Blog

Assistive Living

There are 15 million reasons why IoT is increasingly essential in the future wellbeing of the population of the UK.

It is an undeniable fact that as a population we are living longer and whilst not everyone over the age of 65 may require additional care, at some point, particularly as life expectancy increases, the ability to live independent of a care infrastructure will be questioned. Similarly, as our population grows so does the number of dependents requiring assistance with their everyday living and with increasing demands upon Healthcare and Social services, alternative means of assistance and support become increasingly valuable. By 2025, it is estimated that over 15 million UK adults will be either over 65 or have a disability that requires some form of support (The Lancet vol 2, issue 7, 2017*) and IoT can play a major role in not only easing demands on the Social Care infrastructure, but in enabling individuals to enjoy the freedom of independent living and to participate in community life.

Drawing on over 10 years’ experience of Telehealth and Telecare products and services, IRIS IoT Solutions is harnessing this with its expertise in LTE and LoRa WAN Industrial and Workplace IoT implementations, to create a real difference in the approach to Assistive Living. Responsible deployment of unobtrusive sensors can inform on a variety of everyday activities e.g. recording movement to establish that people are active or raising alerts in the event of a sudden fall; capturing essential food preparation activity to ensure that people are eating properly and environmental monitoring for maintaining healthy and safe living temperatures and air quality. However, as commented by Stephen Westley, IRIS Director:

We have most of the components for a perfect At Home or In Care Assistive Living Service available to us now and are currently undertaking a number of programs in Sheltered Accommodation and Housing Associations. However, our previous experience has taught us two major factors – wearables are great, but people do not necessarily like wearing them i.e. it signifies them as ‘requiring assistance’ and as one of the first companies to introduce a pendant personal alarm to the UK we fully understand this. The second is that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ i.e. we all have our individual nuances and patterns to our lifestyle and for an Assistive Living Program to be effective, it must take count of this. And so, the final two pieces to our jigsaw puzzle are well underway – An Indoor Fall Monitor and the personalisation of the solution using AI and machine learning, so that we can respond to the behaviour and lifestyle of the individual, not the masses – these will be completed and our Assistive Living Care package perfected early in 2020.

IoT is credited as leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it may well also be credited with leading the revolution in Social Care that will release millions of individuals from the prospect of institutional existence into a more self-sustaining and fulfilling independent way of living.

For updates on IRIS Assistive Living Program follow: www.facebook.com/IRIS-IOT-Solutions

*Forecasted trends in disability and life expectancy in England and Wales up to 2025: a modelling study.

What a waste of space!

The modern-day corporate office has changed a lot over the last decade, changing from small, individual, personal cubicles with separators to open-plan offices and hot desking. This has now created a new problem, where to make a private phone call?

We recently have been working on several projects focussing on Occupancy and Space Utilisation and some of the data produced has been quite shocking to the building user. An example of this was a company that asked us to monitor, in a trial, 20 of its meeting rooms as the booking system was indicating that these were being utilised at maximum capacity and more were needed, however, over the 6 month trial the data provided has shown something completely different!

No, we did not sit outside 20 offices for 6 months manually observing activity, we installed a mix of movement sensors and people counters (all wireless) into the building. Some of the overall data collected was that as an average the offices were actually used less than 50% of the time that had actually been reserved on the booking system and also the larger 12-person meeting rooms were being used as little as 30% of the time and often by a single user!

By making further investigations and cross referencing the misuse or non-use of the meeting rooms, the company learnt that the main reasons for the misuse were either to make private calls or meetings that had been cancelled but the rooms had stayed booked.

The solution was to both install Soundproof non-reservable pods and encourage more staff awareness and responsibility in the booking system. This has now freed up the main meeting rooms, which now running at >60% and this has been so efficient that the company is now thinking of decommissioning some of the meeting rooms for other purposes.

Baby it’s warm outside

Baby it’s warm outside… and pretty oppressive indoors too!

Well summer’s visited with a vengeance this year, with temperatures soaring and humidity hitting peak levels, amplifying the usual moans and groans about the great British weather!

But if it’s uncomfortable for some outside, imagine what effects high temperatures and poor air quality have in offices and workplaces up and down the country – with every °C above 25°C leading to a 2% loss in productivity and CO2 levels of 1000ppm having the same effect as consuming 2 pints of beer! – so scientific evidence tells us.

