A special thank you to Elaine He, Sourcing Manager at Shanghai Berry, for sharing with us a deep look into Shanghai Berry.

It is no secret that the global shortage of medical resources has recently been exacerbated by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries are particularly suffering from a large gap between the doctor-patient ratio: Take Germany, which sees 42 licensed physicians per 10,000 population. Numbers get more drastic in China: 20 licensed physicians per 10,000 population, which translates to a doctor-patient ratio of 1 doctor per 500 patients. *

This global shortage of healthcare professionals coupled with the growing need for accurate medical monitoring in the last year made Chinese-based company Shanghai Berry aware that they had just what the medical industry needed: wireless medical monitoring devices like the Fingertip Pulse Oximeter.

Providing Innovative Remote Medical Monitoring

Founded in 2003, Shanghai Berry offers advanced medical monitoring, focusing on non-invasive blood pressure calculation, oxygen saturation detection, and multi-parameter monitoring systems. Their products are extremely valuable for a wide range of consumers – from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients who need to monitor their oxygen saturation (SpO2) levels, to people who simply want to better track their overall health condition. Shanghai Berry also prides itself on putting R&D first – everything they do is based on their in-house research and development.

Affordable Medical Monitoring Devices Make Health Services Accessible to All

Shanghai Berry believes that their products can help address the drastic doctor-patient gap in countries like China, as people are empowered to take health into their owns hands. For instance, their Fingertip Pulse Oximeter, can not only provide instant and remote medical monitoring but safely store patients’ data so it can be shared with physicians, caregivers or even a family member. Having the option of continuously monitoring and sharing the health condition, without the need of hospital visits for patients, frees up valuable medical resources for other patients in need. Increasing the quality and accessibility of healthcare is Shanghai Berry’s contribution to the United Nation Sustainable Development goal of “Good Health and Well-being:” they leverage IoT advancements in medical devices to address the global shortage of medical resources.

Shanghai Berry has seen great success with their wireless monitoring devices across all age groups: the product can monitor the respiratory activity of children while asleep and alert parents if there is abnormal activity. Shanghai Berry’s technology has – in the literal sense of the word – saved lives.

Wearables Are Getting Smaller, but Are They Also Getting Smarter?

But as powerful as their technology is, Shanghai Berry faced the same design challenges as most consumer IoT companies: balancing the ever-growing demand for smaller, portable technology with the constant need of wireless devices to transmit data. In other words – creating affordable low-power wearables without compromising the device’s accuracy.    

After testing numerous wireless solutions, Shanghai Berry decided on Silicon Labs’ BG22 for their Fingertip Pulse Oximeter due the reliable wireless performance, affordable price, and – most importantly – low power consumption, which translates to long battery life. These attributes allow for Shanghai Berry to focus on what matters most: accurate performance tracking in their products that sets them apart from competitors.

Adoption of Remote Medical Monitoring Devices

As data storing and cloud technology becomes more mundane, so do the electronics that leverage these – such as medical devices – and people get more comfortable with taking advantage of technological innovation to improve their health and well-being. While most of their products are currently sold to distributors and hospital systems, Shanghai Berry is hopeful that they will evolve to B2C in the next 5 to 10 years as more consumers adopt wearable and tracking technology by the day.

For more information on Shanghai Berry, visit shberrymed.com.

Get started with developing secure and low-power wireless solutions. Visit the Silicon Labs Medical Devices solution page: https://www.silabs.com/solutions/medical-devices.

*World Health Statistics 2018, World Health Organization, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272596/9789241565585-eng.pdf

A special thank you to Elaine He, Sourcing Manager at Shanghai Berry, for sharing with us a deep look into Shanghai Berry.

It is no secret that the global shortage of medical resources has recently been exacerbated by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries are particularly suffering from a large gap between the doctor-patient ratio: Take Germany, which sees 42 licensed physicians per 10,000 population. Numbers get more drastic in China: 20 licensed physicians per 10,000 population, which translates to a doctor-patient ratio of 1 doctor per 500 patients. *

This global shortage of healthcare professionals coupled with the growing need for accurate medical monitoring in the last year made Chinese-based company Shanghai Berry aware that they had just what the medical industry needed: wireless medical monitoring devices like the Fingertip Pulse Oximeter.

Providing Innovative Remote Medical Monitoring

Founded in 2003, Shanghai Berry offers advanced medical monitoring, focusing on non-invasive blood pressure calculation, oxygen saturation detection, and multi-parameter monitoring systems. Their products are extremely valuable for a wide range of consumers – from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients who need to monitor their oxygen saturation (SpO2) levels, to people who simply want to better track their overall health condition. Shanghai Berry also prides itself on putting R&D first – everything they do is based on their in-house research and development.

Affordable Medical Monitoring Devices Make Health Services Accessible to All

Shanghai Berry believes that their products can help address the drastic doctor-patient gap in countries like China, as people are empowered to take health into their owns hands. For instance, their Fingertip Pulse Oximeter, can not only provide instant and remote medical monitoring but safely store patients’ data so it can be shared with physicians, caregivers or even a family member. Having the option of continuously monitoring and sharing the health condition, without the need of hospital visits for patients, frees up valuable medical resources for other patients in need. Increasing the quality and accessibility of healthcare is Shanghai Berry’s contribution to the United Nation Sustainable Development goal of “Good Health and Well-being:” they leverage IoT advancements in medical devices to address the global shortage of medical resources.

Shanghai Berry has seen great success with their wireless monitoring devices across all age groups: the product can monitor the respiratory activity of children while asleep and alert parents if there is abnormal activity. Shanghai Berry’s technology has – in the literal sense of the word – saved lives.

Wearables Are Getting Smaller, but Are They Also Getting Smarter?

