With WaveContact, FreeWave aims to bring the Internet of Things to the most extreme industrial settings
For now, FreeWave is focused on the Modbus interface—a favorite of the oil-and-gas industry—but the company will look at other networks in the future, Longley said.
A gateway for the 10i EndPoints, the Data Concentrator also serves as a serial radio master for connecting other serial devices with existing FGR/FGR2 (900 MHz) or GX/12 (2.4 GHz) FreeWave networks, according to the company’s press release announcing WaveContact.
“You’ve got a lot of sensors that have been traditionally hardwired a couple feet away from an input on a controller,” Longley said. “You want to be able to take that sensor network and spread it out farther, because you want to monitor more things. You want to get more data. You want to monitor pressure all along the pipeline, so every five miles, you want to get a pressure [reading].
“It’s not practical, necessarily, to run wire to all of those locations; so, by providing this I/O solution we now can help them start to monitor more sensor points in more locations.”
FreeWave is taking orders now for shipment in the fourth quarter. There are also a few customers who are currently using the solution to monitor pressures along a pipeline and a wellhead, as well as tank levels in a C1D1 environment.