Today’s IoT devices generate vast amounts of data that provide actionable insights for organizations committed to sustainability. By leveraging connectivity, cloud capabilities, and real-time analytics, we can make smarter decisions about resource management, waste reduction, and energy efficiency. All critical factors in building a more sustainable future. 

The Power of Connected Environmental Monitoring 

The IoT has transformed environmental monitoring. Connected sensors now collect continuous, accurate data from previously inaccessible locations without requiring on-site visits. Whether deployed in remote forests, ocean environments, or crowded urban centers, these devices deliver real-time insights that help us understand and protect our environment like never before. 

While the potential is enormous, challenges remain in making IoT solutions more accessible and user-friendly. At Blues, we’re committed to democratizing IoT technology so product builders can deploy intelligent devices to better our planet quickly and affordably. 

Let’s explore ten inspiring IoT applications that are helping create a healthier planet: 

Smart Solutions for Earth Day and Beyond

1. Water Quality Monitoring and Cleaning

IoT-powered water quality sensors track critical parameters like pH levels, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and contaminants in our lakes, rivers, and oceans. This data helps identify pollution hotspots and guide cleanup efforts. Smart waterway cleaning devices are also collecting trash and debris while gathering valuable data on waterway health, addressing the growing concern of water pollution affecting marine ecosystem.

2. Smart Farming

IoT sensors monitoring soil moisture, temperature, humidity, and nutrient levels are transforming the agriculture industry. This data allows farmers to optimize irrigation, reduce fertilizer use, and increase crop yields while minimizing environmental impact. Smart farming techniques can significantly reduce water consumption and chemical use while improving food production. A win for both farmers and the environment.

3. Animal Tracking

Animal tracking devices are used to monitor the movement and behavior of animals in their natural habitats. These devices can be used to track the migration patterns of birds, the behavior of marine mammals, or the movements of land animals such as deer or bears. By collecting data on the behavior of animals, scientists can gain a better understanding of their habitats and how they interact with the environment. This information can then be used to develop conservation strategies to protect these animals and their natural habitats.

4. Green Energy

IoT is powering the renewable energy revolution through smart grid technology and energy monitoring systems. Connected sensors optimize energy production and consumption by tracking usage patterns, weather conditions, and grid demands. Even smart home devices such as lighting systems contribute to energy-saving efforts by automatically adjusting based on occupancy and natural light availability, significantly reducing energy waste in homes and commercial buildings.

5. Air Quality Monitoring

As air pollution concerns grow worldwide, IoT air quality monitors provide real-time data on pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter. These networks help identify pollution sources, alert vulnerable populations during poor air quality events, and measure the effectiveness of clean air initiatives.

6. Waste Management

Smart waste systems are revolutionizing garbage collection and recycling. Sensors monitor bin fill levels, optimize collection routes, and provide data that helps communities improve recycling rates and implement effective composting programs. This technology reduces unnecessary truck trips while providing valuable metrics on waste generation patterns.

7. Responsible Water Usage

Water conservation efforts benefit from IoT enabled smart meters and leak detection systems. These devices monitor consumption patterns and quickly identify anomalies that might indicate leaks or inefficiencies. For municipalities and businesses, this translates to significant water savings and reduced costs, while helping preserve this limited resource.

8. Intelligent Transportation

Transportation emissions are being tackled through IoT solutions that optimize traffic flow, reduce congestion, and support electric vehicle infrastructure. Smart traffic lights adjust timing based on real-time conditions, while connected vehicles receive optimal routing information that minimizes idle time and fuel consumption.

9. Natural Disaster Monitoring and Prevention

IoT sensor networks provide early warning systems for wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters. By detecting environmental changes quickly, these systems help emergency responders act faster and more effectively. Potentially saving both natural habitats and human communities from devastating losses.

10. Green Supply Chain Management

Sustainability throughout the supply chain is enhanced through IoT tracking and monitoring. Companies gain visibility into their entire logistics network, identifying inefficiencies and reducing waste. From temperature-controlled shipping that prevents food spoilage to optimized delivery routes that minimize fuel consumption, IoT is making supply chains greener. 

Building a Sustainable Future with IoT Solutions 

IoT solutions can play a critical role in protecting the Earth. Through the introduction of ten inspiring IoT solutions in this blog, we hope to inspire a more sustainable future that is built on technological innovation, environmental stewardship, and social responsibility. 

