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Museum / Art Gallery

Introduction

Museums and event spaces often have a large concentration of people in an enclosed space. A range of factors can affect comfort and safety, including temperature, humidity, air quality, CO2 levels, occupancy and lighting. It is therefore important to monitor these levels and react if they deviate outside of safe and comfortable limits.

IoTPortal offers museums and event spaces an all-in-one solution for monitoring and controlling key parameters within their premises, including living walls or planted areas within the building and space utilization. A range of compact and aesthetically designed sensors connect via the LDSBus to provide monitoring for museums and event spaces alike, with its scalable and modular architecture. IoTPortal helps to ensure comfort whilst on premises, enhancing the visitor experience and encouraging more frequent visits to the museum.

Challenges

Maintain a comfortable environment

Staff needs to regularly monitor soil and water quality in outdoor fields to check if they are conducive for the plants.

User Friendly Interface

The graphical interface with touch control ensures that users can understand and interact with the system. Use the Software Development Kit to develop your user interface to suit the needs of the conference or meeting room.

Compatibility and Flexibility

The system allows a variety of parameters to be monitored at different places in the room whilst keeping cabling and installation simple as all units connect to the same bus. Extend the system in the future by adding more Quad T-Junctions with additional or different sensors.

Integrated

Many systems consist of independent sensors which are not compatible with each other. With LDSBus you can view all data together on one panel, and you can control output devices based on these without worrying about bridging different systems together.

Challenges

Poor Air Quality

When the space is in use, unbeknown to the occupants, the air quality and CO2 levels may be reaching levels that make them uncomfortable.​

Resource Management

Museums and event spaces can struggle to allocate resources based on occupancy for non-ticketed events.

Artwork Preservation

Humidity levels are one of the key concerns when it comes to artwork preservation, reacting to changes in humidity can be slow and resource dependant.​

Protection of Exhibits

Monitoring systems can be basic and often rely on sounding alarms to notify staff when a restricted exhibit space has been breached.​

Solutions

In this example, we use 4in1 sensors, Air Quality Sensors, CO2 Sensors, Modbus Sensors (water leak detection), and People Counting Sensors positioned around the museum space to monitor the environment. A Living Wall and planters are included within the premises for air purification. A Hydroponics system is used to maintain this wall which is controlled by the IoTPortal, with monitoring via pH and Electrical Conductivity (EC) sensors. The planter irrigation system utilises Soil Moisture sensors. Relay controllers actuate pumps for both systems. People counting sensors are utilized to enable route planning for patrons (via a mobile application), and to enable crowd control planning and live occupancy data for building management and patrons. The IoTPortal Gateway manages the Long-Distance Sensor Bus consisting of up to 80 sensor units and over distances of 200m per bus allowing use in Museums with multiple rooms.

The system allows you to monitor parameters such as:
  • Air Quality via the AQS (Air Quality Sensor) adapter
  • Temperature via the 4in1 Sensor and CO2 Sensor
  • Humidity via the 4in1 Sensor and CO2 Sensor
  • Ambient Light via the 4in1 Sensor and CO2 Sensor
  • Motion Sensing via 4in1 Sensor
  • Carbon Dioxide via the CO2 sensor
It provides manual or automatic control of devices too such as:
  • Control Ventilation fans to maintain air quality based on AQS and CO2 measurements (Relay actuator)
  • Control Lights depending on the motion sensor and light level sensors (Relay actuator or Dimmer actuator)

Sense

  • Air Quality via the AQS (Air Quality Sensor) adapter
  • Temperature via the 4in1 Sensor and CO2 Sensor
  • Humidity via the 4in1 Sensor and CO2 Sensor
  • Motion Sensing via 4in1 Sensor
  • Carbon Dioxide via the CO2 sensor
  • Water leakage via the Modbus sensor adapter
  • Soil and nutrient mix conditions via pH, EC, and soil moisture sensors

Monitor

  • Monitor patron movements through museum space with motion sensing
  • Monitor individual room humidity levels
  • Monitor room occupancy for museum spaces via people counting sensor
  • Monitor water leakage in museum space
  • Nutrient levels for Living Wall

Control

  • Control Ventilation fans to maintain air quality based on AQS and CO2 measurements (relay actuator)
  • Control Lights depending on the motion sensor and light level sensors (relay actuator or Dimmer actuator)
  • Control dehumidifier by measuring Humidity based on 4in1 Sensor measurements (relay actuator)
  • Watering and Nutrient dosing control for living wall (relay actuator)

Advantages

Maintain a comfortable environment

The IoTPortal system monitors air quality through attached sensors as well as creating automatic responses to help to maintain it automatically. Irrigation systems for Living walls can be fully automated.​

Occupancy Logging

The BRT Systems People Counting Sensors and logging capabilities can be used to better understand museum footfall, route planning and crowd control for non ticketed events and help plan better staff utilization.

Humidity Control

With LDSBus, humidity levels can be monitored via 4-in-1 and CO2 sensors, while actuators can be used to enable dehumidifiers automatically to ensure safe levels for artwork and exhibits.

Remote Alters

Staff can be alerted even when offsite via SMS, Push Notification and Email. The IoTPortal can send automatic alerts based on motion detection in restricted exhibit spaces, enhancing staff response time and aiding staff utilization.

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