Environmental Monitoring
The low-power Zigbee protocol was used to bring wireless technology into a range of battery powered sensors. This gives clear advantages in terms of ease of installation and the use of a low power protocol alongside other power-saving techniques meant that the devices could boast a battery life of up to 5 years, minimising maintenance requirements. The devices themselves accurately measure environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, light level and occupancy (PIR) and the data is transmitted on a periodic or rate-of-change basis to a central hub which acts as part of the control system in a closed loop network. Such a system can provide big cost savings to the end user, for example by only heating or lighting rooms that have people in them.
Gateway Products
MDS has designed a number of gateway products based around wireless technology, where data received over a wireless link or network is converted into another form for transmission using another medium or protocol. An example of this was a serial-to-ethernet link that was developed as part of a wireless sensor hub. This provided the client with a means of real-time monitoring environmental conditions via a secure web page, with the data received being transmitted from the hub using HTTPS over a TCP/IP connection.
