Difficulty: expert

Connectivity

In general, the Connectivity​ for the Workplace Hardware can be described as: sensors send data to a platform/data cloud, and Workplace picks up the data from that platform and stores it in the Spacewell Smart Building Platform on Google Cloud.

Workplace Hardware can be split in 2 large groups:

• Hardware in Spacewell Catalogue (more information below):

  • LoRa devices send their data through a LoRa gateway to the LoRa Sensor Cloud, which is managed by Spacewell. The data is forwarded to the Spacewell Smart Building Platform on Google Cloud.

  • Proprietary sensors send their data through the 3rd party platform to the Spacewell Smart Building Platform on Google Cloud.

• Hardware already available on-site:

  • Sensors already present on-site send their data to a platform or database. External Data Sources is a way to get this data from that 3rd party platform into Spacewell Smart Building Platform via a webhook. The connectivity type of the devices depends on the vendor.

LoRa devices

All hardware that is distributed by Spacewell and which uses the LoRa protocol, is listed here: LoRa Sensors and Gateways

What is the impact of the LoRa technology on existing wireless infrastructure in the office?

LoRa is designed to provide low-power, low-data rate communications between sensors, gateways, and the cloud.

Some IoT professionals have concerns when it comes to LoRa and Wi-Fi interference with each other. However, this is an issue of little relevance because both have different operating frequency bands and design objectives. As a result, they do not interfere with each other. The frequency band used by LoRa (433MHz to 915MHz) is typically much lower than the frequency bands used by Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). This means that there is little overlap between the two technologies, which reduces the likelihood of interference. Additionally, the different design objectives of LoRa and Wi-Fi (long-range coverage vs. high-speed data transfer) ensure that they are not competing for the same resources, which further reduces the likelihood of interference.

For more information, see Building IoT: Does LoRa Interfere With Wi-Fi?

Depending on the chosen LoRa gateway for your project, and on the mode, it is required to have some ports opened on the network. For example a gateway that uses 4G does not have any Network requirements, since it will effectively go around your internal network.

Find more details about which ports to open in the chapter “Hardware & Network Requirements” for each gateway under LoRa Gateways, Hubs installation guides.

Proprietary devices

All Spacewell hardware that is considered proprietary (connecting to a 3rd party platform):

• Pointgrab (no gateway)

• VergeSense(gateway)

  • What is the impact of the VergeSense sensor technology on existing wireless infrastructure in the office? This has been tested in a coexistence analysis.

• Airthings (gateway)

  • What is the impact of the Airthings sensor technology on existing wireless infrastructure in the office? VergeSense sensors in a building with other WiFi devices has zero impact to the users or the other devices.

Find more details about which ports to open in the chapter “Hardware & Network Requirements” in the links above​.

Data Transmission

All hardware that is distributed by Spacewell has its own heartbeat frequency or sends an acknowledgement in regular intervals, which allows to monitor the health of the device. More information is available on How to monitor Sensor Health.

When we look at the space sensors, we can identify different ways of data transmission:

• some sensors transmit a data change to the Workplace Cloud when triggered (e.g. Motion sensor, that only sends “presence detected” data; compared to Bosch Parking Sensor, which sends both “presence detected” data and “vacancy detected” data)

• some sensors send data in regular intervals (see Pointgrab, which sends data every minute), independent of any value change.

The comfort sensors transmit data packages every 5 minutes (see Airthings and Milesight CO2 Sensor ).

Privacy

Workplace doesn’t collect any personal information, especially where an open office policy is in place. However, if this solution is used in other settings, it could indirectly collect personal information (for example, if each employee has his/her own workspace).

Also, be aware that, if this data is combined with other data sources (such as badging system) or is used by other services (such as Office 365), the privacy concerns need to be evaluated.

The sensor data that is available in the Workplace touch points GO, Workplace App etc is also the sensor data that is available and stored in the back-end.

For example for headcount sensors: they use image processing to calculate the number of people in a location, and then only transmit the analytics data to the cloud management system. The only information available in Workplace (and in the sensor platforms) is the number of people detected with the relevant timestamp, as visualized in the screenshot below.

Open

The only information available in Workplace (and in the sensor platforms) is the number of people detected.

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