Over the past years new technologies have opened up many possibilities for real estate managers to connect building technology and simplify maintenance. With help of smart meters, sensors and gateways, water, electricity, and heating consumption can be monitored remotely which not only saves energy and money, but also saves time in operational processes and leads to happier tenants.
The multinational telecommunications provider Vodafone has developed a smart building solution for the housing industry to provide apartment building owners with these advantages. Vodafone’s solution centers around the Develco Products Squid.link Gateway. The gateway is used to gather data from various sensors and alarms.
Gathering data with the Squid.link Gateway
With Vodafone’s multiprotocol solution, data can be gathered for example from heating meters via Wireless M-Bus, from smoke detectors via various protocols like Wireless M-Bus or the – from Develco Products smoke detector supported – Zigbee protocol. Further protocols like Z-Wave and Zigbee are used to realized use cases like leakage detection while WLAN is used to connect the gateways through the building and to provide a local hotspot.
This data can then either be accessed through a web portal or passed on to downstream systems and processes such as applications used by housing companies. With this system, Vodafone’s clients save time and money as they do no longer have to spend work hours on manually collecting meter data.
Quick start into business with a market-ready gateway
As the IoT world is developing fast, Vodafone did not want to spend valuable time developing their own gateway within their solution to be able to quickly get into the market. The company’s goal was to find a market-ready gateway which they could already include in their offering while constantly upgrading the corresponding application. This way, Vodafone reduced the time to market of their solution remarkably.
Multi-protocol gateway for flexible and expandable solutions
The support of Wireless M-Bus was central for Vodafone when looking for a Gateway as this protocol has become the standard for reading heating meter data in Germany. Additionally, Vodafone is using Zigbee to gather data from different sensors and systems including lights, smoke alarms or digital door locks. Apart from Wireless M-Bus and Zigbee, the Squid.link Gateway also supports Z-Wave, Bluetooth Low Energy and WLAN. This variety of protocols is highly valued by Vodafone as it gives them the option to add more functions to their smart building solution in the future operating under different protocols.