High accuracy scalable technology redefines BLE location, context and intelligence
Fathom, a business unit of Rx Networks, is a new Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) proximity gateway device with the intelligence to locate and monitor beacon and BLE devices in its vicinity, and has now introduced a suite of products to the public.
BLE devices, commonly referred to as beacons, are typically used to trigger an event on a mobile device, such as sending a notification to a user when they are within a beacon’s range. The Fathom Hub transforms standalone BLE beacons into a managed proximity ecosystem, reporting on the location and status of all BLE beacons in the coverage area. To achieve this, rather than being bolted onto existing networking technology, Fathom is purpose engineered to accurately locate and position BLE devices.
As a hardware and cloud-based software system, Fathom has been designed to redefine the beacon and Internet of Things (IoT) space. It delivers a wide range of industry applications from retail to healthcare and addresses the challenges of managing large scale beacon deployments.
Guylain Roy-MacHabée, president and CEO at Rx Networks, said: “After three years of research and development, we’re excited to emerge from beta and bring Fathom to market. Early customer feedback is positive and affirms that Fathom solves a very real and very painful problem for companies that have deployed and are managing beacons. Remote identification and monitoring are key challenges in scaling beacon deployments across the Enterprise as is maintaining location-context integrity of those deployments.”
Through the Fathom Control cloud-based management interface businesses can remotely manage their proximity networks, providing real time visualisations of beacon deployments and access configuration and monitoring tools to track assets and set alerts if beacons move or stop responding.
Additionally, Fathom renders valuable location data, derived from other nearby BLE devices, such as wearables and smartphones. Just a few examples of Fathom’s use include hospitals (who will be able to quickly locate essential equipment and staff), retail (marketing teams can identify popular aisles in retail environments to understand how consumers are interacting with a bricks and mortar store), manufacturing (locating equipment and materials throughout the process), and advertising (digital signs that change content based on who is watching).
