Social Distancing by the Thousands: How Our BT710 Makes it Easy

Example: Campuses of Thousands Struggling to Maintain Distance

Perhaps nowhere is the challenge more pronounced than in large college campuses, which by their very nature tend to expose students, faculty, and others to repeated contact and proximity to others. Campuses function on a schedule of moving between buildings and classes, and often feature open areas of congregation and large indoor study and dining halls. In a campus, it can be practically impossible to fully avoid exposure to others, and since learning and teaching involve person-to-person interactions by default, the potential for human error and closer-than-intended exposure is high.

There is a great potential for IoT to solve this challenge, particularly by using wearable technology to encourage and alert users when they’ve approached too closely. Our Sentrius™ BT710 Contact Tracer is an elegant solution to this problem: with several wearable form factors (clip/pendant/wristband) and alerts (LED/vibration), the BT710 can sense when it’s too close to other BT710 sensors and trigger warnings to the user, serving as a reminder to the wearer to keep a safe distance.

This is enough to facilitate social distancing, but contact tracing introduces another challenge. In order to build a timeline for contact tracing, it’s necessary to log all instances of contact, so that if someone is infected, the people they’ve been exposed to can be notified and checked for illness. This means contact data needs to be logged on the sensor, and then uploaded somehow to the cloud for analysis.

Example: Busy Manufacturing Floors Leave Room for Error

In manufacturing environments, busy production and lots of moving parts create an environment where social distancing can be especially difficult. Workers interacting, moving parts, transferring between work areas and trying to maintain tight deadlines are all factors that can create accidental contact and possibly spread disease. Once again, the BT710 provides a solution that cuts through the routine and helps enforce social distancing where it’s easy to forget safe procedure.

The BT710’s vibration functionality is ideal for environments like these, which can be noisy and can make it difficult to hear an audio alert. Workers can also utilize a hard-hat clip, which can keep the BT710 away from manufactured parts that can be susceptible to scratches and physical damage that can result from a wrist-worn sensor or pendant.

For industrial environments, the Sentrius™ IG60 Gateway is uniquely suited to the demand for rugged equipment, with a wide range of ways to connect. The IG60 supports Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Serial, and LTE. The IG60 is available with built-in AWS IoT Greengrass support, which allows you to easily write lambda applications to send your data to AWS and start monitoring and tracking sensor data.

The IG60 gives you more options for the ultimate in design flexibility. Skip cellular data fees by connecting directly to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Back up data locally on a Micro SD card in case of outages. Mount to existing infrastructure with DIN-Rail mount, or to any wall with the included wall mount bracket. And connect with reliability, thanks to high-performance 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi.

All of these features make the BT710 and IG60 a winning combination for monitoring the health and safety of your installations. The best social distancing and contact tracing solutions have to work continuously, leaving no contact unconfirmed and reliably getting that information to the cloud for crucial alerts. The BT710 and the IG60 give you confidence that your workers are protected in real-time.