Tracking Personnel using BLE Beacons, Wi-Fi and TASSTA Solutions, But What is a BLE Beacon?
Being able to track your personnel outdoors using GPS is straightforward. Our smart devices with their GPS receivers use satellite triangulation. But they rely on clear sight of skies.
But what about indoors location mapping when there are no clear skies to rely on?
With BLE technology you can access the same accuracy indoors and meet the same duty of care to your personnel as outdoor location services.
BLE beacons communicate via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) sending out an ID numbers approximately 10 times every second. Beacon devices are small and discreet radio transmitters, strategically mounted throughout your property that send out signals up to 80 metres in range. A combination of three indoor beacons is sufficient to find the accurate position of a smartphone to within a 1-meter range. The signal from the beacon triggers the TASSTA T-FLEX app on the smartphone device automatically sending its location position to the TASSTA T.RODON mapping terminal using either the on-site Wi-Fi or via 4G LTE GSM.
Virtual BLE’s can also be utilised using local Wi-Fi systems negating the need to have a physical beacon.
By latching onto existing Wi-Fi networks the location of a user is determined by assigning a probability weight to each point. After calculating the expected signal strength and the measured signal strength, the location of the device (user) is determined with great accuracy.
Indoor tracking is not just for security guard tours.
Tracking can be used to evaluate KPI’s for example in manufacturing and warehousing; to locate the nearest asset to handle a maintenance issue, locate a First Aider or keep a watchful eye over a lone worker. With TASSTA’s applications your smartphone becomes a dedicated Push-to-Talk device, with near instantaneous call setup. When this is coupled with tracking features it gives you the added benefit of being able to seamlessly monitor personnel indoors or outdoors. If an incident occurs, such as a man-down situation or an emergency call, your team will know exactly how to respond and with greater accuracy.
How do you get a map of your facility into the TASSTA system?
The floorplan of your facility will be uploaded into the systems using a jpeg file or similar. For multi-story buildings the application will be able to determine what level the tracked asset is on based on the beacons.
