Hygiene & safety, air quality, environment monitoring, IAQ sensors

OMRON & RIPPLES IOT solutions

September 12, 2019Midhun MenonAir quality sensors, IOT events, IOT solutions

A global company endorses our product

Omron Corporation is generally considered to a pioneer and global leader in industrial component manufacturing and advanced sensing technologies. They are into numerous industries such as automotive, AI, energy, healthcare, electronics, and manufacturing. For history buffs, OMRON developed the first ever electronic ticket gate and ATM’s with magnetic card readers.

Air quality sensors with dashboard software

Ripples IOT has been associated with OMRON for more than a couple of years now. Our wireless mesh enabled environment & air quality monitoring solutions are powered by air quality sensors. Studies have shown that lower air quality can hamper workforce productivity. Ripples air quality monitoring module keep track of Particulate Matter (PM) levels inside a building. The module also keeps a close eye on varying temperature & humidity levels inside critical areas of a building. Live alerts are passed on via thresholds set in a visualization tool.

The Ripples air quality environmental monitoring device has proven to be a gem in easing our health standards accreditation inspection process. – Dr. YLR, Shekar Eye Hospital, Bengaluru, India

Ripples at OMRON Distributor Meet

Omron India team had requested to showcase our solutions at their distributor meet to be held at Mysore (India) on 24th and 25th April 2019. The idea was to familiarize Omron family members with the innovative solutions developed with their sensors. Our team quickly deployed a demo kit for the event and shipped to Omron office in Bengaluru. One of the major advantages of using Ripples IOT solutions is that any non-technical person can easily assemble and deploy with the help of simple documentation.

The solutions were showcased at the event and attracted a lot of eyeballs. Many liked the fact that we were providing full-stack solutions including a visualization instance and not just the hardware. There were a lot of positive responses from the distributors.

Some of the photos from the event showcasing mesh network-enabled air quality sensors, data visualisation tools.

Air quality sensors being demostrated at Omron event

Call us to know more about our air quality sensors, gateways and data visualisation tools.

Air quality & productivity

April 15, 2019ripplesiotAir quality sensors, IOT in factories, IOT in manufacturing, IOT solutionsair quality monitors, air quality sensors, Hospital air quality monitoring, laboratory air quality, Pharmaceutical air quality

Indoor air quality & wellbeing

Easy to deploy solution solution – Sensors, gateway, software & data analytics
Works as a stand alone module for retail shops, restaurants, clinics, well centres etc
Mesh networked wireless modules for hospitals, factories, warehouses & offices
2.4 Ghz Pre certified communication protocols.
Dashboard for realtime data visualisation
Alerts. notifications and anomaly detection
Interface with BMS and other tools using open API
Product has been endorsed by Omron corporation

Most factories and warehouses these days are trying to provide a clean, healthy and safe environment for their employees with the intention of maximizing their productivity. It’s an era where we just cannot overlook the health hazards that a polluted environment brings in. The primary focus should be on improving the air quality of the office space and surroundings to ensure that all the employees spend their valuable time in a healthy environment.

Like most people believe or think, air quality is not just about the visible pollutants like smoke or smog. Volatile Organic Compounds popularly abbreviated as VOC is difficult to trace and are extremely dangerous to human health. If exposed to on a daily basis, it can compound to long-term health effects and can even hamper day to day activities. Hence it is important to monitor VOC and other harmful pollutants on a regular basis in order to ensure a productive industrial work environment.

How air quality affects overall productivity

It is an alarming fact that the quality of the air has a large influence on the industrial worker productivity. Studies and researches conducted worldwide affirms the fact that worse the air quality, the productivity was directly proportional. Be it ozone levels at outdoor or particulate matter (PM) in indoors, both had a direct impact on the worker efficiency and productivity. Maintaining good indoor air quality should be a priority across industries or verticals and I am sure you also might have felt uneasy while working in an environment with high levels of particulate matter.

Though PM concentration level increase is a concern outdoors as well, the effect is much worse indoors due to poor ventilations. The particulate matter compounds are generally undetectable to human eye but can have an adverse effect on the health when inhaled. Most modern buildings are centrally air conditioned and have generally a sealed environment.

