Cypress Announces Solar-Powered BLE Beacon Kit
Cypress, a semiconductor company that sells a range of memory and wireless component modules, is selling a kit that includes a solar-powered temperature and humidity sensor with an integrated Bluetooth radio, a USB-powered Bluetooth receiver and debug board, and the Cypress BLE-Beacon app, which is compatible with both iOS and Android operating systems and provides a graphic visualization of temperature and humidity readings in 2D or 3D. The CYALKIT-E02 Solar-Powered BLE Sensor Beacon Reference Design Kit (RDK) was created to enable system integrators or end users to design solar-powered IoT sensors that can be very small (the sensor module is 25 mm in diameter and 5.5 mm thick) and provide temperature and humidity tracking with BLE wireless connectivity. The sensor uses a super-capacitor to store energy and power the beacon for up to 30 hours in no light. The solar panel can operate indoors, with light levels as low as 100 lux.
The sensors could be useful for indoor environment tracking for indoor use or for agricultural, smart home, or industrial automation applications. Cypress is currently taking pre-orders for the kit, for $49, and says it will begin shipping them in two to three weeks.
Sigfox, e.l.m. leblanc, Partnering to Connect Boilers for Remote Monitoring
Low-power wide area network (PLWAN) provider Sigfox and French boiler manufacturer e.l.m. leblanc, have announced an agreement through which e.l.m. leblanc and its partners in France will add Sigfox radios to boilers, enabling remote control of boilers used to heat houses and other buildings, and a means for tracking their energy consumption.
The agreement marks a return to a feature that e.l.m. leblanc, which is owned by the Bosch Group, attempted to launch years ago. The company had planned to add cellular modems to their boilers to offer users to remotely monitor boiler performance, optimize their maintenance, and support preventative maintenance programs, but the technology proved to be too costly, according to a press release for that use case.
Currently, nearly 2,000,000 e.l.m. leblanc boilers are installed in France. Starting in September, the companies will add Sigfox radios to at least 100,000 of those boilers.
C3 IoT Announces Trio of Customers, Partners
C3 IoT, an IoT platform provider that earlier this year transitioned from serving only the energy industry to targeting its software to a wide range of companies, ranging from manufacturers to healthcare to financial services, has signed three different deals during the past two weeks. On June 16, it announced a strategic alliance with Amazon Web Services through which the C3 IoT platform is now fully integrated with AWS IoT, a managed cloud service that connects devices to the cloud and provides sensor status and network health data. The C3 IoT Platform uses AWS’s infrastructure and services to provision, manage and scale network components.
On June 20, C3 IoT announced that the U.S. Department of State had awarded it a multi-year contract, of a value up to $25 million. Through the contract, C3 IoT will provide the State Department its machine learning-based platform and software application suite, which the department will be able to use, in collaboration with networks of sensors, to automatically monitor, analyze, and support energy management systems across more than 22,000 State Department facilities in more than 190 countries.
Thirdly, on June 23, C3 IoT announced that ENGIE, a Fortune 500 global energy company, has selected the C3 IoT platform for a three-year minimum licensing deal, as part of ENGIE’s new Digital Factory initiative in order to improve its operational performance and predictive maintenance across all of its 24 business units across the world. Through this program, ENGIE will also develop IoT-based programs to offer new products and services to its residential, business and industrial. ENGIE will use the C3 IoT platform to power its IoT initiatives across its entire enterprise.
Space-Time Insight Acquires IIoT Service Provider GOFACTORY
Space‐Time Insight, a data-analytics service provider, has acquired the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) company GOFACTORY for $13 million. It is a move designed to marry its Space-Time Insight’s real-time visual analytics services with GOFACTORY’s IIoT services, particularly in the energy industry. Space-Time Insight says the acquisition will allow its customers and partners to take advantage of GOFACTORY’s cloud service to capture and analyze data from connected assets, systems and people in real time. In the last year, Space-Time Insight has grown revenues by 70 percent and now works with more than 30 organizations, including FedEx, Florida Power & Light, NEC and Thames Water. Space-Time Insight says the GOFACTORY acquisition will help it build on its current momentum and exploit a growing demand for enterprise-scale advanced analytics and visualization solutions.
