Airscan – Improving Road Traffic Congestion

Traffic CongestionTraffic Congestion to most people means, a motionless slow moving line of vehicles leading to driver frustration and in some cases road rage.

Congestion has many negative social, environmental and economic impacts and its one of the many challenges facing Traffic Engineers. Understanding the future demand for road travel and congestion is therefore a key requirement in being able to tackle it.

Airscan by Iknaia, is a new unique sensor monitoring solution that enables Traffic Engineers to analyse traffic queues and congestion in an efficient way and present live journey times to drivers.

Airscan monitors the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi ids in anonymous vehicles and provides real-time information about changes in traffic flows.  With Airscan installed Traffic Engineers can quickly analyse the data and identify congested areas. This will help make judgements to divert traffic to other routes and plan future roads infrastructure.

Airscan data can be presented to signs and phones to keep drivers fully informed of the impact of any incidents or diversion routes.

Julia McNally, Founder of Iknaia says “The Airscan system is able to identify, in real time, incidents that impact on journey time reliability, and what’s more it is portable and easy to install. Using the online self-service dashboard you can control all your units in one place and view real-time reporting. Data can also be exported and fully integrated into existing monitoring applications.”

Data collected by each Airscan unit is pushed to the cloud using 3G/4G connectivity and presented in real-time to an online dashboard optimised for PC, tablets and all mobile devices.  Activity reports can be viewed, and push notifications can be set up to alert key management personnel and ensure they are made aware of incidents as they occur.

Airscan is compatible with multiple third party products including variable message signs and it is also fully integrated into the Iknaia Intelligent Tracking solution to enable location monitoring of the workforce and assets.

For more information www.iknaia.co.uk/airscan

 

 

Bluetooth Buses in Bucharest Will Guide the Blind

iBeacon BusFive hundred buses in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, will soon receive Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons. The beacons will serve to guide blind passengers on and off buses, without the need for any assistance. So far, forty of the BLE beacons have been installed already, with the rest expected to be in place by the end of August.

How does the system work?

A visually impaired user would set up the app on his or her phone before leaving home. The phone application would then allow the user to follow whichever bus lines he or she needs to complete the trip. Each bus in this system has a unique ID in the form of an iBeacon, which alerts the phone of the visually impaired person as to the fact that the bus is arriving. The alert is sent when the iBeacon-equipped bus is 50-60 meters away from the station. Once the bus actually arrives, it will also be informed by iBeacon of the fact that there’s a blind passenger in the station. The bus will begin to beep repeatedly so as to inform the app user of its location even if there’s multiple buses in the station at the time. The beeping stops once the passenger has boarded.

BLE system will simplify travel for tens of thousands of blind in Romania.

Now, thanks to the system, tens of thousands of blind people will be able to easily access any area of Bucharest. They will be able to board, leave, and also transfer buses with ease, since the mobile app will help users find connecting buses easily. By the start of September, the whole Bluetooth system will be up and running, and available for free to anyone in Bucharest.

Who came up with and funded this program?

The program is the result of a project known as Smart Public Transport (SPT). It was organized by Onyx Beacon, provider of the bluetooth beacon technology, RATB (Bucharest’s public transportation agency), and visually impaired project coordinator Tandem Association. The SPT is one of eight projects that received funding by aVodafone Romania Foundation called “Mobile for Good.” The Mobile for Good program is meant to promote the use of mobile technology for social causes.

Read more at Clapway: http://clapway.com/2015/06/08/bluetooth-buses-in-bucharest-will-guide-the-blind-890/#ixzz3cbDTeLV1

Onset’s Bluetooth Smart Data Logger Protects the Magna Carta

Onset’s Bluetooth Smart Data Logger Protects the Magna Carta

Onset, a world leader in data loggers for building performance monitoring, today announced that the HOBO MX1101, the company’s first data logger that measures and transmits temperature and relative humidity data wirelessly to mobile devices via Bluetooth Smart technology, is helping to protect a copy of the Magna Carta.

Originally issued by England’s King John in June 1215 to prevent civil war between the king and his barons, the Magna Carta is a world-famous symbol of justice, fairness, and human rights. Having inspired and encouraged movements for freedom and constitutional government for hundreds of years, the four remaining copies have been awarded ‘Memory of the World’ status by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The best-surviving copy of the Magna Carta, currently on exhibition in Britain’s Salisbury Cathedral to commemorate the document’s 800-year anniversary, is stored in a glass display case along with an Onset HOBO MX1101 Bluetooth Temperature/Relative Humidity data logger.

“Preserving the text is of paramount importance,” said Emily Naish, Archivist at Salisbury Cathedral. “Excessive humidity can cause parchment to buckle as it tries to revert to its natural shape. The parchment can expand while the ink remains static, causing ink to lift from the text. As the room in which the Magna Carta is displayed has large glass windows, it is prone to these kinds of damaging fluctuations in humidity.”

Because the display case is sealed and protected by alarm systems, there was no way to constantly monitor temperature and humidity without going through the time-consuming and complicated process of switching off the alarms and accessing the case.

