Arch Rock claims to have found a way to run ZigBee signals over a wired network.  Traditionally, ZigBee has been used to transmit information efficiently across wireless networks.  Arch Rock’s new method could effectively integrate smart meters with data centres.

Arch Rock says the new technology will make it much easier to manage and control power consumption without having to rely on gateway hardware that connects ZigBee devices to IP-based networks.  “Every [ZigBee] node becomes IP-enabled,” said Malay Thacker, director of customer solutions at Arch Rock.  He spoke February 19 at the Teladata Technology Convergence Conference in Santa Clara, California.

ZigBee is quickly emerging as a standard protocol for smart metering.  Arch Rock’s discovery could boost the company’s stance in the industry by providing ZigBee support to a wider range of networks.

Thacker cautioned that his company’s Compact Application Protocol (CAP) is “still very much in development,” and isn’t featured in any of the pilot projects or deployments that Arch Rock is currently involved in.

CAP allows multiple vendors of ZigBee devices to co-exist on the same network without the need of a gateway.  Arch Rock demonstrated its technology at last year’s Sensors Expo and has submitted the technical specifications of the CAP protocol to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Even though Arch Rock has targeted industrial and commercial customers, half of its deployments have been in data centres, according to Thacker.  Other companies like Cassatt, Power Assure, Sentilla, and SynapSense have specifically targeted the data centre power efficiency market.

Data centres are very power hungry.  As these top-of-the-line computers have become more sophisticated and complex their power needs have also increased.  The amount of power needed by servers and data centres could double to 100 billion kilowatt-hours within 3 years if they do not become more energy efficient, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  Energy costs would top $7.4 billion annually.

Another company called Agilewaves has developed an Internet-based system that links a building’s water, electric, and gas monitoring systems together through an integration panel.  Arch Rock is also testing its own home power monitoring technology with a pilot project involving three homes in San Francisco.

Arch Rock, as a member of the IPSO Alliance, actively promotes the Internet Protocol (IP) as the best way to connect smart technology and share the information that they provide.  “We’ve seen strong cross-industry participation from semiconductor makers, software companies and systems integrators,” said Geoff Mulligan, chairman of the alliance.

“Most significantly, more and more utilities and OEMs are viewing embedded IP as the long-term solution – and proprietary approaches and ad-hoc alliances as merely an interim step.  They are recognizing that only IP can support a wide variety of networking technologies with the needed scalability and interoperability that organizations require.”

Patient Care Technology Systems (PCTS), a subsidiary of Consulier Engineering Inc, today announced that it has signed an agreement with CenTrak Inc, to provide integrated workflow automation solutions to healthcare facilities. PCTS will utilize CenTrak’s patented InTouchCare™, a hybrid technology that combines a new generation of Infrared and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to track people and equipment to a room and individual bay.

CenTrak developed InTouchCare™ technology to provide a “location-certainty” by overcoming the inaccuracies of “location-estimation” hindered by issues of RF penetration of walls, ceilings and floors. CenTrak patient and equipment tags use Gen2IR™ infrared light signals which cannot penetrate walls to accurately locate people and movable medical equipment to a specific room. The active-RFID component is used to communicate the location information back to the network for maximum tag capacity and a fast response time. In this way, CenTrak provides room and sub-room level accuracy with certainty, not based on an estimate. Installation of a CenTrak InTouchCare network is simplified by using battery-powered components which eliminate wiring and offer plug-and-play installation functionality. With RF and Infrared operating simultaneously, the sensors can operate continuously for up to five years on a set of batteries.

PCTS pioneered the use of real-time locating systems (RTLS) to automatically track patients and assets in emergency and surgical services departments and today provides purpose-built solutions for departmental to enterprise-wide patient flow needs. Department-specific process rules recognize and timestamp patient care milestones based on the measurement of location, movement and interactions between patients, staff and mobile medical equipment.

The location information together with patient data from other hospital information systems is visualized for caregivers in map and status screen views of patient flow. Additional intelligence interprets the meaning of patient status events and notifies appropriate staff in real-time. Caregivers interact with the web-based tracking software as their centralized workflow communication and management portal. In this way, caregivers are able to better anticipate and manage their workflows as they coordinate care between them. PCTS tracking solutions have supported over four million emergency department and perioperative patient encounters at leading hospitals nationwide.

About CenTrak

CenTrak is a leading provider of precise, adaptable, and cost-effective tracking solutions for healthcare, commercial, and industrial facilities. The company develops and markets hybrid Active-RFID/Gen2IR network products used for tracking people and assets in real time, enabling greater workflow efficiency, asset utilization, and higher overall security. The patented InTouchCare™ Real Time Location System (RTLS) offers breakthrough performance and cost advantages that had been previously unattainable. It is the first predominantly battery-powered RTLS network in the world and it is currently operating in several world-class healthcare sites in the United States. For more information about CenTrak, visit its Web site at:www.centrak.com

About Patient Care Technology Systems

Patient Care Technology Systems, a subsidiary of Consulier Engineering, Inc. CSLR, supports health care providers with intelligent workflow automation solutions to improve patient flow and reduce the risk of medical errors. The company’s Amelior™ software suite includes Amelior ED®, a comprehensive emergency department information system, and automatic patient and asset tracking software for the emergency department, perioperative suite and enterprise-wide needs. Amelior automatic tracking software is compatible with all leading locating hardware including active-RFID, infrared, ultrasound, ultra-wideband, Wi-Fi and ZigBee. PCTS customers have been recognized nationally for improvements in efficiency and clinical excellence. For more information, visit www.pcts.com.