UHP Wireless Networks rollout new IoT Smart Building Solutions in the US based on Actility’s IoT platform Based in Philadelphia, UHP Wireless Networks, a leading provider of network technology services to Federal, Local and Commercial customers in the United States, has become an Actility Channel Partner and is now distributing LoRaWAN® connectivity offers using Actility’s ThingPark™ platform, focusing on Smart Building and Smart City use cases. Smart Buildings Get Safer Through Actility’s Network Management Platform 2020 is the perfect time to take advantage of the Internet of Things (IoT) for your facility. UHP Wireless Networks brings years of experience in infrastructure deployment together with Actility’s IoT Platform, making it easier to scale and manage IoT technology. Smart Buildings bring real time date for efficient operations and facilities management. As operations and IT staff begin to work together on addressing deployment challenges, partners like UHP Wireless Networks bring ideas that can be implemented now. The Actility’s ThingPark™ platform for IoT brings management to a wide range of devices, sensors and the applications that allow you to ‘see and hear’ your building. ThingPark™ platform and network technology to deploy, operate and maintain public and private wireless IoT networks within a unified, scalable and versatile network infrastructure. IoT delivering smart buildings and digital facilities management IoT offers ideal mechanisms to make buildings more sustainable and productive. Simple, low-cost sensor devices provide valuable real-time contextualized data. Together with Actility, UHP Wireless Networks enable building management companies to deliver various services using a common IoT enabler platform, providing LoRaWAN™ network server and software to manage public city-owned or private networks, under a unified, scalable, multipurpose IoT network infrastructure. Specifically, LoRaWAN™ is ideal for Smart Building applications, because LoRaWAN™ has the lowest cost for network infrastructure deployment and maintenance thanks to its high link budget, long range, good redundancy and ease for scaling densification. Cost-efficient IoT solution well-complementing legacy BMS. “We are excited to have a platform which makes IoT deployment less worrisome for building owners and facility managers. ThingPark provides use of IoT for insight into building operations and data for management decisions. It’s scalable on the LoRaWAN standard to start with Occupancy Monitoring, and add other functions like Smart Parking, Waste Bin Monitoring and Tenant Surveying later.” said Jonathan Ford, Managing Partner at UHP Wireless Networks. “Smart Buildings and Smart Cities are major domains which are benefiting from a large variety of IoT use cases. We are pleased to expand IoT applications in the US with such a great partner as UHP Wireless Networks” added Nicolas Jordan, COO at Actility. About UHP Wireless Networks: Urban Harvest Partnership, LLC dba UHP Wireless Networks provides technology services for corporations and municipal agencies. UHP Wireless Networks works with organizations to plan and deliver infrastructure for Smart, Connected Buildings and Cities. Our solutions improve cellular signal inside of buildings and utilize a combination of smart cameras and low power IoT sensors that provide real time data for efficiently managing assets. Offered solutions include: In-Building Wireless (BDA/DAS); IoT; Cloud Solutions; Wireless LAN; 10 Gig Copper & Fiber Optics Structured Cabling; Site Surveys; Network Infrastructure. Contact: John Cureton, Founding Partner, cureton@uhpwireless.com, Linkedin About Actility Actility is a world leader in Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) industrial-grade connectivity solutions for the Internet of Things. Actility provides its ThingPark™ platform and network technology to deploy, operate and maintain public and private wireless IoT networks within a unified, scalable and versatile network infrastructure. The vast majority of nationwide LoRaWAN® network service providers (over 50) and hundreds of companies trust ThingPark™ all over the world. Through its subsidiary Abeeway, Actility also provides patented ultra-low power tracking solutions. ThingPark Market offers the largest selection of interoperable IoT gateways, devices and applications to simplify and accelerate deployment of use cases. Contact us here: https://www.actility.com/contact
Specialist Distributor Saelig Launches Abeeway Location Tracking Sensors to USA market
Specialist Distributor Saelig Launches Abeeway Location Tracking Sensors to USA market Fairport, NY Specialist distributor Saelig Co. Inc. announces its new partnership with leading IoT tracking solutions provider, Abeeway. The agreement sees Saelig becoming the USA distribution center for Abeeway products which complement Saelig’s other LoRa and RF offerings. Abeeway offers a complete, high performing, power-efficient, and low cost tracking technology – a flexible IoT multi-technology geolocation solution optimized for LoRaWAN™. With advanced location-solving algorithms, the Abeeway platform and trackers bring a geolocation intelligence fit for existing and new use situations. Abeeway’s high quality of service, extended battery life, and intelligently-configured multimodal operation gives reliability and versatility. Abeeway devices combine cutting-edge location technologies, robust hardware, meticulous selection of highest performing low-power chipsets and a no-compromise optimized software. This allows flexible application, highly responsive to changing needs, and guaranteeing asset and people location in various coverage scenarios. High-quality hardware houses multiple embedded geolocation technologies such as GPS, Low Power GPS, Wifi Sniffing, and Bluetooth Low Energy. Abeeway trackers are small, light, and highly resistant to harsh environments (ATEX certified). Alan Lowne, Saelig’s CEO, says: “Through their use of multiple geolocation technologies with LoRaWAN connectivity, Abeeway trackers can be used both indoor and outdoor to track and monitor assets such as trucks, containers, parcels, people and more with ease and accuracy. We are thrilled to have become the official USA distributor for Abeeway. We are constantly searching for the best solutions to meet our customers’ requirements and Abeeway certainly leads in the field of geolocation tracking. Paired with our expert technical