But as powerful as their technology is, Shanghai Berry faced the same design challenges as most consumer IoT companies: balancing the ever-growing demand for smaller, portable technology with the constant need of wireless devices to transmit data. In other words – creating affordable low-power wearables without compromising the device’s accuracy.    

After testing numerous wireless solutions, Shanghai Berry decided on Silicon Labs’ BG22 for their Fingertip Pulse Oximeter due the reliable wireless performance, affordable price, and – most importantly – low power consumption, which translates to long battery life. These attributes allow for Shanghai Berry to focus on what matters most: accurate performance tracking in their products that sets them apart from competitors.

Adoption of Remote Medical Monitoring Devices

As data storing and cloud technology becomes more mundane, so do the electronics that leverage these – such as medical devices – and people get more comfortable with taking advantage of technological innovation to improve their health and well-being. While most of their products are currently sold to distributors and hospital systems, Shanghai Berry is hopeful that they will evolve to B2C in the next 5 to 10 years as more consumers adopt wearable and tracking technology by the day.

For more information on Shanghai Berry, visit shberrymed.com.

Get started with developing secure and low-power wireless solutions. Visit the Silicon Labs Medical Devices solution page: https://www.silabs.com/solutions/medical-devices.

*World Health Statistics 2018, World Health Organization, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272596/9789241565585-eng.pdf

We recently had the chance to speak with Tom McLaughlin, vice president of engineering at Aclara, a subsidiary of Hubbell Inc. Aclara creates smart infrastructure solutions for water, electric, and gas utilities. Aclara’s end to end solution gives utility providers actionable insights into utility customers’ resource consumption with real-time visibility into distribution networks to optimize management of vital commodities.

Aclara’s water infrastructure technology was recently adopted in Silicon Labs’ hometown by Austin Water, the City of Austin’s water and wastewater utility, and Pedernales Electric Cooperative, the largest electric Co-Op in the nation. Below, Tom explains how the water technology works and his insight on why Aclara’s solutions are helping the utilities market evolve by improving resource efficiencies for end consumers.

Tell me about Aclara.

Aclara was founded with a mission to partner with gas, water, and electric utilities to develop smart infrastructure solutions that meet the needs of their customers. My responsibility is focused on building the advanced metering infrastructure systems supporting these efforts.

Can you tell us about the water metering infrastructure technology and how it is used?

In the water industry, our radio frequency-based AMI solution – Aclara RF™ – consists of endpoints connected to water meters that communicate data read from meters to data collectors via licensed frequencies that are owned the utility. Data from the collectors is transmitted back to the utility. In the water industry specifically, initial use cases were centered around gathering basic data on water consumption.

Today, the endpoints have evolved to be much smarter and can perform more intelligent tasks, such as leak detection and tamper detection. Our software platform, AclaraONE®, now enables the utility to extract valuable analytics and data for operators that help them serve their customers better as well as manage water distribution.

How does Aclara’s technology help specifically with water leakage?

Leakage is a huge problem. Many parts of the country have incredibly outdated water utilities. For example, where I live in St. Louis, some of the pipe downtown is still from the 1800s. The pipes are made from wood, and they're being retrofitted with inserts that try to curb the leaks. In some places within the U.S., 20 to 30 percent of the water meant to be delivered to end consumers is lost to leaks. In other parts of the world, that percentage is even higher.  

There are two primary components of Aclara’s solution that address leak detection. The first, after the data is collected, is analyzing it to determine whether a premise has a leak. Our customers, such as DC Water, use data analytics to determine if there's a leak in a home or business and notifies the customer. The second piece is our leak detection system, where we place acoustic sensors that “listen” to the sound of water in mains and communicates that data to the utility over our AMI network. By analyzing the acoustic data, we can localize where a leak is - down to a meter or two. That's proven very helpful for the utilities and we've deployed many of these water sensors.

How is Silicon Labs technology used in your product?

We've partnered with Silicon Labs for a long time. Our Aclara RF product operates in the 450 to 470 MHz band. We specifically use the Silicon Labs Sub-GHz Si446X EZRadioPRO transceivers as a core piece of our system. We needed our product to be extremely high quality, highly accurate, and meet certain FCC rules, specifically Part 90 Mask D. Not all silicon vendors can meet these requirements, but the Si4460 is Part 90 Mask D compliant, while also satisfying all our needs for a high-performance, low-current wireless transceiver.

In addition, the Silicon Labs support team has been incredibly reliable through the years. The applications and field engineers that we've worked with have been top notch, helping us drive solutions to problems.

What other design challenges did you experience?

Power is still a huge issue in the water and gas industries. We create endpoints that communicate with meters and require a 20-year life, which is extremely difficult to do for a piece of electronics, especially when they are communicating several times a day. We needed a very low power transceiver to enable such a lengthy battery life.

Another key issue is flexibility. When you analyze numerous transceiver and radio parts, you realize vendors have different philosophies in terms of how much they allow their customers to configure their devices. The Silicon Labs solution has just the right amount of flexibility, allowing us to configure all the areas we need adjusted for our products.

How do sustainability and mounting climate concerns impact Aclara’s offering?

Electric, water, and gas infrastructures are evolving rapidly to support technologies being developed to combat climate change, such as electric vehicles, photovoltaics, and distributed generation. A major tenet for Aclara is always asking ourselves how our systems can better optimize and automate the distribution networks to better support all these valuable technologies.  

How do you see IoT changing in the next five to eight years?

I think industrial IoT will continue to accelerate we’ve already gone through the phase where you get things connected and can deliver data, so now we’re discovering how to extract information out of said data. The answer is really in the analytics. This analysis may happen in a distributed way, with edge computing devices that look at the information and make decisions on how to optimize the network and the devices on the network. Eventually, we will move to using this information in an automated way.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Dave DeMona, Arrow Electronics’ engineering manager for lighting, about Arrow’s new smart horticulture platform: Arrow Growhouse. Concerns about global population growth, sustainability, and ecologically friendly farming are encouraging growers to adopt innovative technologies to improve farming practices. 

