Industrial IoT edge computer and wireless sensor range

Hardware
1

Hi,

The company I work for are looking for a good solution that can monitor tank level for septic tanks at multiple sites in a ~1km radius. The edge computer would be at a high point(maybe 100meters) but not with direct line of sight and the sensors would be close to ground at the measurement site.

Would this work?

I’m worried because of some threads i’ve seen that talk about the mesh feature requiring the sensors to be awake at all times. This would of course drain the battery and require constant power to the sensor, which is not optimal in this case.
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Thank you!

Edge computer antenna mounted on top of this roof:

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Building is on the top of this ridge:

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Sensors spread at around these points with max distance of 1km(some trees inbetween)

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2

I’d like to note that mounting a better antenna for the sensors is an option.

We would definitely have a Yagi-Uda antenna for the Edge Computer.

3

Hi,

Yes, I would recommend high gain antennas from a 3rd party supplier(we do not offer high gain antennas). You just need to make sure the antennas are 900mhz and can terminate to an RP-SMA connector.

You are correct that devices can only act as repeaters if they are externally powered(not battery powered).

My recommendation would be to purchase an IoT Edge Computer and a sensor, then try them out in the different locations. We offer a 30 day return policy for full refund. It’s very difficult to estimate if the devices will work in a given environment or not which is why we have this return policy.

Thank you,
Travis

1 Like
4

Just for comparison, what is the dBi and polar pattern of the antenna that comes with the sensors and the Edge computer?

Edit:

Nevermind, found the answer here although in dBm which doesn’t really have a direct correlation to dBi.
So it would be nice to get a dBi value for the antennas :slight_smile: