IBM and NEOCORTEC are working together, creating an IoT ecosystem.
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OCTOBER 2016
In an effort to move Internet of Things (IoT) forward from buzzword to real-life applications, IBM and NEOCORTEC are working together, creating an IoT ecosystem for collecting, transmitting, processing and visualising data.
The complexity of IoT calls for partnerships between technology providers on different levels of the IoT landscape. This is exactly what IBM and Neocortec are doing together.
Jan Ekstrøm, Solution Architect at IBM’s Watson Internet of Things division explains:
– We need partnerships with technology providers and users to realise the vision of IoT. NEOCORTEC has developed a really exiting technology that we are hooking up to the IBM Watson Internet of Things Platform. We are working closely together on some interesting projects, showing how it’s done and what benefits you can achieve.
IBM is investing heavily in IoT, also in the Nordics, among other things collaborating with facility management giant ISS as well as KONE, which is in the “people moving” industry.
Under the umbrella of Watson IoT IBM is offering an array of tools for processing and analysing input from sensor systems. The Watson IoT Platform is a service within IBM Bluemix, which enables the utilisation of many other services within cognitive, analytics, and application development.
Two exciting projects
Jan Ekstrøm explains:
– We are collaborating with NEOCORTEC on two projects, both of which are really interesting. Firstly, we’ve collaborated on a project at Roskilde Festival, monitoring toilets with wireless sensors and experimenting on how to use the collected data. After only two days we were able to send reports back to the festival organizers, with suggestions on how to improve service and maintenance. Apart from that we’ve collected some interesting data: now we know, that a toilet is used about a 1000 times during the festival, and that the average festival guest weighs around 70 kilos.
– Secondly, we collaborate with the Danish social start-up company LinkAiders. We are contributing to the development of Reachi, a dedicated response device for disaster areas. Reachi is based on Mesh-technology and allows volunteers to send damage reports from their affected communities to relief coordinators. Reachi resembles an ordinary mobile phone and is water proof, robust and able to keep up power for a very long time. It transmits information from device to device and is able to function even without any telecom infrastructure in place. This makes it possible to coordinate efficient disaster relief with a great number of volunteers, all carrying a Reachi device.
All has to interact seamlessly
– Although very different in scale and importance these two projects are typical IoT projects. To make it work you need it all to interact seamlessly: Sensors transmitting data to the network and delivering it to a central service for analysis and data visualization. That is what makes it challenging.
According to Jan Ekstrøm, Neocortec has a potentially important role in the development of IoT:
– The advantages of the NEOCORTEC mesh network come into play, when you need long range combined with low power consumption. The Linkaiders project is an ideal example to illustrate that.
– What differentiates NEOCORTEC from its competitors is, that they have developed a technology that transmits data through mesh networks under circumstances where traditional infrastructure is unavailable, and it is self-configurable without the need of a management component. NEOCORTEC is also independent from other technology providers and there are no limits to the amount of data you transmit. These are quite powerful features.
– In addition to this, it’s easy to get started. When you look at ease-of-use NEOCORTEC has great advantages. Moreover, through our collaboration we’ve demonstrated how easy it is to connect the NEOCORTEC gateway to the Watson IoT Platform. You can get something up and running in 5 minutes, and that is quite unique in the IoT space at the moment.