Advancements in technology have revolutionized data collection and analysis, making it possible to monitor remote areas continuously and accurately so organizations and businesses can make data-driven decisions. As these technologies become more affordable and user-friendly, more organizations and communities can leverage them to create positive environmental impact.  

This Earth Day, we invite you to consider how connected technology might help your organization contribute to environmental protection and sustainability. The future of our planet depends on the actions we take today, and IoT provides powerful tools to make those actions more effective than ever before. At Blues, we remain committed to providing easy-to-use connectivity solutions that help innovators quickly deploy IoT solutions for the environment. 

Additional Resources 

• Get involved, contribute to the global air quality dataset with an Airnote 

• Learn how to rapidly prototype your environmental monitoring device with Blues 

• Discover how IoT Technologies have transformed sustainable Agriculture 

The post Smart Earth: 10 IoT Innovations Protecting Our Planet appeared first on Blues.

Our Customer Champions 

It’s essential to keep our focus on those we’re building Blues for: our customers. Seeing how Blues is enabling our customers is truly inspiring, and this year, we invited Arribada to share their experiences with our team. They spoke about how they’ve implemented Blues, the challenges they’ve encountered along the way, and their next steps on their development journeys. 

Arribada tracks aid packages using Blues 

Arribada develops open and accessible technology for wildlife, people and the planet, driving down cost and scaling up access to impact-driven tools and solutions to solve conservation and environmental challenges.  

The team at Arribada shared with the team their work with UNICEF and the world food program on Project GeoSeals. The aim of Project GeoSeals is to generate real-time humanitarian aid stock level alerts for aid agencies seeking to understand and manage their supply chains cost effectively. To do this they provisioned each location where aid packages are stored with a ‘GeoHub’ which includes a RFID scanner that scans each box as it enters the premises, and transmits this data back to the agency using a Blues Notecard so that agencies like UNICEF always have up to date information on supply levels and can ensure stock is sent to the right locations. 

Alex Bucknall, Senior Engineer at Arribada shared, “Blues has helped us accelerate our software solution; being able to move from device to cloud instantly is a huge advantage for us developing these systems. The amount of work required to go from a device sending data over cellular to a centralized server and then across to a dashboard, in a country as remote as Ethiopia would have been incredibly hard.” 

Giving back Globally 

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Safecast citizen science group has applied its expertise to create a radiation monitoring network around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants that are threatened by military activity. Safecast’s Radnote device contains a solar panel, power cell, and rechargeable batteries, which provide reliable stand-alone power for a Geiger counter even under emergency conditions. The radiation data goes to a power-efficient Blues Notecard, which uploads it in real time at intervals that can be adjusted to either conserve power or track fast-changing radiation levels. 

Blues is deeply connected to this cause having designed and built the Radnote alongside Safecast, at this year’s summit, we partnered with Helping Hands to learn about the challenges faced by people in Ukraine and assembled care packages to support those directly impacted by the crisis. 

Working Toward the Future of Blues 

Digital transformation is driving a more sustainable world by enabling smarter, data-driven decisions across industries. We look forward to a future of intelligent machines, a generation of connected products that seamlessly integrate hardware, software, and services. At Blues we aim to give product builders access to data to streamline operational efficiency, improve business value, and unlock new revenue streams. 

Intelligent machines will allow for real-time monitoring and optimization of resources, leading to reduced energy consumption, lower emissions, and minimized waste. From smart cities that manage energy usage efficiently to agricultural solutions that conserve water and increase crop yields, these insights are helping industries operate more sustainably. 

The post Blues Summit Champions Technology for Good appeared first on Blues.

As a technology solution provider, Blues Wireless was recently honored as the Natural Disaster Innovation Awards’ “Cost-Effective Mitigation Product of The Year” as part of the 2022 California Heat and Fire Expo. The award was designed to recognize an outstanding company providing an accessible and advantageous solution that minimizes the disruptive effects of natural disasters on daily life. This award is particularly meaningful to Blues because our technology was born out of a humanitarian response to a natural disaster, with the goal of enabling easy, affordable deployment of connected solutions to improve the world. 

Blues Wireless at the Heat and Fire Expo

As the effects of climate change alter our environment, floods, storms, earthquakes, and fires are becoming more common and intense, prompting urgent need for innovative solutions to mitigate the damage. The Blues Wireless booth at the California Heat and Fire Expo was a showcase of the latest IoT technology developed to protect people and property from environmental factors and the effects of natural disasters.  