Late last year, Arrow Electronics – one of the leading electronics distribution companies – introduced a new IoT platform with superior lighting controls. These controls help the commercial farming industry improve crop yield and gain better control of their indoor crops, decreasing water, space, and pesticide usage. The platform also equips growers with remote wireless control and monitoring of indoor farming operations and conditions. The demand for smart agriculture products such as this one has been growing rapidly. Dave explains below what prompted Arrow to build the scalable and smart horticulture system and how exactly it works.  

Can you tell us about Growhouse? 

The Arrow Growhouse platform is a flexible, scalable, smart agriculture solution for monitoring and controlling key aspects of a commercial growing environment. It combines environmental and plant-level monitoring and multichannel lighting control into a single, cloud-based user interface with both a web and mobile app. It's compatible with most of the horticulture luminaires currently in the market, and the underlying architecture allows for easy development of additional sensing and control modules based on a customer's individual needs. 

What components are included in the platform? 

The system can be bought either piecemeal or as a complete system, depending on what the user needs. The basic kit includes a gateway that communicates back to the cloud and a multichannel LED controller that connects to the horticulture luminaire itself, allowing the user to control the different color channels. The kit also includes a soil sensor to monitor the moisture level and the pH of the soil. Customers can add more sensors and controllers as needed.  

The architecture of the system is customizable: if a farmer has unique needs and wants to monitor aspects of the system that the base package doesn't cover, it's easy for us to develop additional sensor modules to fit their needs. 

What was the inspiration behind creating this smart horticulture solution? 

Over the past few years, we've been involved with a number of different horticulture and horticulture-adjacent customers. We noticed that – although clients had great ideas on how to optimally grow plants – there was an underlying set of fundamental requirements. This client base is predominantly growers, not hardware and software experts, so we thought: What if we built a base platform that could be individualized and customized for their unique needs?  

How long has the product been available? 

The product was launched last year and was enabled by a combination of recent technology advancements:  

• The maturation of LED technology enables practical implementation of controllable LED luminaires for horticulture. Suddenly, farmers could control the spectrums that a plant sees throughout its growth, which can trigger specific characteristics.  

• In addition, advances and cost reductions in communication and sensing started to allow for better monitoring of what's happening at the plant level.  

These combined factors sparked a revolution a few years ago and this reflects on the feedback surrounding Growhouse to date. Systems have historically been disparate and manual (such as lighting, environmental controls, and fertigation), but Growhouse integrates all of the monitoring and control capability into a single, intuitive user interface.   

Why did you select Silicon Labs’ technology for your platform? 

Like many IoT platforms, Growhouse involves a gateway, end devices, and communication to a cloud and a user interface. Communication between our end devices is via Zigbee, and communication for commissioning is via Bluetooth. We chose Silicon Labs Zigbee modules for the radio because it’s a high-performing, integrated dual technology that tackles our needs. 

What are the primary market drivers of smart horticulture? 

Growth in the market is due to a variety of needs: resource conservation, population growth, a desire for local production, reduced transport of produce and grown items, and the reduced use of pesticides and fertilizers. A lot of these needs tie back to the intent of creating an ecologically sustainable method of farming.  

Smart agriculture also provides a highly controlled environment, so growers end up with not only faster-growing crop yields, but more consistent yields with less waste fallout. Adding control to different aspects of the growth environment allows the grower to ensure their crop is behaving the way they want it to, when they want it to.  

There has been a boom in indoor horticulture in recent years. How is indoor farming better for the planet? 

It really is all about the control of the plant environment. When you're growing outside, you're subject to the whims of the weather. With indoor horticulture, the grower has complete control over that environment, leading to significantly reduced water usage and needs for fertilizers and pesticides. Indoor agriculture also allows for farming in regions that may be unsuitable for certain outdoor crops. For example, in some areas in Africa where you really can’t grow certain crops in the ground, growing food within a warehouse or container allows people to cultivate locally. 

How do you see IoT technology supporting sustainable agriculture in the future? 

We look at the evolution of farming as the evolution of human history. Until recently, we haven't had a lot of insight and data into how to farm better. The direction I see IoT going in smart agriculture is in the implementation of AI: doing something with all the newly derived data now being gathered on a more and more granular level. I think we will see a continuation of automation from the time the seed is planted in the ground until it's ready to harvest.  

Everything will be based on the sensors' data and the rules developed, enabling better quality and crop consistency, less fallout, and more locally grown crops. We'll start seeing smaller versions of these systems at a local level – whether that be for a small city or a college campus – all the way to the point where we may have these systems in our own homes, much like a micro-garden in your kitchen. Regardless of how green your thumbs are, you'll be able to create quality produce at home, and get rid of all the transportation needs and other external factors. 

We recently had the chance to speak with Morten Møgelmose, Co-Founder and CEO of Zliide, a Danish company merging the digital and physical realms of the fashion retail world. Zliide’s Bluetooth security tags bridge the gap between virtual and in-store retail experiences, providing a seamless and heightened customer experience. Zliide tags connect with shoppers’ smart phones, allowing them to conveniently self-checkout at any moment and access product information, photos, and videos to enhance their shopping experience. The tags also provide valuable data for retailers, giving key insights into specific stores, items, and customer preferences. Below Morten shares background on the company’s overall mission and insights behind how the company’s innovative tag technology works.

Can you tell us a little bit about Zliide?

