New gadgets from Branham Up and Comer Sensor Wireless mimic a tomato or zucchini to monitor shipped items from inside packaging crates

If broken eggs and bruised potatoes could talk, they might just reveal secrets that could save an organization big money. A new family of products from a Charlottetown, PEI-based company can't give voice to vegetables, but does the next best thing.
    Wayd McNally, president and CEO of Sensor Wireless, saw how much produce was lost or damaged along a typical supply chain, and it gave him an idea. What if you could throw a device in with shipped goods and somehow measure just what happens to them along the way? That was back in 1997. Today, after much research and development, that idea has evolved into active wireless sensor products such as Smart Spud, CrackLess Egg and Smart Bottle. 
    The system employs highly sensitive devices that look and act like a potato, an egg or whatever else a company ships, McNally said. "When the CrackLess Egg sensor moves through (the supply chain), it looks like an egg and it acts like an egg. It weighs the same and it has identical roll characteristics."
Users can buy pre-made devices off the shelf or devices can be custom designed to "mimic" a host of real-life products: a particular fruit, bottle or package, for example. Active sensors are built into the units, which are then placed "undercover" alongside the real products. They travel along the entire supply chain, and are used to measure conditions such as temperature, humidity, vibration, impact and pressure - all without interfering with existing processes or equipment.
    The active wireless sensors are smaller and more customizable than anything else on the market, McNally said. Most simple Radio Frequency tags available today are very limited in what they can measure, or require cumbersome batteries, or can only send information in certain frequencies. 
    This new breed of more sophisticated sensors can feed back real-time information to the customer via Global Positioning Systems and other wireless technologies. Customers can monitor remote assets and pull up charts or graphs of where problems are occurring. The information can then be used to streamline processes, tweak temperatures, change packaging, etc., in an effort to improve the quality of goods being delivered.
    McNally described one client who had more than 40,000 cases of eggs broken during transport and could not nail down the problem. Sensor Wireless discovered the eggs experienced numerous stress points along the supply chain, rather than one large event. 
    "Impact can occur at a certain point in the line, but the actual break may occur at a different point. It has a cumulative effect. With these sensors, you get to see exactly where the issues are occurring - you get to the root cause."

The Branham cut

Braham's president and CEO Wayne Gudbranson said the company caught his eye because "a lot of cool things are happening with them, and they have a whole heck of a lot of potential."
Gudbranson believes a wave of more sophisticated Radio Frequency Identification technology is coming and that Sensor Wireless is ahead of the curve, especially if it continues to focus on agricultural applications.
    "The opportunities right now are endless. And the company is in a particularly good place to position itself as a leader in this space."

The Up and Comers

Every year the Branham Group ranks Canada's top-performing tech companies. Part of that roundup is a list of the Top 25 Canadian IT Up and Comers, companies that have not yet made it big but which Branham believes may soon be headline firms. For the full list click here.