In a recent press release, Digi International declared that Lessoil, an energy conservation services company providing and maintenance to multi-family property owners in the Northeast, is using the ConnectPort X4 wireless gateway, XBee ZigBee environmental sensors and iDigi cloud service to wirelessly connect its energy conservation solution.
“Prior to Digi, we were using a connectivity solution that was slow and didn’t offer any way to measure temperature in the building,” said David Armstrong, project manager for building automation controls, Lessoil, in a press release.
“Other solutions with temperature measuring capabilities were cost prohibitive. Digi offered an off-the-shelf, cost-effective solution where everything just worked. Once we got the network set-up, everything was pretty much plug-and-play. It is very easy for us to add new sensors, more IO and other functionality,” he added.
The under or over heating of the houses in many buildings leads to discomfort for building residents, energy wastage and increases heating costs. With Lessoil’s solutions, the users can monitor the base temperature within individual building units and enables building temperature control remotely.
Using ConnectPort X4 gateway, Lessoil gathers apartment temperature data from Digi XBee ZigBee temperature sensors. The gateway then communicates this data over cellular networks to the iDigi cloud service. Lessoil can login to the iDigi cloud service to easily monitor building temperature and make any necessary adjustments. Lessoil also uses iDigi for network set up.
“iDigi allowed us to quickly enable everything,” Armstrong said. “It makes it really easy to set everything up. If you don’t use it, it’s like getting a personal computer and writing your own operating system –you just wouldn’t do that.”
Digi International (News 
- Alert) makes wireless M2M easy by developing reliable products and solutions to connect and securely manage local or remote electronic devices over the network or via the Web. The company recently launched its ConnectCore Wi-i.MX53 which is the second in a series of core processors that is based on the Freescale (News - Alert) Semiconductor i.MX processor family.
Rahul Arora is a TMCnet contributor. He has worked as an editor and freelance writer for several reputed organizations in India. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Janice McDuffee