Zliide is a Danish company founded in 2016 with a vision to always take the consumer’s point of view first. Fashion retail has always been really good at providing consumers with a great “wow” experience when they come into the stores, but a lot of the stores have forgotten the digital evolution of customers. Our solution enables fashion retailers to provide an omnichannel experience, combining offline experience with online experience. This is done through what we call the Zliide tag, which goes onto every piece of merchandise in the store. The tag operates like a standard security tag, but allows users to scan the tag with the Zliide app and gain access to a digital version of the item in the app. This can show videos and images of the item on a model or in motion, allowing shoppers to really envision themselves in the merchandise. The consumer can then pay for the item on their phone, using a mobile payment application. Once the item is paid for, the security tag unlocks, and the customer is able to leave the store with their purchase. Right now, our technology is only available in Denmark, but we are looking to expand to other Nordic countries and perhaps the U.K. in the next couple of years.

Why was the Zliide tag created?

The whole company started based on an experience I had in a Nike store in London. When I arrived in London, I used Airbnb and Uber, and everything was with one click. Then I went into a store and actually had to wait for someone to help me get rid of my money and make a purchase. I was really frustrated because over the last few years I had become accommodated to using numerous cool technologies with easy user experience and convenience across all different channels. This experience led me to start a company with a vision to always take the consumer’s point of view first.

How is your Zliide tag different from other commonly seen security tags in fashion stores?

The basic purpose of a conventional tag is securing a piece of clothing. The conventional security tags business is great and meets a basic and much-needed functionality. We definitely believe tags have a place in the market indefinitely, but we also believe that if you already mount a piece of hardware onto every single item in a store, there is so much potential to build on top of the tag for data collection and a better consumer experience.

With our product, we enable customers to interact with every item in the store and access pictures and videos of everything they want, anywhere they want. It’s all about freedom and convenience for the stores and the consumers, along with the possibilities of building a data collection for retailers. We allow communication with the end user’s mobile device by introducing Bluetooth to the tag. We've done this in the Zliide tag version we are introducing to the market now with Silicon Labs' BGM220. Also, in recent years, we’ve seen a rise in RFID tags that allow resellers to do a limited inventory count with RFID scanners. With our solution, retailers have the added benefit of doing an immediate daily inventory count.

Why did you decide to use Silicon Labs' solutions for the product?

We were introduced to Silicon Labs through Arrow and have been extremely impressed with the company's representatives, who introduced us to the BGM220 and its features.

All of the functionality we wanted was met in terms of security, battery lifetime and the possibility of over-the-air (OTA) updates, as it would be a big risk to not be able to easily update the software. On top of that, by using the module we were really able to minimize the size and the number of components on the PCB. Another important factor for us was to reduce cost of the device due to mass production – one fashion store can easily have 10,000 Zliide tags.

I would say one of the things that really made a difference for us was the superior level of support we have received from Silicon Labs. For us, it's really about the support and the commitment we've received to help a young company like ours to really thrive in a competitive world. Getting access to those valuable and knowledgeable resources to build a better product is really what made the whole difference for us.

Where do you see fashion retail IoT going in the next 5-8 years, and how has COVID-19 affected the market?

From a technology perspective, we see a lot of technology evolving in the retail sector at the moment.  Recently we've seen a lot of investments going into the back end of retail companies to optimize the supply chain. I believe if you have a big footprint of stores, you need to take those stores and elevate them to the next level with consumer-facing technology. I think we will see technology in the fashion retail industry still being a little bit behind some of the other retail outlets such as supermarkets, convenience stores, etc. The fashion industry has high-value items that they want to protect, whereas in convenience stores and supermarkets, there's basically no security there; you can just use a barcode scanner to speed up the customer experience. Our technology will be the fastest solution to allow self-checkout for more high-value items.

COVID-19 had a major impact on more than just revenue streams in these fashion retail companies, and collectively the industry has realized how vulnerable it is. When it comes to shutting down all your stores, you’re losing 80-90% of the revenue from one day to another. I think it made retailers realize two things: For one, they need to do something different now. And two: they need to realize that digitalization is the only way to go. If COVID-19 restrictions go into effect again, retailers would still have access to users on the Zliide online platform with the ability to purchase something from their store. Even though stores would be physically closed, retailers could still ship out from the stores through this massive footprint.

In five years, we'll see a lot changing in the industry, and the ones who don't keep up with technological advancements will be the losing companies, no doubt about it.

Find out more about how our BGM22 Series here.  

We recently had the opportunity to speak with two authors using new and unconventional animal tracking research: biologist Simon Ripperger of the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University and engineer Niklas Duda of the Institute for Electronics Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) in Germany. The talented duo’s animal tracking research went viral in October when one of their new studies confirmed that vampire bats in the wild socially distance themselves when sick.

The social distancing study was one of several consecutive case studies published since 2019, detailing the first-of-its-kind wireless biologging network they designed to track and study wild bats. The new biologging technology allows for simultaneous direct proximity sensing, high-resolution tracking, and long-range remote data download – all of which enabled their team to collect never-before-available data and observations on bats in the wild. The wireless sensor network has not only resulted in riveting findings about the social nature of bats, it has also opened the door to a new realm of scientific knowledge concerning the spread of infectious diseases, wildlife resources, foraging strategies, and physiology. The two brilliant scientists explain how their research came about and how new technology is enabling scientists and animal conservation experts to break boundaries in animal biologging.

Tell us how you all started working together and give us some background on your bat studies.

Simon: I’ve been involved with this project since the end of 2013 and was inspired by my advisor, who is also a bat biologist. He used to go to Greece for field work all the time, but their method of tracking and biologging bats was a bit unbelievable – he was essentially running behind bats, chasing them with an antenna. We knew there had to be a better way to do this, and the university had a long history of cooperation between computer scientists, engineers, and biologists. They decided to create a big, collaborative project on wireless sensor networks using a fully automated tracking system for bats.

Bats are a great species to start with because they’re elusive –it’s hard to observe them, and they're nocturnal and tiny. If your project can succeed with bats, it can probably work with most species. This was the motivation for the research unit, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

Can you tell us more about the wireless sensor network and how it gathers information?

