The Sentinel product line from Aginova provides a means to monitor temperatures in critical physical areas, such as food storage, lab samples, pharmaceuticals, etc. The Wi-Fi based system broadcasts--as often as once a minute--temperature information via 802.11 through the customer's existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to the vendor's own data collection servers, which examine the data and transmit alerts via E-mail, pager, or on-screen displays to appropriate personnel should the temperatures exceed administrator defined thresholds.

Components of the system include the physical temperature sensor, a 1 inch by one-quarter inch probe that can be deployed tethered to the transmission device or un-tethered; the transmission device itself, which runs on a pair of AA batteries (or a single Li AA battery) with an expected life of at least 4 years (at one measurement per minute) and transmits the temperature readings to an existing Wi-Fi access point; and a management/monitoring/reporting software package that can be deployed on site for Enterprise-grade implementations or run hosted by the vendor (in the hosted version, the temperature parameters would be sent through the customer's Wi-Fi network to the Internet and then to the vendor's host servers). The transmission devices include enough on-board memory to remember at least one full day of temperature samples (again, assuming those samples are collected once per minute). Note that the platform ships only with the transmission device/temperature probes themselves; the necessary Wi-Fi infrastructure for receipt/transmission of the temperature samples must be provided by the customer.

Once received by the server, the data is analyzed for potential alerting needs and stored in a database for later review. Administrators can access the data via Web-based panels that provide both real-time monitoring and historical reporting of temperature and previously triggered alarm statistics, including corrective actions taken.

Probes are offered in various temperature ranges, typically ranging from -45C to 85C with accuracy to within 1 degree Celsius. The vendor states that the batteries in the transmission devices can be expected to last at least 4 years and up to 5 years.

New in the product line are the vendor's SentinelPro transmitters, which are driven by the GainSpan Corporation GS1010 Wi-Fi SoC and boast battery lives of from 5 to 10 years.

The Sentinel platform is available now; with pricing for the new SentinelPro transmitters listed at $100 to $300, depending on purchase quantity and temperature range.

Contact Aginova for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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