IRIS IoT Solutions are leading several regional initiatives to understand and improve the modern workplace environment with Wellness in Workplace programs being trialled in both commercial and public sector buildings. Deploying discreet, unobtrusive, LoRa sensors to monitor Temperature, Humidity and CO2, linked to a cloud based analytics and visualisation platform via a stand-alone cellular Gateway, IRIS is not only enabling employers to optimise environmental conditions for the benefit of their workforces, the real-time data generated by the programs allows building heating and ventilation systems to be dynamically controlled for greater efficiency and optimum operating cost.

And by adding further sensors to monitor movement and ‘people counting’, IRIS is providing valuable information on how efficiently valuable building space is being used. With modern ‘mobile’ workforces and open plan office designs, enabling efficient use of available workspace for the comfort and convenience of employees is essential, but with the significant associated costs to workspaces, no less than ensuring that the available workspace is being efficiently utilised. Real time information, driving real time booking systems and ‘hot desking’ initiatives, improves flexibility, increases productivity and reduces cost.

And so whilst we should all take the opportunity to invest some time to get outdoors and enjoy the summer, enlightened businesses are taking the time to look indoors at how the introduction of some simple IoT initiatives can greatly improve the outlook for their colleagues and the performance of their business.

HMT-1 by Realwear – Wearable Tech

Hands Free, Eyes Forward

Take Control & Empower Your Workforce & Industrial IoT

The world’s first hands-free wearable rugged Android tablet for industrial workers.

The HMT-1 by Realwear, is a powerful, fully rugged Android computer that is worn on the head and replaces the touch screen with an articulated micro-display, giving the appearance of a 7-inch tablet screen.

The HMT-1 has a completely hands-free voice-controlled user interface allowing workers to operate the tools and equipment needed for the job, even while climbing a scaffold or tower. Allowing the worker to maintain full situational awareness and maximum productivity, HMT-1 is faster, safer and smarter than either a tablet or smart glasses.

Productivity is not about working harder. It’s about working smarter every day. Every aspect of the HMT-1 augmented reality headset was built to enhance worker performance.

100% Hands Free. Voice based operating system, local speech recognition in loud areas
Powerful Audio. Integrated speaker and 3.5mm audio jack for use with hearing protection
Unmatched Noise Cancellation. Four digital microphones and advanced algorithms
Waterproof. IP66 waterproof – Protected against heavy seas and powerful jets of water
Dust Tight. IP66 rating. Complete protection against micro-particles
Drop Proof. Resistant to 2-meter drops onto concrete from any angle

Knowledge is power and HMT-1 outs that power into the hands of your workforce. Training is not a once-and-done for occurrence, the new generation of industrial workforce learns by video and communication. The HMT-1 is built to move knowledge across a workforce in minutes.

By using four microphones and advanced algorithms to perform noise cancellation prior to voice recognition, the HMT-1 augmented reality headset features unmatched speech recognition. Workers can navigate applications and enter text and numbers just by speaking in a normal voice with accurate performance even in 95 dBA of typical industrial noise. And no Internet connection is needed to navigate augmented reality applications – voice recognition is embedded, local and fast.

HMT-1 revolutionises Industrial IoT solutions, enabling your workforce with the real time data and communication that is required when they are operating, inspecting or maintaining plant and equipment

Make every worker a Mobile Command Centre.

Don’t count your chickens… unless you can rely upon the outcome!

IRIS IoT Solutions joins with the world’s leading IoT partner network.

IRIS IoT Solutions Limited has just recently joined the Vodafone Global IoT Partner Network which includes the world’s leading operators, hardware and application suppliers, systems integrators and distributors.

IRIS Director, Stephen Westley, is excited at what this means for the business:

“We have worked with all the leading networks for over 20 years, but when it came to our needing resilience, reliability and reach for IRIS IoT, it was a natural choice to look to Vodafone, the world’s leading IoT network and services provider and to be acknowledged as a Vodafone IoT partner”.

IRIS and Vodafone have already collaborated on two ground breaking Agri Tech programs, both involving the monitoring of Livestock health and wellbeing and the prediction and prevention of illness. The first was awarded 2018 Industry Supply Chain Innovation accolade and is planned for international roll-out in the first half of 2019. The second program brings together unique image capture technology with Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to process huge masses of data, creating a real-time decision-making platform for improvement in animal welfare and delivering significant cost savings to the industry.

