Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2023 - ST6

LoRaWAN
Figure 4. (Image: Multi-Tech Systems)
of the software tools and cloud-based
services have now advanced so much.
And there are far more engineers who
are trained and up-to-speed in all the
technologies.
The other thing that was a challenge
then, was that companies weren't necessarily
willing or ready to embrace all the
business process changes they would
have to make in order to absorb that
data. It's one thing if I give you data
that tells you: here's the level in all
these bins. But if you're going to start
using that to schedule your service
folks, you'd have to make a lot of process
changes in your systems and in
your personnel.
In the last few years, we've seen that
not only has the technology matured,
but for businesses, post-pandemic, the
amount of acceptance to change is
quite a bit different now - we've all
had to accept vast changes. Many of us
are working remotely; there's shortage
of field service labor; there's
a shortage
of things like trucks. So, people
have gotten quite serious about this,
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it's no longer just a nice-to-have. Now I
need to have a connected product or a
connected service because I only have
half of the staff available that I used to,
and I can't get all the vehicles I used to
use. Before, it was about reducing costs
but now it's become about sustaining
your business.
A Better Mousetrap
Companies with large field service
staffs are finding big benefits from getting
a little bit of data from the field
- the sorts of things we've talked about
for a decade now. For example, things
like smart pest control traps that can
tell us whether a particular pest trap
needs to be emptied or does it need to
be re-baited?
Brown: This is the first time I'm hearing
that one.
Fahrion: Yeah, the smarter mousetrap
is really happening now. If you're
in commercial pest control, it makes a
huge amount of sense. Think of a large
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warehouse and the amount of labor it
takes somebody to go out and inspect
all those traps and decide whether they
need to be re-baited. Or they could see
" there's been no activity on this site " or
" only these 12 traps out of the 400 out
there need activities. " That can bring a
massive return from improvements in
cost and effectiveness.
Having plenty of available link budget
makes it easy to deploy successfully
in a traditional commercial building.
We usually place one gateway on every
floor or maybe every other floor. But
many times, you don't get to put those
gateways in optimum spots because
you need to put them where you have
access to a backhaul connection like
Ethernet or close enough to a window
where you get good LTE coverage if
you've got cellular backhaul. And you
also need need power available for the
gateway. So, we end up putting those
gateways in an IT closet or utility
closet, where they work really well in
terms of providing the backhaul for
any kind of sensing.
Sensor Technology, February 2023
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Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2023

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