PRTG Network Monitor and Sigfox protect UK’s tech legacy with their environmental monitoring solution
/The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) told Paessler “Colossus can get hot enough to melt its own solder! The logical solution would be to install air conditioning, but the museum has chosen not to do that because it is not true to the experience of the ladies who actually worked here in the second world war.”
Due to the sensitivity of Colussus and other machines in the Museum, environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and UV light levels must be closely monitored to avoid damage. TNMOC has a “duty of care”, which means their artefacts are to remain fully functional for the next 100 years.
PRTG’s alerting system helps museum staff to monitor more precisely
The Sigfox-ready Paessler’s PRTG monitoring devices and software combined with Sigfox global LPWA Network dedicated to IoT provide a complete hardware, software and connectivity solution to monitor the environment and warn the museum staff ahead of impending thresholds.
Before Paessler implemented this solution, it was the responsibility of the museum staff to determine if the room was too hot, too cold, too bright, or too damp for their machines and react accordingly. Either by powering down machines or opening a window. An automated monitoring solution relieves the burden of this manual monitoring and ensures a more accurate, and timely control of the environment.
Head of Learning at the Museum, Claire Marston, said: “PRTG allows us to set thresholds on the various environmental factors and sends us alerts when we are closing in on those thresholds. It allows for much more precise monitoring to proactively manage and mitigate risks to our collection.”
Sigfox provides connectivity without interfering with the museum’s own IT infrastructure
It is essential the environmental data collected in the 14 rooms monitored in the museum is transmitted in real-time and is available 24/7. Internet connection is not available in all the rooms, and to avoid interfering with the museum’s own IT infrastructure, Paessler called on their alliance partner, Sigfox.
The combination of Sigfox technology and PRTG ensures data is not only collected securely but is visualised in a single view. PRTG also detects if the sensors stop working, which is essential to the overall management of the museum’s environment.
A nice side-effect of monitoring the environment: Helping autistic families map their visit
The museum offers ‘Relaxed Openings’ to accommodate children on the autistic spectrum. This is where the museum opens outside of normal opening hours to ensure sensory overload is at a minimum.
Noise levels can contribute to stress in an autistic sufferer, so minimising this is of huge beneft to the families that visit the Relaxed Openings. PRTG monitors the sound levels in the rooms and helped build a traffc light dashboard to visualise this, so visitors can map their visit accordingly.
ABOUT SIGFOX
Billions of objects worldwide will be connected to the Internet; their data will be stored in the cloud and will participate in the digitalization of our environment. Having a global, simple, low-cost and low-power connectivity solution is fundamental. This is the challenge that Sigfox addresses by deploying a long range and low-bandwidth network dedicated to IoT, already present in 45 countries.
Created in 2010, the company is a recognized global pioneer and leader in a sector that is already disrupting business models and will revolutionize the whole of society. The ambition of Sigfox, embodied in the slogan “Make Things Come Alive”, is to give a voice to the physical world around us and to allow these billions of objects to play a role in economic and social development.
ABOUT PAESSLER AG
Paessler AG’s award winning PRTG Network Monitor is a powerful, affordable and easy-to-use Unifed Monitoring solution. It is a highly flexible and generic software for monitoring IT infrastructure, already in use at enterprises and organizations of all sizes and industries. Over
200,000 IT administrators in more than 170 countries rely on PRTG and gain peace of mind, confdence and convenience. Founded in 1997 and based in Nuremberg, Germany, Paessler AG
remains a privately held company that is recognized as both a member of the Cisco Solution Partner Program and a VMware Technology Alliance Partner.
