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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.

NarrowBand IOT

What is NarrowBand IOT ?

NarrowBand IOT

NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed to enable a wide range of devices and services to be connected using cellular telecommunications bands. NB-IoT is a narrowband radio technology designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) and is one of a range of Mobile IoT (MIoT) technologies standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

Other 3GPP IoT technologies include eMTC (enhanced Machine-Type Communication) and EC-GSM-IoT.

The NB-IoT specification was frozen at Release 13 of the 3GPP specification (LTE-Advanced Pro), in June 2016.

NB-IoT focuses specifically on indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life, and enabling a large number of connected devices. The NB-IoT technology is deployed “in-band” in spectrum allocated to Long Term Evolution (LTE) – using resource blocks within a normal LTE carrier, or in the unused resource blocks within a LTE carrier’s guard-band – or “standalone” for deployments in dedicated spectrum. It is also suitable for the re-farming of GSM spectrum.

Zigbee

What is Zigbee ?

Zigbee

Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios, such as for home automation, medical device data collection, and other low-power low-bandwidth needs, designed for small scale projects which need wireless connection. Hence, Zigbee is a low-power, low data rate, and close proximity (i.e., personal area) wireless ad hoc network.

The technology defined by the Zigbee specification is intended to be simpler and less expensive than other wireless personal area networks (WPANs), such as Bluetooth or more general wireless networking such as Wi-Fi. Applications include wireless light switches, home energy monitors, traffic management systems, and other consumer and industrial equipment that requires short-range low-rate wireless data transfer.

Its low power consumption limits transmission distances to 10–100 meters line-of-sight, depending on power output and environmental characteristics. Zigbee devices can transmit data over long distances by passing data through a mesh network of intermediate devices to reach more distant ones. Zigbee is typically used in low data rate applications that require long battery life and secure networking (Zigbee networks are secured by 128 bit symmetric encryption keys.) Zigbee has a defined rate of 250 kbit/s, best suited for intermittent data transmissions from a sensor or input device.

Zigbee was conceived in 1998, standardized in 2003, and revised in 2006. The name refers to the waggle dance of honey bees after their return to the beehive.