Tag: smart buildings
Event: Show and Tell of Workplace Sensors
If you managed to join us last week at Unilever’s impressive London HQ, you will have seen demonstrations from us and our partners in the practical uses for sensors within Workspaces. It was a perfect opportunity to let people see and feel in real terms, different types of sensors from environmental, occupancy and air quality sensing.
Nate Barney and John Chang from Unilever have been smart in their approach to adoption of new technology and shared their approach with attendees. Cornerstones of their strategy include cloud first adoption, choosing vendors that have open APIs to encourage interoperability and understanding all systems should integrate via their analytics layer. Our guests Alex Storey from Disruptive Technologies and Bruno Beloff from South Coast Science introduced us to the sensor innovations they are leading the industry in and both gave informative presentations.
Disruptive Technologies’ sensors although small – the size of scrabble squares, have an impressive 15 year battery life. We are excited about how disruptive technologies’ sensors are going to change asset monitoring. If you can deploy sensors easily to know when machinery is being used, predicting its maintenance cycles and the headline dreams of industrial IoT are suddenly possible!
Bruno brought an example of one of his environmental sensors and gave a fascinating live demo measuring the CO2 in the room – especially disconcerting when it accurately measured the carbon monoxide from a smoker’s breath. South Coast Science have been a partner to OpenSensors for a number of years. Their Air Quality sensors focus on measuring gases and particulates extremely accurately, these sensors are being adopted by Landlords and Occupiers who are working to meet the Well building standard. In putting sensors not only indoors but also by HVAC vents, building managers are able to monitor the performance of HVAC systems. Questions like ‘When should fresh air be circulated?’, ‘Is the HVAC system making the air quality better or worse?’ become easier to answer.
Daniel Hummelsund and Kevin Mugadza from OpenSensors also gave insight into the way we approach workspace deployments and our ethos on interoperability of systems, unsurprisingly we strongly feel that new sensor systems deployed within a building context should ‘talk’ to existing systems and work to augment the workflows of the different people charged with managing the space. Daniel gave information around reports people like to see, such as how data is analysed in both spatial and time series view. Kevin deep dived into the practical realities of project managing sensors deployments. The team approach these deployments in a methodical way as the complexity of IoT is in getting sensors, networks, software and data layers to work seamless in usually complex environments.
After a lively Q and A and there was an opportunity for networking where guests could enjoy cold drinks on an extremely hot day and got the chance to mingle with other attendees. Thanks to everyone who came and made it such a success. We look forward to the next one in the Autumn.
Roundup of the Best Workplace Trends Blogs
Blogs are a great way to keep up with the fast changing developments in workspaces. From sensors and software to IoT to real estate, here is a round-up of are some of our current favorite blogs:
Workplace Insight Workplace Insight is a great source of news and information about the design and management of workplaces. Mark Eltringham and his team offer interesting insights into workplace design and management issues.
Memoori Memoori provides thought provoking information and insights on smart buildings.
Dwell Magazine We love this stylish and innovative Magazine, the Workplace & Office section is a special favorite.
Here are a couple of favorite IoT and Smart Building blogs that keep us informed on the latest technology and innovation trends too;
Have a blog you think we should include? Let us know, we’d love to check it out!
BisNow Future of Real Estate Conference
OpenSensor’s CEO and Founder Yodit Stanton was a guest speaker on a panel for Bisnow’s ‘Future of Real Estate Event’ brought the most innovative & creative industry players.
The uptake of new technologies such as the Internet of Things is accelerating in Commercial Real Estate, with a significant % of landlords, occupiers and contractors taking part in deployments and developing a comprehensive plan of action with regards to integration.
The benefits to the property world, will be seen in terms of workplace efficiencies, energy savings and employee’s wellbeing. It was clear that the savvy technology buyers of smart buildings understood that these benefits would only be delivered by demanding technology providers integrate seamlessly with all products of the built environment.
With the significant traction that sensing technologies are gaining in the marketplace, technology companies will be rightly held to a high standard on interoperability with existing systems.
The Official OpenSensors Blog 
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