Westley adds:

“Being a part of the Vodafone IoT partner network fits perfectly with our overall strategy – very few, if any, organisations have the complete services portfolio or capabilities to deliver on the full range of opportunities and benefits that IoT can deliver. Through partnerships and collaborations, IRIS brings together expertise in sensor design and engineering, solutions architecture, data analytics, software engineering, AI, connectivity and visualisation, alongside its own proprietary developments, for either the delivery of a complete end-to-end systems architecture, or simply the supply of standalone sensing solutions”.

Building on a proprietary, multi-sensor cellular gateway design, with unique processing capabilities, that readily integrates with 3rd party devices and data platforms, IRIS can create highly customisable and bespoke solutions from a standardised, cost efficient, platform. And by integrating the resilience and mobility of 4G cellular networks with energy efficient LPWAN protocols and harnessing the power and security of EDGE computing, IRIS delivers leading edge, Industry 4.0, solutions with 24/7 visibility and real time, pro-active, program management.

And finally, that it is an early adopter of NBIoT, with its platform being NBIoT ready with Westley commenting further “Vodafone have clearly laid down the markers to lead this space, as demonstrated in their investments in and commitments to NBIoT and the support they give their partners in technology and know-how and we look forward to sharing that knowledge, with and throughout the whole IoT partner network”.

About IRIS IoT Solutions Ltd.

By harnessing over 20 years mobile communications and solutions experience and adopting a holistic view enterprise requirements IRIS IoT Solutions is able to effect a digital transformation of a business, providing real-time visibility and data driven insights to environments, processes and assets, enabling meaningful decision-making and improving efficiency, reducing costs, enhancing stakeholder experience.

Whether the simple deployment of a monitoring sensor or implementation of a complete systems architecture, IRIS delivers a solution that will improve performance and increase productivity.

Development partner PrognostiX wins Best Poultry Supply Chain Innovation at the British Poultry Awards

Well done to our development partner

We worked hand in hand with PrognostiX on our Sense Hub and they have just received a great award

PrognostiX Predict & Prevent Monitoring system was launched this year, establishing a completely new and insightful way of monitoring animal health and farm performance. By developing real-time wireless sensors, they set out to create a simple and cost-effective piece of software that allows farmers, farm advisors, nutritionists and veterinary surgeons to access information in an easy to read format.

Adopting the latest communications technology, the sensors capture a range of environmental and health parameters within the poultry shed including temperature and humidity, air flow, carbon dioxide, water usage and temperature and light intensity. The software instantly transforms the data inputs into clear, visual representations that enables users to monitor performance over time and quickly identify trends or discrepancies. Combined with any data that requires manual input the system aids rapid and informed management decisions whether that is on the one site or across a number of farms or businesses. In addition, comparisons can be made between crops and within zones in a shed.

PrognostiX was announced as Best Poultry Supply Chain Innovation at the 2018 British Poultry Awards

The prestigious event, held at the Sheraton Grand Park Lane, London and organised by The British Poultry Council, recognises Britain’s best poultry products with chicken, turkey and duck producers and retailers competing for the top spot. This year saw three new supply chain categories consisting of Best Innovation, Standout Performance and Supply Chain Champion. An independent panel of judges from the food industry was formed by the British Poultry Council.

Their Predict & Prevent solution allows for a deeper insight into a farm’s performance. With the increasing pressure to reduce antibiotic usage, the need to understand exactly what factors are causing disease. Being able to use the information to predict and prevent disease is critical to really understand performance challenges to facilitate this reduction.

Keith Evans, Technical Director of PrognostiX

We are incredibly excited to have received this recognition within the poultry industry. We have developed technology which we believe will provide users with completely new insight into productivity on farm and quickly identify trends and improvements, make farm-life easier and ultimately drive farm performance.

Alan Beynon, Managing Director of PrognostiX

The excitement is not just accessing real time data from farms but using the domain expertise of St David’s Veterinary businesses to help farmers improve efficiencies and further improve animal welfare.

