We have been building applications with longitudes and latitudes for over 6 years now integrating a variety of technologies and servicing even more purposes. Its only logical that we extend this indoors.
At their annual event, Option had many great new things to disclose. As a key component of their catalogue, virtually everything for them starts with their amazing Cloudgate. A very fine piece of engineering that acts as a hub to the outside world. You can combine several radio technologies such as BLE, LoRaWAN, Wifi, ... into 1 single gateway and set this up with a multitude of backbone connectivities.
1 of those new things they launched was the birth of an End2End solution for indoor tracking and positioning. As a licence holder for Wirepas they have combined Bluetooth Tags and Anchors, their Cloudgate, a licence of the Wirepas Positioning Engine and a licence of the WMW Tracking Application into a single expandable package. It was exciting to see the appreciation of the audience on this powerful and yet simplified solution.
Our CEO, Bert Vanaken, was asked to co-present it and we are proud to be a part of this solution. With use cases for Hospitals, Warehouses but even moving trucks in Logistics it is fairly easy to show the benefits of this combined technology. Since we have been positioning for a long time, we also see a great opportunity in extending the outdoor tracking use cases into indoor environments. LoRaWAN has the possibility to triangulate and thus position any tag in its network with an accuracy of up to 50 metres. GPS based devices can provide more accurate results as we all experience in our vehicles when we drive anywhere. However, indoors both technologies do not work. There is no line of sight towards a satellite in the sky and the 50 metres accuracy does not cut it in any case indoors.
Our application can do much more than just the positioning on a map. It includes geofencing, user responsibilities, zone detection, KPI monitoring, reporting, ... and can always be combined with any other telemetry from various sensors (cfr. FoodLogistics).
Option also have constructed a demo kit that is available for POC's and first exploration.
