FAQs

BLEAT is a scalable, easy to deploy system offering a low barrier to adoption.

• BLEATags (tracking devices) localise themselves by fusing location information broadcasted from low power infrastructure beacons (BLEAcons), distributed throughout an indoor environment.
• Data from BLEATags is communicated to the BLEAcons via a proprietary BLE encoded and encrypted packet.
• The BLEAcon relays the data to a gateway via LoRaWAN, which in turn forwards the packet to the cloud server for real-time localisation of the tracked subject or for insightful analytics.

Exceptionally low power (typical 5uA when not moving), the BLETags have an accelerometer, NFC, LEDs and a buzzer to easily attached to the subject to be tracked.

The BLEAcons feature both BLE and LoRa radios, allowing BLE packets to be beaconed to the BLEATags (for localisation) as well as forwarding received locations from tags back to a LoRaWAN gateway in a low power manner.

The system provides useful, real-time tracking with as little as a few beacons, or alternatively, the beacon network can be grown as needed to meet the accuracy, coverage and functionality regardless of the size of the site.

BLEAcons can be rapidly deployed because they are battery powered (untethered). This means companies can be tracking objects and achieving efficiencies on the same day beacons are deployed.

Additional CSIRO technologies can be used atop of BLEAT to enable devices to share geo-located object state information through a novel IoT “language” (EI OTI), sharing of time-stamped  sensor data (EI TDF), processing of shared data by compact virtual machine code representing rules (EI VM) and over the air reprogramming and reconfiguring (EI RPC).

Potential users to benefit from this tracking technology include:

• Construction companies
• Supermarkets 
• Households (pets, kids, car keys) 
• Wildlife tracking and research 
• Hospitals
• Mining companies (underground, open cut)
• Site managers (private and government organisations)  
• Health and safety firms 
• Army bases (enhanced safety)
  

BLEAT does require BLE to be turned on for smartphones to be tracked or interact with BLEAT devices. BLE is a very low power radio protocol and having it turned on usually has negligible impact on modern smartphones’ daily battery usage. 

No – the BLEAT system can operate without access to the internet, however for cloud-generated alerts and web visualisation of the system, the gateway must have internet. 

Device lifetime depends on a number of variables (such as how many other devices are around, how often devices are moving). As a general rule, more BLEAcons allows sharing the energy costs of relaying tracking tag (BLEATags). Under a light relaying load, BLEAcons should last over a year on the 3 button cells they operate on.

BLEATags lifetime is also dependant on a number of variables (how often they listen for other devices, how often they transmit etc), but how often they are moving is a dominant effect since they necessarily turn their radios on to listen in order to localise. Under moderate movement conditions (1 hour of movement per day), BLEATags can operate for over a year on 1 button cell battery. 

Contact us for a detailed discussion of your requirements and we can then provide technical details about BLEAT.