For more information about the award, visit https://www.britishpoultry.org.uk/british-poultry-awards-2018/

LTE-M

Long Term Evolution for Machines: LTE-M

LTE-M is the simplified industry term for the LTE-MTC low power wide area (LPWA) technology standard published by 3GPP in the Release 13 specification. It specifically refers to LTE CatM1, suitable for the IoT. LTE-M is a low power wide area technology which supports IoT through lower device complexity and provides extended coverage, while allowing the reuse of the LTE installed base. This allows battery lifetime as long as 10 years or more for a wide range of use cases, with the modem costs reduced to 20-25% of the current EGPRS modems.

Supported by all major mobile equipment, chipset and module manufacturers, LTE-M networks will co-exist with 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile networks and benefit from all the security and privacy features of mobile networks, such as support for user identity confidentiality, entity authentication, confidentiality, data integrity, and mobile equipment identification. Commercial launches of LTE-M networks will take place globally in 2017/18.

Companies involved in LTE-M

Altair Semiconductor
AT&T Mobility
Bell Mobility
Blackberry Limited
China Mobile
China Telecom
China Unicom
Cloud 9 Mobile
Entel PCS Telecomunicaciones
Ericsson
Etisalat
Gemalto
Huawei Technologies
iBasis, Inc
IDEMIA
JT (Jersey) Limited
KDDI Corporation
KPN B.V.
LG Uplus, Corp.
Marathon Telecom
Mediatek Inc.
Nokia
Orange
Qualcomm Inc.
Quectel Wireless Solutions Co.,Ltd
Radiomóvil Dipsa, S.A. de C.V.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
Sequans Communications
Sierra Wireless Inc.
SingTel Mobile Singapore Pte. Ltd.
SoftBank Corp.
Spirent Communications
Sprint Corporation
Tele2 Eesti Aktsiaselts
Telecom Italia SpA
Telefónica UK Limited
Telekom Austria AG
Telit Communications S.p.A.
Telstra Corporation Limited
TELUS Communications Inc.
T-Mobile USA, Inc.
Transaction Network Services, Inc.
Truphone Limited
Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S.
u-blox AG
Verizon Wireless

Visit here for more information

The Internet of Things

What the blummin’ heck is IoT ?

Despite some experts calling the Internet of Things (IoT) the 4th Industrial Revolution, a mind blowing 87% of people have no idea what it is.

The term “the Internet of things” was coined by Kevin Ashton of Procter & Gamble, later MIT’s Auto-ID Center, in 1999.

Well, it’s a bit like the Internet that you know and love, but on a massive scale. IoT is about connecting more devices to the internet. Developers are adding the means to connect not only our smartphones and tablets to the web but also our appliances, cars, bins and even clothing.

Things, in the IoT sense, can refer to a wide variety of devices such as heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders on farm animals, cameras streaming live feeds of wild animals in coastal waters, automobiles with built-in sensors, DNA analysis devices for environmental/food/pathogen monitoring, or field operation devices that assist firefighters in search and rescue operations. Okay, so imagine a world where you could check and order the contents of your refrigerator from your smartphone, or own an appliance that automatically requested a service when it brakes down. These ideas barely scratch surface of what will be possible. In this connected era, anything that has a microchip will most likely connect to the internet.

The Internet of Things - The Connected World

IoT promises to make our global society more efficient and productive connected world than we ever thought possible.

LoRa

What is LoRa ?

LoRa

A Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) or Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) network or Long range (LoRa) or Low-Power Network (LPN) is a type of wireless telecommunication wide area network designed to allow long range communications at a low bit rate among things (connected objects), such as sensors operated on a battery. The low power, low bit rate and intended use distinguish this type of network from a wireless WAN that is designed to connect users or businesses, and carry more data, using more power. The LPWAN datarate ranges from 0.3 kb/s to 50 kb/s per channel.

A LPWAN may be used to create a private wireless sensor network, but may also be a service or infrastructure offered by a third party, allowing the owners of sensors to deploy them in the field without investing in gateway technology.

LoRaWAN is a media access control layer protocol for managing communication between LPWAN gateways and end-node devices, maintained by the LoRa Alliance. Version 1.0 of the LoRaWAN specification was released in June 2015.

LoRa is a proprietary, chirp spread spectrum (CSS) radio modulation technology for LPWAN used by LoRaWAN, Haystack Technologies, and Symphony Link.