Simon: I would say it is the most sophisticated sensor network for biologging –the degree of automation and data quality is certainly unique because we’ve combined different functionalities. We have high-resolution tracking to allow us to track animals with tags at small scales, and we also do proximity sensing. The tags can be as light as one gram, including housing and battery. If you look at systems for GPS tracking, the remote download function costs several grams because it’s so expensive in terms of energy. This all adds considerable weight to the tags, so it’s amazing to have this 1-gram tag with the option to retrieve data remotely.

For me as a biologist, the most exciting function is the proximity tracking. The tags talk to each other and exchange information, so we can get social networks of an entire group of animals every few seconds—simply mind-blowing if you have been studying social networks in animals—and the data quantity is amazing.

Why did you choose Silicon Labs for your wireless network?

Niklas: We have used Silicon Labs EFR32 SoCs since 2017 in all of our studies. Our tags have proximity logging and localization functions that operate at two different frequency levels. Before using Silicon Labs, we had to use three separate ICs to accommodate these functions. However, the Silicon Labs Flex Gecko integrates transceivers for both frequencies and a microprocessor core in one component. The ability to scale from three components to one makes the PCB smaller and makes it easier to control the radios, resulting in overall improved performance. We also wanted the Silicon Labs Gecko solution for its ultra-low-power functions. When tagging animals, we need our solution to be as small, light, and low power as possible, and Silicon Labs solutions support this need.

Can you tell us more about what you have learned about bats from your studies with the technology?

Simon: The first study we conducted was on noctule bats: European bats that live in city parks. Every few days, the bats switch their roosting site; therefore, we wanted to find out how offspring know where the group’s ever-changing roosting sites are located. Up until now, this has been impossible to track. With our wireless network, we found that mothers actually guide their pups to the new roosting sites; they leave the roost together, fly together, and arrive at the new roost together. This first simple application of our proximity sensing discovered a whole new form of maternal care in bats.

We then moved on to studying vampire bats, the most social species of bats. They have social connections similar to human friendships as they recognize each other, prefer to associate with certain individuals from a group, groom each other, and even share food. This behavior has been studied mainly in captivity because it’s so hard to observe bats in the wild. We were able to use our proximity sensors to see whether these social behaviors are simply an artifact of captivity or whether they held up in the wild. We took bats in captivity that we knew had social relationships with one another and released them back to the wild after two years. We could track associations between all the bats in their natural habitat and show that these social relationships were maintained in the wild, even with new bats to interact with and in a totally different setting. It showed for the first time that these relationships are very stable and persist in the wild. There would be no way to observe these behaviors without this technology.

One of your studies was widely covered by international media this past fall. Can you tell us about what you found?

Simon: We used our wireless network to observe bats' social networks and how they are affected when a bat is sick. We gave half the group an immune-challenging substance—a substance that doesn’t actually make them sick but makes the immune system react. With our high-resolution data, we could observe what happens to the network when the bats get sick. We found that their social encounters decreased –what we call social distancing –and after this period of sickness, the level of interaction with the “sick” bats went back to normal. Essentially, we found they manage to distance themselves from the group when they feel sick.

What are your future plans for studies?

Niklas: We’re spinning out a company, Dulog, to sell this technology to use with other animals. The technology is in development with several pilot customers and should be commercially available later this year.

Simon: The applications have no end – from preventing the spread of infectious diseases to studying information flow among social animals on food resources and even mating behavior—the sky is the limit! Why do social animals behave the way they do? With our technology, you can now observe their natural behaviors without interfering, but you can also use it to see how animals react to experimental approaches in the wild.

Where do you see the IoT going in the next 5-8 years?

Niklas: As IoT develops, sensors are getting smaller, which really benefits the scientific community – we reap the benefits of IoT that the larger commercial markets drive.

Simon: For biology, leaps forward have always been inspired by technology. Animal tracking has been around for 50 or 60 years, but advancements in IoT have allowed these recent developments to create a true renaissance in biologging and animal tracking. You can use benefits from ultra-low-power computing in various aspects of biology studies, and we not only get better data, but we can get it for a much wider range of animal species.

For more information on our EFR32 technology, visit https://www.silabs.com/products/wireless/technology.

Home security device manufacturers in the UK are required to adhere to a complicated set of British and European standards before their products can hit the market, which typically requires professional installation. A consequence of this relatively high barrier to entry is that most of the available alarm solutions are professional grade and, due to these regulations, must be segregated from other smart home assistance. Scotland-based Boundary is working on bridging this gap with a state-of-the-art alarm system that consumers can install themselves and monitor through their smartphones. We recently sat down with Boundary co-founder, Paul Walton to learn more.

Tell Us About Boundary.

Boundary was founded in 2018 after a successful Kickstarter campaign, producing a smart intruder alarm system for the UK market based on Z-Wave technology. Our co-founder, Robin Knox, had the idea when he was on his honeymoon and realized the limitations of his existing alarm system meant that if his home was broken into, he would be unable to actually do anything other than watch the events unfold on a CCTV camera. Immediately upon his return, he set out to find a reasonably priced self-install security system but had little success. This gap in the market for DIY home security was the catalyst to build something that looked great, was user-friendly, and provided better features at a reasonable price point.

Internally, our company’s goal was to develop a great mobile app that provided a much more intuitive and enjoyable user experience. With a focus on the user journey and hardware design, we are anticipating launching our first product, a smart IoT alarm system, this month. This system consists of four components: the central hub (which is the Z-Wave gateway), a motion sensor, a contact sensor, and an external siren, all of which connect to the central hub advisory.

One thing that sets Boundary apart from our competitors is its EN50131 European Standard for Intruder Alarm Systems compliance certification. Achieving this level of certification requires some pretty tough validation, dropping the hub from two meters and making sure that it's still operational, for instance. The rigorous design detail has made us the first manufacturer of a Z-Wave 700 device that is currently undergoing this certification, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year.

Why Did You Choose Silicon Labs Z-Wave Solutions for Your Products?

