Where the tools are on site: EYE tags

How it is put together. At a set interval the tag transmits its identifier over Bluetooth Low Energy. The tracker on an excavator, loader or tipper hears every tag around it and sends the server the list along with its own coordinates. The site manager's smartphone with the mobile app does the same. In the central system the tag takes on the location of the nearest gateway that saw it, and the time of last contact.

This is how wacker plates, floor saws, generators, tool boxes, smaller plant such as articulated dumpers and everything else that regularly travels between sites is tracked. The storekeeper no longer has to ring round the site managers, and the workers do not have to report every movement.

An ordinary morning on site. A gang needs a vibrating screed to pour a slab, there is none in the store, and the site manager is sure it was taken to another section. The manager opens the list of tags and sees it: the screed was last noticed by a tipper's tracker yesterday at 17:40 on the neighbouring site, and it has not moved since. The tipper, which is going there for spoil anyway, brings it back by nine in the morning. A search like that used to take half a day of phone calls, and sometimes the hire of a second screed.

Where to start. There is no need to tag everything at once. Usually the expensive and frequently lost tools come first: generators, welding sets, wacker plates, breakers, laser levels. Then boxes of hand tools and small plant are added, once it is clear that the system works and people have got used to it.

What is not on site shows up too: a tag has not been in contact for a long while, which means the tool is either in a store outside gateway range or has been taken away without asking. Before hiring another generator, the manager checks whether one of their own is sitting unused on the neighbouring site.

EYE Beacon and EYE Sensor tags come in an IP67 housing and withstand dust, rain and washing down. The battery lasts a long time, so once fitted they need practically no attention. Besides its identifier, EYE Sensor transmits temperature, humidity, movement and tilt.

Setting up a large estate. Teltonika trackers can search for tags by name (the name filtering function). If you order tags with a set name through the configuration-at-the-factory service, that name only has to be entered into the tracker once, and it will see all present and future tags with that name. Setting up a thousand tags takes as little time as setting up one.

A single tracker sees up to 100 EYE tags at a time. Plant and tools are moving about constantly, though, and over a shift a tracker gets through any number of tags, so coverage of the site builds up by itself. These functions require firmware version 03.29 or newer in the tracker.

A movement counter. EYE Sensor has a movement timer function: it counts only the time the tool was actually moving, stops counting when it stops and carries on at the next movement. That data suits billing customers when equipment is hired out, and servicing based on actual use. Teltonika warns that the movement timer may require a test version of the firmware.

A survey before the rollout. Before tagging all the tools, we walk the site with a tracker or a phone and check at what distance a tag can be seen through a container wall, a vehicle body or concrete. That makes it clear where the gateways are sufficient and where tools will drop out of sight. The report for each tag carries the time it was last detected and the gateway that saw it. An old timestamp is a reason to check on a tool, not proof that it has gone.