Monitoring data centers with sensors over conventional temperature probes has huge advantages, says facilities monitoring specialist ServersCheck. The company's new technology is what it bills as "the world's first thermal imaging camera sensor that works with SNMP and Modbus". While a traditional temperature sensor reports the nearby temperature, ServersCheck's patent-pending thermal imaging sensor performs a thermal scan of what it sees within its 50° field-of-view camera. Every two seconds, it checks the temperature at 4,800 points, and this thermal image array is then converted into SNMP and Modbus data for easy integration with monitoring platforms. The network monitoring or building management platform receives transmission from the wired or cellular base unit—that is, the SensorGateway, which connects to the sensors via RJ45.

This new technology opens up myriad new monitoring opportunities, says ServersCheck, particularly relating to data centers and distributed infrastructure sites. The new sensors can monitor individual changes or events within the environment that don't necessarily affect the overall conditions and often go undetected. Furthermore, monitoring the contacts and switches at substations with massive current loads on a 24x7 basis streamlines the maintenance process and safeguards against massive failures.