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Localisation service
Most supply chain or fleet management cases revolve around locating assets. Therefore, the localisation service is at the heart of the Sensolus solution.
A diverse set of applications is built upon and around this central service.
The Sensolus asset trackers provide 4 different geolocation technologies as different technologies are better suited for different situations. Depending on your use case, we will select the best technologies and activate them on your trackers.
GPS allows outdoor localisation without any infrastructure.
WiFi is suited to indoor and outdoor localisation in environments where WiFi access points are publicly or privately available.
Network triangulation is good for low precision localisation and doesn’t require any additional infrastructure.
BLE is used for indoor localisation using extra infrastructure like geobeacons or anchors for real-time or high-precision localisations.
From a battery-consumption perspective, a tracker should always sleep except when there is direct business value for the customer. Therefore Sensolus provides a set of different configurations to define when to wake the tracker and capture location.
When starting and/or stopping with -optionally- some intermediate locations (e.g., every 15 mins) while moving.
At fixed time intervals or at specific times during the day.
When a change in context occurs (e.g., orientation change when a container is emptied).
When an asset has moved more than a certain distance or it has exceeded a certain speed (e.g., moved more than 2000 meters and speed of more than 80 km/h)
While the first four location triggers have been initiated by the device, you can use BLE anchors and smartphones that scan for trackers to convert this into location data.
For optimal results, using one location technology is often not enough. Sensolus enables you to use a cascade of technologies. With the edge configurable rule engine, you can define this sequence remotely.
By combining different location tracking technologies, Sensolus provides asset location information. The choice of technology(ies) depends on the use case:
Sensolus constantly evaluates all new GPS chip releases to provide the most energy efficient tracker on the market.
Sensolus trackers extend battery-life with configurable GPS fix times depending on the needed location accuracy, indoor detection algorithms, and more.
Our cloud device management application provides all required information regarding GPS energy use, fix times, fix precision, and installation quality.
The tracker scans for WiFi access points (APs) in its surroundings and calculates its location based on the MAC addresses of the detected. This technology works well in urban areas, both indoors and outdoors.
Public WiFi location services are used to map the WiFi APs to a location. However, users can also define a private list of their own APs.
Our cloud device management application provides all information regarding the number of found addresses, resolution quality, WiFi scan energy consumption, and more.
BLE geolocation technology is used in multiple ways for locating assets.
For optimising tracking of zones Sensolus provides different solutions: geobeacons for a quick and easy installation, smartphones and tablets for nomadic tracking, and BLE anchors for higher responsiveness of location information.
For higher precision of location, Sensolus trackers can be integrated with existing solutions (e.g., Quuppa, BlooLoc).
The tracker sends a Sigfox message which is received by one or more Sigfox basestations. The location is determined based on the signal strength.
There is a trade-off: the extremely low energy consumption means that the accuracy is also low (precision: kilometres) and only live messages can be sent.
The network location is also used as a back-up if other geolocations technologies are not available. This is defined using the edge configurable rule engine.
Sensolus always looks for a solution that requires as little infrastructure as possible. Our basic rule is stick (the tracker) and forget (for at least 5 years). However, we sometimes add some infrastructure to meet customer requests, e.g., for high-precision or high-responsiveness of location information.
Geobeacons can provide zone precision location information of assets when GPS localisation fails indoor, indoor WiFi localisation is not possible, or the localisation captured is not accurate enough.
A BLE anchor installed at a fixed location and continuously scanning for Sensolus trackers, gives real-time information about when an asset enters or passes a zone.
A high-precision setup can be deployed when accuracy of up to 1 metre is required. Our trackers are compatible with Quuppa and BlooLoc indoor tracking technologies.
A high-precision setup can be deployed when accuracy of up to 1 metre is required. Our trackers are compatible with Quuppa and BlooLoc indoor tracking technologies.
We blend data from different location technologies on the cloud level for a consistent user experience and API.
Take a look on how Tracking your Asset’s Location with Sensolus looks like on the Platform.
