2021 Update
Our Silver Lining of 2020: FCC, Bluetooth, and ISED Qualification
In the last few months, Wiliot has achieved FCC radio regulation certification in North America and ISED in Canada. In addition, we also received Bluetooth® qualification. Wiliot’s Version 1 product is now listed on the Bluetooth SIG website. This milestone of Bluetooth qualification validates the interoperability of our tags with any other Bluetooth compliant implementation. This ensures that Wiliot tags can seamlessly interface with existing smartphones, access points, smart speakers, computers, IoT and other devices that are Bluetooth enabled. Being able to naturally fit into this vibrant ecosystem that shipped more than 4 billion of new products just in 2019 alone brings the vision of tags being accessible to everyone and everywhere one step closer.
Temperature Sensing and Cold Chain Applications
Momentum around cold chain tracking for pharma and food products has grown significantly in 2020 because of the pandemic and the resulting emphasis on supply chain management efficiencies. With native support of temperature sensing, Wiliot can enable tracking solutions that continuously monitor temperature from manufacturing through distribution, retail, delivery and usage.
Tags with V1.0 Wiliot technology have been tested by a 3rd party lab. Temperature performance was assessed in two major temperature regions, one relevant to pharma and protein (-2 to 8 oC) and the other for produce products (10 to 25 oC).
The results are very promising: with two-point temperature calibration, we see already around 1 oC accuracy for static and dynamic temperature measurements in the chill region.
While tests were conducted on a limited population of tags, these results provide evidence of the solid technological foundation of Wiliot for temperature tracking applications. Improvements are coming in Version 2.0 to increase robustness of tag operation across different temperature regions, and accuracy within them. Building on this foundation, we believe will provide for an accurate and robust temperature sensing product that can scale to millions of units at an economically viable price point for unit level monitoring solutions.
Wiliot Insights
This year our cloud services evolved from delivering a tsunami of data to now provide occasional events that deliver relevant information at the rate that application developers require. Wiliot compounds the stream of sensing and auto-ID attributes of physical tags, to provide ‘Insights’. Applications can subscribe to events relevant to their businesses, like temperature alarms, item placement changes, or the compliance to an operational process that is time-bound. Users can quickly visualize the relevance of those events to their businesses via open source analytics solutions like Grafana, which we use as a 3rdparty tool to visualize the sensor data streams generated by Wiliot technology. Grafana is a platform suited to analyze, query and create alerts. It offers a rich set of sleek visualization widgets to build up creative dashboards, and it simplifies the access to time-series databases. It’s therefore easy to run query and visualize historical data series with associated time-stamps.
Solutions
In 2021, Wiliot will focus on solution stacks that use our cloud services and tags as a foundation. These will leverage the solution components that Works with Wiliot partners and the services that systems integrators provide. While Wiliot Tags can be used to implement a myriad of applications, it’s becoming clear that there are certain use cases where the return-on-investment is significant and the building blocks required for success already exist.
Continuous Inventory and Smart Shelving
Ensuring products are available for customers to purchase is necessary to drive sales. While this sounds obvious, when brands ship products through a fragmented distribution channel, whether owned or wholesale, visibility diminishes as the network expands, and out of stock events are a real issue. What makes these events worse is that brands may not get visibility into them until it is too late, after they have already impacted sales. Our early adopters across varied industries, including fast moving consumer goods, fashion and apparel, pharmaceuticals, automotive parts and furniture, have recognized the need for better solutions, given the limitations of the existing alternatives.
Wiliot technology can be applied to any product anywhere and deployed rapidly at minimal to no-infrastructure cost. The broadcasts from Wiliot tags that can then be read continuously, without requirements for staff or customers to tap or scan, provide new levels of insights into each step of a product’s journey. They provide demand signal visibility, real time changes in stock levels, and engagement that enable actions to increase product availability. The value of such solutions is further multiplied by new analytics and by the ability to engage consumers directly via their phones.
Wiliot Version 2.0
In November, we received the first Wiliot Version 2.0 production silicon wafers back from the fab where they are manufactured. The early testing results are promising.
There is still more work to be done to complete the software that runs on the chip and to tune the production processes required to go from wafer to tag. Our current projection for mass production is Q2 2021.
Wiliot V2.0 will have significant improvements in: energy harvesting and broadcast range, operating temperature range, temperature sensing accuracy, versatility in the surfaces it can be attached to, increased robustness and decreased cost.
Wiliot V2.0 Alpha Test Developer Kit
One of the things we are most excited about in 2021 is enabling a growing community to receive Wiliot Tags for the first time. We are now offering those interested in purchasing a Wiliot V2.0 Alpha Test Developer Kit the opportunity to register by clicking the button below. Please note, Wiliot V2.0 Alpha Test Developer Kits will be sold for ~$500, and are expected to ship in Q2 2021.
Works with Wiliot
Since our last newsletter in September, we have added two more members to 'Works with Wiliot', Cloudleaf and Blyott. For more information regarding the Works with Wiliot Partner Program, and to get the most recent news on the members, visit our website.
Cloudleaf is the provider of a device agnostic Digital Visibility Platform, enabling customers to integrate any sensor with Cloudleaf’s ecosystem and glean granular, holistic and real-time insight into the location and condition of assets traveling through the supply chain or at rest.
Wiliot and Cloudleaf have partnered to integrate real-time and historical location and temperature tracking, as well as configurable alerts and notifications to boost transparency and cold chain visibility. Combining real-time sensor data from Wiliot devices with the Cloudleaf platform and capability for proactive correction of issues, the cold chain is strongly equipped to deliver safe and regulatory compliant pharmaceutical products globally.
The Cloudleaf platform collects and analyzes real-time information, making it easier for companies to make informed decisions with precision and agility based on ground truth.
Blyott is a location based tracking (RTLS) and monitoring specialist in the healthcare industry.
Blyott is using existing Bluetooth infrastructure and “automapping” via machine learning. This ensures low initial investment and low cost of ownership.
Eliminating equipment surplus, reducing search time and less failure cost by cold chain monitoring are the main benefits.
Thanks to the Wiliot tags, the location of specific assets is made visible and the temperature of sensitive medicines and other consumables can be monitored in real-time.
This saves searching time, requires less investment, increases job satisfaction and efficiency of medical staff and ensures that medicines always remain at the right temperature.
Blyott. Big savings. Happy staff.
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