Gartner research shows there will be 8.4 billion connected devices by the end of 2017, up 31 percent from 2016. Business IoT spending will account for 57 percent of overall Internet of Things (IoT) spending this year, meaning it is more important than ever for companies across all business sectors to employ IoT solutions to keep pace with their industry peers.
Yet there is one major hurdle in the race to develop IoT solutions, particularly in large-scale applications like offices and industrial facilities: processing power. The proliferation of IoT devices, and those devices gathering more data, is making the existing generation of IoT hubs obsolete.
To get ahead of that challenge, Current, a GE company, partnered with chip leader Intel. The result is a next-generation wireless area controller (WAC) to manage wireless IoT devices and data within buildings. The new WAC60, powered by a highly efficient Intel dual core chip, functions as the hardware heart of Current’s industry-leading Daintree wireless controls solution for smart buildings.
Using open and interoperable ZigBee® standards-based technology, the WAC60 communicates with standards-compliant sensors, switches, thermostats, and LED drivers to transform basic room controls into a complete wireless control solution. The WAC can independently control a single extended area, or multiple WAC60s can be connected through an Ethernet network to easily scale the system. In effect, the WAC60 collapses complex control panels, gateways, and miles of wires into a single powerful controller.
The new WAC60 also securely connects to GE’s industrial-strength IoT platform, supports double the number of sensors and other endpoints, and incorporates significant improvements in security and scalability…all while maintaining Current’s approach of “open on the top, open on the bottom,” which means virtually any data can be ingested and that any system can accept the output of Current’s platform.
“Our new wireless access controller, powered by a cutting-edge Intel Atom processor, significantly increases how many devices we can support, and what we can do with those devices in an intelligent environment,” says Maulin Patel, Current’s GM of Intelligent Enterprises.
“It is also designed to be easily upgraded, so it will continue to offer superior hub capability as the buildings IoT space continues to mature and to deliver efficiency and productivity outcomes for customers…like occupancy-based space planning, queue management, and energy savings.”
Learn more about harnessing the power of IoT and unlocking the potential of intelligent buildings.