EDMS Competitive Advantages

EDMS Based Environmental Monitoring – Competitive Advantages

Willabay Design has reviewed many competitive solutions that support temperature and humidity monitoring.  Most of these solutions involve products that are meant to be used in one place; typically in one residence as far as home monitoring is concerned. For applications such as temperature monitoring in specific areas of a business, such as freezers or wine storage areas, the products often involve complicated and expensive software packages or subscriptions to a monitoring service.

Today’s home security market has many products that have been introduced recently that may operate in a manner similar to our EDMS/EDA arrangement. However, these products are packaged as a complete hardware/software offering. If the hardware fails in 2 years, some of these vendors are not going to be around. We only work with hardware vendors who retain their product line. We also do not expect to be continually updating our product in such a way that users have to continually keep on top of software updates. EDMS customers will be able to re-use their EDA application in a newer box without paying a new license fee,

Our EDMS system is specifically aimed at those customer applications where multiple sensors need to be deployed over a distributed area but the user does not have the resources to pay for the server side of this arrangement.  Please check our EDMS Applications page for examples of how this system can be utilized.

Our choice of hardware platforms also allows users to be able to purchase equipment that they can use for a long time; without fear of the products being discontinued. This is why we have chosen Tibbo Technologies devices to support our software application that we call an Environmental Data Agent (EDA). Our exclusive vendor for the actual environmental data collection, Embedded Data Systems (EDS) also has a long history of product support.

Specific EDMS features which are not normally found in other systems

Some of the key features that are designed into our EDMS product are listed below.

Support for a large number of sensors using off-the shelf, proven hardware products.

Our current products support up to 16 Temperature or Temperature/Humidity sensors using a single set of controllers ( EDS Meshnet Controller and Tibbo Controller). This assumes a customer is using Tibbo’s newer processor technology in a Generation 2 TPP2L.

A longer range Sensor is now available from EDS and is fully supported in our current release. This is the ENV-THX sensor (EDS2040). This new sensor also is capable of supporting 3 additional wired sensor probes, right off of the wireless device itself.

The EDMS system also supports very large configurations made up of multiple host sites but is treated as one system for management purposes. An EDMS system with only 7 host sites can support over 100 sensors, depending on wireless range and other factors.

The EDMS system utilizes products from EDS and Tibbo. Both companies have been in business for years and continue to offer newer and lower cost products. Extensive online documentation is readily available for all of the EDS and Tibbo products via their company websites.

Free access to a Remote Portal Database environment that is simple to use prior to and after the equipment installation is complete.

At the present time, the EDMS has no required service accounts or even login and password access procedures on the Remote Portal.

All configuration and sensor identification is done on site when the product is first installed. This also avoids the need for online registration accounts. After installation, customers can update certain key portions of their EDA configuration remotely via our server.

The EDMS system supports secure EDA access and network password protection to prevent unauthorized use of the host equipment. This also protects the against unauthorized addition of a foreign EDA to your customer account .

Support for sensors that have the capability of adding  IO inputs to an existing system.

Every EDS sensor has an available terminal that can be used for an  add-on closed contact sensor such as a water detector. The state of this external alert sensor is reported to a customer’s Remote Portal along with the state of the sensor’s battery. Other uses could be motion sensors or alarm output monitoring.

The new EDS ENV-THX (2040) sensor supports up to three external 1-wire inputs for additonal temperature sensors. This means that for certain applications, one EDA can support up to 48 wired sensor probes at a time.

IMPORTANT NOTE

Please note that Willabay Design has only created the Tibbo based EDA software and the Remote Portal environment for the EDMS application.  The EDA product and the free utilization of the remote portal access does not have any warranties or guarantees. Willabay Design does not offer or support the hardware that is used in this system. See the EDMS Product Page for more detail.