Our client, a leading Utilities company wanted to develop a NB-IoT enabled air quality monitoring solution with cloud connectivity. They wanted a solution that optimized battery life to run for years.
Gadgeon developed a air quality Sensor with an NB-IoT chip that runs on battery. An ultra low power MCU will be the heart of the system. It will operate in sleep mode and wake up periodically to sense the air quality and store the readings in flash memory. Depending on the readings, it will configure the next sensing interval and go back to sleep. A replaceable battery of 2000mAH is used for the system. The device will run directly on USB power if available, otherwise, it will resort to the battery. The expected lifetime of the battery is close to 3 years.
The readings are sent to cloud platform hosted in AWS. Users can log in and view their system status through a mobile app. In case of air quality alerts, push notifications are sent to mobile app. Users can view the history of the readings and get trend charts etc.
Wireless smart meters are gaining momentum across the world. And, with the multiple benefits presented by NBIoT, cities are likely just the beginning of a long-lasting transformation in utility services.