support, we look forward to growing Abeeway throughout North America.” ThingPark™ offers key factors for success of your IoT project: Full deployment flexibility: private networks with ThingPark™ Enterprise, available with full on-site of SaaS platform, all the way to nationwide public networks. Openness: Networks committed to 15 year+ IoT services cannot afford single supplier dependency. ThingPark™is hardware agnostic and runs over all leading LoRaWAN gateway manufacturers, providing seamless administration interfaces and ensuring that you can always use the hardware best suited for your use case, country of deployment, and budget.ThingPark implements open standards APIs and connectors to all leading IoT cloud platforms. All-inclusive industrial grade service: our SaaS service is fully managed including 365×24/7 monitoring, geo redundancy & high availability. Non-stop upgrades are also managed by Actility. Comprehensive set of value-added services such as reliable multicast, firmware updates (FOTA), Peering/roaming or low-power geolocation services, to go beyond connectivity. Nicolas Jordan, CEO of Abeeway commented, “Abeeway is very pleased to partner with Saelig, which is well-known for bringing unique and novel industrial electronics products to the American marketplace. As tracking and logistics becomes one of the key verticals for IoT adoption, Abeeway will leverage its expertise in its multi-technology based, power efficient geolocation products, and will be happily supporting Saelig in addressing this huge market.” About Saelig: Saelig Co. Inc. is a leading distributor of industrial test and measurement products. Now adding Abeeway to its portfolio of RF test products, Saelig provides easy access to the best in class hardware, service, and support to customers throughout North America. Saelig’s vision is to provide solutions that ideally match users’ needs, with support from our expert technical team. About Abeeway: Abeeway was formed in 2014 in Meylan, near Grenoble. It arose from the birth of LoRa, a wireless data communication technology developed by Cycleo, a Grenoble-based company acquired by Semtech in 2012. Abeeway is the market leader in low-power geolocation and a provider of disruptive IoT tracking solutions worldwide. Abeeway offers the most energy-efficient, reliable and flexible geolocation solutions using unique tracking devices and a smart multi-technology location system optimized for long-range and low-power-consumption LoRaWAN™
Actility signs agreement with Pittsburgh International Airport
The Actility Newsroom Actility signs agreement with Pittsburgh International Airport Actility, the industry leader in Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Pittsburgh International Airport in a move that will greatly expand the airport’s IoT capability and position it among the most technologically advanced airports in the world. By 2023, a high-tech $1Bn terminal will be built at Pittsburgh International Airport with plans for the best IoT technology embedded from the outset of the design phase, in order to provide the most up to date offering in a world-class facility. Under the MOU, the airport will establish an LPWAN IoT Lab with Actility to enable different use cases to be deployed and tested to identify the best candidate devices and application partners for the overall new terminal design. Targeted areas will include asset movement, people movement and building management. Actility CEO and co-founder Olivier Hersent said: “We are delighted to sign this MOU with Pittsburgh International Airport to undertake the first phases of the IoT Lab using our ThingPark Business Accelerator Program. We will supply the airport with the tools, knowledge, and techniques to make their IoT services successful and to demonstrate the benefits of LoRaWAN technology. We look forward to bringing the airport and its visionary management team through the critical first steps of a commercially successful IoT service.” “Technology innovation is critical for us,” said Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Cassotis. “This is one step toward our goal of building the ‘smartest’ airport in the world. Building an ecosystem of technology leaders and advanced thinking partners will enable us to learn and adapt to be the leading airport in meeting passenger and airline needs while continuing to increase efficiencies. Actility’s Business Accelerator Program (BAP) consultative service is the first step in IoT service and business case definition. It sets the goals for client projects, tests assumptions, and establishes high-level go-forward plans for launch. “The expected growth of IoT is exponential, and therefore, as part of our transformation to a smart airport, we need to understand how impactful and valuable this wave of technology can be to our airport and the industry,” said Katherine Karolick, Senior Vice President of Information Technology at Pittsburgh International. “We will work with Actility and the IoT ecosystem to first learn and test the value in our existing airside terminal and then refine and perfect it. When our new landside terminal opens in 2023, we will have deployed proven, reliable, secure, and innovative systems.” Actility was launched by IoT industry and LoRaWAN experts in 2010 to accelerate low power global connectivity. Actility co-founded the LoRa Alliance and continues to pioneer low power wide area (LPWA) networking technology. ENDS For further information: Actility: Anne van Gemert anne.vangemert@actility.com / +33 6 47 37 30 21 Notes to editors: Actility connects the industrial internet of things. Our IoT connectivity platform, tools, and fast-growing ecosystem enable our customers to create IoT solutions that transform business, industries and processes. The ThingPark LPWA platform connects sensors gathering data to cloud applications on any scale, from global or national networks to secure on-campus enterprise solutions, managing devices, data flows and monetization. Our value-added applications and business services enable roaming, device software update, geolocation and smart grid. Actility is at the heart of a thriving customer ecosystem, connecting solutions partners, supporting developers and device makers preparing their LPWA product for market, and providing an e-commerce Marketplace offering global distribution to solution providers. Actility co-founded the LoRa Alliance and continues to pioneer LPWA networking technology.