LoRa is a patented (EP2763321 from 2013 and US7791415 from 2008) technology developed by Cycleo (Grenoble, France) and acquired by Semtech in 2012. LoRa uses license-free sub-gigahertz radio frequency bands like 169 MHz, 433 MHz, 868 MHz (Europe) and 915 MHz (North America).

On top of this physical layer, there are two main competing protocols:

LoRaWAN defines the communication protocol and system architecture for the network while the LoRa physical layer enables the long-range communication link. LoRaWAN is also responsible managing the communication frequencies, data rate, and power for all devices. Devices in the network are asynchronous and transmit when they have data available to send. Data transmitted by an end-node device is received by multiple gateways, which forward the data packets to a centralized network server. The network server filters duplicate packets, performs security checks, and manages the network. Data is then forwarded to application servers. The technology shows high reliability for the moderate load, however it has some performance issues related to sending acknowledgements.

UNB, Ultra Narrow Band, modulation technology used for LPWAN by various companies including:

Sigfox, UNB-based technology and French company Telensa
NB-IoT, another narrow band standard initiated and completed by 3gpp with their release 13 of the series of IoT standardizations
Nwave, proprietary technology developed in cooperation with MIT. Its first release without error correcting codes also forms the basis of the Weightless-N open protocol
Weightless, a set of communication standards from the Weightless SIG

Sigfox

What is Sigfox ?

Sigfox

Sigfox is a French company founded in 2009 that builds wireless networks to connect low-energy objects such as electricity meters, smartwatches, and washing machines, which need to be continuously on and emitting small amounts of data.

Sigfox is based in Labège near Toulouse, France, and has over 80 employees. The firm also has offices in Madrid, San Francisco, Sydney and Paris.

Sigfox employs a proprietary technology that enables communication using the Industrial, Scientific and Medical ISM radio band which uses 868MHz in Europe and 902MHz in the US. It utilizes a wide-reaching signal that passes freely through solid objects, called “ultra narrowband” and requires little energy, being termed “Low-power Wide-area network (LPWAN)”. The network is based on one-hop star topology and requires a mobile operator to carry the generated traffic. The signal can also be used to easily cover large areas and to reach underground objects.

Sigfox has partnered with a number of firms in the LPWAN industry such as Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs and ON Semiconductor. The ISM radio bands support limited bidirectional communication. The existing standard for Sigfox communications supports up to 140 uplink messages a day, each of which can carry a payload of 12 Bytes (Excluding message header and transmission information) and up to 4 downlink messages per day, each of which can carry a payload of 8 Bytes.

Assistive Living

Assistive Living

There are 15 million reasons why IoT is increasingly essential in the future wellbeing of the population of the UK.

What a waste of space!

What a waste of space!

The modern-day corporate office has changed a lot over the last decade, changing from small, individual, personal cubicles with separators to open-plan offices and hot desking. This has now created a new problem, where to make a private phone call?

Baby it’s warm outside

Baby it’s warm outside… and pretty oppressive indoors too!

Well summer’s visited with a vengeance this year, with temperatures soaring and humidity hitting peak levels, amplifying the usual moans and groans about the great British weather!

HMT-1 by Realwear – Wearable Tech

Hands Free, Eyes Forward

Take Control & Empower Your Workforce & Industrial IoT

Make every worker a Mobile Command Centre.

Don’t count your chickens… unless you can rely upon the outcome!

Don’t count your chickens… unless you can rely upon the outcome!

IRIS IoT Solutions joins with the world’s leading IoT partner network.

About IRIS IoT Solutions Ltd.

Development partner PrognostiX wins Best Poultry Supply Chain Innovation at the British Poultry Awards

Well done to our development partner

We worked hand in hand with PrognostiX on our Sense Hub and they have just received a great award

PrognostiX was announced as Best Poultry Supply Chain Innovation at the 2018 British Poultry Awards

Keith Evans, Technical Director of PrognostiX

Alan Beynon, Managing Director of PrognostiX

LTE-M

Long Term Evolution for Machines: LTE-M

Companies involved in LTE-M

The Internet of Things

What the blummin’ heck is IoT ?

LoRa

What is LoRa ?

On top of this physical layer, there are two main competing protocols:

Sigfox

What is Sigfox ?

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

About Us