Sensorkit manual
Somsix has developed a solution for your sustainability needs. Currently, oxygen measurements are difficult to follow since the measurement is done with a needle that compromises the bag that the product is stored in. By inserting the needle, the liner of the bag ruptures and creates a leak. In addition to this, it is very costly to maintain personnel in charge of taking said measurements.
Our solution is called … The system is based on the transmission of wireless data using LoRa transceivers. LoRa stands for Long Range communication. A sensor is capable of measuring the oxygen environment it is in, as well as the temperature, humidity, and remaining battery level. The sensor, then sends those values via LoRa gateways and, from there, to the internet. The gateways need a host on the internet to post the data to. The Things Industries provides the backend necessary to receive LoRa messages and view them online, as well as the possibility to connect other internet services to it such as Microsoft Azure to gather and save the posted data. The Starter Kit provides an inside look into the system/platform as it includes 10 calibrated sensors and a LoRa gateway.
Sensors
The sensors are calibrated in-house before they reach the customer. By default, the sensors are shipped with a battery. However, due to the sensor cap design, the sensors have a switch that prevents the battery from draining before the sensors need to be used. The sensors will turn on once they are secured to a threaded cap base.
After securing a sensor to its base, a green LED will light up and start blinking slowly for around 20 seconds. If the sensor was able to connect to a gateway to send the message, the green LED will stop blinking and the sensor will enter sleep mode. If there was no gateway nearby, the sensor will instead start blinking red, indicating that the sensor couldn’t connect to a gateway and send data. The sensor thus stores the data that wasn’t sent in memory and enters sleep mode.
Gateway
The gateway provided is the connection point between the sensors and the Internet. Each sensor can connect to a gateway to send sensor data. However, if the connection is unstable or it fails, the sensors will log the measurements instead. After the next sensing time (6 hours), the sensor will attempt to send the logged data to the gateway along with the new measurement. In order to connect the gateway to the internet, two options are possible: WAN via Ethernet cable, or 4G/LTE network connection.
The gateway is also setup in-house and linked to The Things Industries network, which in turn is linked to our secure Somsix Portal. Thus, there is no need to modify settings in the gateway. If, however, you feel the need to modify settings such as the name of the WiFi network the gateway hosts, it is possible to modify such settings via an internet browser page.
Portal
Our data portal is secure and simple to use. The initial setup/provisioning of sensors on the portal is done in-house and according to a specific customer. Once logged in, however, the customer is able to see the dashboards linked to that user. By clicking on the dashboard’s name, it is possible to open and view the graphs that are gathering the data from the linked sensors. Furthermore, in the graphs, the user can select custom dates or a custom time window ranging from 6 hours, to 1 month. In addition to this, there is an alarm system integrated in the portal. This means that the user can set custom alarms that will notify the user when, for instance, the oxygen level surpasses a set standard of 3% oxygen. Another feature is the prediction algorithm. With the sensors posting data periodically, it is possible for the algorithm to follow and analyze the data in order to calculate the rate at which the bag is leaking (increasing oxygen concentration) and use it to predict the date when the product/bag will reach the alarm condition.
Features
Sensors
- Long range: +1km outdoor range, 150m in-warehouse range
- Long battery life: 2 years (measuring once every 6 hours)
- Low power consumption: 2mA @ 3V (average periodic consumption)
- Measurement period: 6 hours (can be modified according to customer wishes)
- Oxygen Accuracy: Fill in
- Humidity Accuracy: Fill in
- Temperature Accuracy: Fill in
- 30 day measurement logging capability
- Calibration per sensor possible (magnet is required)
Gateway
- Full LoRaWAN Stack support (V 1.0.3) with Semtech SX1302
- Supports 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi AP for configuration
- 100M Base-T Ethernet with PoE
- 4G/LTE connectivity (via SIM card)
- Can integrate with both private (ChirpStack) and public (TTN) network servers
- TF card for log backup and LoRa frame buffering (in case of backhaul failover)
- Antenna upgrade possible