UBX Systems Delivers a Smart Building System That’s up to 20x More Cost Effective Using AWS IoT

UBX Systems develops smart solutions that provide remote monitoring, analysis, and control of HVAC systems, as well as nearly any LoRaWAN device, from smart thermostats to occupancy and energy monitoring solutions.

The first iteration of the UBX smart building solution connected its customers’ HVAC systems and remote sensors to the internet with a Linux-based controller. However, the controllers and sensors required wired connections within the building, which could take weeks to install. “We wanted to go entirely wireless and cover entire buildings without pulling any cables,” says Jonah Peskin, chief technology officer for UBX Systems.

The UBX Systems team evaluated its options, including Bluetooth, wireless LAN, and various advanced wireless mesh networks. The drawbacks were that customers would still need to install multiple gateways, hubs, or repeaters with wired power sources as well as potentially thousands of nodes throughout their building to achieve full coverage.

The company then considered LoRaWAN connectivity, a low-power, wide-area networking protocol designed to support wireless connectivity for low-power IoT devices over long distances. The UBX team learned about AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN when it became generally available. “We can go into a seven-story building that’s 130,000 square feet and connect every device with a single wireless hub,” says Peskin. “AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN solved all our in-building connectivity problems. You no longer need to deploy and manage multiple gateways; it’s revolutionary.”

UBX Systems developed a LoRaWAN-based system with a hub, which can be plugged into any 120-volt power outlet. Customers can then monitor their environments and control their equipment by placing small, battery-powered LoRaWAN sensors or devices throughout their buildings. The cloud software automatically processes and segments IoT data using AWS Lambda, a compute service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages compute resources, to run code without clusters or servers.

A single hub can scale to support thousands of nodes at a time. UBX also offers the option to add more hubs to increase both coverage area and reliability, where IoT data transmissions traverse every available hub and are then de-duplicated in the cloud on AWS. “Each hub, powered by AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN, routes messages into AWS, where the fully managed LoRaWAN Network Server lives,” says Peskin. “That gives us a great level of robustness. Any of our customers’ gateways could be unplugged accidentally, and they would not lose device connectivity. It’s also very simple to swap out and add new hubs for even more wireless coverage and robustness.” UBX stores customers’ device encryption keys in the cloud instead of using on-premises servers, which helps to protect their devices from malicious threats.

Compared with wired smart building solutions, the UBX solution is 6–20 times more cost effective. Because it is based on LoRaWAN protocol and directly connected to the cloud through AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN, it requires minimal maintenance. In addition, “LoRaWAN devices are unprecedented in their battery usage,” says Peskin. “We’re getting real-world examples of devices that can run for 15 years on a single set of batteries.”

UBX customers can access smart insights through a web-based application, the UBX Application Suite. From there, they can improve the comfort and efficiency of their buildings by monitoring elements such as temperature, humidity, CO2, occupancy, equipment status, and energy in near real time to better understand patterns in their building usage and energy consumption. “People are more concerned than ever about comfortable, healthy buildings and energy use, and simply understanding what is going on in your facility is an essential first step,” says Peskin.

The UBX Application Suite also provides customers the opportunity to build a digital twin or virtual building replica, set up preventive maintenance alerts, and remotely control their HVAC systems and smart thermostats. Plus, UBX offers unique LoRaWAN adapters to bridge traditional wired building protocols (Modbus and BACnet) to the wireless LoRaWAN network. “We make it possible to add virtually any existing HVAC or building subsystem to a UBX smart building,” says Peskin.

UBX Systems is scaling its deployments and has installed its solution in a broad range of buildings, including offices, schools, retail, restaurants, theaters, medical facilities, and more. To support this growth, UBX Systems must efficiently manage devices across geographies. Using AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN, UBX Systems can scale its device deployments globally, keep a pulse on operations, and perform targeted over-the-air updates across its fleet.

Despite the uptick in demand, the company has kept its operations running smoothly, reacting quickly to unforeseen issues while reducing its cloud costs by five times. “In addition to cost savings, using AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN for UBX makes it simple to add data points, devices, and new applications, such as smart thermostats, comfort and air quality monitoring, refrigeration monitoring, energy monitoring, and equipment monitoring and control with very little added infrastructure,” says Peskin.

UBX also uses the broad ecosystem of LoRaWAN vendors to deploy solutions for almost any business need. “If we want to add a water leak sensor or gas metering, it’s quick and simple,” says Peskin. “We can solve just about any smart building challenge by combining LoRaWAN and our UBX technologies on AWS.”