MAC Solutions targets "˜smart city' applications

WoMaster designs and manufactures high-quality industrial IIoT hardware for critical applications such as rail, power and utilities, intelligent transportation and smart city surveillance. From networking devices to all-in-one communications systems, the company provides customer-oriented, robust, reliable products with high levels of cybersecurity protection.

WoMaster Group is joint ventured by global listed industrial companies. MAC Solutions has made a strategic investment by purchasing shares in the parent company, WOM ASIA CO., LTD.

According to research firm Gartner, in the near future, there will be thirty billion new smart objects within smart cities worldwide, which will unlock innovative digital business opportunities and revolutionise application design, development and operations. Civic resources are under increasing pressure and crime is harder than ever for police to manage and control. The task to collect and integrate vast amounts of raw data and analyse this for action poses huge challenges as well as opportunities for IT systems integrators. Smart city surveillance/IoT solutions therefore need to be installed in outdoor environments such as street lighting, traffic lights, walls and roofs. In surveillance, the system needs to connect and power PoE cameras, with fibre or LTE as the uplink path. The audio interface is needed for microphones and speakers, to collect local voice, as well as alarm warnings. Different power sources must be supported such as street lighting, solar panels and batteries. Integration and installation are huge tasks and so easy, safe batch configuration is important, as are management and cyber security levels.

For smart urban use, the Embedded Smart City Box (SCB) from WoMaster is equipped with interfaces for connecting various devices/sensors and is able to connect to Cloud and Monitoring Centres, including:

• Complex city monitoring (microphone, temperature, humidity, PM2.5/CO/CO2/SO2/O3 sensors, PoE powered IP-cameras)
• Remote control, preventing unauthorised actions, vandalism and crime
• Information provision through connected digital signage (news, weather, air pollution level, specific location information, advertisements, dynamic navigation, etc.)
• Warnings (speaker, alarm)
• Automatic street lighting using LDR
• SCB can act as a hotspot by LTE and WiFi for city dwellers and travellers

Such a variety of operations are realised through existing telecommunications optical communication transmission networks by using various data transmission technologies supported by the Embedded SCB, such as Ethernet optical communication (PON, PTN, etc.) and wireless (WiFi, 4G LTE, LoRa, NBIoT, Node-RED, etc).

Embedded computer with Node-RED

The WR302G-EC/WR312G-EC/WR322GR-EC wireless routers from MAC Solutions are available with built in Node-RED flow-based programming. A tiny embedded computer provides a reliable and secure gateway for data acquisition and processing at field sites, as well as a user-friendly communication platform for many other large-scale deployments.

Tim Ricketts, Director at MAC Solutions, comments: "MAC Solutions is really excited about the possibilities the new relationship with MoMaster will bring. In addition to our traditional strengths in smart transportation applications, WoMaster also provides a platform to address the exciting IIoT applications in the fast-growing Smart City market with its innovative Embedded Smart City Box."

For more information, please visit www.mac-solutions.net, and you can visit the company at the IoT Tech Expo Global Conference at Olympia, London (25-26 April 2019).