Inovonics’ cloud capabilities, including fall detection and precise floor and room location, enable caregivers and security personnel to reach people faster during a crisis. In these situations, when minutes or seconds can make the difference, Inovonics needs to be sure it’s delivering the highest speed and reliability possible. We’re confident that moving our device communications to EMQX Cloud will help us do exactly that.
– Lalit Pandit, VP of Engineering at Inovonics
EMQ, the pioneer of the world's leading MQTT platform, is thrilled to share the success story of its collaboration with Inovonics Wireless Corporation. Inovonics, a leading manufacturer of wireless monitoring products, has integrated the fully-managed MQTT service EMQX Cloud into their new mobile duress and senior living community product infrastructure to elevate communication of location, event, and device health data.
Inovonics, a pioneer in developing cutting-edge hardware solutions for various industries, has been making waves with its innovative wearables designed to enhance security and emergency response systems. At the heart of their success is the EMQX MQTT platform, a robust and scalable solution that plays a pivotal role in ensuring the safety and well-being of individuals across diverse environments.
With 30 sites already in operation, Inovonics is poised to expand its mobile duress system to thousands of sites. The applications span school districts, hospitals, and senior living communities, reflecting the scalability and adaptability of the EMQX. Whether it's a panic button alert or a critical incident notification, EMQX ensures faster response times by sounding alarms and providing precise location information, a crucial factor in emergencies. Inovonics has plans to expand the use of EMQX into other applications as its product portfolio grows.
“Inovonics’ cloud capabilities, including fall detection and precise floor and room location, enable caregivers and security personnel to reach people faster during a crisis. In these situations, when minutes or seconds can make the difference, Inovonics needs to be sure it’s delivering the highest speed and reliability possible. We’re confident that moving our device communications to EMQX Cloud will help us do exactly that.” – Lalit Pandit, VP of Engineering at Inovonics.
In practical terms, when an Inovonics' mobile duress or senior living pendant is activated, the wearer's location and alert status can be rapidly communicated to emergency call applications, central monitoring stations, access control panels, or other software applications. This integration directly provides actionable information into a customer’s emergency response infrastructure.
Inovonics, as the industry leader in mobile duress, utilizes wireless locators to scale its solution, covering specific rooms, zones, or floors with a high degree of accuracy. With millions of devices in the field, their senior living community products feature advanced capabilities such as automatic fall detection. Inovonics' mobile duress and senior living community products are currently available to customers in the U.S. and Canada, offering location alerts compatible with popular monitoring and access systems such as Open Options and Genetec.
The Solution
In their quest to create a reliable and efficient mobile duress system, Inovonics explored various MQTT broker options. Their exhaustive research led them to EMQX, a platform known for its versatility and performance. While they initially tested EMQX Cloud for its managed solution, they later transitioned to the Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) offering, appreciating the flexibility and control it provided.
One notable feature of EMQX is its ability to seamlessly communicate with major public cloud infrastructure, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity for mission-critical IoT devices. With a SQL-based rules engine and 40+ native integrations, including Kafka, MongoDB, and InfluxDB, EMQX Cloud simplifies connectivity with backend applications, streamlining emergency response infrastructure.
One standout feature that captured Inovonics' attention was the extensive range of data integrations offered by EMQX. Leveraging Redis for authentication and seamlessly integrating MQTT bridging with Amazon Dynamo, Inovonics found that EMQX supported their requirements effortlessly. The MQTT 5.0 protocol and its accompanying features provided the extra bells and whistles they needed for their mobile duress system.
One of Inovonics' favorite aspects of EMQX Cloud is the unwavering support they receive. The Inovonics team highlights the responsiveness and immediate assistance they get when submitting tickets—responses within minutes. This level of support, coupled with Teams meetings and Slack channels, showcases EMQX's commitment to addressing any issues or variables that may arise in a dynamic network environment.
Customer Experience
We recently sat down with Jared Zymbaluk, Staff Software Engineer at Inovonics, to get his take on the integration and why Inovonics chose to use EMQX to power their IoT workflow. Here is what he had to say:
Q: How does Inovonics use EMQX Cloud? Could you describe the workflow?
A: “Inovonics uses MQTT (EMQX Cloud) in two of our market solutions. Mobile duress and senior living. Inovonics uses EMQX Cloud to drive critical alerts and information from on-site devices to interested parties (emergency services, senior living caregivers, etc.). Our on-site infrastructure will deliver alarms and events to our cloud, which will process and deliver notifications through email, SMS, and of course, MQTT.”
Q: Did you test other MQTT solutions before making your choice?
A: “Yes, we initially started with a self-hosted broker, but we were ultimately interested in a managed solution. We were fairly exhaustive in our search for the perfect managed MQTT broker, and we initially went with another provider. However, when we discovered EMQX Cloud and the extensive feature set and performance provided, we knew we needed to migrate our MQTT brokers to EMQ.”
Q: What factors influenced your decision to go with EMQX?
A: “We were looking for an MQTT 5.0 broker with high performance and throughput. EMQX also has an impressive number of options for data integrations and external authentication. We utilize Redis for authentication and ACL rule control and have used the MQTT bridge function to send our MQTT messages to other brokers.”
Q: How has your experience and support been implementing EMQX?
A: “Our experience has been top-notch. Any time we submit a ticket to the EMQX Cloud helpdesk, we always receive helpful responses within hours or minutes, depending on the severity of the ticket. Our experience has been great moving our brokers to the BYOC option. We have worked directly with EMQ developers and personnel, and they have gone out of their way to ensure that any questions or concerns are taken care of.”
Conclusion
This collaboration between EMQ and Inovonics serves as a testament to the transformative power of advanced IoT solutions, bringing together cutting-edge technology to create safer environments for individuals across diverse sectors. Inovonics' success story with EMQX is a testament to the transformative impact a reliable MQTT broker can have on mobile duress and emergency response systems. As they continue to innovate and expand their footprint, EMQX remains a trusted partner in delivering seamless, secure, and scalable solutions for a safer and more responsive world.