🎙️ Want to learn how IoT can make building management systems safer, smarter, and more efficient? Listen to the full episode of our Solving with Sensors podcast to learn how connected sensors can monitor indoor air quality, doors, cold storage, electricity, HVAC, and much more!

 

The building management system shows the air handler running. By midafternoon, people in the conference room are propping the door open because the room feels stuffy. To investigate, the facilities team needs measurements from the room itself. A wireless sensor can record temperature and carbon dioxide (CO₂) throughout the meeting, giving the team a way to compare conditions with occupancy and the HVAC schedule.

At Embedded Works, we help businesses extend monitoring in buildings that already have a building management system (BMS). We bring together wireless IoT sensors, gateways, connectivity, and monitoring tools so facilities teams can see conditions in spaces that were hard to reach in the original installation. In a compatible system, selected readings can appear as points in the existing BMS. Teams can also use a dashboard to route alerts to the staff responsible for a particular room or asset.

Explore Embedded Works sensor solutions

 

Where Existing Buildings Need More Visibility

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that the country had 5.9 million commercial buildings in 2018, with a median building age of 36 years. Over decades of tenant changes and renovations, a building’s monitoring coverage can fall behind the way its spaces are used. A warehouse gains a refrigerated area. An equipment closet gains a server rack. A new service area sits far from the nearest network jack. U.S. Energy Information Administration building survey

Battery-powered sensors can make it practical to add readings in finished or occupied spaces where installing new data cable would be disruptive. Several sensors can share a gateway, which needs power and an approved network connection. Gateway placement matters because walls, floors, and equipment affect how well signals travel through a building.

In a federal building evaluation, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used LoRaWAN to carry data from a basement through two concrete floors. The test transmitted data consistently for more than 200 indoor air quality and energy alerts. A site pilot can answer the same coverage question for your building, using the actual sensor positions and gateway location. GSA field evaluation of LoRaWAN

How Wireless Sensor Data Reaches the BMS

LoRaWAN is a low-power wireless protocol suited to small messages such as temperature readings or changes in door status. In a retrofit, a gateway receives those messages. A compatible gateway can translate selected readings into BACnet points that the BMS can import, display, and trend. The Milesight UG56, available through Embedded Works, is one example of a gateway that can expose LoRaWAN data over BACnet/IP with supported firmware and sensor mapping.

Milesight UG56 gateway · Milesight integration guide

For a building running Johnson Controls Metasys, the project team can evaluate whether the installed network engine supports the appropriate third-party BACnet integration. Confirm the software version, network access, and points you need to import before choosing the gateway. With a compatible configuration, a room’s temperature or a door’s status can sit alongside the building data operators already use.

Johnson Controls Metasys integration documentation

The people acting on the information may work outside the controls room. With SensorWorks, a food service team can view cooler temperatures on a dashboard and receive an alert when a reading moves outside its preset range. For automatic HVAC adjustments, the controls team can commission an approved sequence that accounts for how often the sensor reports and how the controller should respond if a reading becomes stale.

SensorWorks monitoring example

 

Where to Add Wireless Monitoring First?

Area	Data to collect	How the team can use it
Indoor air and comfort	Temperature, relative humidity, CO₂, and particles where relevant	Compare room conditions with occupancy and ventilation schedules to investigate recurring complaints.
Doors and cold storage	Door status and cooler temperature	Route a door-ajar alert to staff and check whether prolonged openings coincide with temperature excursions.
Water	Leak detection and readings from compatible water meters	Inspect the area when a sensor detects water or investigate unusual consumption after hours.
Electricity and HVAC	Circuit energy use, equipment runtime, and schedules	Find loads that persist after closing and identify equipment schedules to review.
Meeting rooms	Occupancy and booking data from a connected scheduling system	Compare reservations with actual use and find rooms that are regularly conditioned while empty.
Restrooms	Toilet paper and soap levels from compatible dispensers, traffic counts, and odor indicators	Prioritize cleaning and refill checks where use or conditions indicate that service is due.
Dumpsters and bins	Fill level	Adjust collection schedules based on how quickly containers fill across properties.

Back in the conference room, a rising CO₂ trend during occupied periods can prompt a technician to check outdoor-air delivery. They might find that a ventilation schedule ends while meetings are still underway. Comparing room conditions before and after a schedule adjustment can help the team assess whether it addressed the complaint. EPA guidance on indoor air quality and ventilation

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 2016–2020 Smart Energy Analytics Campaign included 104 organizations and about 6,500 buildings. The final report documented median annual energy savings of 3% for participants using energy information systems and 9% for those using fault detection and diagnostics. The campaign paired building data with analytics and ongoing commissioning, the work of finding issues and correcting how equipment operates. Berkeley Lab final report

Consider a building where a meter shows unusually high electricity use every night. An operator can compare the load with equipment schedules, discover that an air handler is running long after closing, and correct the schedule. Tracking the after-hours load before and after that change gives the team a way to assess the result. A leak monitoring pilot calls for a different measure, such as how long it takes a technician to acknowledge a verified alert.

 

How Embedded Works Helps Plan the Retrofit

In a SensorWorks healthcare deployment, wireless temperature and humidity sensors gave staff visibility into medication and food storage conditions. A dashboard kept a record of readings, and alerts notified staff when conditions moved outside the ranges set for each area. The same approach can give building teams a view of other sensitive spaces, including server rooms and collection storage. Read the SensorWorks healthcare story

Choose a problem to solve first. We help identify which reading would change the team’s response, where it should be measured, and who needs to see it. A pilot might focus on one floor with repeated comfort complaints or a few equipment rooms that only receive periodic inspections.

Verify signal coverage and readings. Select sensors and a gateway based on the building layout, power options, and reporting needs. During the pilot, test radio coverage under normal operating conditions. Check the values and units shown in the BMS or dashboard and confirm how staff will know if a device stops reporting.

Set up alerts around the work people already do. A door that opens for a delivery is routine. A cooler door that stays open past an agreed duration may need attention. Define who gets the alert, how they respond, and who maintains the sensors. That makes it easier to judge whether the pilot reduces missed events or unnecessary checks.

Prepare the next site. Once the first site proves the workflow, use its device labels, settings, and installation notes as a starting point for the next. Our i3PL service can source equipment, configure devices, provision connectivity, assemble kits, and ship them to each location. Embedded Works i3PL services

 

Plan Your First Sensor Pilot

For donation centers, a bin is more than a metal container. It is a community collection point, a source of reusable goods, an operational asset, and a physical extension of the organization’s mission.

Remote monitoring helps that asset communicate.

By knowing when bins are approaching capacity, when one may have fallen, and when abnormal heat may require attention, nonprofit teams can respond more strategically. They can reduce uncertainty, protect donations, improve the donor experience, and make better use of limited operational resources.

Embedded Works is proud to help 501(c)(3) organizations bring this visibility to their donation-bin networks—and the same approach can be adapted to many other container-monitoring challenges.

If you need to monitor fill levels or have another sensing project in mind, tell us what you are trying to measure. We can help evaluate the environment, connectivity, form factor, and supporting infrastructure to identify a solution suited to your specific requirements.

 

Interested in monitoring your facility with smart sensors and AI-powered visibility? Let’s Talk.

📧 consult@sensorworks.net
🌐 www.sensorworks.net