Wirefree makes factories smarter with wireless sensor systems. We are experts in the field of wireless sensor networks and emerging wireless technologies. Making manufacturing processes smarter, safer, and above all, more affordable is what we do best.

Our simple to use systems save energy, improve process efficiency, and promote safety without the need of wires or established networks. We are at the forefront in creating “The Intelligent Factory” and making the world free from wires.

Creating a Wireless World

Equipment failure, unsafe environmental conditions and unplanned down-time are some of the reasons production goals are not met.  In many cases, unplanned downtime can be avoided if advanced warnings of problems were provided.  WirefreePlant is a suite of wireless sensor applications designed to provide such warnings as well as monitor conditions found in manufacturing plants and industrial sites.

WirefreePlant sensor applications provide alerts to changing conditions; track mobile equipment; monitor the environment  in locations where wired data networks are impractical; and monitor events in locations where electric power does not exist.

WirefreePlant applications include:

Temperature Monitoring is designed to monitor temperatures in the extreme environments found in many manufacturing applications. Sensor types include Thermocouple, RTD and Thermistor sensors.

Condition Monitoring continually analyzes equipment, such as motors, to detect changes that may result in unplanned downtime.  Sensing includes vibration measurement and analysis, as well as motor current analysis. The system provides real-time condition analysis needed to react appropriately to changing equipment conditions.

Environmental Monitoring is designed to measure environmental conditions in plants, warehouses and hostile locations so operations can react quickly to changing circumstances. Environmental monitoring includes a variety of sensor types such as: Temperature – RTD, Thermocouple, Thermistor; Moisture; Barometric Pressure; Light; and Acoustics.

Safetynet is a wireless Collision Avoidance System designed for warehouses, manufacturing plants, industrial sites, and mines. Small wireless sensor devices are attached to workers and mobile equipment enabling them to detect those they may not normally see or hear.

Wireless Weighing places sensors on forklift hydraulics so that loads can be weighed in transit without the need to divert to a stationary scale for weighing.  Weights are then wirelessly transmitted to WirefreePlant weighing module where they shared with internal company SCADA and ERP systems.

Fill Level Monitoring provides real-time fill level information for mobile tanks. The system tracks tanks that move around warehouses and manufacturing plants.  Various sensors can be accommodated such as a sanitary pressure sensor with a 4-20mA loop or sonar sensor can be easily configured to meet specifications.

Production Monitoring for discrete manufacturing is designed to provide real-time product counts and evaluate process flow. By placing wireless sensors at strategic points in the manufacturing process, operations can quickly identify bottlenecks and interruptions, as well as production line inefficiencies. The system uses wireless sensors, such as beam break and reflective sensors, to track events in the manufacturing process providing management with the performance data it needs to monitor the quality of plant operations.

Proximity Detection Wirefree’s Proximity Detection System uses wireless sensors to track company assets such as vehicles, mobile tanks and other expensive equipment. The detection system can locate assets in and around manufacturing plants, warehouses and other kinds of industrial sites. Assets are marked with active RF tags where transmission can be identified and tracked by Wirefree’s Sensory Information System (SIS).

Benefits

Previously there are many areas within a plant where operational information was unavailable due to hostile environmental conditions or the lack of power and data networks.  With State-of-the-Art wireless sensor systems, manufacturers continually receive data that benefits operations in reach their production goals by:

• Reduce unplanned down-time – unplanned down-time may be prevented if alerts to changing conditions are provided
• Quality-of-Service (QoS) – real-time information about plant environmental conditions, processes, and equipment improve reaction time
• Safety – unsafe condition such as collisions between vehicles and pedestrians or harmful gasses can be monitored and early warnings provided.

Many manufacturers may not require all the modules in WirefreePlant but it’s nice to know the system has the ability to grow as you do.

When people ask me “What’s a Wireless Sensor Network”, they generally aren’t network engineers nor do they understand subtleties in networking lingo.  Yet, conceptually Wireless Sensor Networks are not difficult to understand if we start with our basic knowledge of Wi-Fi, considering most of us are fairly adept at connecting our laptops to Wi-Fi hotspots.

At a conceptual level, a wireless sensor network (WSN) is very similar to a Wi-Fi network that you connect your PC or Mac to.  Using networking terminology, your PC is considered a node or end-point on the network.  The node (your PC) is ‘smart’, meaning it is capable of advanced computing and communications functions, with a powerful 32 or 64 bit processor.  In order to connect the PC (node) to the Wi-Fi hotspot (wireless network), the PC uses it’s internal ‘ radio’ (Wi-Fi card) that communicates wirelessly to an access point.  The access point is a modem that connects your PC and other PCs on the wireless network, to the Internet.  Most of us that have laptops are very familiar with wireless Internet access.

In the case of a WSN, the nodes are sensors (not PC’s).  Sensors are used to measure the surrounding physical world.  Sensors can measure temperature, light, sound, pressure, vibration, detect gas, decay, motion, etc.  Their processors tend to be considerably less powerful (generally 8 bit microprocessors) than the 32 or 64 bit processors found in laptops.

The second way that WSN’s differ from a standard Wi-Fi network is that they are generally designed to consume much less power.  Unlike a laptop, sensor nodes may need to run for months or years on battery power. Therefore, each component on the sensor node must be optimized to conserve power, such as using a small, 8 bit microprocessor, rather than their more energy consuming 32-bit cousins. When the nodes aren’t being used, they are put into sleep mode. For these reasons, WSN’s are also referred to as Low-Power Sensor Networks.

The reference to low-power also applies to the distance the radio signals can travel.  Low-power WSN nodes generally have a broadcast range of approximately 100 meters or less, thus requiring less power to transmit data.

While sensor nodes can use a Wi-Fi network for communication, Wi-Fi networks use a significant amount of bandwidth and therefore a significant amount of power, to handle large volumes of data such as movies, videos, music, and other large files. Sensor data only needs a fraction of the bandwidth that a PC does, because it’s more the size of a tweet.  For example, this document is 2 MB, whereas data transmitted from a sensor is about 100 bites or less. Because node data doesn’t need a lot of bandwidth, WSN’s typically use a much smaller RF channel. WSN’s also uses less power, once again, conserving node battery life.  Both ZigBee and Wi-Fi (n) network protocols are designed for low-power network.

To insure the Quality of Service (QoS) and network range, protocols such as ZigBee use a multi-hop, mesh strategy.  In a mesh network, a node can communicate directly with an access point or it can use its neighbor to hop from one node to the next until it reaches the access point (multi-hop system).  So rather than increasing the range by increasing the radio power (and decreasing battery life), multi-hop mesh technology allows the network’s range to extend beyond 100 meters, yet without increasing the power usage. An added benefit a multi-hop system is if one path is blocked, the node can use an alternate path back to the access point.

WSN’s are similar to Wi-Fi networks but differ in a few important ways.  First, the nodes on the network are not PC’s but ‘smart’ sensors used to measure aspects of the physical world.  Second, WSN’s are optimized for low-power mostly to conserve the battery life of a sensor node. Third, they are generally designed to use less channel bandwidth than Wi-Fi because the amount of data is considerably less.  While this explanation leaves out a significant number of technical details and exceptions, it should help provide a basic understanding of a wireless sensor network.