Cratus and Fujitsu Partner on BlueBrain Edge Processing Unit
Cratus, a company based in Silicon Valley that works with semiconductor and component suppliers as well as contract manufacturers to develop IoT-based solutions for vertical industry applications, has partnered with Fujitsu Components America to create the BlueBrain Edge Processing Unit, a module designed to easily mount on a sensor board (via a 32-pin EEPROM IC socket) for applications that link sensor data to cloud-based platforms or on-premise systems such as those that monitor machine health. The BlueBrain’s main controller is a Cortex-M4, but it also contains a Cortex-MO microcontroller, to handle wireless communications, and a Bluetooth Low Energy radio module provided by Fujitsu Components America. At the Sensors Expo in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, Cratus CEO Zeki Gunay demonstrated a few ways the BlueBrain could be used in various industrial applications. These included pairing the BlueBrain with augmented reality glasses so that workers in a factory could inspect the temperature of a machine by simply walking past it and receiving a graphic showing the temperature, or temperature history, projected on the glasses.
The BlueBrain is available now and is compliance with the Bluetooth 4.0 standard. An upgraded version, compliant with the Bluetooth 5.0 standard, will be available by year’s end. Gunay says Cratus plans to work with Fujitsu to integrate more radios into the BlueBrain, including a sub-GHz radio, for long-range applications, and an NFC module, for access control applications.
Building Management Virtualization from Stratus Technologies
Stratus Technologies, which sells off-premise servers and software solutions to keep mission-critical applications running continuously through virtualization, has announced a new product: Stratus Always-On Infrastructure for Smart Buildings. Built on Stratus’ downtime prevention software, everRun Enterprise, with performance monitoring from Sightline Assure, the product enables building managers to virtualize disparate multi-vendor solutions and monitor the entire building management network – from servers and virtualized applications to cameras, door locks and sensors.
“Environmental controls [in buildings] are consolidating so that HVAC, air-quality control, and other environmental sensors such as carbon dioxide monitors and smoke detectors are all software-driven. Thanks to the IoT, these endpoints [communicate] over a central network,” says Jason Andersen, vice president of business line management, Stratus Technologies. Through the Always-On service, he says, a building manager can choose to virtualize the building management system and avoid having to run, maintain, and monitor as many as 10 different servers at the building.
Stratus Always-On Infrastructure for Smart Buildings is available now, through system integrators Johnson Controls, Tyco, Schneider and Siemens.
Samsung Making $1.2 Billion Investment in IoT
Samsung Electronics CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon said this week at a Samsung-hosted forum in Washington, D.C., that his company will spend $1.2 billion over four years for U.S.-based Internet of Things (IoT) R&D and investments, to be led by the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center, Global Innovation Center and Samsung Research America, part of Samsung’s U.S. footprint of more than 15,000 employees across the country.
The investment is part of what Samsung calls its vision for “Human-Centered IoT,” which highlights the use of IoT technologies to aid in home healthcare services, particularly for aging individuals. Kwon called on industry peers to focus on the use of open, standardized technology to ensure interoperability of hardware and software, across industries.
The CEO also announced that Samsung is a co-founder of a newly launched program, hosted by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), called the National IoT Strategy Dialogue. He described this program as a means for educating policy makers on the ways in which IoT technologies could benefit individuals, communities, innovators and the U.S. economy.
Semios Offering Free Two-Year Moisture Sensing Service
Semios, a Vancouver-based provider of IoT services to support precision farming applications, is offering its customers two years of free soil moisture monitoring, so that those farmers can optimize their use of irrigation. Many of Semios’ customers are orchard owners or operators, and British Columbia is experiencing its worst drought in hundreds of years.
“Water shortages have been tough for farmers. By fine-tuning irrigation to where and when it is most needed, farmers can protect their crops from drought conditions and time the irrigation sets throughout the season to enhance growing conditions,” says CEO Michael Gilbert.
The Soil Moisture Module is designed to conserve water and fertilizers by ensuring irrigation flows do not continue beyond the root zone and that crops do not suffer from a deficit of water.
Through this offer, Semios will deliver, install and service its soil moisture solution demo station to customers for two years at no charge. But the moisture module is part of Semios’ larger controller and sensor network, designed to provide fruit and tree nut farmers remote access to conditions in their fields. Therefore, customers using the free service would need to purchase these other Semios products and services, which provide pest management, disease control, and alerts to prevent frost damage.