Blues experts gave live product demos to visitors at the Expo, highlighting the ease of use of our solution, and diverse use cases that cellular IoT technology can support. Featured at the booth were: 

• SoFar Ocean Spotter: a solar-powered ocean buoy that collects and transmits real-time wave, wind, sea surface temperature, and barometric pressure data 
• Safecast + Blues Wireless Airnote: a zero-config, solar-powered air quality monitoring solution  
• Blues Wireless Radnote: self-configuring, solar-powered radiation and particulate monitor 

As one of the event’s invited speakers, Blues President and CRO, Jim Hassman, revealed the “Untold IoT Story Behind Fukushima.” Both informative and inspiring, the presentation engaged attendees with the true story of Blues founder and CEO Ray Ozzie’s work with Safecast in Japan in 2011. Jim had his own personal connection to the event, as financed his undergraduate degree working as a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service.

IoT For Good

In 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake—the most powerful recorded in Japanese history—triggered a massive tsunami that led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In the aftermath of this devastation, our founder and CEO, Ray Ozzie, volunteered with a team from Safecast to help track and create an open-source map of radiation levels in Japan. While he was there, he realized that there was a need for a better way to deploy wireless connectivity quickly and easily, especially in the face of natural disasters. And so, Blues Wireless was born.

Today, our IoT connectivity solution is providing individuals, communities, government, and enterprises with the technology they need to quickly and easily deploy solutions that can mitigate the devastating effects of natural disasters. By harnessing the power of connectivity, we’re helping people build communities that are better prepared to weather any storm. 

Building Resilient Communities

In 2020, there were 30 named tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin—the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record. And these storms caused an estimated $51 billion in damage. The same year, the West Coast of the US experienced its worst wildfire season in history. More than 10 million acres burned, causing almost $20 billion in damages. As extreme weather events become more common, it’s more important than ever for communities to be prepared.

But preparing for natural disasters is no easy feat. When a hurricane makes landfall, for example, first responders must contend with flooded roads and downed power lines—making it difficult for them to get where they’re needed most. And once they do arrive on scene, they often lack the information they need to make informed decisions about where to deploy resources. 

This is where IoT connectivity solutions come in. By connecting people and devices before, during, and after a natural disaster, we’re empowering first responders with real-time data so they can make informed decisions about where to deploy resources—helping them save lives and minimize damage. We’re also helping people and devices stay connected when traditional infrastructure fails. 

Connecting People Everywhere with the Power of Data

At Blues Wireless, we’re on a mission to help people build more resilient communities—communities that have access to accurate information and are better prepared to weather any storm. By enabling our customers and partners to quickly and affordably build robust IoT solutions, we are harnessing the power of connectivity to deliver life-saving data. Together we’re making a difference in the world, one community at a time.

The post Blues Wireless Honored as the Natural Disaster Innovation Awards’ “Cost-Effective Mitigation Product of The Year” appeared first on Blues.

The Roomba® of the Ocean

In a public speaking class in high school, Michael Arens heard a presentation on ocean plastics and the havoc it wreaks on aquatic ecosystems. He became obsessed with how to solve the growing problem.

Michael teamed up with David Constantine, and their first idea was to design a massive vessel that could clean up tons of trash daily, but they faced too many roadblocks when it came to bringing that to market. Unwilling to give up, they started talking to marinas and other businesses who are impacted by pollutants, and quickly discovered that there was interest in finding solutions. With Jonathan Rosales spearheading device engineering, they scaled down their original concept to be small enough to deploy in marinas, and thus Clean Earth Rovers was born. The design that is being deployed today is called the Plastics Piranha, and what their team playfully refers to as the Roomba® of the ocean.

Marinas and others maintaining water hygiene with the Plastics Piranha can program the area(s) for the rover to clean. Just like a robot vacuum, it operates within defined parameters then returns home or moves to the next area. It works in both saltwater and freshwater applications to clean up physical debris and chemical pollutants in the water.

In conversations with owners and key stakeholders at marinas, Michael and his team noticed that the desire for access to water quality data was a common topic. While we have many organizations focused on air quality metrics, the infrastructure for water quality data is notoriously missing.

