Water damage is often an unseen threat under floorboards, ceilings, and around pipelines causing serious damage over time such as mold, equipment failure, and facility damage if not prevented in time. Water leak detection sensors monitor the presence of water in the specified area and alert you whenever they sense a leak. Among various types of water leak detection sensors, the cable type sensor and spot type sensor are the most widely used types.

Now let’s see what are the differences between them and how to choose in your applications.

When we're detecting water leaks, what are we detecting exactly? We're talking about both point detection and linear detection. It can be either point and spot detection or when using specialized cables linear detection for large areas.

The spot type sensor or point detection sensor, which is designed to sense water at a single point and confined areas. There are two probes on the sensor and both of them must touch the water simultaneously to detect a water leak and trigger an alarm. You can deploy the sensor to those places where a leak easily happened, for instance, the drip pans, floor drains, or where water tends to converge. The spot sensors are suitable for monitoring limited areas given their small and precise range.

The zone type sensor or cable/linear detection sensor is designed to detect a leak in expansive and open areas. These water-sensitive cables can be put on the floor, wrapped around pipes, or attached to a wall for detecting leakage of clean or polluted water or other conductive liquid anywhere on the total length of the cable. It’s always difficult to predetermine the leak points in a large space like under raised floors, so the cable sensors are the ideal choice in that case.

Theoretically, all leak detection cables are based on two sensing wires with reliability and durability. With a standard length of 3 meters, the cable is light, easy to install but robust enough to keep its shape, and both ends of the cable are equipped with terminals for length expansion. The sleek design of the cable allows it to dry and can be put into use again even after having been soaked in liquid and can still maintain its high sensitivity to react quickly without false alarms. 

These basically systems are designed to continuously monitor for any amount of water and then produce an alarm if the water is indeed detected. It's in a way very similar to the concept of detecting the presence of smoke or heat in a fire detection system.

Solution

As a matter of fact, the Linovision water leak detection sensor is an early warning solution based on LoRaWAN® technology, which can be quickly deployed in multiple zones for effective monitoring. With the feature of Custom Image on the Linovision IoT Cloud platform, you can now plot the leak sensors on your floor plans, building maps and the software will automatically change the color of the bubble and send you alerts on mobile push when a water leakage occurs. 

variety of leak sensor options available, it is important to evaluate the exact situation of monitoring required. You may probably need to take some factors into consideration including the area/zone being monitored, the environment of implementation, the simplicity of operation, the scalability of the device, and the total cost of your project.

Background

The icing of airport runways is a major safety hazard that affects the safety of aviation flights. In the history of civil aviation, there were several runway excursions due to the icing of the runway. As a result, airports use a variety of methods to deice the runway. And the common method performed in aviation is deicing with chemical fluids by lowering the freezing point. Thus, to meet the demand for the unfrozen runway in the winter season, a sufficient supply of deicing fluid should be guaranteed. In this case, Linovision LoRaWAN® Ultrasonic Level Sensor can be deployed inside the storage tank to monitor the fluid level for the safe level of runway deicing fluid.

Challenges

• Timely report of shortage of runway deicing fluid

• Chemical deicing fluid deals damage to the sensor

• Requirement for long-term maintenance-free solution

Solution

Normally, the chemicals used to deice runways can pose a hazard to submersible level monitoring sensors. Equipped with IP67 and industrial-grade enclosure, Linovision IOT500-UDL Ultrasonic Distance/Level Sensor provides highly accurate and contact-free distance measurement in harsh environments. When mounted at the inner top of the deicing fluid tank, IOT500-UDL emits a high-frequency acoustic pulse from its transducer. The pulse travels through the air gap, reflects against the deicing fluid surface and returns to the transducer. IOT500-UDL measures the pulse time of flight and converts this into the level height of deicing fluid. What’s more, the built-in 19000 mAh high-capacity battery makes IOT500-UDL suitable for 10-years maintenance-free applications.

Once fluid level reaches the threshold, LoRaWAN® based IOT500-UDL will immediately report the level height to Linovision IoT Cloud or third-party cloud platforms, notifying admins of the shortage of deicing fluid. By implementing the Linovision deicing fluid level monitoring solution, the airport can keep the runway unfrozen without the accidental shortage of deicing fluid.

