Tuesday, February 22, 2011

New sensor tags promise to improve compliance, operations

Three new wireless temperature and humidity sensor tags from Ekahau could help with regulatory compliance and improve operations across a number of industries, including healthcare. The Wi-Fi-based RTLS vendor says its new tags deliver an automated way to measure, monitor and manage areas where changes in the environment could be harmful.

Wireless and battery powered, the tags are designed to be easily configured and can be deployed in various environments without having to run cabling for power and connectivity. The tags boast a three-year battery life (when set at a 15-minute reporting interval), and are capable of sampling temperature and/or humidity every 15 seconds. On-board heuristics enable the tag to immediately report anomalies if they occur between reporting intervals, according to a company statement.

Two of the tags—the TS1 and TS2—have extended cable probes that can be installed inside the environment where temperature is being measured, such as a freezer or refrigerator. The TS1 tag has a single probe; the TS2 is a dual-probe tag.

The third—a humidity sensor tag called the HS1—includes on-board sensors that measure relative humidity (RH) ranging up to 100 percent, and temperature ranges of -40 degrees to +85 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees to +185 degrees Fahrenheit).

All three include audible and visual alarm indicators on the tags themselves and allow for programmable alarm limits and local data logging. The upside of continuous data logging is that the measurement data will not be lost even in the event of a network outage.

All of the new sensor tags also incorporate the ability to receive acknowledgments from the Ekahau servers and a smart re-try capability, in case of data transmission failures.

This article was originally posted at http://ping.fm/hCIFz

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