The concept of the office is changing. With the rise of hybrid working, offices need to be more flexible and adaptable than ever before. AIoT-enabled embedded computing solutions can play a pivotal role in making offices smarter and more efficient, including working space management, meeting room scheduling and digital whiteboard for video conferencing.
Working Space Management
In the post-pandemic era, people have not fully returned to the office and hybrid work remains popular. Today many corporates no longer assign seats to employees like the old way. To streamline the process of getting a seat for an individual workday or a table or a meeting room for a quick meeting and teamwork, having a floor plan showing occupied and vacant seats and spaces can be convenient. To identify whether a seat is vacant or not, some companies already deploy an IP camera or a wireless access point that detects mobile signals to tell if a seat is taken. The data can be processed by a wireless edge system and transmit real-time space availability information to a display at the entrance of the office.
In light of an edge system for smart office, the fanless eBOX630A can be a good fit thanks to its compact size, computing capability and rich I/O. Powered by the 11th gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor, the eBOX630A supports three 2.5G LAN, six USB ports and four COM ports which provide flexibility for peripheral devices. Then, the M.2 Key E slot and Wi-Fi/LTE module can enable wireless connection for data transmission.
Conference Room Management
In a large enterprise, managing the schedule of conference rooms is crucial. Occupying a conference room at unscheduled times can be disruptive and affect the efficiency and productivity of colleagues. Deploying an HMI outside each conference room can not only display the appointment time but also can have access control functions through a built-in RFID smart card reader and camera. Also, it's a handy way to connect a programmable LED lightbar to the HMI to show different statuses of the room such as occupied or bookable.
In this kind of case, we recommend the modular panel PC, the ITC151. With a slim diamond-cut bezel, the ITC151 is stylish to fit into the modern office environment. It is based on the swappable Intel® SDM CPU card, which is convenient for future maintenance. At a size 15.6-inch HD TFT LCD screen, it supports portrait and landscape modes to meet the demands of various applications. Additionally, the ITC151 supports several peripheral devices like RFID reader and camera module to accomplish the access control solution. The M.2 Key E enables wireless connection and makes the applications more flexible. What’s more, since it supports desktop stand, floor stand, and wall mount, it became a favorite in use cases in the office.
Digital Whiteboard for Video Conferencing
During video conferencing to improve the quality of communication, the digital whiteboard has become a must-have. The video conferencing solution that sets it apart is the multi-party whiteboard collaboration. During the meeting, the user can scribble down keywords or draw mind maps while others in the online meeting can see them simultaneously. To complete a video conferencing solution, given a variety of displays on the market that supports Intel® Open Pluggable Specification (OPS compliance), users can choose an OPS signage player according to the demands of computing performance, I/O and storage options. The OPS standard provides cableless and cost-effective deployment for more effective management and maintenance of media players.
Axiomtek has used the OPS520 to build a video conferencing solution for our corporate customers through its swift plug-and-play feature, turning a display into a computer. Its 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor and two DDR4-2933 SO-DIMM up to 64GB of memory provide decent computing capability to run more sophisticated software. For great connectivity, it offers one USB 3.2, one USB Type C, two USB 2.0, one GbE LAN, one DisplayPort 1.4, and one HDMI 2.0 with 4K UHD. It also comes with one M.2 Key M 2280 supporting NVMe interface for storage and one M.2 Key E 2230 slot for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This digital signage player also comes with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 which can provide security and privacy benefits.
All in all, with the combination of various embedded systems and HMI, we can make the office smarter that meet today’s different demands of work and optimize the convenience of the workplace.
