1000+ node Hygiene Monitoring Network
The Situation:
Our customer sells dispensers of hand cleansing products for use in institutional settings such as hospitals and food preparation establishments. Their customers have established hand sanitization policies but needed a way to verify whether their staff was operating in compliance with those policies. Low incremental cost to the dispenser product and maintenance-free operation over several years were essential for success.
Our Approach:
Venture worked with the client to understand the technical and business needs of the product. Using RFOS breadboards, we quickly prototyped and field-tested a system to answer some key technical questions that allowed us to finalize a system specification. The solution involved 
augmenting existing dispenser products with battery (coin cell) powered transceivers which monitor the dispenser and the staff’s RFID tag which in turn communicate with a mesh radio network to relay dispense events to a central server. The mesh network is self-configuring and self-healing as nodes or entire new branches are added to or removed from the system. The system operates at both 433MHz and 900MHz unlicensed ISM bands. Back-end communication can use either an available wired or WiFi network connection, or it can operate free of the IT infrastructure by connecting to a cellular wireless data network.
The Result:
With a pilot installation of over one thousand nodes and battery life well in excess of five years, the product has exceeded all of its objectives and has provided our customer with a platform that can be expanded to provide their customers with additional functionality and services over the same hardware infrastructure. Wireless connectivity throughout the system minimizes the cost of installation.
