5 Most Commonly Used Sensors for Developing Industrial IoT Solutions

Author: Rasika Joshi

Internet of Things is used across many industries like Manufacturing, logistics, oil and gas, aviation etc. and in use cases which belongs to the industries. An IoT System includes sensors which helps to sense the data and can communicate with the other sensors.

Main motive of connected things has made sure that industries are able to work smartly along with huge amount of data that is being collected by the sensors. The industrial IoT solutions are developed by taking huge data into consideration.

What are exactly sensors?

Sensors are basically used to measure parameters like temperature, Pressure etc. and convert these parameters into electric signals. Selection of sensors should be based on three features:

  1. It should not change the measured details while measurement process.
  2. It should not be modify as per other physical situations.
  3. It should be sensitive only to the parameters that measures.

A Sensor are described more clearly using different properties, the most important among them are Range, Sensitivity, Resolution.

Sensors Classification:

Based on different criteria, sensors are classified into-

  1. Passive and Active sensor: Passive sensors need not require an external power source to track an environment whereas Active sensors need an external source to do further work.
  2. Analog and Digital sensors: Analog sensor gives output as continuous signal, while digital sensors provide a digital output.
  3. Another criterion is based depending upon method (mechanical, chemical etc.) used to detect property.

Some of the Sensors Used in IoT Solutions:

Infrared sensors: It is used to detect presence of human. Previously this was used only for the Military Applications but over the years, IR Sensors had been integrated with Industrial IoT Solution.As IR sensors can easily detect heat that’s why they are deployed in the industries like healthcare, electronics, chemical etc. Few of IoT IR sensors used in industries includes Murata, Melexis MLX90614, Intersil ISL29021.

Temperature sensors: This is one of most used sensors in Industrial IoT solutions. It mainly used in applications where temperature monitoring is the important factor. Industries like biotechnology, pharmaceutical used this sensor to measure temperature parameter. LM35, Environ data TA40 series are few temperature sensors used in industry.

Proximity sensors: This sensor mostly used to measure distance between itself and nearest object. They are commonly used in car bumpers to give an alert in case of any collision is going to happen. It has an application in retail industry to guide customer regarding any discounts of the day when person walks near that particular product.

Smoke sensors: Smoke sensors have a huge impact in industries like construction sites, industrial units where the gas leakage chances are more. When Smoke Sensors are combined with IoT Solution, then even slight leakage of gas or fire will be reported to the concern team and in this way disaster can be avoid.

Piezo sensors: These sensors are used to measure pressure. If these sensors are integrated with IoT solution it can send the data related to the pressure changes.

By using these sensors we can measure pressure in the equipment's like boiler, water systems etc. Environ data BP 10 series is one of the used sensor in industrial applications.

It is being possible to automate your industrial operations using industrial IoT Solutions. To know more about these kindly go through hIOTron IoT Training: https://www.hiotron.com/iot-training/