When it came to selection criteria, we had many requirements that needed to be met. Some were driven by the standards and some were simply a matter of the target data transmission rates the team wanted to meet. Developing a product that did not require complicated setup and provided the range required to cover a medium-to-large sized house was also important, as was maintaining connection for all devices on the network. Z-Wave emerged as the standard that could meet these challenges. Set-up is incredibly simple, requiring the customer to simply scan a QR code to pair the device.  

The result is an alarm that is easy to use and exceeds the highest regulatory standards. Our product features a motion sensor with always-on detection that can be used for home automation routines like powering down smart lighting and regulating heating when a room is not in use. With a door/window sensor, any unauthorized entry will immediately set off the alarm. Users can also see the status of a window or door from the app at any time.

Looking Forward, Where Do You See the Smart Home Security Market Heading?

We believe that within the next five years, we’ll see a bit of a shift in the home security market towards proactive security. For Boundary, our focus is on bringing another product to market, one that utilizes machine vision, and to expand into Europe.

For more information on how Boundary used Silicon Labs Z-Wave solutions to deliver professional-grade security to smart homes, check out our case study and learn more about smart home offerings.  If you’d like to leverage the benefits of Z-Wave technology for your smart home applications, we’d love to hear from you. 

We recently had the chance to speak with Kevin Kim, Vice President of Rainus America, a South Korean-based company focused on elevating the retail experience using digital technology. The company’s smart retail solutions allow retailers to update their prices in real time, maximizing retailers’ efficiency and simplifying customers’ shopping experiences with personalized and convenient digital solutions. Customers can also engage with Rainus’ touch display technology in-store. In the interview below, Kevin shares insight on the company’s products and where he anticipates growth for Rainus and the industry in the coming years.

How long has Rainus been on the market?

Rainus was founded in Seong-Nam, South Korea in 2014. We are one of the fastest-growing companies in the world, specializing in electronic shelf label (ESL) technology. Seong-Nam is about five miles south of Seoul, in an area referred to as the “Silicon Valley of Korea.” We set up our first international office in Switzerland, Europe, in 2015 and opened the second one in Tokyo, Japan due to our international business growth. The third one will be in the United States and will open in October of 2020.

Tell us about your products

One of our primary products is InforTab, which is our e-paper display product line. InforTab is a full graphic label based on customized wireless technology and brings huge benefits to retailers such as price automation, store efficiency, accurate pricing, operation cost savings, and additional functions like dynamic pricing. Another product line of ours is called InforTab+ & InforTab+ Touch, a bar-type display suitable for the digital shelf. InforTab+ & InforTab+ Touch can take today's retail store to the next level. This technology can deliver not only price information, but also advertisements via diverse multimedia formats and has a touch display functionality, enabling interaction with shoppers for more customer engagement. InforTab+ & InforTab+ Touch will eventually function as the real-time interaction between the customer and retailer via touch, visuals, and voice, and we have a clear roadmap for making this happen.

We offer a single platform that connects all our product lines. InforTab, InforTab+, and InforTab+ Touch are IoT devices and work with our access points for data transmission. Information to be displayed is fed to the InforTab platform from the customer's legacy system, then transmitted to the Rainus devices whenever necessary. Our network system is very secure, accurate, and robust, ensuring fast data transmission and the widest coverage possible for big organizations.

Most of our customers are grocery retailers, though we are seeing growing demand across other sectors, such as drug stores, health and beauty, and consumer electronics. The common issue retailers are currently encountering is a store inefficiency. Price changes for all products in a store take at least a couple of days with a conventional method.  Also, a price mismatch between the Point of Sale system and a paper label is another pain-point for retailers. With InforTab, prices of products can be automatically changed in real-time, which brings operational excellency to stores. The ESL providers are trying to improve it’s the technology’s accuracy and robustness. At Rainus, our core technology uses a concentric network system with a minimum infrastructure cost and a maximum number of ESLs, providing the highest level of accuracy and robustness within the industry.

How do your products differ from others on the market?

We take a lot of pride in the high performance of InforTab's advanced architecture. This capability sets us apart from others in the market. Recent benchmarks with potential customers in Japan continue to prove our leadership in performance. For example, after several rounds of an intense performance test, a leading electronics retailer selected us as a sole ESL provider, where we then successfully deployed 200,000 ESLs in a single store, which is record-breaking in our industry. At this time, no other company can support this many ESLs with the lowest server specification.

From a shopper's perspective, they can see the right price and information at the right time. Near Field Communications (NFC) embedded InforTab gives an enhanced customer experience by allowing them to use their mobile phones. Tapping phones on InforTab can link shoppers to product details or reviews on their own phones.

Why did you decide to use Silicon Labs?

Silicon Labs has cutting-edge technology and is known as a leader within the industry. We are currently using the Silicon Labs FG22 Series 2 Wireless 2.4 GHz SoC. We are very happy with the performance capabilities of the wireless solution and the excellent Silicon Labs technical support we have received throughout our product design life cycle.

How do you see your company evolving in the next 5 years?

Our company initially started out focused on ESL, and there is no question our ESL solution is our primary business. As demands grow in other sectors along with retail, we expect to see more opportunities to integrate smart retail technologies. We have a lot of R&D and partnership activities underway as we see the growth potential for a transition to a broader IoT business. Many people are talking about digital transformation, yet we are seeing huge changes in retail right now. Smart retail technology will play a much greater role in people’s shopping experiences in the future. Many consumers and businesses have yet to imagine the new conveniences and operational gains to be experienced by digitalization. Rainus is excited to be involved in such a rapidly changing industry and we see smart retail technologies evolving into all types of retail environments in the future.

To learn more about how our FG22 Series 2 SoC optimizes retail ESL technology, check out our Rainus case study.

