A New Remote Monitor and Control System Based on SigFox IoT Network

We describe a new, low-cost system designed to provide multi-sensor remote condition monitoring of modern scientific laboratories and to allow users to perform actions from remote locations in the case of detection of specified events. The system is battery operated and does not require the presence of a local area network or WiFi (which are typically not available in the case of, e.g., power losses), as it exploits the growing infrastructure of Internet of Things low-power wide area networks. In particular, our system exploits the new SigFox ultra-narrow-bandwidth infrastructure and provides a bidirectional link between the instrumentation and the remote user even in the case of power line outages, which are among the most critical situations that a scientific laboratory can withstand. The system can detect the occurrence of predefined events in very short times and autonomously react with a series of predefined actions, also allowing a remote user to timely perform additional actions on the system through a user-friendly smartphone application or via a browser interface. The system also embeds a novel power loss detection architecture, which detects power line failures in less than 2 ms. We provide a full characterization of the prototype, including reaction times, connection latencies, sensor sensitivity, and power consumption.