In recent years, the office and the way we work have undergone a massive transformation. How do you make sure your office ticks all the boxes to accomplish your business goals? Smart office solution might be the answer you are looking for. A smart office is a workplace where modern technology is leveraged to help employees work smarter, better, and faster. Overview of office is fed with various data, collected by different types of sensors and gateways. This way, people can see which workplaces are available, where their colleagues are, which meeting rooms appear to be empty or how is the indoor air quality. To kick off and level up your office into a smart one, a mini gateway could be a suitable choice.

Challenges 

•Unnecessary Cost Consumption

For deploying smart office solution in every necessary space of a whole office building, full functional gateway could be helpful yet a little luxury considering cost.

For existent smart office solution, physical obstacles in buildings would inevitably form some blind spots, causing difficulties in receiving data to some extent.

Solution

IOT-G63 Mini LoRaWAN® Gateway is great to start smart office journey and level up user experience. The word “Mini” doesn’t mean that IOT-G63 makes any compromise in terms of functions as a qualified gateway. With built-in network server, the IOT-G63 supports Semtech’s latest packet forwarder, and is compatible with multiple network server platforms like TTN, ChirpStack and Link WAN, which offers a wide range of options for data processing. In addition, the Listen Before Talk function would bridge the gap between reliability and efficiency. When LBT is enabled, the device continuously monitors channels so as to transmit only when a channel is not in use.

Benefits

• Affordable & Available Gateway

IOT-G63 Mini LoRaWAN® Gateway is another masterpiece from Linovision gateway family with mini size. Coupled with an elegant and aesthetic appearance, UG63 is in perfect accord with the office surroundings.

• Massive Connectivity

Adopting Semtech SX1302 LoRa chip, IOT-G63 supports connection with more than 2000 LoRaWAN® nodes.

• Blind Spot Coverage

Besides the general features of a LoRaWAN® gateway, the Gateway Fleet makes IOT-G63 is particularly suited to provide network coverage for indoor blind spots.

• Actionable Utilization Insights

By streamlining the employee-to-facility management channel, smart office solutions can radically reduce the time and effort to menial tasks, unnecessary obstacles and activities that drain time and energy from the workforce.

Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally at a rapid speed. Until now, it is still a tremendous threatening factor for public safety and society, with hundreds of thousands of people being confirmed the contagious diagnosis on a global basis every day. These patients need to be isolated in isolation wards respectively. Under this circumstance, Milesight smart button allows these patients to alert a nursing staff remotely of their need for help.

• Ease workloads of nursing staff

Nurses used to go from ward to ward to find out whether patients need help. As the number of confirmed patients goes through the roof, they can no longer allocate so much energy and time to do this repetitive work.

• Improve patient safety by alerts whenever they need help

Confirmed patients are stuck in isolation wards, regardless of their symptoms are serious or subtle, whereas nurses cannot squeeze a little time to keep an eye on them.

• Reduce costs of purchasing new devices

As COVID-19 ravages all around the world, more isolation wards need to be established. In contrast, those isolation wards where confirmed patients all recover need to be tear down or rescheduled. Hence, most of the original devices suitable for addressing COVID-19 will be subjected to abandonment.

Linovision IOT-S500BT is a LoRaWAN^®-based smart button for wireless controls, triggers and alarms. It supports multiple press actions, all of which can be defined by the user to control devices or trigger scenes. It is remarkable that Linovision also provides a red button that is primarily used to send SOS alarms, while a white one is used for general scenarios. Compact and battery-powered, IOT-S500BT is easy to install. Besides, it can be carried everywhere with a lanyard.

Topology 

Solution

In hospitals or specific isolation places, every isolation ward is equipped with one smart button, that is, every isolated patient can get help if required. With easy configuration, if the alert of smart button is triggered by pressing it, which means patients need help, the signal can be transmitted by Linovision LoRaWAN^® gateways to a cloud platform such as Linovision IoT Cloud. Accordingly, nursing staff can find out who and where the patients needs help and provide care required in a much more efficient way.

Benefits

• Avoid repetitive work

With the increasing number of confirmed patients, Milesight smart button allows nursing staff to avoid repetitive patrol of usually going from ward to ward, so they can put left time and energy to more patients.

• Swift response , no matter where and when

Anything can happen in an isolation ward. Milesight smart button ensures that the nurses receive alerts of help from patients in time, or saving their lives.

• Reusable devices

Linovision smart buttons are movable and can be re-deployed in other isolation wards, which save much cost.

Background

The revolution of the rapidly urbanizing society involves the rapid increase of grocery stores which play an increasingly crucial role in people's lives. At the same time, the management of grocery stores brings various problems to the owners of grocery stores, such as loss of burglary damage and the high cost of unifying video surveillance. As a smart solution, the Linovision solution adopts a more convenient and cost-effective management method to prevent burglary and enhance grocery store security, which can receive alarms anytime and anywhere in a timely manner.

Challenges

- High cost of unifying video surveillance becomes a hindrance to the security system.

- Installation and maintenance are time-consuming and labor-intensive.

Solution

This solution leverages Linovision IOT-S500DCS Magnetic Contact Switch and Linovision IOT-S500L PIR & Light Sensor to implement all-round monitoring of entrances and exits, windows and warehouses to prevent potential intruders.

IOT-S500DCS Magnetic Contact Switch protects doors and windows, serving as a trigger for alarm systems when unauthorized intrusion is detected. By adopting magnetic sensor technology to function, the switch consists of two parts: a sensor and a magnet. When doors or windows open, the magnet detaches from the sensor, triggering the alert of unauthorized opening.

IOT-S500L PIR & Light Sensor uses the PIR motion detection technology to detect human presence accurately. Human presence in a non-operating time indicates the intrusion. The switch and sensor take advantage of battery power supply and wireless communication technology – LoRaWAN^®, facilitating the quick and easy deployment without wiring of power supply and Ethernet.

When an unscheduled opening or human presence occurs, the sensors will send out an alert to the Linovision IoT Cloud via a LoRaWAN^® gateway, enabling admins to view alerts remotely and receive instant notification

The cold chain ensures that the food, beverages, medication, and volatile chemicals are still safe to use after they reach the consumers. To do this right, temperature is a profoundly vital factor. Bacteria grows quickly and could taint consumable goods if the transporters do not keep them at the right temperature. Cold rooms, warehouses, order assembly points and loading docks all have specific temperature profiles that must be monitored and maintained based on the products being stored or transported. Adopting a reliable and accurate PT100 temperate sensor may be one of the best ways to ensure the efficacy and safety of temperature-sensitive products.

The PT100 temperature sensor is an instrument that converts temperature variables into a standardized output signal that can be transmitted. They have been used for many years to measure temperature in cold chain, laboratory and industrial processes, and have developed a reputation for accuracy, repeatability, and stability. 

• Control at Specific Level

Cold chain Logistics service providers need to offer controlled environment, refrigerated, frozen, deep freeze and cryogenic freezing services, which can be complex as each has its own temperature requirements and application.

• Maintenance in Transit

Shipments pass through a variety of environments and handlers. Considering any deviations in temperature could affect the safety of products, it’s difficult to manage complicated cold chain effectively without real-time information.

An industrial temperature monitoring system for cold chain can be useful on any type of equipment with moving parts and components. At Linovision, we offer two workable solutions tailored to customers’ needs. For new LoRaWAN solution deployment, the IOT-S500PT Industrial Temperature Sensor would be a good candidate. It is a three-wire RTD design and performs perfectly as cold as -328 °F (-200 °C). By transporting data from IOT-S500PT to IOT-G65 gateways, real-time monitoring and alerts of temperature on Cloud platform are achievable easily. For upgrades to existing deployments, the IOT-C300 IoT Controller could be a better fit. Besides the 4~20 mA and 0~10 V type analog interfaces, the IOT-C300 firstly adopts 2 RTD inputs for accepting and converting resistance signal of 2/3 wires PT100 sensors into 4-20 mA current signal with a range from -200°C to 800°C. Besides, IOT-C300 IoT Controller supports 4G and LTE. So, the selection of technology would be more flexible.