Custom IoT solution with Valpas – Enabling certified bed bug-safe hotels at scale
Valpas is a hospitality technology company transforming global travel by enabling hotels to guarantee safe, sustainable stays free from bed bugs and pesticides.
To deliver this at scale, Valpas required a custom IoT solution that could be embedded directly into hotel furniture, operate for years on battery power, and scale to thousands of rooms across multiproperty hotel groups.
Challenge
Smart bed legs designed for mass production
Valpas developed a patented smart bed leg that integrates discreet bed bug interception technology directly into the bed structure.
The design challenge was two-fold:
- The product had to remain small, visually neutral, and be compatible with hotel aesthetics.
- It had to operate autonomously across hundreds of rooms without requiring manual checks by housekeeping.
In a 700-room hotel, staff simply do not have the time to inspect individual devices. The smart bed leg needed embedded intelligence and wireless connectivity to provide room-level visibility without adding operational burden.
Valpas had built an early prototype demonstrating that embedded sensors and firmware could identify when the device required servicing.
However, the prototype was not optimized for:
- Mass production
- Component sourcing at scale
- Long battery lifetime
- Robust RF performance across hotel buildings
Valpas had already selected Wirepas Mesh for low-power, large-scale connectivity. The next step was finding a hardware development partner capable of transforming the prototype into a production-ready device.
Solution
Close cooperation for a production-ready IoT architecture
Haltian partnered closely with Valpas to redesign the hardware and firmware for industrial-scale deployment.
“The whole project was definitely more cooperation than direct subcontracting,” says Matti Parkkila, Co-founder and Software Developer at Valpas. “We had several meetings where we presented logic charts of the firmware and algorithm, and discussed different component options to find the best long-term solution.”
The collaboration focused on:
- Custom PCB design optimized for compact mechanical integration
- Ultra-low-power electronics to enable multi-year battery lifetime
- RF optimization and antenna design for reliable mesh communication
- Firmware architecture supporting scalable deployments
- Design-for-manufacturing and sourcing decisions to ensure production readiness
The embedded electronics were engineered to integrate seamlessly into the smart bed leg while maintaining structural durability and aesthetic neutrality.
Once powered, each device automatically joins the Wirepas Mesh network. The decentralized mesh topology ensures that every installed device acts as both endpoint and relay, enabling reliable communication room-to-room and floor-to-floor.
This architecture allows entire hotels to be connected with minimal gateway infrastructure, even in complex building layouts.
Results
A future-proof, scalable IoT foundation
The final solution delivered:
- A production-ready smart bed leg with embedded electronics
- Stable multi-year battery performance
- Reliable RF performance across diverse hotel environments
- Firmware that has required no circuit board redesign since launch
In the three years we have been selling our product, we have not needed any changes to the circuit board design,” Parkkila says. “We are also very happy with the antenna performance and are still impressed by how well the mesh network works from room to room.”
Because the firmware architecture was designed with extensibility in mind, Valpas has been able to evolve the platform without hardware redesign.
Today, the Valpas solution is deployed globally across dozens of hotels, with thousands of smart bed legs live in guest rooms. These devices power the Valpas platform, which enables hotels to maintain certification as bed bug-safe and provide digital proof of protection to guests.
Engineering impact beyond hardware
The custom IoT solution developed with Haltian did more than create a device. It enabled a new hospitality category: certified bed bug-safe hotels.
The hardware, firmware, and mesh connectivity form the technical backbone of a platform that supports:
- Room-level traceability
- Digital certificates of safety
- Centralized dashboards for hotel teams
- Long-term operational analytics
“Haltian was the right partner for us”, Parkkila concludes.
Haltian was the right partner for us. Their expertise in hardware design and embedded systems was a perfect match for the mesh connectivity we use. I could always reach the right people and get clear answers quickly.”
Matti Parkkila, Co-founder and Software Developer, Valpas Oy
Get in touch
Interested in creating a custom IoT solution with us?
Book a meeting with Jarno Leskelä from Haltian.