WiFiSwede

The last five years (atleast) we all been hearing a lot of talk surrounding IoT, however in my work as a Solution Architect i still don’t see and hear customer asking about it or have it deployed in they’re environment. However i think this is about to change, the last couple of years were seen Cisco Meraki launching a new product serie (MT) and Cisco Catalyst Access point getting sensors built in in them, making it easier and more accessible for customers.

A few month ago i had a customer after my recommendation trying a few sensors from Meraki, so i just wanted to share some pictures and give a brief explanation how they work and look.

First of all, Cisco Meraki offers all customers to buy five sensors without license, which is a good way to get customer to try them. All sensor can be run on regular AA batteries and connects to the Meraki Dashboard thru Bluetooth (802.15.1 BLE4.2). Most Meraki MR series Access-points comes with a built-in Bluetooth radio, so if u are using MR Access-points you only need the hardware sensor and a few clicks in the dashboards to get started.

Start with adding your equipment to your inventory and place the sensors in a network. After that go to the Wireless tab and press IoT radio settings below:

Enable scanning ON, after this u will se them start coming online in the dashboard and delivering data.

Here are the sensors i tried with a short description of the function they provide:

MT10 – Sensor for indoor temperature and humidity.

MT12 – Indoor sensor for water leak detection.

MT14 -Sensor for indoor air quality (PM2.5, TVOC, Temperature Humidity and Noise).

MT20 – Indoor sensor for open/closed door.

We used those sensors for two different use cases, The first was to improve Security for the datacenter with functions of monitoring temperature and humidity. We also installed the MT20 to get logs over when someone opened the door. And finally we installed and MT12 to be able to detect a water leak and hopefully be able to react before it reaches the hardware.

The second use case was basically to provide an MT14 to the HR department to be able to track some basic measurement of the environment in the office spaces. The goal here was to get a better understanding of the work environment and see if anything needed to be done regarding air quality and noise figures.

Here is a picture of the MT12, the way it works is that it uses two sensing wires around a rope. When water reaches the rope it closes the circuit and will generate an Alarm in the Meraki Dashboard.