Using the IoT for fill-level monitoring and mobile container positioning

Pepperl+Fuchs offers an IoT sensor with integrated ultrasonic measurement for ascertaining fill levels. The data is recorded at frequent intervals and uploaded to the internet together with the current geolocation. The autonomous wireless sensor is battery-operated and can, therefore, be employed in mobile containers.

With the Wilsen.sonic.level, the company has developed a sensor concept that is ideal for use in a mixture of different wireless networks. Another version of the product has a LoRaWAN interface for utilising privately operated low power wireless networks. All of these radio interfaces are employed to transmit sensor data to the internet. Depending on the wireless standard chosen, an appropriate remote location is accessible on the internet for the incoming sensor data. When utilising the public GSM mobile wireless standard, the Wilsen.service middleware acts as a secure remote location for receiving and forwarding the telemetry data from the device. The system concept of the Wilsen.service not only manages the decoding and the targeted forwarding of the sensor data, but also provides secure and convenient device management. This is especially advantageous if a large number of IoT sensors are employed in later practical operation and if logging into the wireless network and selecting the right users needs to be as automated as possible. Furthermore, Wilsen device management enables automated application parameterisation of IoT sensors and a structured roll-out for software updates to assure that even large numbers of IoT sensors in the field are kept up to date. The WILSEN concept presents a modular IoT system to which individual components including sensor modules, middleware, network nodes, and data processing can be added.