Digi

RMONI was facing temperature monitoring challenges in a cold chain business. A cold chain must be established and maintained to ensure goods have been properly refrigerated during every step of the process, making temperature monitoring a critical business function. Manual registration practice can be very costly, labor intensive and prone to mistakes.

DigiBale, wanted to apply technology know-how and IP from implementations successfully to more agriculture sectors including cotton, forestry, sugarcane and cattle. However, farmers and growers still have worries about the connected technology.

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.

Around the world, drones of all shapes and sizes from the market-pioneering Flying Eye are filling the skies. They incorporate a wide range of sensors, cameras, batteries, and radio controls, making them an increasingly valuable proposition to a broad cross-section of industries. Today, Flying Eye drones are spraying crops, capturing breathtaking photos and videos of remote locations, and extending the reach and agility of customers around the world. But, according to Alexandre Thomas, co-founder and technical director of Flying Eye, significant safety issues emerge as these tiny aircraft crisscross overhead, since these vehicles are often flying quite near crowds of people. “A drone must be safe, and designers must have contingencies in place to respond to unplanned events and failures,” he said. “We take a lot of measures to ensure reliability in our aircraft. Our electronics are tested to ensure the drone won’t unexpectedly shut down. We design propellers from durable materials, and we invest in battery technology to keep the drones aloft for longer periods of time.” Of course, no vehicle is 100-percent foolproof. Technical errors and operator errors can disrupt flights, which is why Flying Eye builds in contingency parachutes and redundant communications into its aircraft. And that’s where Digi XBee® RF modules play a key role.

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.

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.

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.

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.

New Sun Road is a registered California Benefit Corporation committed to implementing solutions to climate change and global energy poverty. This group of talented engineers is partnering with Ugandan green energy startup GRS Commodities to deliver reliable and clean power to the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, Uganda. The goal of the pilot system is to provide affordable and reliable solar powered electricity to businesses on Kitobo Island.Although no small feat, deploying the solar power grids is likely the simplest part of the solution. Solar was the obvious choice for the power source because it is economical and relatively simple to deploy.The primary difficulty lies in managing the energy grid and ensuring proper maintenance without having to be on-site at every location. The capability to remotely monitor the grid will enable New Sun Road to expand their service across the Ssese Islands in a more efficient manner since each grid can be monitored from one central location. But, in remote areas, where communication options are limited, how do you remotely monitor and manage a smart solar power grid?Without a local ISP, this can be a complex challenge, so the team decided to enable remote connectivity over the global cellular network.In addition to communication challenges, another major difficulty New Sun Road had to overcome was finding a device capable of withstanding the high temperatures within their network hubs. The device would be residing within a NEMA enclosure in direct sunlight, so the capability to function under extremely high temperatures was a must.

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.

The Royal Victoria’s 20-year-old Mitel system, with separate analogue voicemail system, needed to be replaced. The hotel required a modern communications solution that would:Connect the hotel's 160 employees.Provide call logging to help monitor business performance and control costs.Provide communications to mobile members of the team such as the night porters.Improve guest WiFi internet access.