Moxa networking equipment for Stevens Institute of Technology

Moxa will provide its industrial hardened networking equipment to Stevens Institute of Technology students

Moxa is proud to sponsor Stevens Institute of Technology as it competes in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon 2015, an award-winning program that challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive.

Moxa will provide its industrial hardened networking equipment to Stevens Institute of Technology students as they build their entry, SURE HOUSE, a sustainable, resilient house for coastal communities engineered in response to the 2012 Hurricane Sandy tragedy that took the lives of 158 people and caused more than $65 billion in damage. For example, SURE HOUSE will sit on a bed of pilotis (ground-level supporting columns) to slightly elevate it out of reach of flooding, plus have durable flood-shielding incorporated into the outer layers of the house to create a waterproof shell.

Moxa's Business Development Manager comments:

Jim Toepper, Moxa's Business Development Manager for the Power Market, commented, "We are excited to lend Moxa expertise to this critically important project. We recognise SURE HOUSE is not just a contest entry for Stevens students but a demonstration showing future generations of innovators how to build in a world affected by a changing climate, and a chance for them to do their part to help the New Jersey Shore bounce back from the damaging effects of Hurricane Sandy."

AJ Elliott, graduate student in the Product Architecture Engineering program at Stevens said, "We have a computer science senior design team designing a very in-depth home monitoring system using Moxa equipment. With this system we are monitoring our branch circuit power consumption and numerous indoor and outdoor environmental data points. This data is critical to verifying our home's performance as well as measuring how the house holds up during weather events and power outages. We wanted the system to be as low-power consumption as possible since for the Solar Decathlon competition there are rigorous energy limitations. Given the large scope of what we are doing compared to a conventional home monitoring system, we really needed to turn to Moxa products engineered for use in the industrial controls world."

Once built, SURE HOUSE will merge inherently efficient indoor/outdoor rooms and an open floor plan of the quintessential 60's style modern beach cottage with state of the art building science, the latest renewable energy technologies, and fiber-composite materials repurposed from the boat building industry. The result is a home armored against extreme weather that uses 90% less energy than its conventional cousins, powers itself through clean solar energy, and in the aftermath of a storm becomes a hub for emergency power to the neighborhood.

Moxa UC-8100 wireless computer with LTE module

As part of its sponsorship, Moxa contributed critical elements that will assist the project in achieving its goals of being fully solar powered and storm resistant. A Moxa UC-8100 wireless computer with LTE module and an EDS series network switch provide a low-power solution for cellular network connectivity, data logger queries, database logging, and HTML page hosting. The UC-8100 is Verizon LTE-certified and is currently available for purchase and testing through a starter kit program.