21-02-2020 | Nordic | Subs & Systems
Nordic Semiconductor has announced that Signetik is employing the Nordic multi-mode LTE-M/NB-IoT with GPS Nordic nRF9160 SiP at the heart of its newly launched SigCell pre-certified, battery-powered cellular IoT-based module platform.
SigCell is created to eliminate both the delay in time-to-market and commercial risk of producing a sensor-to-cloud IoT solution with both basic and big data AI analysis and machine learning abilities. Signetik says the platform provides a wide range of environmental sensing and imaging processing abilities that comprise (but are not limited to) humidity, temperature, movement, sound, gun shot, light, rain, and visual tracking. Typical battery-life is rated at 2-5 years in most applications depending on duty cycle.
"Our cellular IoT platform is all about getting environmental sensing applications into production fast," comments Signetik's president, Steve Poulsen. "And in a manufacturing environment, for example, this might include interfacing to older, PLC-based legacy equipment to make it IoT-enabled. Or in agriculture, it might include rain detection to avoid over-watering of crops, allied with taking still photos and using basic AI to spot any abnormalities in appearance or growth."
Although The Signetik IoT platform comprises an ecosystem of add-on boards with sensors for various applications, Poulsen stresses: "And if we as a company don't yet have an add-on board for what you want to sense, give us a month or two and we'll develop one for you."
"AI and the IoT go hand-in-hand because the IoT generates too much data for a human to reliably and quickly analyse," continues Poulsen. "At present we estimate around 20% of our customers use AI in their IoT applications, and based on current trends we see this rising to 50% within the next few years.
