BlackBerry Limited has announced enhancements to its BlackBerry Radar® H2 intelligent, data-driven asset monitoring devices to help the world’s transportation businesses reduce costs and securely improve the utilization of their trailers, containers, chassis and other remote assets.
With multi-sensor reporting, the enhanced BlackBerry Radar H2 device expands on the core capabilities of the original to improve global coverage and connectivity to the latest 4G LTE cellular networks and bands. The company also bolstered the short-range wireless communications protocol for connecting to sensors, adding range and stability and improving compliance with worldwide standards.
To support global operations that need enhanced cargo visibility and control of their shipments, BlackBerry also released the BlackBerry Radar R2, a wireless sensor that uses radar waves to measure cube space utilization inside a container or trailer, with the door open or closed.
“As countries struggle to ensure critical healthcare supplies and essential goods make it to market amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain efficiency and security have never been more important,” said Christopher Plaat, SVP and GM, BlackBerry Radar. “With the new global enhancements to our BlackBerry Radar H2 devices, transportation and logistics businesses the world over can unlock excess shipping capacity they didn’t know they had and gain better visibility into their entire fleet, both of which are vital during these unprecedented times when transport companies’ role as the lifeblood of our economy is heightened.”
Select trucking companies and private fleet operators are currently participating in a customer pilot program to trial the new enhancements that have been made to the BlackBerry Radar H2. BlackBerry Radar devices are currently operating around the world including in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America and North America, respectively.
The online end user dashboard has also been enhanced, empowering teams to better manage their assets based on the information BlackBerry Radar provides. The new Events 2.0 Alerting System highlights ‘events’ within a customer’s transportation ecosystem that are important to their specific business needs, systematically combing through mounds of asset location and status data to bring forward actionable intelligence to help solve problems and drive operational efficiencies. With Events 2.0, transportation businesses can create custom reporting dashboards using a combination of data elements – mileage, cargo status, location, geofence, asset type, asset status and time frame – to focus on key items of importance that can be monitored for, acted against and improved upon, whether it be turn times, preventative maintenance, or unauthorized and underutilized assets.
BlackBerry Radar provides information such as location, motion, mileage, temperature, humidity, door open/close status, and cargo status on an intuitive on-line dashboard. BlackBerry says it collects more data than conventional GPS-based track and trace solutions and uses this information to build a 360-degree visualization of a customer’s assets. All data is transmitted and stored securely on a cloud platform, which maintains the privacy of user information.