Australian Microsoft partner helps trial "smart" hardhat

Sydney and Brisbane Microsoft partner MOQdigital has helped trial a “smart” hardhat for construction workers.

The systems, being trialled by Laing O’Rourke with help from MOQdigital, involve sweatbands incorporating sensors that can be fitted to an ordinary hardhat, monitoring the wearer’s heart rate and temperature, outside temperature and humidity.

The hardhat also has a GPS unit and accelerometer and is designed to determine the impact of vibration and shock. The wearer is alerted to vibration and sound.

Data is collected via Zigbee radio by a separate “gateway” for storage. The gateway uses a 3G M2M industrial router for remote access and alerts can be sent via email and SMS.

The system uses a “store and forward process” to put the data into the cloud, and uses Microsoft’s Power BI platform.

MOQdigital provided the hybrid cloud expertise in connecting the gateway with Azure Analytics, through their Cloud Data Manager product suite.

MOQdigital was recently named as one of nine Australian resellers to form an Interrnet of Things partner group.