Hartford Business Journal

HartfordBusiness.com | January 11, 2021 | Hartford Business Journal 11 the major services the company originally offered upon its founding in 1866 was inspecting industrial steam boilers, in order to take them offline before they exploded — a frequent, fatal and costly occurrence years ago. The company established a "sensor team" in 2013, and began investing in startups using sensor technology the following year, Hui said. In the past six years, HSB has invested nearly $50 million in early-stage companies that make sensor devices — like Augury, which uses sensors to track the health and performance of industrial manufacturing machines; and relayr Inc., which tracks data from machines and production lines to provide insights into critical failures and efficiency levels. Today, HSB uses sensor technology to monitor clients' property, and warn them when 107 Old Windsor Road, Bloomfield, CT 06002 (860) 242-8586 | Fax (860) 242-8587 www.pdsec.com PDS ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION, INC. THINK • PLAN • BUILD Spotlight on: Commercial Impact Plastics | Putnam, CT Total Project Size: 12,000 SF Another Successful Project by PDS DESIGN BUILDERS • GENERAL CONTRACTORS • CONSTRUCTION MANAGERS PDS recently designed and built a state of the art two-story, 12,000 square foot addition onto the existing Impact Plastics facility. This new addition features polished concrete floors, a frameless glass conference room, work laboratories, and a second floor exterior patio. PDS was able to complete this project within the time requested while remaining within the owners budget. a pipe is about to burst, or an electrical system is in danger of an outage. A few months ago, HSB warned the Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency, which has been running a free meals program in Newington throughout the pandemic, that its freezer was registering higher-than-usual temperatures, Hui said. Using that sensor data, HSB identified which part was causing the problem, and the client replaced it before the freezer went down and food spoiled. "What could have been a major loss to the community became a minor issue," Hui said. "This remote monitoring is helping many of these businesses prevent risk at a time when they really need extra support." Further, Hui thinks the ability to prevent accidents that lead to property damage could turn the insurance industry on its head within the next five or so years. "It's going to be about predicting and preventing loss, and not just about paying out for losses," Hui said. "I think that is going to be a huge sea change for the industry." Startups to stalwarts Smaller companies working in Hartford are getting into sensor technology, too, like Oval Digital Inc., which makes a wireless in- home device that monitors changes in temperature, light, humidity, motion and water. The New York-based company, which was founded in 2014, is HBJ PHOTO: STEVE LASCHEVER Source: Allied Market Research currently participating in the Upward Labs startup accelerator in Hartford, CEO Michael Harry said. Selling home-monitoring devices didn't have much appeal with the public until millions of people started buying and using Amazon's Alexa or Google Home, Harry said. "It wasn't really resonating with a lot of homeowners, because there was a learning curve of educating them on what this was, what it can do and why they would need it," Harry said. Now Oval's home device is available on Amazon, and the company is looking to expand into selling the product to property managers, who could use it to identify problems with a building's HVAC and other systems, before tenants complain, said Moore, the company co-founder. Farmington-based Otis Worldwide Corp. was already using sensor technology to monitor the brakes on its elevators before it began releasing a slate of touchless sensor-based products in 2020 that allow passengers to control an elevator with their voices and hand gestures, said Chris Smith, the company's vice president of marketing and product strategy. There is also the company's IoT program called Otis ONE, which uses sensors to detect problems with an elevator, and reports issues to Otis maintenance crews to help streamline repairs, Smith said. About a quarter of Otis' elevators around the world are sensor-enabled, he said, and that will rise as old ones are replaced or retrofitted. "In 10 years, people are going to expect that there is certain information and data that you can get from the elevator that customers want access to," Smith said. THESE ARE THE MOST POPULAR SENSOR MARKETS Radar sensors Biosensors Touch sensors Image sensors Pressure sensors Temperature sensors Proximity and displacement sensors Motion and position sensors Humidity sensors An HSB water sensor product.

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