitor the unknown. The future applications!
Monitoring the Unknown and future applications
Monitoring has been around for a very long time and has really taken off in the last hundred years. As we have more sensors, the requirements for monitoring have expanded, but how we monitor is still very complicated. There are lots of people out there that have problems which monitoring could solve. They want to monitor but the barriers are numerous. The barriers are firmly fixed around the technology; complicated technology requires learning, skills, time and money. Qualified engineers require lots of money, do it yourself requires the skills, a lot of time and less money. Even the engineers want an easy monitoring system to save time and money and enabling them to expand their monitoring opportunities to improve their operations efficiency benefiting the business as a whole. The drive for easier monitoring stems from engineers wanting to make it easier for engineers to get the job done. Engineers are tired of the monotonous and complicated wiring and repetitive calibration. Engineers want to build effective monitoring and control system.
Our engineers are designing the Smart Box system as building blocks, initially engineers would use our systems to solve existing monitoring problems, but that is just the start, the fun and hard part we make easy is monitoring the unknown or future application; the applications we haven’t thought about. You have a great idea to solve a problem, it requires you to monitor something and maybe control it. How do you do it? The non technical try to find someone to design and build it, the technically minded may try to build a system from scratch. Building from scratch is getting easier with electronics like the Raspberry Pi and modular based monitoring product kits, but a lot of people just simply give up. They have the idea and the market; they just need the hardware and software solution. There are so many missed opportunities. Through using Smart Boxes our engineers want to change that, make monitoring easier for both the technically minded and non technical/consumer that has these great ideas. Simple; know what you want to monitor and then build your system.
A perfect Example
Air-Con
An Air Conditioning Engineer came up with an idea, to save his time in Commissioning and Servicing of Air Conditioners. He got the idea of building a maintenance tool, this was a monitoring tool. His first goal was to build a wireless monitoring system to send feedback of sensors to a visual display unit. He wanted to place wireless sensors such as temperature in various rooms and have them feedback data to the room with the control unit in; this way he could calibrate the control unit and make changes in the system across all the rooms, saving him a lot of time. He then wanted to automate this process for self calibration by placing wireless sensors which would report back to another device for calibration next to the control unit, adding calibration parameters and press automate. While the device calibrates, he can get on with finishing all the other maintenance and commissioning tasks. Having a kit of sensors in his van and at each job, enables him to simply walk in, place sensors in each room, place the calibrator in the Air Conditioning control room, input parameters and press start, or load existing calibration points from previous save and press go. Another benefit of this system would be online maintenance and calibration records, for future reference.
He began with buying Raspberry Pi and with online information built one wireless sensor and got it communicating with the Pi. He then used an infrared module for the Pi and collected all available codes for all air conditioners out there so he could control the air conditioners through infrared or direct communications. This took him months of trial and error in his free time, he then asked a friend to design software for the Pi and even worked on a mobile App for calibration and an automation function. It took a long time and did he complete it? No. He gave up. The idea is sound and it would have saved a lot of his time and in-effect money for the company he worked for, in the maintenance and commissioning of certain air conditioners.
This Air Conditioning System is interlinked to each room. Therefore it is important all rooms have similar temperatures as this can affect other rooms. Should the temperature rise in one room, this will cause the temperature to drop in another. The Smart Box Wireless System would notify the user to their mobile or control room that the temperature had changed. We also offer control features that would automate the temperature to restore itself if changed.
Chillers
We had another enquiry in Africa. Enormous chillers were failing because of the lack of Anti Freeze (Glycol). In hot countries water evaporates and a lot of the time the tanks are topped up with water and the Glycol is forgotten about, eventually diluting it to the point the chillers would freeze and stop working. This obviously damaged the Chillers. They told us they liked our Smart Box and that they have pressing problems with Glycol. We state any sensors, but at the time didn’t have Glycol. They asked if we could do this and our engineers simply said if there exists a Glycol Sensor then we can do it. Our engineers checked and they exist and now we have a Glycol Sensor Smart Box. Simply install the Glycol Smart Box in the Chillers Unit, set thresholds and alarms for emails and mobile. One less headache.
If the Sensor exists then we can most likely provide you a Smart Box with that Sensor included. We want to do all sensors as we want you to monitor what you want. We want you to experiment and monitor those unknown and future applications.
If the Smart Box Wireless Sensors are not on our list; ask for it and we will do our best to provide.
Tell us your requirement.
Tell us what sensor you want.