The Ins and Outs of Wireless Environmental Monitoring

Wireless environmental monitoring is an increasingly popular option for facility managers.  It’s easy to retrofit into spaces, you can adjust sensor locations quickly to suit evolving monitoring demands, and advances in technology has allowed manufacturers to create sensors with long battery lives, excellent packet transmission accuracy, and robust sensor-to-controller range.  The broad acceptance of wireless monitoring indicates it’s here to stay. 

RLE Technologies has emerged as a front runner in the wireless monitoring space.  RLE’s suite of WiNG sensors monitor a wide variety of environmental conditions including temperature, temperature and humidity with a calculated dew point, conductive fluid leaks, differential pressure, airflow, and analog and digital inputs.  WiNG sensors are proprietary, so they can only communicate with a WiNG controller.  RLE offers two controller options: the WiNG-MGR and the BMS-WiNG.  These two products serve similar functions but were designed with distinctly different applications in mind.  How do you know which controller you should use with your WiNG sensors?  RLE’s technical sales department has compiled the following tip sheet to help you out:

How many WiNG sensors are you using?
If you plan to use more than 50 sensors in your application, you’ll either need to use the WiNG-MGR or you’ll have to purchase multiple BMS-WiNGs.

• You can use up to 50 WiNG sensors with each BMS-WiNG.
• You can use up to 250 WiNG sensors with each WiNG-MGR.

Are you looking for a stand-alone system or are you going to integrate it into a larger BMS?
Both controllers can integrate into a larger BMS system, but only the WiNG-MGR can also stand alone.

• The BMS-WiNG was designed to be an integration module, so you can only use it in conjunction with a larger building management system (BMS). It leverages robust protocol communications to communicate with any Modbus RTU or BACnet MS/TP system.
• The WiNG-MGR works as a stand-alone monitoring system, or it can integrate via protocols into a larger monitoring system using Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP/IP, BACnet IP, BACnet MS/TP or SNMP.

Do you need a system that has a user interface?
If you need a user interface, the WiNG-MGR is the right controller for you.

• The BMS-WiNG does not have an integrated user interface.
• The WiNG-MGR has a very intuitive user interface that you can access any from any browser or mobile device.

Are you looking for a system that provides logging and trending?
If logging and trending is a requirement, choose the WiNG-MGR.

• The BMS-WiNG does not have logging and trending.
• The WiNG-MGR includes logging and trending in its on-board user interface.

Learn more about the WiNG-MGR

Learn more about the BMS-WING

Learn more about RLE Technologies

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