Cool-Tel – temperature monitoring and management

When you are an industrial fridge manufacturer with over £100,000 of stock in your fridge, your reputation depends upon knowing that the fridge is within the target temperature range.

This was the challenge given to Eseye by such a manufacturer which wanted to retro-fit a temperature monitoring solution to its estate of thousands in hospitals.  Because the solution was to be retro-fit, it had to be battery powered and have mobile connectivity.

Eseye accepted the challenge and set to work defining the key design principles.  This clearly showed that efficient data handling to minimise the time GSM module would be active was critical in achieving the minimum battery life of one year.

Eseye therefore carried detailed testing to optimise this process, and also to ensure that when data was transmitted it did so using less than 1kb of data – the smallest data increment used in billing – to send one extra byte would double data costs!

The result is Cool-Tel, a small standalone unit which records temperature every five minutes and reports these reading every eight hours.  The only exception being an alert condition which is sent immediately.  It runs on three AA batteries for one year and for a fixed fee can be used anywhere in the world.

But that was just the beginning.  The data had to be presented to users and stored to comply with regulatory requirements.  Eseye therefore developed a web portal that achieves both goals and which can be programmed to automatically generate and email PDF reports on a regular basis.  Furthermore, the web portal can be used to remotely update the alarm temperature range as well show the location of the device – essential for an administrator managing a large number of fridges.

Cool-Tel – a clear example of Eseye's innovative capabilities.