This lack of ventilation will allow the particulate matter to settle inside the space which may be initially unharmful but can be harmful if risen to alarming levels. In most of the countries, this is becoming a major concern across each industry and vertical. The productivity issue is more so evident in the factory shop floor where the workers move around a lot, sometimes in a very confined area or space. As a result, they are constantly exposed to the pollutant matters and thus hampering their productivity.

Benefits of air quality monitoring

Most companies still feel that anything related to air quality improvement would cost them a fortune and refrain themselves from implementing the same. Sometimes even at the expense of a slightly decreased productivity. But the reality is vastly different, studies suggest that the manufacturing companies that opted to implement methods to improve indoor air quality has saved close to $20 billion annually due to increase in productivity. The situation is somewhat similar, if not better for smaller industries as well.

Ways to improve air quality monitoring

The primary aim of any company should be to curb the pollutants in any which way possible. But no matter how much you try to clean your indoors and even HVAC units, there would be a residual particulate matter that affects the air quality. Especially in a factory floor, where there would be work going on 24*7, it is extremely important to know the level of particulate matter at a given point of time. Proper ventilation is extremely important, and one must ensure that there should be a constant flow of air inside the premises.

We believe that air quality monitoring technology can play a big part in improving the air quality of an indoor space. But for that, organisation must be aware of the particulate matter or VOC level at industrial premises. The earlier one gets informed about the same, the better.

Wireless environment monitoring solutions can help you get important air quality data which in turn can aid in optimizing your workspace environment. To summarize, the greater the quality of air, greater is the workforce productivity.

OMRON showcases RIPPLES IOT solutions

Air quality & PM

October 27, 2018ripplesiotAir quality sensors, Data visualisation, IOT solutions

Why air quality monitoring is important

Particulate Matter, abbreviated as ‘PM’, is a mixture of airborne solid particles and liquid droplets that can be inhaled by human beings, and may cause serious health problems in industrial zones. PM includes particles with different characteristics – i.e. shape, optical properties, dimension and chemical composition – but it is mostly divided into finer categories based on the particle size information.

Now a days, different PM categories are usually reported under the common nomenclature of PMx, where ‘x’ defines the maximum particle diameter in the airborne particle mixture or ‘aerosol’. As an example, PM2.5 defines inhalable particles with a diameter of generally 2.5 micrometers (hospital hygiene as an example) and smaller, PM10 particles with a diameter of 10 micrometers and smaller, and so forth for other applications.

Ripples IOT provides wireless environment monitoring solutions based on high precision air quality dust sensor capable of detecting 0.5µm particles. Compared to other vendor models, our solutions have the capability to intake and analyse greater air volume, providing more consistent and accurate results for environment air quality monitoring.

Where air quality & PM matters

The specific PM categories of PM10 and PM2.5 have been historically identified by governments in developed nations as important monitoring levels to assess the quality of the air we breathe in industrial and domestic zones. PM10 particles irritate exposed mucous such as the eyes and throat and PM2.5 particles travel all the way through the lungs into the pulmonary alveoli (the basic unit of mammal ventilation).

New categories like PM1.0 and PM4.0 are also finding their way into indoor air quality monitoring devices as these new outputs provide additional information to the traditional PM10 and PM2.5 levels, enabling a better particle pollution analysis in manufacturing shop floor, warehouses, public health zones etc and the development of new air quality device specific actions based on the detected aerosol type (e.g. industrial dust vs. kitchen smoke).

The common definition of PM includes particles that are no smaller than 100 nanometers in size. Particles smaller than 100 nm are instead reported as ‘ultrafine particles’ or ‘UFPs’ and are not covered in this article. Within the above-mentioned PM definition, which thus includes particles from 0.1 to 10 micrometers in size, the smaller the particles are, the deeper they can penetrate through our respiratory system and into our bloodstream, posing a higher hazard to our health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that airborne particulate matter as a Group 1 carcinogen and as the biggest environmental risk to health facing humanity now, with responsibility for about 1 in every 9 deaths annually.

RipplesIOT provides easy to deploy, mesh technology enabled air quality monitoring sensors and data visualisation and alert tools which can be deployed in factory shop floors, warehouses, offices, hospitals and public utility buildings.