According to Vaisala, many organisations rely heavily on accurate indoor environment measurements, but traditionally only large corporations have had the resources to build measurement infrastructures with advanced features such as remote monitoring and easy scalability. Vaisala Echo has been designed to provide the benefits of an intelligent indoor measurement infrastructure – but as a built-in feature to selected Vaisala measurement products and solutions.
Echo connects Vaisala measurement devices and monitoring software to create an intelligent measurement infrastructure. In practice, customers will not buy Echo separately, because it is a built-in feature for Echo-compatible Vaisala measurement products.
“With Echo the days of manually setting up indoor monitoring systems are over. The Echo infrastructure gives you easy, reliable, always-on access to data and alerts from all compatible devices. You pick what you need, based on your measurement, oversight, and reporting needs ¬– and Vaisala guarantees that all instruments talk to the monitoring software, securely, and without glitches,” explained Jarno Mitjonen, software product manager at Vaisala.
According to Mitjonen, certain condition-sensitive industries will benefit the most from measurement infrastructures like Echo. These include industrial manufacturing, pharma and laboratories, museums and archives, and indoor and vertical farming. Typically, these sectors will need to measure various parameters like humidity, temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2), or dew point.
Although large corporations will benefit from the connectivity of Echo, Mitjonen believes that the benefits of Echo can best be seen in small and mid-size companies.
“We believe industrial companies should have access to all the measurement data they need, when and where they need it, regardless of the size of their IT budget. With this release, Vaisala wants to level the playing field. Our clients’ focus should be on their business, not on setting up or managing measurement systems,” Mitjonen said.
Echo is said to offer easy access to comprehensive reporting. Echo’s reporting on ambient conditions is also real-time and enables notifications and alerts. Remote access to comparable data can help geographically scattered companies compare sites to identify anomalies and take appropriate action to meet corporate targets. This is claimed to help reduce costs as it eliminates the need to travel to check and verify the data.
Remote monitoring requires data to be accessible online, so data security was a top priority for Vaisala when designing Echo. Mitjonen elaborated: “We built Echo to be secure from the get-go. All data is encrypted in transit and rest, and secured with digital certificates. Echo also enables remote firmware updates for all connected devices. In today’s world, companies need to be able to update their connected devices when the need arises. The result is upgraded security over the whole lifecycle of the measurement infrastructure.”