INDUSTRIAL IOT
Omnispace | March 10, 2022
Omnispace, the company reinventing mobile communications, today announced an agreement with Lacuna Space to collaborate on the distribution of a ground-breaking internet of things (IoT) service.
The collaboration will enable the commercial launch of a first-of-its-kind, global, open standards-based IoT network. The service will employ the LoRaWAN® protocol to support direct-to-satellite communications for a broad range of IoT devices. The protocol will utilize the LR-FHSS technology -- specifically designed for high-capacity IoT networks -- with on-orbit operation validated by Lacuna through several years of non-geostationary satellite testing and optimization. Leveraging Omnispace's licensed, 2GHz S-band spectrum rights, and integrating Omnispace and Lacuna infrastructure, the service will allow devices to connect seamlessly between existing terrestrial networks and previously un-connected regions around the globe.
"Omnispace is reimagining mobile communications for users by employing standards-based solutions to deliver global, real-time connectivity," said Ram Viswanathan, president and CEO for Omnispace. "We're pleased to be working with Lacuna to introduce this new enterprise-class service, which is part of our broader vision to deliver seamless terrestrial and satellite communications."
We are happy to announce this agreement with Omnispace which accelerates getting our technology to market and enables us to start delivering our IoT services around the globe. Our customers will be able to access Lacuna's IoT service directly from inexpensive, battery-powered LoRa® devices to extend connectivity to even the most remote areas of the world."
Rob Spurrett, CEO of Lacuna
This joint Omnispace and Lacuna effort will begin serving customers and distribution partners in Q3 2022, powering asset tracking, fleet management and data collection across industries globally. The two companies will leverage the LoRaWAN standard that is capable of bridging terrestrial networks with worldwide satellite coverage to offer low power ubiquitous connectivity. The initial set of Lacuna sensors are smaller than the palm of a hand and can connect over satellite for several years off a single battery charge, providing customers with affordable and simplified communications.
About Omnispace, LLC
Headquartered in the Washington D.C. area, and founded by veteran telecommunications and satellite industry executives, Omnispace is redefining mobile connectivity for the 21st century. By leveraging 5G technologies, the company is combining the global footprint of a non-geostationary satellite constellation with the mobile networks of the world's leading telecom companies to bring an interoperable "one network" connectivity to users and IoT devices anywhere on the globe.
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INDUSTRIAL IOT
AWS | April 23, 2022
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today at AWS Summit San Francisco announced the general availability of AWS IoT TwinMaker, a new service that makes it faster and easier for developers to create digital twins of real-world systems like buildings, factories, industrial equipment, and production lines. Digital twins are virtual representations of physical systems that use real-world data to mimic the structure, state, and behavior of the objects they represent and are updated with new data as conditions change. AWS IoT TwinMaker makes it easy for developers to integrate data from multiple sources like equipment sensors, video cameras, and business applications—and combines that data to create a knowledge graph that models the real-world environment. With AWS IoT TwinMaker, many more customers can use digital twins to build applications that mirror real-world systems that improve operational efficiency and reduce downtime. There are no upfront commitments or fees to use AWS IoT TwinMaker, and customers only pay for accessing the data used to build and operate digital twins
Industrial companies collect and process vast troves of data about their equipment and facilities from sources like equipment sensors, video cameras, and business applications (e.g., enterprise resource planning systems or project management systems). Many customers want to combine these data sources to create a virtual representation of their physical systems (called a digital twin) to help them simulate and optimize operational performance. But building and managing digital twins is hard even for the most technically advanced organizations. To build digital twins, customers must manually connect different types of data from diverse sources (e.g., time-series sensor data from equipment, video feeds from cameras, maintenance records from business applications, etc.). Then customers have to create a knowledge graph that provides common access to all the connected data and maps the relationships between the data sources to the physical environment. To complete the digital twin, customers have to build a 3D virtual representation of their physical systems (e.g., buildings, factories, equipment, production lines, etc.) and overlay the real-world data on to the 3D visualization—and then ensure the digital twin is kept up to date as conditions change. Once they have a virtual representation of their real-world systems with real-time data, customers can build applications for plant operators and maintenance engineers who can leverage machine learning and analytics to extract business insights about the real-time operational performance of their physical systems. Because the work required is complex, the vast majority of organizations are unable to use digital twins to improve their operations.
