Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT)
Beacons provide proximity detection and IoT sensing that enable organisations to manage assets and realise significant cost savings in operations through remote monitoring, preventative maintenance, alerts and 'big data' analytics.
Beacons enable a simpler, scalable and lower cost IoT solution compared to legacy industrial sensing. They are part of what's being called 'Industry 4.0' and 'The 4th Industrial Revolution', the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and smart factories.
Beacons become part of the IoT by connecting to the Internet or Intranet via a smartphone, single board computer such as Raspberry Pi, a PC scanning for beacons or WiFi/Ethernet gateway. Most implementations use gateways because they provide the simplest and most cost effective solution.
Sensor beacons send data such as light level, motion (detection, x-y-z acceleration or fall), open/closed (electrical, button press or magnetic hall effect switch), proximity (IR, PIR), temperature and humidity. Once at the server, the data is displayed in dashboards, used as the basis for alerts and forwarded on to other systems. Historical data can also be downloaded via HTTP(S) for offline analysis or input into other systems.
Gateways provide initial filtering and send data to your server or your cloud provider. For example, INGICS gateways send to your server (HTTP POST or MQTT), AWS IoT, Google Cloud IoT and Azure IoT Hub. This provides for stand-alone systems and solutions that aren't locked to a beacon platform provider subscription.
Proximity data can be just as important as sensor data. It's often useful to know a beacon attached to something or someone is in or has just entered a zone. Read the article on Using Beacons for Real-time Locating Systems (RTLS) for more information. Collected beacon data can also be used as the source of data for machine learning. Our multi-use BeaconServer™ collects data for IoT, locating and machine learning.
Heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) Dashboard