NOVELIC releases a motion and presence sensor for the lighting industry, leveraging the full potential of Infineon's XENSIV™ BGT24LTR11 radar

NOVELIC, our Preferred Partner, has recently released its newest radar innovation, the RIOT100, the company's first member of the RIOT (Radar for IoT) sensor product family. The whole product line is tailored to the needs of the lighting, smart building, and security industry, providing exactly the required features for the application they are made for and reaching the best price-performance ratio.

The lighting market traditionally uses PIR sensors for motion detection, which often falls short when it comes to detecting people in almost static situations such as in classrooms, meeting rooms, or offices when people are concentrating on their work and are not moving around that much.

In comparison, radar chips impress with outstanding motion detection sensitivity and can pick up even the slightest movements. This feature makes sure that the RIOT100 radar sensor is the ideal human presence detector in any situation. However, one characteristic that the NOVELIC sensor shares with PIR is the ease of use.

CO2 100 ASUKA

For more advanced applications, the sensor provides a serial interface via UART and I²C to provide an object list of all detections and a means for configuring the sensor to automatically filter all objects based on their speed, direction, distance, and signal strength and only report objects that are relevant for the use case.

The RIOT100 comes with some unique features that have not been available in cost-effective motion sensors before. By utilizing the XENSIV™ BGT24LTR11's IQ mixer,  the only radar transceiver chip with a rich set of features and a low enough power consumption, RIOT100 can distinguish the direction of movement - towards the sensor or away from it.

The RIOT100 provides:

  • Precise Micromovement Detection
  • Wide Customizable Detection Range
  • Up to 360-Degree Field of View
  • Internal Signal Processing
  • Fully Digital Interface
  • Low-Latency Presence Detection
  • Maximum Energy Savings
  • Invisible Integration
  • Independent of Object and Ambient Temperature

The RIOT100 sensor can measure the distance to any moving object, enabling an entirely new set of possibilities. Knowing the distance to any object in the field of view, it is possible to precisely limit the sensor's detection range. The detection range can comfortably be set by software without meddling with the mechanical installation of the sensor tweaking sensitivity levels, or masking off parts of the field view.

Besides a boost in functionality, NOVELIC's new motion sensor is more robust and reliable than any other technology. It does not require any optical parts, allowing it to see through dust, dirt, and fog. It is completely unaffected by ambient lighting and does not require any additional parts like IR floodlights.

Last, but not least, it is fully unaffected by ambient and object temperature. Technologies like PIR struggle when the ambient temperature reaches the human body temperature. So, they cannot detect any difference between moving people and the background, rendering them useless. This is one of the cases where radar can display its strengths as the most robust sensor technology.

“Once we finished researching the requirements of the lighting industry, it immediately became clear that Infineon’s BGT24LTR11 radar chip is the ideal candidate to build the foundation of our new motion and presence sensor. Exactly what we need” – Christian Düring, Product Marketing Manager at NOVELIC.