Firmwave® Edge
Firmwave® Edge intelligent sensor platform powered by the latest Intel Quark™ MCUs enables ease of maintenance in remotely located solar-powered outdoor advertising signage that delivers low-power, wireless sensor network connectivity and secure data collection across IoT gateways and networks.
Challenge
Gaining access to remotely located and inaccessible outdoor advertising signage, such as billboards, was proving inefficient and costly for Solar AdTek, a leading provider of solar control units and LED lighting for on and off-grid outdoor advertising display illumination. Just sending technicians to these often remote locations to download device logs, re-programme or reconfigure devices or conduct routine troubleshooting and maintenance was a time-consuming and costly practice.
Solution
Firmwave® Edge intelligent sensor platform is a suite of customizable, pre-validated hardware and firmware modules for accelerating the design, development, and deployment of the next wave of tiny, intelligent wireless sensors. CombiningFirmwave® Edge Cellularwith the flexibility of Vodafone GDSP and the power of Intel Quark MCUs enabled Firmwave to deliver a low-cost, low power smart solar control unit that can be quickly and easily deployed and connected to the cloud to deliver remote device monitoring and control and advanced Edge analytics.
"The choice of using Intel Quark products as part of our solution for Solar AdTek was an easy one. Our solutions demand robust, scalable and secure hardware platforms. Intel® Quark™ MCUs provide us with low power consumption and the robust analytics engine we need to optimise our products and deliver versatile and reliable wireless sensor network solutions that ensured we could deliver the right solution to meet Solar AdTek’s particular needs for remote device management and control." Fintan Mc Govern, CEO at Firmwave Ltd.
Simpler, Smarter Solutions
There are many challenges and complexities facing customers wanting to deploy smart connected devices in a secure and cost-effective manner. Not least among these is having expertise in connectivity, hardware and firmware as well as the complexity of network commissioning, security concerns, maintenance and remote device management. An end-to-end solution that cuts out expensive bespoke development of both hardware and firmware and allows the customer to quickly move from prototype to a robust and scalable product is the driving force behind Firmwave® Edge. Firmwave® Edge sensors also support tiny operating systems including Zephyr™, which is a small open source, scalable real-time operating system.
Working together, Solar AdTek and Firmwave, have designed a low-cost, low-power smart solar control unit based on Firmwave Edge’s modular hardware and firmware architecture powered by Intel Quark MCUs. These modules radically reduce the need for hardware and firmware customization and enable Solar AdTek to securely collect a wide range of sensor data from temperature and humidity to breakage detection as well as battery management data and advertisement viewer numbers. The ultra-low power Edge sensors leverage the Quark on-board sensor subsystem allowing decisions to be made at the Edge simplifying integration and reducing the dependency on larger, costlier gateways. Advanced sensor data and Edge analytics provide Solar AdTek with valuable business insights to include passing traffic and advertising viewer numbers. Monitoring of operational efficiencies as well as remote device maintenance and manageability were also key requirements for this project. Based on Firmwave Edge Cellular reference design powered by Intel Quark MCU and leveraging the Vodafone GDSP platform, Solar AdTek has achieved a platform that allows them to realise significant time and cost savings by enabling remote access to device logs, device configuration and firmware upgrade capabilities. Now when a device or lighting failure occurs Solar AdTek maintenance teams can be alerted immediately and quickly address the problem thus reducing the need for routine on-site visits.
Reliable, versatile solutions for smart solar control units
Firmwave successfully designed a globally deployable solution for Solar AdTek for their smart connected solar solutions for outdoor advertising signage based on the Firmwave Edge Cellular reference design. Key to the success of this project was the practicality of allowing remote devices to be maintained and controlled over a globally dispersed network of devices and to reliably collect sensor data at the Edge and transmit this securely over the network.
Strong supporting relationships
Through a close collaboration with Intel and strong supporting channels, Firmwave were well positioned to design one of the first customisable off the shelf solutions suitable for large scale wireless sensor network deployments. In March 2016, Firmwave launched Firmwave Edge, the first Edge sensor network platform based on Intel® Quark™ (view full press release) and has expanded on the range by launching the Edge 2.0 and Edge 3.0 series. Visit www.firmwave.com for more information.