To address this issue, the Cathedral’s exhibition team installed the HOBO MX1101 data logger, purchased through Onset’s UK distributor, Tempcon Instrumentation Limited. The self-contained wireless data logger, which works with Onset’s free HOBOmobile™ app for logger setup and data management, enables staff to use a smart phone or tablet to access the environmental data at any time from a distance up to 100 feet, without having to open the display case – making the HOBO MX1101 the perfect choice for use in the restricted-access conditions of the Cathedral.

“The HOBO MX1101 is an ideal solution for us to protect such an important historical artifact as the Magna Carta,” said Naish. “It’s great that I can check the current conditions at a glance, and have the ability to access historical data without interfering with the exhibit.”

To learn more about the HOBO MX1101 Temperature/ Relative Humidity data logger, visithttp://www.onsetcomp.com/mx.

Indoor Positioning System (IPS)

Motorola RadioLocate Your Staff Indoors or Underground using existing Two-Way Radios

GPS technology has made outdoor positioning highly successful, but due to the signal attenuation caused by the construction materials of buildings and the lack of mobile signals underground, indoor positioning systems cannot rely on GPS technology.

Iknaia has developed an Indoor Positioning System (IPS) that will help you locate your staff using Bluetooth technology embedded into two-way radios and other Bluetooth enabled devices. These devices can be tracked using their Bluetooth ID, to give real-time location information on the whereabouts of your staff, anytime, anywhere.

Julia McNally, Founder of Iknaia explains, “Using Iknaia Beacons we can track and monitor workers and assets as they move around a construction site, tunnel or mine, but we can now add registered devices to our platform using their ‘always discoverable’ Bluetooth option. Clients who have already invested in two-way radios and other devices to communicate to their workers, need not invest in further tracking Beacons.”

Iknaia uses Bluetooth Smart or (Bluetooth 4.0) technology to continuously scan for any Bluetooth enabled device that repeatedly broadcasts its presence to nearby Bluetooth Detectors. The server then calculates the position and reports its whereabouts in real-time onto a web management console.

McNally continues, “This is a flexible and standardised technology allowing the ability to add any Bluetooth enabled device to be ‘discovered’.  So Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, Two-Way Radios and DECT phones can be configured to work with our platform. Using Bluetooth wireless connectivity also won’t affect or interfere with any radio or mobile network performance”.

The benefits and opportunities provided by using Iknaia IPS are extensive, inexpensive and ever expanding.

You can contact the team at Iknaia for a free demonstration by emailing them at info@iknaia.co.uk

Bluetooth 4.0 helps keep Construction Sites on Track

power tunnel

Tracking Workers using Bluetooth 4.0

Knowing exactly where valuable tools and equipment are in “real time” can be key to a successful construction project, as can protecting employees in an industry where accidents and injury are an ever present danger.

RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology has been widely used for tracking tools, equipment, materials and there are numerous GPS tracking systems available to track the location of vehicles coming in and out of the jobsite.

However, the advent of a new technology, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or Bluetooth 4.0, has emerged and has much wider uses to improve the ability of construction businesses to keep track of a much wider variety of assets even down to individual tools and log and monitor activities on site and to improve health and safety.

GPS doesn’t work indoors or underground and RFID offers limited communication, whereas BLE is easily deployable in a wider range of locations, it’s very low power and is a lot more flexible when it comes to converging technology, making it a more ‘Future Proof’ investment.

BLE has the capability to track and monitor workers and assets more accurately, with the added functionality of being able to integrate into legacy back end systems to send audio and content to connected mobile devices (approx. 80% of all recent mobile devices).  Adopted by IOS, Android and Windows operating systems, its low power and cost, as well as its robust and reliable communication means BLE is quickly becoming the technology of choice.

One such company, Iknaia (www.iknaiatracking.com), London, UK, has built a completely robust end to end solution combing BLE and Wi-Fi. Iknaia’s beacons present their location to their detectors in ‘real-time’. In addition the detectors can connect to mobile devices and send content specific to that device based on its proximity.

Julia McNally, Founder explains: “One of the difficult issues facing organisations planning to deploy new technologies is how they can all integrate and become completely interoperable with any existing and future technology. Iknaia’s solution offers a ‘future-proof’ IT environment. Our installation covers a wide range of solutions including full Wi-Fi mesh connectivity, offering public/corporate channels; Beacon scanning and detecting; integration with back end systems to push relevant content to connecting mobile devices.”

McNally continues, “in addition to tracking valuable assets we can control access to site areas, track workers location, check their health, send alerts to them, send content to their mobile devices and enable them to communicate back. BLE also enables us to add on so many extra features, such as payment systems, check-in applications, CCTV cameras and much more.”

Iknaia’s data is pushed into the cloud and presented on an easy to use online management console, optimised for all devices; PC, tablets and Smartphones.

With Apple and Google adopting beacon technology and developing applications using BLE, we’ll see a lot more uses for this technology in years to come.