Occupancy Monitoring Tech Vendor AVUITY Announces New Line of Sensors

AVUITY, a vendor of sensor hardware and software to collect and manage space analytics, announced a new line of sensors that can detect occupancy, utilization, and variations in temperature, light, noise, and humidity. The company’s press release claims new levels of sensitivity, capabilities, and battery life.

“AVUITY’s new sensors give enterprises a lower cost of entry to get the data they need to make informed decisions on their office space and real estate footprint quickly,” the firm said. “The sensors are also easy to install and operate, providing customers with a seamless integration into their existing building management systems and processes.” In addition, they support Power Over Ethernet, or POE, which is a way to power devices connected to the Ethernet network that is also carrying the data. POE would allow powering of sensors where changing batteries might otherwise be difficult, like with locations on high ceilings.

However, typically, battery-powered units communicate over wireless radio signals to a gateway plugged into a standard power outlet.

At least one previous version used machine learning algorithms to “help determine how people interact with the space and objects around them,” according to a company webpage. The sensor “constantly learns from other deployed sensors as the more data is gathered, the richer its recognition capability becomes.”

In the second quarter, the company plans to release a new version of its wireless gateway.

The company says that the one of the new sensors, mounted on a nine-foot ceiling, in conjunction with the new gateway, can monitor real-time occupancy and utilization over a 1,000-square-foot area. That includes monitoring up to 20 desks with a single sensor and reporting passive and activity occupancy. The battery life can run between four and 10 years, which is twice that of previous models. A business could reduce the number of sensors they would otherwise need by almost a third and save money in hardware, installation, and maintenance costs.