IoT Sensors : Successfully Using Ultrasonic Sensors In IoT Applications
Tags: Tech, Agtech, IoT, Internet of Things

Introduction to IoT Sensors

The Internet of Things is an important topic that affects many industries. Sensors play a major role in everyday life and IoT. Sensors monitor our health status, home security, air quality, and are widely used in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), monitoring production processes. Due to these factors, it is important to know how they work and how we can use them for data acquisition.

What is an IoT Sensor?

Generally speaking, an IoT sensor is a device that is able to detect changes in an environment. Sensors alone aren’t very useful, but when used in an electronic system they can play an important role.

There are many characteristics of a target or environment, so different sensors may be used for certain solutions.

MaxBotix Inc. specifically designs and manufactures ultrasonic sensors. There are environments and solutions that ultrasonic sensors are ideal for and others that may require a different type of detection.

Things to consider when choosing an ultrasonic sensor for your IoT solution include:

The sensor range: What is the minimum and maximum distance to your target?

The sensor sensitivity: What is your environment like? Do you need to pick up anything in the detection zone or just a large target?

The sensor resolution: What is the smallest change the sensor can detect? Inches, Centimeters? Millimeters?

Ultrasonic sensors are used to detect the distance, level, and proximity in many different IoT applications.

3 IoT Applications and Use Cases

Many product developers and service providers use ultrasonic sensors in their IoT projects due to their low power consumption, reliability, and low maintenance.

We’re going to cover a few Case Studies of MaxBotix sensors being used in IoT Applications.

Radio Bridge provides a general purpose LoRaWAN bridge which is used with MaxBotix Sensors in various applications.

This solution provides full sensor to cloud solutions for Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Ultrasonic level sensors are used to detect and range objects in air with high accuracy. A wireless alert is sent if the measured distance is over or under the configured thresholds.

Industries served:

Retail

Industrial

Oil & Gas

Deduction

Utilities

Security

Radio Bridge’s solution is typically used in tank monitoring applications

Features include:

The built-in radio talks directly with LoRaWAN wireless networks.

200,000+ transmissions on a single battery and a 5–10 year battery life depending on usage.

ELSYS uses a sensor from the MaxBotix WR line as an IoT distance sensor.

The applications supported for this particular sensor unit includes smart cities, industrial applications, and various local authorities.

This solution gives you the opportunity to detect and measure the distance to objects in various spaces.

Designed to be mounted outside, the ELSYS ELT-2 is enclosed in an IP67 rated box.

Real world applications include:

Underground water level measurement

Waste level measurement in containers

Snow depth measurement

Voltaic manufactures solar solutions for trucking, environmental monitoring, agtech, and parking.

Nearly all of Voltaic’s industrial customers are using their solar panels to power a sensor and communications over the network.

Use cases include:

Tide Monitoring with Ultrasonic Sensors

Solar Powered River Gauge with Particle

Solar Powered Remote Water Level Monitoring

Tide Monitoring with Ultrasonic Sensors

Sentient Things uses its IoT platform to measure and report tides in real-time. The system measures water height along with wind speed, water temperature, air temperature, and atmospheric pressure.

Solar Powered River Gauge with Particle

Community funded StreamBeam built stream monitoring gauges using ultrasonic sensors, Particle Boron and Voltaic solar panels. They were placed on bridges in Alabama and provide updated data every 15 minutes.

Solar Powered Remote Water Level Monitoring

Northwestern California based Pacific Watershed Associates is an engineering firm that specializes in complex watershed issues. One of their services monitors the water levels in local streams and water flows to agricultural users.

Thanks for reading this article! Leave a comment below if you have any questions. Be sure to visit us on MaxBotix.com for IoT sensors.