IoT SENSORS
This term encompasses many other established and emerging technologies intended to make everyday assets smarter. In almost all cases the sensor will contain a battery or need an external power source. Here are just some examples of mostly proprietary sensing and communication protocols available today:
Over the past few years there has been a significant rise in the capabilities of IOT sensors to the point where there are now hundreds of new IOT sensors coming on to the market. These include sensors that can monitor temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, carbon monoxide, light intensity, shock levels, vibration, and much more. At Codegate we are developing a Luxbase picking bin sensor that is capable of monitoring the quantity of assets in a logistics area or on a production line. To see more about the Luxbase picking bin sensor please follow the link below.
Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) – a collection of technologies aimed at providing sensors with very low power requirements that can communicate over long distances in harsh environments, for example inside large buildings. Whilst the battery life of a sensor can be ten+ years, like BLE, battery management must be factored into any business plan.
LPWAN can be further split into unlicensed technology services, notably Sigfox and LoRa, and services that operate in the licenced cell phone spectrum, for example Long-Term Evolution Cat-M1 (LTE-M) and Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). Deployment costs can be broadly similar to BLE or are subscription based. Since small packets of data are sent over a very narrow frequency band the transmission range can be several kilometres, whilst penetration in a building is very good, such that only one receiver may be needed to cover a whole building.
Photo Louis Reed - Unsplash
