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It is not a matter if a hydraulic hose will fail, but a matter of when. When hydraulic hoses fail on a garbage truck or on heavy machinery, Eaton's customers spend millions of dollars on hydraulic fluid cleanup, fines, remote service and medical costs that result from injuries.

Libelium needed radio frequency modules to guarantee accurate transmission of information from sensors placed in isolated or difficult-to-access areas. To enable Libelium to develop its sensor devices, the company needed to source a wireless networking provider that offered both long-range links and the interconnection of wireless networks of different frequencies.

Customers of Nebraska Engineering Company (NECO) needed the capability to know the grain dryer’s status at all times while couldn’t afford to have someone at the dryer all the time to ensure it is doing what it is supposed to do.

When James Meringer’s commercial contracting business experienced a rapid increase in solar projects, he also saw an opportunity to extend the benefits of solar by using the bifacial solar panels he’d become familiar with in new ways. Bifacial solar panels enable sunlight from both sides of the panel, making it a more efficient harvest of solar power. Seeing the panel’s power, James and his team set out to use the same technology for street lighting. Until now, solar street lights have served as utilitarian solutions that force designers to choose between form and function. The Mira Bella Energy team has changed that.

The second-generation Robonaut, Robonaut 2 is a torso bolted to a pedestal and is connected to the station with wires for power and control. NASA wanted a solution to make the robot wireless so that it can move freely throughout the station and be more useful, and save astronauts' precious time.

A customer of MicroPower Technologies, a large public utility decided to evaluate video surveillance technologies wanted a solution to monitor remote distribution lines for adverse conditions over 4,000 square miles, in 25 cities and towns. Turbulent weather is a disruptive condition, which is why the utility employed three full-time meteorologists to provide early warnings of imminent risks to its ability to maintain uptime of its systems.

When you have up to 200 buses on the streets for 23 hours each day, it’s essential to constantly monitor your vehicles to ensure the highest levels of on-time performance and safety. For the Suburban Mobility Authority for Rapid Transit (SMART), that challenge was growing increasingly difficult as its automatic vehicle location (AVL) system aged. The AVL uses a radio network to create a two-way communication link between each vehicle and SMART’s operations center where dispatchers can monitor vehicle locations, schedule performance, and other metrics. “Our AVL was 20 years old,” explained Mel Evans, IT manager for SMART. “We were relying on a legacy analog radio network that used three leased towers and a slice of frequency that was being retired. While this infrastructure was satisfactory 20 years ago, it wasn’t keeping pace with SMART. We wanted more reporting and we wanted real-time information that we could share with our public ridership.” One option was to upgrade from analog to digital signals and increase the number of towers. Evans noted that this would be cost-prohibitive. “At approximately $1 million each, the upgrade strategy was too expensive for our agency,” he said. “It became clearer that we needed to consider a different strategy that involved an entirely new AVL solution.”

With new and more demanding regulations for radio communication in Europe, Olsbergs saw the opportunity to improve efficiency and safety for construction companies and crane operators. Typically, smaller cranes are constructed on the backs of trucks and operated by two workers. One person controls the hydraulics in the truck and the other acts as a spotter to ensure that the crane doesn’t bump into anything. Olsbergs recognized that the job could be done more efficiently and more safely with remote controlled hydraulics. But to construct such a controller would require a radio module that met both their extremely high standards as a company, and the tough ETSI standards.

Mowic saw an opportunity to reduce the operating costs of spreading salt on roads. Not knowing what terrain you’ll face affects traffic patterns, wears down brake systems, and most importantly is very dangerous. In addition to added time and danger on the roads, it’s no small cost to municipalities to run trucks for salt distribution.

When we first met the team at Maverik Motion Picture Productions, it consisted of 5 full time members of staf. As with many businesses, they were working from a central ofce and sharing one handset between them. As the company grew, this started to become problematic and due to the nature of the business, each member of the team was spending a lot of time on site with clients. This created a real need for each team member to be able to work remotely, using their mobile phones. The businesses central ofce was being rented, which meant the idea of a permanent solution would not be suitable, as they may need to expand or move in the near future.