Understanding LoT - Location of Things - The Killer IoT App

There is currently much hype surrounding IoT, or the Internet of Things. IoT refers to the integration of internet-based technology into every-day items, such as wristwatches and other jewelry, key chains, home appliances, pets and almost anything. A less popular buzzword, but one that is essential for understanding how IoT adds value to an organization, is LOT -- the Location of Things.

Location of Things technology spans the area of identifying where IoT devices are located in relation to their origins, destinations or other adjacent devices. What is the value of sensors capturing identity, environmental data, and status among other things if the consumer of this data doesn't have the contextual location information to give this data some meaning.

By adding "context" to the billions of location-aware sensors and devices that will be part of the IoT ecosystem it will open up unlimited  opportunities to enhance customers’ experience, improve service quality, margins and reduce operational expenses across a wide range of industry verticals and the public sector. 

There are several enablers to LoT such as:

• LPWA (Low-Power Wide-Area) networks that allow a mass market for low-cost long-range low-power connected network of objects. Analysts forecast that there will be 2.7 billion LPWA connections by 2022. 
• Indoor positioning thanks to proximity context-aware devices like Wi-Fi, UWB, Mesh and BLE-beacons.

So get ready for a much wider usage of the term LoT. In the near future, Location of Things will help bring "context" to the "who" and "what" provided by the billions of IoT nodes and sensors that will populate our planet over the next decades to come.

Netclearance has been developing LoT technology and solutions since its inception for a multitude of industrial and consumer applications with the goal to add value to your IoT applications. Contact us to learn more about our IoT location gateways, readers and sensor nodes that can bring "context" to your IoT atmosphere.

Visit us at RFID Live on May 3 - 5, 2016 Booth 728B  Orange County Convention Center
Orlando, Florida (www.rfidbeacons.com)

Low Energy + Light Harvesting = mBeacon1-Lite

State-of-the-art Light-harvesting and Energy Storage

Energy harvesting is the process by which energy available in the environment is captured and converted into usable electrical energy. This energy can be stored in super capacitors for powering low energy electronics and for substituting for batteries. After several days of tinkering with duty cycles and efficient sleep modes we were able to apply the latest in light-harvesting technology to come up with our battery-free device called m1BeaconLite.

The patent-pending mBeacon1Lite, becomes the industry’s first battery-free proximity beacon solution capable of running without batteries. This revolutionary solution features the latest in energy-harvesting and storage technology that converts ambient light into a power source capable of handling a typical BLE application such as iBeacon and other proprietary formats in a small form factor at an affordable price.  The design is capable of using common indoor light sources such as fluorescent, incandescent and LED.

Energy harvesting delivers an scalable and environmental-friendly approach to indoor beacon deployments while reducing beacon equipment total cost of ownership. Most of indoors venues such as stadiums, retail stores, hotels, shopping centers have something in common, that is an abundance of ambient light. The tremendous operational and energy-harvesting efficiency of the m1BeaconLite, combined with our cloud based management and remote monitoring capability, enables our customers to realize the benefits of beacons without having to worry about battery-life or wired installations.

Unlike existing BLE beacons, the solution doesn’t require a battery to run; it utilizes a small photo-voltaic cell to convert ambient lighting into a stable power source that can power the beacon. The solution includes a cloud based server that can collect proximity, movements and dwelling patterns over time. In addition, the transformational solution provides powerful analytics under a single web based platform.

The most comprehensive family of beacons

The solution joins the mBeacon1, mBeacon2 and the mBeaconGW – Netclearance Systems, Inc. multi-mode proximity beacons. The m1BeaconLite is an affordable BLE-only and battery-free device that can be easily installed near ambient light sources. All Netclearance Systems, Inc. solutions, utilize beacon technology and feature an open server APIs (REST), mobile SDKs, and advanced analytics capabilities. In addition, Netclearance Systems, Inc. is the only company that offers a comprehensive web-based content and beacon management platform for all smartphones. It supports new and legacy smartphones by offering a unique low-power Wi-Fi and BLE beacon architecture that is compatible with all mobile platforms.