infoTECH Feature

July 16, 2014

Temperature Monitoring Companies

Are you doing your homework for your next temperature monitoring system? Good news, this post does a bit of the work for you.  You will find links to a few different companies that can provide solutions that cover the gamut from temperature monitoring to humidity, smoke, water and airflow sensors.

Many of the central sensor controller units also provide security capabilities as well.  Sensors include door open, motion and data room authentication systems.  Even cameras can be added to the system to provide an overall environmental and security posture.  The catch on these systems is that you have to try and forecast the features that you may need in advance of the purchase.  Here is a partial list that you may want to add to your growing list of features: 

  • Cost of additional sensors
  • Port density for additional sensors
  • Yearly support contracts
  • Frequency of software updates
  • Telephone technical support – primary language and hours of the day
  • Generic analog sensor support (e.g. fuel levels, electrical current, dangerous chemicals, etc.)
  • 3rd party integration support using syslogs, SNMP and URL linking and embedding support. 
  • Is the system web based with various levels of security for user accounts
  • Are permissions based on groups that users belong to or are the permissions assigned to end users, which is a bit less favorable.
  • Is there a central management platform for the management of dozens or even hundreds of deployed units.  Can you use it to push down policies to all systems?

For a larger company who plan on investing in dozens or even hundreds of controllers each with one or more sensors, you might want to consider management.  Having lots of controllers deployed will be difficult to manage adds, moves and changes.  A good management system should be a key factor in your decision.  Ravica offers a web based management solution that makes management much easier.

So, if you are searching for Avtech Competitors, ITWatchDog Competitors or Simplex Grinnell Competitors you should be aware of the top performers in this field which also includes Ravica.  I suggest a competitive work sheet to help work through the decision making process.

Building out an Excel spreadsheet with the features that are most important to you will allow you to place vendors at the top in columns providing a way to compare vendors and prioritize features that will ultimately service the unique needs of your project. Vendors are great at pointing out their hardware’s unique capabilities but, if you aren’t careful, that will also convince you that you need features that will never get implemented.  The 80/20 rule means you will only implement about 20 percent of the features you purchased the solution for.  The trick is figuring out which of the 20 percent you will end up implementing.  Chances are if you didn’t think of it prior to the discovery process, you probably won’t end up implementing the feature a vendor is trying to convince you that it is something you can’t live without.

Don’t invest in anything until you check our temperature monitoring system.   


Steve Parker is Solutions Engineer for Ravica which provides cost-efficient and functional secure access accessories as well as environmental monitoring appliances such as intelligent sensors for mission critical facilities.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
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