IoT Hero: Enseo Provides Security Management Applications for Hotel Staff with Multi-Protocol SoC

Latest update time：2021-09-03 19:48

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Last month, we had the opportunity to speak with Enseo’s Chief Product Officer David Simpson, and IoT Product Manager Logan Stover. If you’ve ever stayed in a hotel room and watched an on-demand movie or streaming service on the TV, you’ve probably used technology from the Texas-based company.

Enseo serves more than 84 million people annually through their platform. A few years ago, the company expanded its services into IoT security applications and developed an IoT-based employee safety device using wireless technology from Silicon Labs. The new product has attracted attention across the industry, providing employers with a new measure to help prevent housekeeper attacks.

Today, several years after launching the system, MadeSafe® products are used by housekeeping staff at many major hotel brands, including Marriott. Below, David and Logan share some details about the company and how the IoT security product came to be.

Please briefly introduce Enseo

David and Logan : We have four core products on one platform, including in-room entertainment, high-speed internet, IoT energy management and room controls, and the MadeSafe employee safety system. Demand for this platform has grown rapidly, and we have entered other adjacent markets, including education, hospitals, and government. Enseo created the first scrolling guide for cable television channels about 20 years ago. Soon after, Enseo entered the hospitality market.

How was the MadeSafe product developed and implemented ?

David and Logan : One of the reasons why MadeSafe is so useful is that hotel employees are often alone during their workdays while servicing hundreds of rooms at once. A few years ago, media attention focused on a sexual assault case involving a housekeeper in New York City and a well-known international politician. This case brought a lot of media attention to sexual assault in the hotel industry. Soon after the incident, several New York hotels approached us and asked us to design an employee safety product. In 2015, Enseo deployed the first generation of MadeSafe at the Essex Marriott.

According to the Center for American Progress, 25% of all sexual assault allegations occur in the service industry, which has a large number of female employees.

By the end of 2017, the #MeToo movement brought these issues to everyone’s attention. Hoteliers and cities began to enact ordinances, while unions brought the issue to a higher level of attention, which prompted some communities and the American Hotel and Lodging Association to be more aggressive in industry safety requirements. Today, most hotels have committed to installing this technology by the end of 2020. The hotel industry is leading other industries in proactively addressing these safety issues.

How does Enseo 's security product work ?

David and Logan : Each employee wears a small wireless device similar to a car key card. If an employee feels threatened, they simply press a button and a geolocation signal is instantly sent to designated security personnel, showing the employee's exact location on a 3D property map. Employees can only be tracked when they press the button, which is an important privacy element we built into our product.

What advantages does Silicon Labs solution design product bring?

David and Logan : When considering the design of the latest generation of MadeSafe products, we saw Silicon Labs’ multi-protocol capabilities and performance and cost as key differentiators from other products in the industry. In addition, it was critical for us to have multi-protocol capabilities to provide more flexible options for the next generation of MadeSafe systems and other future IoT products.

Silicon Labs' multiprotocol Wireless Gecko platform is easy for Enseo developers to use, allowing us to incorporate Zigbee and Bluetooth protocols into the product. The platform's support for online updates and the Simplicity Studio development toolkit's capabilities are also important to our development team because it helps simplify and speed up the design process. Our design team is already familiar with Silicon Labs solutions and development environments, and they also like the extensibility and flexibility of the software ecosystem.

Where do you think the Internet of Things will go in the next 5-8 years ?

David and Logan : IoT security requires more attention from both silicon and software vendors. Hardware, in particular, plays a key role in security, but until now, has not played a key role. We see this changing in the future. The future of IoT will bring a multitude of new devices to the market, many of which we haven’t even begun to imagine. While future cost pressures are high, we will need flexible and innovative software to meet pricing and development cost demands.

Explore Silicon Labs’ IoT multiprotocol wireless SoC/module portfolio: https://cn.silabs.com/products/wireless/xgm210x-series-2-modules

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