AWS IoT TwinMaker makes it significantly faster and easier to create digital twins of real-world systems. Using AWS IoT TwinMaker, developers can get started quickly building digital twins of devices, equipment, and processes by connecting AWS IoT TwinMaker to data sources like equipment sensors, video feeds, and business applications. AWS IoT TwinMaker contains built-in connectors for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), AWS IoT SiteWise, and Amazon Kinesis Video Streams (or customers can add their own connectors for data sources like Amazon Timestream, Snowflake, and Siemens MindSphere) to make it easy to gather data from a variety of sources. AWS IoT TwinMaker automatically creates a knowledge graph that combines and understands the relationships of the connected data sources, so it can update the digital twin with real-time information from the system being modeled. Customers can import existing 3D models (e.g., CAD and BIM files, point cloud scans, etc.), directly into AWS IoT TwinMaker to easily create 3D visualizations of the physical system and overlay the data from the knowledge graph on to the 3D visualizations to create the digital twin. Once the digital twin has been created, developers can use an AWS IoT TwinMaker plugin for Amazon Managed Grafana to create a web-based application that displays the digital twin on the devices plant operators and maintenance engineers use to monitor and inspect facilities and industrial systems. For example, developers can create a virtual representation of a metals processing plant by associating data from the plant’s equipment sensors with real-time video of the various machines in operation and the maintenance history of those machines. Developers can then set up rules to alert plant operators when anomalies in the plant’s furnace are detected (e.g., temperature threshold has been breached) and display those anomalies on a 3D representation of the plant with real-time video from the furnaces, which can help operators make quick decisions on predictive maintenance before a furnace fails.
“Sensors for equipment, buildings, and industrial processes are proliferating and generating massive amounts of data. Customers are increasingly eager to use that data to optimize their operations and processes and one way to do that is using digital twins, but they find that building a digital twin and custom applications is difficult, time consuming, and prohibitively expensive to maintain today,” said Michael MacKenzie, General Manager, IoT at AWS. “With AWS IoT TwinMaker, customers can now derive previously unavailable insights about their operations that inform real-time improvements to their buildings, factories, industrial equipment, and production lines, and make accurate predictions about system behavior with minimal effort.”
About Amazon Web Services
For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 84 Availability Zones within 26 geographic regions, with announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones and eight more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon.
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INVESTMENT AND BUSINESS
Nordic Capital | May 09, 2022
Nordic Capital, a leading European private equity investor, has signed an agreement to become the majority owner of the German-based Industrial Internet of Things (“IoT”) company ProGlove. ProGlove is a disruptive technology leader for a smarter workforce. In close partnership with ProGlove’s management and founders, Nordic Capital will enable the company to accelerate its future growth plans, further expand its customer base and invest in product development. The financial terms of the transaction will not be disclosed.
ProGlove is a technology leader that has been growing rapidly since its foundation in 2014. With over 250 employees in Munich, Chicago and Belgrade, it serves numerous customers in retail and e-commerce, logistics and warehousing, manufacturing and automotive across more than 30 countries. Among them are renowned global brands such as Mercedes Benz, VW, BMW, DHL, XPO Logistics, GAP and Staples.
The company provides integrated hardware and software solutions that are built around wearable barcode scanners with multiple IoT sensors allowing for hands-free data capture. This combination of German engineering and industry analytics software caters to the growing demand for digitalization across industries. ProGlove’s technology helps improve worker well-being, increase productivity and optimize efficiency.
ProGlove’s market provides excellent opportunities to address increasing logistical complexity, the demand for accelerated digitalization and the need for ergonomic and efficient workflows in the wake of the global labor shortage.
Nordic Capital will actively support ProGlove with its deep understanding of Industrial IoT, its strong network and significant experience from SaaS business models.
Andreas König, CEO of ProGlove says: “This opportunity to work with Nordic Capital is instrumental for ProGlove to help us gain further momentum on our growth path. Building on Nordic Capital’s tremendous expertise in Industrial IoT and SaaS, we will be in a very strong position to achieve our full potential. We are extremely excited about taking our business to the next level, both in terms of growth as well as innovation.”
“The ProGlove team has built an outstanding business with a strong track-record of high-quality growth. ProGlove is a technology leader with strong competitive differentiation and a unique customer value proposition to enable smooth human-machine collaboration. Nordic Capital is looking forward to writing the next chapter together with the company’s strong management team,” says Andreas Näsvik, Partner and Head of Industrial & Business Services, Nordic Capital Advisors.
“I’m delighted to have Nordic Capital on board. Its partnership approach and deep sector expertise will give ProGlove additional firepower to further invest in people and technology. The acquisition by Nordic Capital undoubtedly proves the strength of ProGlove and the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead,” says Thomas Kirchner, co-founder of ProGlove.
ProGlove is a very exciting company and a perfect first investment in the Industrial & Business Services sector for Nordic Capital in the German speaking part of Europe, broadening the sector footprint. Nordic Capital looks forward to working in partnership with the business to further strengthen ProGlove’s great team of engineers and software developers and to continue the exciting trajectory the company is on,
Rainer Lenhard, Partner, Nordic Capital Advisors, Germany.
Nordic Capital has continuously built its business over the past 15 years in the German speaking part of Europe and has become one of the most active investors, with seven companies from its focus sectors in its current portfolio.
With a long history of investing in the Industrial & Business Services sector in the Nordic region, Nordic Capital’s portfolio today includes companies like Sortera, an environmental services company focused on recycling and waste solutions; iLOQ, a provider of self-powered and mobile access management systems; Consilium Safety Group, a producer of safety technologies for the marine, oil and gas, transport and building sectors; and recently listed Cary Group, a leading vehicle glass repair and replacement provider offering sustainable car care solutions.
About ProGlove
ProGlove is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and builds the smallest, lightest, and toughest barcode scanners in the world. ProGlove’s industrial wearables connect the shopfloor worker to the Internet of Things. The wearables combined with ProGlove’s industry analytics software platform promote human-machine collaboration and drive the digitization across the shopfloor. ProGlove’s customers include some of the most iconic global industrial brands, pioneers and innovators in manufacturing and production, logistics and warehousing, retail and e-commerce, and post and parcel.
About Nordic Capital
Nordic Capital is a leading private equity investor with a resolute commitment to creating stronger, sustainable businesses through operational improvement and transformative growth. Nordic Capital focuses on selected regions and sectors where it has deep experience and a long history. Focus sectors are Healthcare, Technology & Payments, Financial Services, and selectively, Industrial & Business Services. Key regions are Europe and globally for Healthcare and Technology & Payments investments. Since inception in 1989, Nordic Capital has invested more than EUR 19 billion in over 120 investments. The most recent entities are Nordic Capital X with EUR 6.1 billion in committed capital and Nordic Capital Evolution with EUR 1.2 billion in committed capital, principally provided by international institutional investors such as pension funds. Nordic Capital Advisors have local offices in Sweden, the UK, the US, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway and South Korea.
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CERTIFICATIONS AND TRAINING
RAKwireless | April 07, 2022
RAKwireless, a pioneer in LPWA end-to-end solutions and IoT technology, has announced the annual Spring Launch Event. Each year, RAK showcases new innovations prepared for the IoT world. This year's slogan is "Empowering the Innovators: Making IoT Your Own."
"We envision these new IoT offerings will empower builders from around the world to think creatively." said Carl Rowan, Technical Documentation Lead at RAKwireless. "Whether starting with a prototype or adding to a final product, the newest launch opens opportunities for IoT enthusiasts and burgeoning engineers to create, tinker and invent more seamlessly. We see the new line as a way to further support our builder community to learn, build and evolve to solve the problems of tomorrow."
Improvements to inspire innovators:
RUI3 – RAK Unified Interface V3 helps streamline and simplify software development, hardware control, and 3rd party library integration. This single, unified platform utilizes some of the most powerful IDEs like Arduino and Visual Studio to support product development.
WisDM – Advanced features are being released to best support efficient fleet management. New functionalities like Network connection management, MultiWAN monitoring, and Firmware over the air have been introduced. Allowing better control over your network infrastructure.
WisGateOS 2 – The firmware that will take our commercial gateways to the next level. With an entirely new look, accommodation of the latest security updates, and exciting new functionalities to come.
A roundup of the newest additions to RAKwireless' portfolio:
WisToolBox – RAK's latest device configuration tool, available in both mobile and desktop versions for easy, user-friendly access to your RAK end devices.
Battery Plus (RAK9155) – A gateway powering solution, incorporating a solar charging system and status monitoring feature that works with WisGate Edge Pro, rendering the gateway perfect for off-grid deployments.
WisBlock – A growing selection of modules for your IoT solutions:
RAK12001 Fingerprint Sensor – Supporting both fingerprint enrollment and matching.
RAK12021 RGB Sensor – Can detect surface color by using red, green, blue, and white light-sensing capabilities.
RAK12025 Gyroscope Sensor – Detecting rotational movements in X, Y, and Z directions.
RAK12028/RAK12031 Through Beam Fork Sensor - Light-based sensor to measure motor speed.
RAK12029 Inductive Sensor – Module that can detect the proximity of metal objects.
RAK13009 QWIIC Interface – Used to connect SparkFun QWIIC and Adafruit STEMMA QT breakout boards without occupying the IO slot.
RAK13800 Ethernet Interface – Adding wired Ethernet communication to the WisBlock platform.
RAK14007/RAK14013 Joystick Interface – By combining a joystick and buttons, this module is a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) suitable for many solutions.
RAK14008 Gesture Sensor – Gesture recognition sensor can detect 9 human hand gestures.
RAK14012 RGB LED Matrix - Intuitive light matrix that can be used to build visual panels that can provide information, warnings, or even a digital clock.
RAK19001 Dual IO Base Board – With 2 IO slots for large modules and 6 sensor slots for sensors, GNSS modules, and similar, this baseboard allows for more complex applications than before.
RAK19007 Base Board 2nd Gen – The 2nd generation of the WisBlock Base Board RAK5005-O but with several improvements.
WisDuo
RAK3172-SiP – Low-Power Long Range Transceiver System-in-a-Package (SiP) based on a STM32WLE5CC chip
RAK4630 Stamp Module – The module introduces an AT command interface for setup of LoRa/LoRaWAN credentials and supports custom firmware development with RUI3.
RAK3272-SiP Breakout Board – It makes it easy to evaluate the power of the RAK3172-SiP module by giving access to all pins.
About RAKwireless
RAKwireless is a multinational technology company established in June 2014, headquartered in Shenzhen. RAK is changing the IoT landscape by eliminating design complexity and accelerating time-to-market for underserved and emerging markets, including open-source and industrial communities. Creating easy-to-deploy solutions and modular IoT products, RAKwireless is working to grow a community of system integrators, IoT solution providers, and tech enthusiasts who are passionate about taking IoT solutions further than ever before.
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