IoT-enhanced space booking with Taitori

In the smart building and smart office sectors, the past few years have seen a rise in demand for wireless sensor solutions, especially in workstation occupancy monitoring. Taitori has a background in hardware design, but they wanted to focus their operations on their smart office platform including the doorpost info screens and software. This meant that they needed to find a reliable IoT solution partner with a ready, off-the-shelf sensor solution that would fit their demands: wireless, battery-powered devices with long battery lives for visitor counting and occupancy monitoring. Another challenge was the long reporting intervals many available occupancy monitoring solutions offered: a good smart office solution requires real-time occupancy information so that people can see and reserve free spaces even on a moment’s notice.

The occupancy monitoring is done with wireless Haltian Thingsee PRESENCE occupancy sensor devices. The sensors are placed on workstations, phone booths, and other meeting spaces where they report the occupancy at very short intervals through Thingsee GATEWAY devices the entire solution is integrated into Taitori’s smart office platform, where the users can see the occupancy information, book spaces, and further analyze the data for better space usage. The gateways relay the data with inbuilt global cellular connectivity, which makes the installation simple and helps Taitori to scale its solution easily. The sensor data is made available through Thingsee OPERATIONS CLOUD, which also acts as an interface for device management. There are many ways to access sensor data, MQTT being the most used one. Haltian support team also provides service levels ensuring high quality of service. The Wirepas IoT mesh connectivity between the Haltian Thingsee devices was another factor in why Taitori chose Haltian as their partner: Haltian sensors could ‘free’ the occupancy of a phone booth in a minute, whereas the competitor’s solution did in 15 minutes. Mesh connectivity offers a reliable way to relay data from the sensors to Taitori’s application, as offices are often full of Bluetooth and WiFi devices that can set a demanding environment for some IoT devices. Another important thing for Taitori has been the ability to manage the settings of the sensor devices themselves: not all sensors need the same reporting settings and detection sensitivity, so it is important for the customer to be able to manage the devices remotely themselves.

The occupancy monitoring for meeting rooms, phone booths, and workstations makes the use of space and assets much more efficient. Taitori’s smart office customers include many companies and enterprises whose offices and meeting rooms have been made smart. In addition, Taitori co-operates in Haltian Empathic Building digital twin solution. Haltian sensors were first taken into use at Taitori’s own office. Big customer installations have been made, and are being made as we speak. Taitori has been particularly impressed with Haltian’s quick delivery times even during the COVID-19 crisis. The installation was also been quick and simple when the technicians were able to use Taitori’s installation system together with the Haltian IoT sensors. Taitori believes that even though office spaces are changing and the number of people working in offices might decrease, the need to invest in technology increases with hybrid working models: