The European leader in providing smart solutions specialized in environmental monitoring: Homerider Systems

Cities around the world are witnessing an exploding growth in the consumption of energy and water resources. The growing needs to make the resources efficient, safe and available are causing utility companies to look for effective solutions which would likely ease the stress on demand of water and energy supplies. Moreover, it is critical that the consumption and forecasting of water use is accurate. With the help of IoT, smart systems can be designed that can make conservation of resources efficient for smart homes and smart cities to exist and function efficiently. There is a greater need to ensure that cities can expand sustainably, operate efficiently and maintain a high quality of life for residents. So, Homerider Systems was established by two serial entrepreneurs, M. Robert Frati from Vienne and M. Dominique Seze from Bordeaux, as an end to end IoT solution provider for industries and utilities. While the water industry is the main focus for Homerider Systems, it has a global environment vision with solutions to monitor the consumption of electricity, gas and oil. Headquartered in Vienne, France, Homerider Systems develops, manufactures deploys and service 5 million of connected sensors through unified wireless connectivity networks that collect and analyze a vast array of environmental data. Acquired by Veolia Water, a historical partner, in 2009, it offers a robust, reliable and multiprotocol network to a rich ecosystem dedicated to data management for areas such as water, industry and efficient energy management. With a strong foothold in the French market, the company is currently expanding its international presence by serving markets such as Greece, England, Spain, China, Mexico, Australia, Morocco, etc.

Optimizing the environmental resources

In its early stages, Homerider acted as an electronic and wireless design house for key accounts in Oil/Gas and water sector. Keeping its customer’s demands in view, the company scaled up and became the Original Electronic Manufacturer of ISM 868MHz radio devices in order to push forward the positive experience of remote monitoring and improve asset management. The company realized that customers needed to have a comprehensive solution from sensors to online application dashboards, so Homerider setup a skillful IT team in order to become a private cloud operator of its own wireless module. At that very moment, Homerider became an End-to-End solution provider for remote asset management with particular focus on Water, Energy, Waste, and Oil businesses. 

The first commercial products launched by Homerider in 2003 were a line-up of metering wireless modules for smart water metering called “G1 compact”. Two customized variantsof “G1” clip-on wireless modules have been designed for Itron and Diehl water meter brands and delivered via Veolia Water to the city of Paris in order to setup the first Online (Fixe Network) water metering project in France. The company had to roll-out 65,000 smart water meters, connected to a local 868 MHz radio system infrastructure (Homerider network products) and deliver daily meter indexes and data alerts regarding water leakages, minimum and maximum flow, tampering and fraud. The project was completed in 2006 and is still operated today.

Providing digital water and energy services

Homerider delivers an interoperable ecosystem of intelligent sensors such as meters, pressure, acoustic loggers, water quality probes, etc., all unified in a single Wireless Network. It raises the bar of Digital Water Management with Fusion, a cloud-based data management system that collects data from all devices connected to the Homerider network. The collected data is presented to customers via the Fusion application. Fusion delivers daily and accurate performance indicators like water balance, network efficiency and water quality, supporting water operators smoothly adopting the best water management practices. Homerider’s data management platform is currently supporting around 5 million smart devices for industrial and municipal customers. 

Homerider connects all types of sensors and instruments embedding intelligence and analytics in each object necessary for Environmental Monitoring and unifies all these heterogeneous data via Low Power Wide Area Networks like LoRaWAN, Sigfox or NB-IoT. All these data streams are easily unified by Fusion’s Cloud services delivering cost effective and simple ICT integration into Big Data platforms such as IBM, Oracle or CapGemini. The company also develops solutions for building energy monitoring as well as Tank Level Monitoring for oil/gas industry. Homerider offers digital monitoring solutions with unrivaled TCO, delivering useful IoT experience to various industries and municipalities.

Apilink, its new product, is a connected sensor for Fire Hydrants permitting to measure and see what was not seen before such as: Open/close detection, water volumes estimation, usage profiling, and NFC accessibility control by access control. “APILINK is an upcoming blockbuster for water business in order to reduce better Non-Revenue Water”, said CEO Xavier Mathieu.

Delivering affordable, useful and simple IoT experience

Industrial enterprises need fast and accurate operational data (Fast Business) while municipal buyers are eager to have long lasting solution with reliable SLA (Slow Business). LPWAN/IoT must propose adaptive, high-performing and useful packages in order to satisfy both Slow and Fast business cases. The team at Homerider works hard to deliver such IoT packages to customers in demand of agile and adaptable solution to various use cases. They believe in creative teamwork and partnerships and have built their team culture around four core values: Innovation, Commitment, Solidarity and Expertise.

Knowing the leader behind Homerider Systems, CEO M. Xavier Mathieu

After ten years in telecommunication industry (mobile telecom operators and solution providers), Xavier Mathieu joined Homerider in 2010 as the Director of International Sales. With significant growth outcomes in 2015, Xavier Mathieu takes over the general management of Homerider at 39 years, leading Homerider to become the worldwide reference of Environmental IoT. Under Xavier’s guidance Homerider Systems has been heavily involved in optimizing environmental resources.

“We are proud of the work that we do, and wouldn’t be successful without our passionate team of dedicated people.”