Around the world, drones of all shapes and sizes from the market-pioneering Flying Eye are filling the skies. They incorporate a wide range of sensors, cameras, batteries, and radio controls, making them an increasingly valuable proposition to a broad cross-section of industries. Today, Flying Eye drones are spraying crops, capturing breathtaking photos and videos of remote locations, and extending the reach and agility of customers around the world. But, according to Alexandre Thomas, co-founder and technical director of Flying Eye, significant safety issues emerge as these tiny aircraft crisscross overhead, since these vehicles are often flying quite near crowds of people. “A drone must be safe, and designers must have contingencies in place to respond to unplanned events and failures,” he said. “We take a lot of measures to ensure reliability in our aircraft. Our electronics are tested to ensure the drone won’t unexpectedly shut down. We design propellers from durable materials, and we invest in battery technology to keep the drones aloft for longer periods of time.” Of course, no vehicle is 100-percent foolproof. Technical errors and operator errors can disrupt flights, which is why Flying Eye builds in contingency parachutes and redundant communications into its aircraft. And that’s where Digi XBee® RF modules play a key role.

When James Meringer’s commercial contracting business experienced a rapid increase in solar projects, he also saw an opportunity to extend the benefits of solar by using the bifacial solar panels he’d become familiar with in new ways. Bifacial solar panels enable sunlight from both sides of the panel, making it a more efficient harvest of solar power. Seeing the panel’s power, James and his team set out to use the same technology for street lighting. Until now, solar street lights have served as utilitarian solutions that force designers to choose between form and function. The Mira Bella Energy team has changed that.

Customers of Nebraska Engineering Company (NECO) needed the capability to know the grain dryer’s status at all times while couldn’t afford to have someone at the dryer all the time to ensure it is doing what it is supposed to do.

The second-generation Robonaut, Robonaut 2 is a torso bolted to a pedestal and is connected to the station with wires for power and control. NASA wanted a solution to make the robot wireless so that it can move freely throughout the station and be more useful, and save astronauts' precious time.

A customer of MicroPower Technologies, a large public utility decided to evaluate video surveillance technologies wanted a solution to monitor remote distribution lines for adverse conditions over 4,000 square miles, in 25 cities and towns. Turbulent weather is a disruptive condition, which is why the utility employed three full-time meteorologists to provide early warnings of imminent risks to its ability to maintain uptime of its systems.

When you have up to 200 buses on the streets for 23 hours each day, it’s essential to constantly monitor your vehicles to ensure the highest levels of on-time performance and safety. For the Suburban Mobility Authority for Rapid Transit (SMART), that challenge was growing increasingly difficult as its automatic vehicle location (AVL) system aged. The AVL uses a radio network to create a two-way communication link between each vehicle and SMART’s operations center where dispatchers can monitor vehicle locations, schedule performance, and other metrics. “Our AVL was 20 years old,” explained Mel Evans, IT manager for SMART. “We were relying on a legacy analog radio network that used three leased towers and a slice of frequency that was being retired. While this infrastructure was satisfactory 20 years ago, it wasn’t keeping pace with SMART. We wanted more reporting and we wanted real-time information that we could share with our public ridership.” One option was to upgrade from analog to digital signals and increase the number of towers. Evans noted that this would be cost-prohibitive. “At approximately $1 million each, the upgrade strategy was too expensive for our agency,” he said. “It became clearer that we needed to consider a different strategy that involved an entirely new AVL solution.”

With new and more demanding regulations for radio communication in Europe, Olsbergs saw the opportunity to improve efficiency and safety for construction companies and crane operators. Typically, smaller cranes are constructed on the backs of trucks and operated by two workers. One person controls the hydraulics in the truck and the other acts as a spotter to ensure that the crane doesn’t bump into anything. Olsbergs recognized that the job could be done more efficiently and more safely with remote controlled hydraulics. But to construct such a controller would require a radio module that met both their extremely high standards as a company, and the tough ETSI standards.

The Royal Victoria’s 20-year-old Mitel system, with separate analogue voicemail system, needed to be replaced. The hotel required a modern communications solution that would:Connect the hotel's 160 employees.Provide call logging to help monitor business performance and control costs.Provide communications to mobile members of the team such as the night porters.Improve guest WiFi internet access.