Netshield GSM Power Monitor IoT Gateway helps cut support costs
Netshield has launched its next generation Inline GSM Power Monitor IoT Gateway

Netshield GSM Power Monitor IoT Gateway helps cut support costs

Netshield has launched its next generation Inline GSM Power Monitor IoT Gateway.

It is the ideal accompaniment for businesses looking for a cost effective and easy to deploy means to remotely monitor for business disruptions, such as power, temperature, humidity, flooding and even door contacts on their client’s sites. The device is particularly relevant for business-critical environments where the delivery of services depends on third party facilities like utility power and building HVAC systems for cooling.

The device includes kettle type connectors (C13/C14) at both ends, making it easier to through feed power to critical devices. With this addition it is now able to monitor several optional extra environmental factors beyond just power, and with the inclusion of a REST API, it can be incorporated in a host of third-party event management applications, saving a customer time and money while at the same time increasing service levels.

“This is the perfect device for companies who have support SLA’s in place with customers,” said Inus Dreckmeyr, CEO at Netshield South Africa.

“Once deployed inline, through feeding enables the power to be fed to critical networking devices such as remote equipment ATMs and cabinets.

“It will then dynamically alert administrators and deployed event management software, via the IoT protocol MQTP, when there is a power disruption, spike in temperature, flooding, changes in humidity or a door left open.

“This ensures that you can react and respond to potential service disruptions by proactively informing your clients of support issues as they happen, without a client having to make the call to advise you of a problem. This saves on the costs associated with support personnel making lengthy calls to establish the source of a problem and eliminates the wasteful need to dispatch technical call-out staff on issues such as power failures on remote sites.”

The Netshield Inline GSM Power Monitor includes features such as utility mains power detector (single phase and optional three phase); GSM unit with a Micro SIM socket; an internal GSM Antenna; an internal Lithium-ion polymer rechargeable backup battery; charger and sensor interfaces.

Through ‘phantom feeding’ of power directly to the sensors from the gateway unit, temperature, humidity, flooding and door contacts can be monitored, and alerts sent when anomalous behaviour occurs. For instance, administrators can set acceptable ranges for temperature and humidity, and when there is a deviation that is above or below this range the unit will send an alert.

For environmental health checks, the unit can also be set up to send regular status updates such as single or repetitive time delayed event alerts or provide you with a ‘once a day’ heartbeat status of the environment if no alarms occurred during the day.

Once deployed, a unit (or multiple units) can be set up to send information into any telemetry port in the cloud or your private environment. Making use of the integrated REST APIs, the database can be prepared for integration into event management systems, ticketing systems, call centres, ITSM or any requesting third party API environment with ease.

Alternatively, the units can be managed through custom built dashboard or in the absence of a monitoring tool a customer can request Netshield to assist it in developing a bespoke dashboard tailored for their environment.

“The units dynamically read any configuration changes that have been made each time a connection is established to the centralised event database,” added Dreckmeyr.

“If configuration changes have been set in the database at the configuration layer – the unit automatically reconfigures before the next information or data transfer.

“We have also retained the option for the device to generate an onward message via email from an event trigger in the database, directly to a customer. This ensures that clients are automatically notified of a potential problem. We have also added optional GPS/GNSS location into the unit, allowing you to enter GPS co-ordinates into the database to clarify the location of each unit in an installation for maintenance purposes.”

With its on-board Lithium-ion polymer backup battery with up to two days battery life, it can continue to send alerts if the power goes down. It also has status indicators and front-mounted LED indicators to show network and functional statuses.

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