Cold Chain Monitoring and Smart Tracking in Zaragoza

Tahona Goyesca is an Aragonese leading company in the bakery and pastry sector. This artisan bakery has four points of production, several retail shops and a fleet of ten vehicles that perform around thirty deliveries everyday. Tahona Goyesca bakes and distributes cakes and pastries that require storage at proper temperature to reach their destination in peak condition. Deliveries take place in the morning to take advantage of drive time and to reach customers early at the point of sale.

Tahona Goyesca – Bakery and Pastry

To control the temperature and make delivery more efficient in Tahona Goyesca’s fleet of refrigerated vehicles, Libelium designed a Smart Tracking solution using Waspmote Plug & Sense! and the Meshlium gateway. A central dispatching office maps out the routes for each of the delivery vans. The bakery delivers cakes, pastries and fresh bread products to retail outlets, restaurants and catering events. With the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) system, the temperature and position of each delivery vehicle can be monitored in real time remotely through a pc / smartphone / tablet and basic Internet connection.

Tahona Goyesca – Fleet Tracking

 

Sensor nodes and wireless gateway

The technology solution consists of a Waspmote Plug & Sense! sensor node installed on each vehicle in the fleet and a central node (the wireless gateway) called Meshlium. The main components of each Plug & Sense! node are the temperature sensor, a GPS antenna, a 3G antenna, a car battery charger and the Waspmote Plug & Sense! Tracker.

Sensor node with specific Smart Tracking Components

The Waspmote Plug & Sense! nodes monitor the temperature in the vehicle refrigeration chamber and transmit the data to Meshlium using the 3G mobile network. The vehicle’s position is obtained from the GPS antenna and transmitted with other information such as RSSI (3G signal power) and the battery level of the node.

Waspmote Plug & Sense! installed in the cab of a van

During daily deliveries, the Plug & Sense! node charges its battery directly from the vehicle battery through the cigarette lighter socket of the van. The Plug & Sense! battery has a capacity of 6600mAh and transmits data even when the vehicle is off.

Plug & Sense! charges its battery directly from the vehicle battery

  Networking with Meshlium Meshlium has wireless communication modules as well as Ethernet. It receives information from the nodes, parses it and finally stores the data in its internal database. With the Meshlium Web interface, Customer Service staff can check order status information and every vehicle’s data by simply entering an IP address in a browser; drivers can receive alerts.  

Libelium Solution includes Hardware and Software

Every Waspmote Plug & Sense! node is programmed, configured and tested in the Libelium laboratories, so that once placed in the vehicle, just clicking the ON button is required to the node starts running and transmitting . Libelium’s solution allows the nodes to use sleep mode, so that every node “sleeps”, “awakes”, updates its position and temperature, and “sleeps” again. For Tahona Goyesca, the optimum time between samples is three minutes, to properly balance the binomial energy consumption with precision. Each Plug & Sense! node synchronizes the refrigerator chamber temperature, vehicle position, remaining battery level and 3G signal power every 3 minutes. The Tahona Goyesca delivery trucks are moving from 5am until 1pm every day, so the sensor nodes monitor the fleet during this period and hibernate the rest of the day. In the absence of 2G or 3G coverage, data values are stored in memory and transmitted as soon as coverage resumes. A specific Meshlium application to visualize the data was developed for this project. Each vehicle’s route, and starting and finish times are tracked and reported, and reports can be viewed as a map or as a list. In map view the trajectory of the vehicle is superimposed on a Google maps interface. Each sample of data taken is represented by a dot that displays date, time and temperature when selected with a click.

Map View Data Visualization

The data in list view shows a table of each sample including date, time, coordinates and temperature.

List View Data Visualization

 

Real Time Data Visualization and Scalability

Using mobile technology for data transmission allows data to be stored and accessed through the Meshlium gateway. The value is being able to check the temperature measurements along with the vehicles’ position, in real time. The real time sensor network solution selected for Tahona Goyesca is applicable to any transport or logistics company that requires temperature and position monitoring in their vehicle fleet. The only requirement is to install a Plug & Sense! node in any vehicle whose position and temperature the company want to monitor, and a Meshlium gateway accessible via the Internet. “Cakes are one of the most delicate goods to transport. By controlling their conditions in realtime we can detect any failure or delay in the delivery system and act before the cakes get ruined”, said Laura Lumbreras, Customer Service Manager at Tahona Goyesca. “Tahona Goyesca operates its own fleet of refrigeration trucks and is one of the leading bakeries to use sensing and tracking technology to offer their customers efficient food distribution”, said David Gascón, Libelium CTO.  

ERP Integration and Cloud Partners

In this project, data is visualized in a Web interface. Custom solutions that store data in an external database, synchronizing Meshlium with a company management platform or ERP are easy to develop. Libelium’s Smart Tracking solution allows data exportation in different formats, such as KML format for visualization in a tool such as Google Earth, or in CSV format for further work in Excel spreadsheets. To integrate with an ERP, data may be inserted SQL system, either working directly with the database or via web servers XML or JSON files. Libelium’s technology integrates easily with Cloud platforms such as Axeda, Sentilo, Thingworx, Esri, and with the Cloud solution platform of Telefónica, the global broadband and telecommunications provider.

Libelium’s Cloud Partners

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