A Smart Response To a Slovenian Shopping Mall’s High Energy Costs
A Smart Response To a Slovenian Shopping Mall’s High Energy Costs Energy management is an economic necessity. Tomaž Damjan, Energy Manager, BTC City 470,000 square metersArea of BTC City 60 million kWH/yearTotal energy consumption of total budgetEnergy costs End customer BTC City CUSTOMER CHALLENGE A Shopping Center The Size of a City BTC City Ljubljana is one of the largest business, shopping, entertainment, recreation and cultural centers in Europe, located just three kilometers from Ljubljana city center and 200m from the Ljubljana ring road. It is considered a must-visit destination by city residents and tourists. Due to the large number of facilities, wide area, high consumption of electricity, water and heating, BTC’s energy needs are comparable to those of urban centers. “Energy management is an economic necessity,” says Tomaž Damjan, Energy Manager at BTC City. In a bid to reduce energy consumption and costs as well as subsequent CO2 emissions, BTC sought to implement an energy management (EM) system for its multi-purpose facilities, such as those used by Smart Cities, and in line with the ISO 50001 standard, aimed at supporting organizations to conserve resources and tackle climate change. BTC turned to Solvera Lynx, the region’s leading provider of comprehensive energy management solutions, to help devise their own system to monitor and reduce energy consumption. Specialists from Solvera Lynx described the key to greater efficiency and energy management coordination was to provide BTC City with “systematic control” over energy consumption. “Due to the large number of BTC facilities, it was important to control the consumption of individual energy products and monitor consumption by individual end-users,” explained Janez Klančnik, Project and Energy Manager at Solvera Lynx. “BTC needed tools that allowed the easy collection of data, performance analysis and production of automated reports.” SOLUTION Applying Smart City Energy Management Tools Solvera Lynx set several objectives for implementing their Smart City EM solutions: To gain remote control over energy consumption To implement an alarm system To define and analyze key energy efficiency indicators in real time To introduce an energy accounting system with a clear, transparent view of energy use To provide a tool for employees to carry out relevant and efficient energy management activities To achieve these objectives for BTC, Solvera Lynx had four types of communication equipment in mind: GsmBox.WG, ComBox.M, ComBox.L and GsmBox.X4. These wireless, long-range sensors utilize LoRaWAN technology to send data to GemaLogic, an advanced energy management software platform. The idea was to connect and deploy this network of sensors and communication equipment throughout the entire BTC City, digitizing utility meters that could then send data on electricity, heat, natural gas and water consumption from all facilities to the GemaLogic software, where energy managers could constantly gather, process and analyze the data and produce automated reports. Deploying a network of indoor/outdoor sensors requires a special communication technology to overcome a variety of obstacles. LoRaWAN was the natural choice and Actility supported the Solvera Lynx team on its use. To easily understand the benefits of LoRaWAN-enabled sensors, it is useful to compare it to WiFi, the commonly known indoor, wireless networking technology. Covering the wide area of BTC City would require dozens of WiFi access points, whereas only two LoRaWAN gateways were needed. With LoRaWAN, BTC City was able to set up its own private network within a week. In addition, the battery life of LoRaWAN-powered sensors is much higher—5 to 8 years on average. The most exciting aspect for Klančnik was observing the small time intervals of sending data from normally inaccessible places. “Once we connected the meters in the water shafts to the ComBox.L devices, we could receive data on water consumption every 15 minutes. Before, that was not possible and water leakages were not detected in time,” said Klančnik. This was just the tip of the iceberg. BENEFITS Steep Reduction in Costs and Consumption Once Solvera Lynx implemented the network, deployed the sensors and connected them to the GemaLogic platform, results were instantly observed. For example, once the energy data was digitized, energy managers could immediately start monitoring and analysis in real time, and start benchmarking and forecasting. Solvera Lynx EM solutions also include an alarm system that can detect deviations in consumption, such as those caused by a water leakage, alerting the managers for a quick response. EM systems can be improved over time and the easy monitoring leads to taking effective measures to continuously increase BTC City’s efficient consumption of energy. In fact, after one year of implementing Solvera Lynx’s EM system, BTC City has reduced its energy consumption by 5%. Even more staggering, BTC City has observed that before, water loss was measured at 40%, whereas after the