Many Digi customers have highly demanding applications operating in extreme conditions such as mining and oil and gas, which are subject to a range of environmental conditions. Here are two such examples:

1) Oil and Gas Use Case

In this example, the customer is an oil and gas company that leverages the Digi WR31 on-board digital I/O. The companys application involves a private radio communications network.

The private radio network occasionally freezes and becomes unresponsive under certain circumstances, and the cost of sending a resource onsite to re-power the system is considerable. This customer has resolved the issue by placing Digi WR31 routers at each radio site and connecting an inline relay to the Digital output to interrupt/re-enable power to the private radio units. When a radio become unresponsive, the customer can now send a command to the Digital I/O on the Digi WR31, cutting all power from the private radio, then re-enabling it resulting in a hard system reset. This solution avoids repeated truck rolls to numerous distant sites each year, resulting in considerable cost savings.

2) Power Company Use Case

Involving a major power utility that installs Digi WR31 routers throughout the smart grid, using the on-board serial connection to monitor reclosers (power grid circuit breakers) and maintain a high degree of power reliability for more than four million customers. The Digi WR31 is installed outdoors in a utility box that also contains a battery backup, so the customer leverages both Digital interfaces on the WR31 as inputs to monitor two conditions:
-Utility box door opens or closes
-Router input power switches from line electricity to battery

Each time one of the above conditions is triggered or reset, the occurrence is denoted in a log file with a timestamp for further review and analysis by a company administrator. Condition detection and logging are achieved through the use of a simple Python program running directly on the router. The combination of an on-board programming environment and GPIO enable the customer to eliminate additional hardware while delivering a complete solution at the edge.