Technical rounds - use of bluetooth beacons

Introduction

The document describes the use of bluetooth beacons to automate technical rounds by automatically verifying the employee’s location and automatically updating the round list due to the employee’s movement.

Introduction

The inspection round system requires the employee to register a number of activities - questions, measurements, tasks on the inspection round path declared by the administrator. The employee uses mobile devices - telephone, tablet - to register this information. Sometimes the employer/manager requires confirmation of the presence of a given person at the place of the inspection round. This is the expected confirmation that the employee has actually been to the location. For this operation in the AMAGE system, we use RFID tags or Bluetooth Beacons introduced in this release.

The principle of using beacons

The disadvantage of RFID tags is the need to approach them at a certain distance. In order for the mobile device to supply energy to the RFID tag, a close distance (2-3 cm max) is required. This, combined with the arrangement of RFID readers in mobile devices (often in the lower part, where the hand of the tour operator is held), causes that RFID tags, despite their advantages, also have disadvantages during the inspection round.

Bluetooth beacons in the AMAGE system are configured as a generator of unique information about a specific location. The beacon is installed in a selected place of the plant and configured to periodically send its identifier. The advantage of this solution is a greater range between the mobile device and the beacon for correct reading. The disadvantage of these devices is the need for battery power, which in turn limits the life of such devices. In the AMAGE system, we estimate the service life at 4-8 years of continuous operation, depending on the configuration.

In the AMAGE system, we use these elements to mark presence in a selected place, but also to provide the employee with contextual information about the place of work and to adjust the data displayed there.

Purchase and delivery of beacons

Beacons provided by AMAGE are already pre-configured and activated to work in a mode suitable for round-the-clock work. They should be installed in the selected place and the system should be configured to use them.

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Figure 1. Selected bluetooth beacons
The activity of the beacons and their parameters (battery) can be viewed in the AMAGE Shell application (information at the end of the tutorial).

Adding beacons to the location

After installing the beacons in selected physical locations, we need to add them to the location in the AMAGE system. This is how we place these elements in space and give them information.

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Figure 2. Adding a beacon to a location - beacon type + its address
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Figure 3. Declared location with connected bluetooth beacon

Inspection rounds

Information about locations can be used in the inspection round module. First, we can use the added locations as checkpoints. In this case, the employee performing the inspection round, if he appears within the range of the beacon and the AMAGE Shell application reads it, the checkpoint will be automatically marked in the system as reached.

The second option is the possibility of supporting the employee in carrying out the inspection round. By installing beacons in physical locations, we can link inspection round elements (paths) into groups (sections) that will be associated with a specific location. If the employee at this moment turns on the tracking of visible beacons and activates filtering by their visibility, the inspection round list will be automatically filtered according to nearby beacons.

Checkpoint definition with bluetooth beacon presence verification

To get this functionality, it is enough to add a task requiring scanning an ID to the inspection round path and link this task to a location that has a bluetooth beacon assigned to it.

First, we define the task in the question/measurement/task template. We define it as a task of the "Scan ID" type, we indicate that this task is required to be completed and we indicate the specific type of tag (here bluetooth beacon).

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Figure 4. Definition of the task to be performed - scan required of a specific type

We then use this task to create a inspection round list. We add an element of the inspection round, indicate the task and link it to the location that has the given bluetooth beacon.

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Figure 5. Definition of a inspection round item - location and ID scan task

We configure the inspection round in such a way that one of the elements is confirmation of presence in a given location using a bluetooth beacon.

Definition of sections and areas

In order to filter the elements of the inspection round according to the location of the employee, you must first define the sections of the tour. For example, we define the "Electrical devices" section. This section assigns a location that is identified by the bluetooth beacon.

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Figure 6. Definition of an inspection round section with a location assigned to it (with a beacon)

Then we group the individual elements of the inspection round in the selected section. In order to do that, in the edition of a inspection round item, select the section to which the given inspection round element belongs.

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Figure 7. The definition of the element of the inspection round - here the measurement, which is in the second section

The list of inspection round items contains all items along with a section selector that allows you to filter only items from a specific section or not belonging to any section.

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Figure 8. View of the inspection round list with two elements

Inspection round execution

When making an inspection round using the AMAGE Shell application, you must first activate the scanning of bluetooth beacons by the application itself.

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Figure 9. Activating the bluetooth scanner in the action menu in the AMAGE Shell application drawer

Then, when executing an inspection round, the checkpoints will be automatically marked as completed if the employee is within the range of a given beacon.

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Figure 10. Automatically marks the completion of a position scan task

Filter against beacons

If the employee additionally activates the element filter according to the presence of the beacon

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Figure 11. Filter and selection of filtering by beacons

then the view of the inspection round list will be updated automatically based on the visible list of beacons associated with the inspection round sections.

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Figure 12. Automatically filtered elements of the inspection round based on approach to the beacon
If there are several bluetooth beacons in the range, the list will be the sum of elements that belong to all sections that are active.

Diagnostics

For possible diagnostics of beacons and e.g. verification of their battery status, we can use an additional view in the AMAGE Shell application. After it is displayed, there is a list of visible bluetooth beacons and all information that a given object provides - battery status, ambient temperature, date of last transmission, etc.

Preview of beacons in range in AMAGE Shell image::images/maintenance_inspectionrounds_beacons-4af18.png[]

To view the beacons, you must first enable the bluetooth scanner as shown in the previous sections of this tutorial.
This Howto is based on system version 1.22.0.0 (07.2023) and presents features that may not be available on your system. Ask AMAGE to provide this functionality.
Due to ongoing development of the system, some screens or configuration files may look slightly different, but will still retain the full functionality described here. This does not affect the core functionality described in this document.