Last month, we had the chance to speak with our customer Christine Horton, VP of Global Marketing for Nonin Medical, a global medical monitoring solutions company that has been leading the way in pulse oximetry technology for the past 30 years. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Nonin has been on an overdrive to meet the surge in demand to design, build and ship personal hundreds of thousands of fingertip pulse oximeters to healthcare facilities and homes to help people better determine virus exposure before debilitating symptoms set in. These small, Bluetooth-based non-invasive oximetry devices can detect decreases in blood oxygen levels, which is one of the first signs that a person has been infected with COVID-19. Christine shares background on the company’s overall mission and insights behind how the valuable medical technology works.

Tell us about Nonin.

Nonin was founded in 1986 by Phil Isaacson, our current Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, with three other engineers. Phil was the visionary and driving force behind the operation, and he continues to be dedicated to our innovation efforts. While Phil was not the inventor of pulse oximetry, he was the first person to envision using a person’s finger without wires as a way to determine oxygen levels. His foresight led Nonin to launch the world’s first fingertip pulse oximeter in 1995.

Creating a non-invasive oximeter device was the goal at the time, and non-invasive devices are still our focus today. The word “Nonin” is actually short for “non-invasive.” Today we are a global company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, often referred to as “medical alley.” Minneapolis is a center of excellence for medical innovation and technology advances, so it’s an ideal location for us to evolve our medical innovations.

Our mission is to improve the quality of people’s lives throughout the world. We want our highly reliable, accurate, and high-quality devices to be empowered by individuals and healthcare providers to help them make better medical decisions.

Why was the product created?

We developed the technology for the same reason it is so critically important today – to help save lives by enabling pulse oximetry outside of the hospital. The pulse-ox measurement is an early indicator in detecting COVID-19, even before high temperature, of raising a red flag if a person’s oxygen saturation has fallen below healthy levels. Taking this measurement every morning can provide a good baseline while you’re healthy. If you start to see changes, you can address the condition, or potential condition, sooner. We seek to empower self-care in the home, which can allow for earlier detection and may improve the chance for a better outcome.

While Nonin had products before 1995, launching the small fingertip oximeter was a game-changer for healthcare and personal health. Even though we really didn’t talk much about personal health in 1995, there were pockets of people who were paying attention to their pulse-ox levels. Now it is more mainstream, and our current connected devices are evolving rapidly. It also goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has also put pulse oximeters in the spotlight as an easy to use but potentially life-saving tool.

When we talk about personal health, or population health, we talk about a connected product, which is our consumer pulse oximeter fingertip device. Our 3230 Bluetooth Low Energy oximeter allows information to be shared so that you, your physicians, or other people you want to enable can see it. Data can be sent and received from the comfort of your own home, which is such a convenience and helps to free up space in hospitals and healthcare centers. For many patients and family members, it provides tremendous peace of mind.

How does your oximeter device work?

We use a technology called PureSAT®, one of our largest differentiators for quality, accuracy, and reliability. There are a lot of things that can influence a fingertip reading, such as movement and low perfusion in the patient. PureSAT has advanced algorithms that filter out artifacts and interference to provide a true, accurate measurement using infrared light and photodetectors to measure the amount of light getting through the fingertip to calculate the oxygen saturation of a person’s blood.

Accurate readings take just seconds. If the green quality indicator light is on while applying the device to finger, the user knows an accurate and correct measurement is being taken. Our product is FDA-cleared, and this an important distinction to ensure the safety and efficacy of the product.

What are your future plans for the product?

We support the push and pivot to telemedicine. Healthcare is rapidly taking place outside the clinic and hospital settings.  Healthcare is happening right where people are at the time they want care. We have a team focused on our connected devices, and we see the market growing rapidly and continuing at a strong and sustained growth rate. For Nonin, this means we’ve increased our capacity for production two-fold to keep up with COVID demand. For the long-term, innovation in the personal health sector is focusing increasingly on home self-care – essentially telemedicine – becoming more mainstream. The rise of telemedicine ensures the continued need for device connectivity to the cloud is crucial for all of our future products.

Why did you choose Silicon Labs?

We use Silicon Labs’ chipsets for the majority of our Bluetooth-enabled products. For the 3230 oximeter product, we use the Bluegiga Legacy Model Bluetooth Low Energy Module.  The Silicon Labs module enables us to get our products to market more quickly because they are easily integrated with a pre-certified Bluetooth radio that covers many geographical markets for us. The power-efficiency of the Silicon Labs module is also a very important feature for healthcare solutions like ours.

How has the pandemic changed the demand for your product?

In a word, yes. In fact, we have doubled production from March to June to try and keep up with the demand. We are still - like much of the medical essential and critical suppliers and medical devices - trying to make sure we keep up with the global needs of the healthcare systems. Fortunately, we were able to ramp additional production effectively and hired more staff in a very short amount of time.

From nearly the outset of the pandemic, it became clear that pulse oximeters could provide critical early insight to people before more serious COVID-19 symptoms presented. Patients will come into the ER, and maybe they don’t feel well, or they are a little short of breath, but they will be talking. One of the first signs of being in respiratory distress is having a hard time talking because you have to breathe well to hold a conversation. These patients will be breathing just fine, and two hours later, they will be on a ventilator. We’ve heard a lot of cases about the rapid progression of going from “hey, I can talk, and I kind of feel sick” to “my pulse-ox is now in the 80s or below.” This signifies something very dangerous for a patient. If a patient can see that their oxygen levels are decreasing before symptoms get to that life-threatening point, they may be more likely to get the care they need early on and avoid a potentially life-threatening onset of symptoms.

Right now, we are constantly evaluating what changes are temporary, semi-permanent, and permanent within the healthcare industry. We are closely looking at a variety of indicators, such as medical device access, hospital partnerships, and supply chains every day. Day to day, minute by minute, the pandemic has been a learning lesson for the world.

In addition to ramping production, what other steps have you taken during this uncertain time in our world?

