These inexpensive data sensors could help you make better, more accurate decisions

Connexin is a Business Reporter client

Imagine what you could do if you could cost-effectively collect information from thousands of monitoring devices and pull that data into a central system for analysis and insights?

This is possible using LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network), an open-standard, low-power communication protocol for small, low-cost IoT devices transmitting small amounts of data over long distances. This means new data sets can be collected with a focus on the cloud, where visualisation and analytics tools, combined with new machine learning capabilities, can provide new insights. These in turn can disrupt or totally transform business processes to provide better services at higher quality and lower costs than ever before.

Many solutions can be created when you can collect and actively use data. Many are interlinked – as soon as you start collecting data, it can be used productively to contribute to various outcomes, of which a few could be:

All organisations have to meet regulatory standards, especially in health and safety-related areas. Repetitive tasks can be automated for increased reliability, effectiveness and audit compliance, reducing the need for manual inspections, removing risk from error-prone checks and providing a solid and complete audit trail to ensure compliance. Furthermore, real-time monitoring can provide alerts if an issue arises, improving service levels as problems are detected and fixed earlier.

Examples can be found in emergency lighting, water quality, water safety (such as legionella risk prevention), fire equipment monitoring (fire doors, extinguishers, alarm panels), air quality (external and internal), temperature control/logging (for example, in refrigeration) and dangerous gas detection (such as methane or radon).

If your company has a sustainability agenda, you can monitor real metrics (such as air quality or actual energy usage) to gain a greater understanding of what activity contributes most to achieving targets, and consolidate views of many different data sources to pinpoint key areas for improvement.

For example, connected water meters help to reduce water loss by detecting leaks quickly – Severn Trent Water claims it can detect and fix leaks within a few days, an improvement on its previous eight-month lead time. It can also show users how to save water (much as with smart gas and electricity meters).

Using real data, resources use can be optimised to reduce visits, unnecessary vehicle use and emissions, and save costs. Use cases around this include measuring road temperatures and waste-bin level monitoring, both of which enable more effective journey planning (for example, to grit or empty a bin when required, not just according to an inflexible rota). The resources saved can be better targeted towards service improvement.

Monitor dispersed estates remotely through a central dashboard to allow central oversight, management and optimisation of many building elements, such as energy, access and compliance-related checks. These last can include monitoring temperature/humidity and CO2, which could indicate the existence or potential for damp and mould and so allow preventative action to be taken. Empty buildings can be monitored for security. Footfall management can improve building design and usage, and highlight issues with existing spaces.

Connexin is building a reliable nationwide carrier-grade LoRaWAN network. An ever-increasing variety of sensors are being connected enabling all kinds of new innovative and transformational solutions.

Talk to us about how you can collect meaningful, real-time data that can help you:

…inform your business decisions

…improve services (for example, identifying and repairing faults before they occur 24/7)

…lower operational costs (save/redeploy resources)

…help achieve carbon reduction strategies