Iot and Assets: Tracking Mobile Toilets

One of the most challenging jobs for IoT technologies is real-time tracking of goods and assets at remote locations, even when they lack a power source. Tracking Mobile Toilets are a good example. They’re usually tucked away well out of sight and smell. And the only way to find them is to send somebody out looking for them.

Foresolutions, a U.K. technology company, thinks it’s found a better way to locate and check the status of such hard-to-find assets as porta potties, construction tools, and air-traffic equipment, just to name a few. Foresolutions is providing battery-powered IoT devices along with its own software for managing non-powered items in outdoor working environments.
These often include seats of ease, euphemistically called Mobile Expandable Wellbeing Units, or MEWUs (pronounced Mews). These are typically bright orange interconnecting boxes placed at railway or building construction sites and containing removable wastewater tanks and compartments for additional safety equipment such as defibrillators and first aid gear. They cost lots of money and are mostly left to fend for themselves out somewhere in the boondocks.
Thanks to battery-powered sensors and wireless connectivity, Foresolutions helps railroads and construction companies keep track of their units, tell whether or not they are being used and when they may require maintenance. Altogether, Foresolutions has deployed several thousand IoT devices to keep track of several thousand non-motorized assets—tools, steps, tugs and other equipment—at Heathrow Airport in order to help management understand their utilization and locate equipment as needed.

Tracking Mobile Toilets: A mobile expandable wellbeing unit.

Sensor data is collected through Foresolutions’ cloud-based software, which provides a dashboard and customizable alerts for the owners of those assets.
Throughout the past year, Foresolutions has been partnering with Digital Matter, which makes battery-powered sensors that leverage wireless networks, including LTE, GSM, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to forward data to the cloud, no matter where a sensor is deployed.
Foresolutions is using Digital Matter’s Oyster 2 sensor devices, powered by three AA batteries, on the mobile toilets, which can update companies with the information they need to manage the units. Traditionally, this type of data cannot be accessed without a human visiting the station. Foresolutions’ system can detect not only its GPS location but also such conditions as the opening and closing of doors, vibration, temperature and humidity changes, as well as, water, ice and other outdoor conditions. Each sensor comes with a unique identifier, and that ID number is linked to the unit in Foresolution’s cloud-based software.
With the unit installed at a specific location, the GPS data is updated in the software. Any changes in location or sensor readings, such as tilting or moving are forwarded to the headquarters so those in charge of the stations can tell when they might be being moved. After all, these units cost a lot of money, and theft is not unknown.
IoT data also helps to ensure that the units are sanitized and well-maintained, says Tom Ross, Foresolutions’ managing director. He has ambitious plans to expand his solutions far beyond mobile loos, as they’re called in the UK, to one day include such markets as farms, factories, hospitals, and shopping centers and even. amusement parks. Ah, the things you can do with IoT!

Author: Tim Cole
Image Credit: Foresolutions

Source: https://www.smart-industry.net/iot-and-assets-tracking-mobile-toilets/