As a medical device organization, we are squarely focused on mitigating risk within our supply chain to ensure we can continue supplying as many devices as possible.

We are a for-profit company, but we made the decision early on during the pandemic that we would not increase pricing, despite the escalating demand for the product.

Where do you see medical IoT going in the next 5-8 years?

I’ve been in the medical device field for 28 years, and this is the biggest and most rapid shift I’ve ever seen. The transformation is definitely driven by connected devices, personal health, and telemedicine. We were already moving in that direction, but because of COVID-19, telemedicine is now a proven concept that millions of people have come to trust and rely on. We anticipate telemedicine to remain at the 90% growth rate we see today.

Connectivity in medical devices is no longer a nice to have, and it has rapidly become a requirement. The Internet of Medical Things will become the norm in healthcare because it delivers so much value for a patient’s continuum of care. Medical IoT devices enable doctors and other healthcare professionals to track and treat a patient throughout the entirety of their life.

The data derived from medical IoT is also extremely valuable for healthcare economics and health insurance payers. If you have a finite amount of money, how can you best use the funds to care for the maximum number of people in the highest quality way? For example, if a doctor knows that you are not in crisis and can see from your pulse-ox level that the medication or therapy administered at home is working, you do not need to come into the emergency room. This frees up healthcare workers to give people care who really do need it, which ultimately benefits everyone.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Daniel Russi Netto, Co-founder and Commercial Director, and Airton Hess Jr., Co-founder and R&D Director of  SmartGreen, a Brazilian IoT company focused on sustainable smart lighting and smart metering automation solutions. Headquartered near Sao Paulo, SmartGreen works closely with cities and utilities to build end-to-end IoT integrated solutions, such as the 200,000 smart street lights the company is planning to deploy in Brazil by 2022. While the majority of SmartGreen’s customers are currently located in Brazil, Daniel and Airton share their valuable insights on the growth drivers their company is seeing in municipal lighting and where they see the potential for smart cities in the future.

Tell us about SmartGreen, how did it get its start?

The company was founded in 2012 after merging with another company called Radio Telecom. Today we have 35 employees. From the beginning, our goal has been to offer an integrated IoT solution to customers that encompasses hardware, communications, gateways, the processing layer, and the software and apps needed to manage a device.

Who is your competition?

We have two kinds of competitors. We have local start-ups, but their technology is not as mature as our solutions, and they cannot scale to the level of devices that SmartGreen can handle. We also run into international competitors from time to time, but these companies tend to have challenges entering the Brazilian market due to local pricing and technological barriers.

What sets SmartGreen apart from other companies with similar offerings?

We can operate more devices in our mesh network using Zigbee 2.4GHz than the competition and remain competitive on price. We also have close relationships with our customers. Most of our lighting customers have limited technology expertise. Therefore, they depend on us heavily because of our technical expertise, and this dynamic helps us establish strong customer relationships.

What is driving the demand for lighting projects?

We see some of the demands driven by regulatory issues. However, we also see a lot of the demands coming from city managers who are interested in automating city infrastructure to improve overall operations of their city, and municipal lighting is a good place to start. City managers value the energy savings and the reduced workload for fuel operations teams.  

Tell us about your commercial lighting product.

Our primary smart light product is the SGIP7, which replaces the photocell and gives the luminary the intelligence it needs to be automated. We sell the hardware, gateway, and endpoint for street light projects and offer SaaS packages, including software licenses, upgrades, cloud capabilities, and ongoing technical support. Our network communications standards are high, but even if the network goes down for some reason, our devices can continue to work and communicate with other sensors and devices. The Zigbee mesh network, combined with Silicon Labs’ wireless technology, enables the sensors and devices to communicate with each other without the gateway.

What about your smart metering solutions?

For smart metering, we sell two different kinds of endpoints to utilities – network interface cards and smart meter modules. We have two types of modules for residential usage, including external modules that connect to standard meters and modules for smart meters. Our smart meter modules remotely read energy consumption for utilities, which reduces the need for utility workers to be dispatched to residential homes for readings and turning on/off electricity connections.  

How is business right now for lighting and metering applications?

We see significant growth in our smart lighting business, while smart metering projects move more slowly. Utilities have a more complex decision-making process, and they are still waiting for a wireless standard for smart metering to emerge, so between that dynamic and this space being fairly regulated, projects can be delayed and/or slow to start. Yet, smart lighting purchasers are not concerned with technology standards but are focused on performance and cost benefits instead. Of course, they want the technology to be certified, but smart lighting is not regulated like smart metering, so we see a lot more activity and growth.

Why did you decide to use Silicon Labs?

We use Silicon Labs’ first-generation Zigbee module after coming across this Bluetooth chip when we acquired Telegesis. We recently decided to upgrade our IC modules and tested several other competing devices, and Silicon Labs performed the best. Therefore we plan to upgrade to the MGM13P Mighty Gecko Zigbee Module in the near future. Silicon Labs solutions have always worked very well for us.

Zigbee modules continue to be our preferred protocol for our products. We have tested quite a few different protocols in the past but ran into performance and cost issues. The Zigbee protocol and architecture, along with Silicon Labs’ Bluetooth mesh module, works exceptionally well for street lighting applications because of its reliable high performance, low power, and built-in security capabilities.

Where do you see IoT going in the next 5-8 years?

We are excited about our energy management applications in the enterprise market and see a great deal of potential in the future. Because our technology platform is already built into many Brazilian city infrastructures and the contracts are long-term (lasting anywhere from 20-30 years), we see a major opportunity to evolve into a multi-service network for cities. Our municipal customers want to explore other automated services on our platform, such as using environmental, traffic, and utility sensors to help them operate their cities more sustainably and efficiently. Silicon Labs’ Mighty Module solution is helping SmartGreen make this extension of our customer offering possible because of its cost-effective performance abilities.