Let’s see what we need if we want to be able to track and trace a shipping container. To be able to do this we will need the following:
- A sensor which can sense location and perhaps some other attributes
- A communication subscription to communicate the data from the sensor
- The MEUNGO platform to collect and use the data from the sensor
The sensor
There exists many different Sigfox sensors, most of them are designed for a specific use case. For this case we need a simple sensor, it needs to be able to sense location. A quick search on the internet for Sigfox sensors should give you lot’s of options.
https://partners.sigfox.com/products/device
A communication subscription
Just a sensor alone has no use, we want the sensor to be able to send the measured data somewhere. For this we need a communication subscription which can be purchased at
The platform
Next we will need a place where you can collect the data. Not only do we want to be able to visualize and act on the data but we also would like to monitor the state of the communication and subscription. We need to know when to replenish a battery, is the sensor signal strong or weak, do I need to renew my subscription. The MEUNGO platform can be configured to directly link to the Sigfox backend. All we have to do is give the MEUNGO platform permission to get access to your Sigfox subscription using API Access:
We copy paste this API Access and we are good to go to see any Sigfox device in our group.
Next we will define the type of our sensor, either it is already pre-defined by MEUNGO or we define it from scratch.
Here we use a sensor already available in the platform:
Now the MEUNGO platform knows the type of sensor and all is left is connecting our physical sensor with a digital one. This we can easily accomplish by creating a digital twin by pushing create in the list of Sigfox devices and selecting the type of sensor.
This is all we need to get started, the MEUNGO platform will start collecting data from your sensor immediately. The data will be translated conform the definition of our sensor. We can define sets of sensors on which we can define calculations, rules and dashboards with all kind of widgets like charts, maps and values.