Making a City Smarter in Winter- LoRaWAN-Based Snow Level Monitoring Solution

Apart from easing the transition from 2G to LTE networks in recent years, LPWAN technologies are expected to open up new opportunities and address greenfield opportunities among value assets in smart city. For example, in cold winter, by leveraging LoRaWAN-based snow level monitoring solution, government departments can take timely response to heavy snowfalls and avoid confronting with long-time road restriction. The EM500 ultrasonic distance level sensor, LoRaWAN® Gateway, other network servers and items can help create a network that helps improve field visibility and makes a city smarter.

Many cities and places are faced with inches of snowfalls, severe snowstorms and freezing temperature in winter. Calling snowplows to clear the roads or doing it on your own when people are about to go out is time-wasting. What’s worse, roadways are hazardous and motorists should drive with extreme caution when the snowfalls has a severe impact on cities. But now, with the sensor-to-cloud monitoring solution, the department is able to pave way for road security ahead of time despite those limitations that hold back the development of a smart city.

Challenges

• Clear snow on the exposed ground timely
• Real-time detecting snow level and send out relevant warnings

Featured Product

• EM500
• Milesight EM500 LoRaWAN® Sensor for Snow Level Measurements

The EM500 is a reliable LoRaWAN® sensor that measures the distance to a wide range of  objects including approaching or receding things by using ultrasonic sound waves and provides highly accurate continuous level measurement of most liquid and solid material.

>>Specifications

Solution

Legacy workflows and devices are not designed to share data. By adopting LoRaWAN-based monitoring solution, snow level can be easily and timely detected and sent to Milesight Cloud through LoRaWAN® gateway. Users can read analytics both on Web and phone and take prompt action such as sending out snowplows to clear roads rapidly.

This snow level monitoring solution helps users to have an active response plan towards road security in cold winter and prevent injuries. Residents do not have to call ahead for snowplows before heading for work or school.

Benefits

The EM500 captures measurements with pinpoint accuracy. It detects the distance to a target by measuring time lapses between the sending and receiving of the ultrasonic pulses.

Featuring high IP rating enclosure IP66-IP68 and 19000 mAh Li-SOCL2 battery, the EM500 is rather mature in availability and it is straightforward to deploy at the most harsh environment with years-long product life expectancy.

It detects an object passing within the preset range between 0.3m to 10m and generate an output signal with ±1% accuracy and 1mm resolution.