Background
Laboratories store research samples, bacterial cultures, blood, professional equipment, and other invaluable scientific materials in many different ways, from standard refrigeration units to specialized cryogenic environments. Thus, a proper operating environment is a necessary safeguard for all laboratories since the monitoring of temperature, humidity monitoring, PIR motion, and brightness will definitely help maintain and secure the environment of the laboratory 24/7, providing work surface disinfection when there is no lighting and no personnel activity.
To successfully introduce an Internet of Things (IoT) system in the laboratory environment, this case is aimed at monitoring the temperature and humidity changes as well as the personnel activity detection through implementing on-premises sensors, gateways, and cloud-based Milesight IoT Cloud system.
With the advancement and development of science and technology, more and more highly sensitive equipment is used to ensure data accuracy in labs. And it has higher requirements for temperature and humidity monitoring of the testing environment, such as in the electrical laboratory, sample storage house, etc. In the field of scientific research and experimentation, most experiments are carried out in a controlled humidity and temperature environment. The accuracy of the temperature and humidity control of the experiment environment and equipment has a significant impact on the experimental results. In a long time, the traditional recording method has depended on manual recording or ink recorder to draw a curve on the paper, which is bulky and time-consuming; the paperless recorder is also not so popular as expected due to its large size and high cost.
Challenges
- The temperature of equipment in a laboratory that requires temperature measurements, such as freezers and refrigerators is checked daily by manually reading of installed mercury thermometers
- Laboratory temperature and humidity are managed in specific areas by a separate system
- No motion detection sensor to check the presence of staff in the lab and automate switch-on for UVC lamp to disinfect the lab or work surface
- No timely alarming system
Project
We are committed to providing smart environmental monitoring solutions for research or clinical labs to collect, analyze, and report data wirelessly on-demand – including alarm notification and historic records.
Solution
In this application, several LoRaWAN® sensors were deployed in different machines and zones in the laboratory, like the UC11-T1 sensor in the deep freezers and the AM104 ambiance monitoring sensors on many corners of the lab. Then they sent the data collected to the UG85 LoRa gateway that deployed in the office next door.
The built-in battery design makes it easy to deploy sensors on any place you want. The PIR motion of the AM104 sensor detects the personnel activity whether the lab is still in use before turning on the disinfection systems.
In this case, UG85 acts as a forwarder to transmit data smoothly into the Milesight IoT Cloud platform, where you can easily check all the data from multiple sources in this centralized management platform.
Product List:
UG85 LoRaWAN® Gateway (Indoor)
UC11-T1 temperature and humidity sensors
AM104 ambiance monitoring sensors
Deployment
Data collected from each sensor were transmitted every 30 minutes to the gateway. When the temperature and humidity fell outside of the preset tolerance limitation in the Milesight IoT Cloud, an alert was sent by email or to the smart-phone application by mobile push.
Benefits:
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- Monitor equipment and ambient air in laboratory 24/7/365
- Sends alerts via email or App push if laboratory temperatures, humidity, and light brightness are not in the proper range.
- A secure web-based data managing tool allows you to monitor, detect, and review data of each sensor, logs, perform custom actions. Available from any internet access point.
- Automate control of the UVC lamp to disinfect the lab or work surface when there is zero PIR motion.
After the temperature and humidity measurement and control system which mainly composed of Milesight IoT Cloud, sensors and controller is used, the system turns to be operation-stable, reliable, high data precision, strong resistance to interference, convenient and flexible in use.
About GWT
Gulf & World Traders (GWT), a member of the Belhoul Group was established in 1969 as the flagship of the today's Belhoul Group with the vision of its founder Dr. Juma Khalfan Belhoul Al Falasi, to provide the United Arab Emirates and neighboring GCC countries with the most advanced hi-tech healthcare-related products.
