How does Bluetooth Low Energy make the building smarter?
Building solutions even in commercial and industrial environments need high security, high reliability and high performance: according to an ABI Research, 360 million Bluetooth smart building devices will be shipped per year by 2022.
Source: Bluetooth SIG
Thanks its seamless evolution, Bluetooth LE increases reliability, reduces costs and enhances ROI, as it can power
- Automation & Control -> for instance: self-regulation of light and temperature.
- Condition Monitoring -> for instance predictive maintenance, optimization of environmental conditions and automatic adjustment of lighting/cooling/heating levels (83% of companies will invest in predictive maintenance by 2020 – source: RCR Wireless).
- Location-based Services -> for instance asset tracking to optimize the productivity (read HERE Alstom’s asset tracking story), people localization to help you quickly find what you need or for worker’s safety purpose.
With regard to the last point above, we’ve developed our own concept of localization based on Bluetooth Real Time Location System (RTLS – Zone Method): Beacon fixed on objects or worn by people transmits the data (including its unique MAC Address) to BLE EchoBeacon, which operates like a “bridge” between Beacon and BLE Gateway; in this way, the zone monitored by EchoBeacon depends on the Beacon’s transmission power and on the RSSI filter set in each EchoBeacon.
Once the BLE EchoBeacon detects the information coming from the surrounding Beacons, it forwards this information to the Gateway using BLE packets; the BluEpyc Gateway is a device able to communicate to an external host in different way (Ethernet/Wi-Fi/GPRS).
Source: Bluetooth SIG