EM solutions were installed, that figure plummeted to 4.5%. Moreover, early detection of equipment defects, such as in air-conditioning units, has led to replacement of parts that have cut electricity consumption by half! In the past year BTC has invested massively in its infrastructure to guarantee and maintain the highest level of efficiency for its operations. The company has a strong environmental strategy and is dedicated to optimizing and reducing water leakages and energy consumption, serving an example of sustainability on a national level. With all the measures the BTC energy team have introduced they have reached successful results – in the last 10 years of constant monitoring and improving they have reduced water leakages up to 20% ” “The system has paid-off,” said Tomaž Damjan, Energy Manager at BTC City. “We will continue using the GemaLogic energy management platform.” Meanwhile, the case study has also been a major win for the collaboration between Solvera Lynx and Actility, according to the former’s Toni Žužek. “We really appreciate the timely and professional support from Actility’s experts,” said Žužek. “They helped meet our needs and strategic milestones, as well as plan and organize more effective sales and marketing activities in order to promote our advanced EM software and hardware solutions.” BENEFITS Guarantee traceability throughout the disposal chain Recycling bins throughout Dutch cities provide clear evidence of this successful IoT implementation. A sensor placed in each bin signals to collectors when it is full. As
Cisco Live in the city of lights!
The Actility Blog Cisco Live in the city of lights! Cisco Live is Cisco’s premier education and training destination for IT professionals worldwide. This year, Actility sent two hands full of their crew to support its very own booth at the edition in Las Vegas, running from 25-29 June. Over 28000 partners and customers attended the event and benefited from a curriculum of more than 1,000 sessions offering unique opportunities to acquire cutting-edge knowledge and skills on innovative technologies. Cisco Live is a five-day immersion in sessions and specialty programs on numerous topics including, of course, IoT. It is a chance to see and be seen by suppliers and customers, to see and deliver demos, to explore and assess the latest solutions from all markets and meet the industry’s top vendors. For Actility, this event was a tremendous success. The LPWA market in the US is just getting traction and now is a fantastic time for us to position ThingPark™ as the leading Network Server in that space. We come back fully energized and rich from the experience. We realized we were capable of grabbing real attention from visitors. The attendees interested in IoT and in connected objects were drawn to our booth, impressed with the possibilities Actility’s ThingPark delivers and the power of LoRaWan in the LPWA landscape. We spent our days evangelizing. Our booth focused on Smart City solutions, as our market analysis tells us this is the ‘low hanging fruit’ in the US. We had numerous devices to demo on our booth, such as a Smart Streetlight powered by Flashnet, a Smart Parking solution with our partner PNI, a SmartBin waste management solution, the ever-popular connected mousetrap and others focused on that vertical market. And our biggest hit was our live shuttle bus tracking demo, powered by Actilitys’ ThingPark and Abeeway™ tracking devices and using Cisco IXM gateways. Cisco used seven gateways, of which four deployed indoor covering the entire convention center and only three were necessary outdoors to cover the shuttle route on the entire southern part of the Las Vegas Strip. Cisco placed Actility’s Abeeway trackers inside the buses taking participants to and from the Convention Center and their hotels. And the demo was impressive! Shown on our booth as well as Cisco’s, and on the information desk in the lobby. We got people’s attention. Here is when we truly contribute to making people’s lives easier and smarter: using an app on their smartphone or public screen to determine the arrival time of the next shuttle bus between their hotel and the Mandalay Bay Convention Centre, attendees could wait for their shuttle inside, and avoid waiting in the Nevada heats they had to last year! The general theme of the event was Calling all Super Heros, You’re IT. I can tell you, we brought our Super Hero, and his name is Gabor Pop! Each day Gabor had a 15-minute presentation, in which he introduced Actility and explained a use case. We chose Smart Parking, Tracking, Smart Lighting and Smart building. His presentations stopped traffic, and guided people to our stand afterwards. We played our cards well. We found new channels to help us bring ThingPark to US market, we found new customers, some with immediate projects, others we need to develop. With a complete team based across the US, Actility is invested and betting the US LPWA market will catch up to the Europeans and Asia/Pac. Thank you Cisco Live! We enjoyed playing, meeting many superheros, and winning new relationships!