Discovering an IoT Solution for Water Quality Data

Recognizing the value of understanding water health, they went to the internet to search for cellular IoT solutions that not only allowed for remote operations but also supported the many sensors needed for collecting water quality data. The initial solutions they found had pricing models that were out of scope with what they’d be using, so they turned to DIY blogs to find tested IoT solutions. That’s when they discovered Blues Wireless.

Clean Earth Rovers’ main considerations for their IoT solution were:

• Simplified, bi-directional connectivity (transfer of data from device to the cloud and back to the device)
• Intermittent connectivity and power consciousness
• Solar power capabilities
• Pricing that allowed them to scale at their own pace
• Supported their preferred MCU (Raspberry Pi Pico)

Blues Wireless checked all their required boxes, simplifying the connectivity but allowing them to customize components for the device build and data visualization.

Once they had their rovers deployed with the technology, they also found it easy to post-process data without having to hard-code anything into the device. They can send raw data from device to Notehub (the Blues Wireless thin cloud layer for data routing), then transform it in Notehub using JSONata transformer before sending to their cloud application. For their team it is easier than writing firmware or figuring out how to do OTA updates.

Tracking Water Quality Data

Powered by Blues Wireless, the team at Clean Earth Rovers enabled their devices to collect both trash and water quality data. Customers have the option to use the feature or not, but all deployed devices will collect data to build the missing infrastructure.

The rover will track metrics including:

The post Clean Earth Rovers is Creating Solutions for Coastal Waterways appeared first on Blues.

One of my favorite things to do when the weather is nice is go camping with my family. We swim, hike, and play all day, then at night, we sit around the campfire roasting marshmallows. One of my least favorite things about camping is when the wind blows the smoke from the campfire towards me, and I get a face full of dark grey air. It stings my eyes, and when I breathe, it burns. Luckily, all I need to do to make that better is to move further away from the fire. A little distance means I’m back breathing clean air.

But when I’m camping, that fire is pretty tiny and only putting out a little bit of smoke. I can move a few feet away and not have to worry about it anymore. But what if the fire was larger? If a fire is big enough, can I still feel the effects from far away?

Recently there were some very large fires out in the Western United States, burning hundreds of square miles of trees, grass, and debris. Within a few days, smoke from those fires could be seen over New York City and Boston, over a thousand miles away! The below map from NASA and the US Forest Service shows just how widespread those fires were on July 27th.

Why it matters

Smoke is made up of countless microscopic particles and gases, an important fact in understanding the effects of fires so far away. Those particles are why we can see the smoke and are known as particulate matter. With the right tools, like an air quality sensor, we can measure and count these particles.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers, or about 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair, is small enough to breathe in and causes damage to our lungs and bodies. Smoke is full of particles that size, which is why we cough when a campfire blows in our faces.

Normally, a small amount of PM2.5 in the air is fine, but when there’s too much, it’s time to be concerned.

What Western Fires Mean for the East Coast

The satellite image above was taken on July 20th, when the fires out West were still burning hot. You can see the winds carried the smoke over to the East Coast, covering parts of New York and Massachusetts. For people in Boston that day, including many of the Blues team, the smoke was thick enough in the air they could see it.

Luckily, a citizen scientist nearby had an Airnote air quality sensor from Blues Wireless actively recording data that we can see, including measurements of fine particulate matter. Thanks to the air quality data that the device sent back, we can see just how much was in the air before and after the smoke arrived.

The graph of the data for the fine particulate matter shows that on July 20th number of fine particles rose by a large amount. In fact, it exceeded 50 µg/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter). Above this level Air Quality researchers on Airnow say things start to get concerning for sensitive individuals with asthma or breathing problems.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the large amounts of fine particles the Airnote caught during that time. On July 26 the count jumped to 133 µg/m3, a level Airnow designated as red level, or unhealthy for sensitive groups, and only 28 µg/m3 away from being unhealthy for everyone.

Just for comparison, in the below graph you’ll note an Airnote in Washington was located much closer to the fires, upwind and away from smoke, over the same time period saw a peak of 8.14 µg/m3, almost 16 times less than Boston’s high of 133 µg/m3.

This makes plain that you don’t need to be close to these large wildfires to see and feel the effects of the smoke. If you are watching an air quality sensor in your area and see the counts start to rise, check out your local news and see if planning for indoor activities is a good idea until the wind can move those fine particles out.

Sources and Additional Reading:

• This map NASA and the US Forest Service
• This site from the EPA
• Smoke can affect your health

The post Far Away Fires Can Cause Nearby Problems appeared first on Blues.