Kontakt.io Unleashes Nano Tag - the World’s Smallest, Disposable, Wearable BLE Tag Along With Two New Products Opening a New Generation of Kontakt.io BLE Devices

Continuing our standing commitment to innovation, today we are thrilled to announce three new products - Nano Tag, Asset Tag 2, Anchor Beacon 2. This is yet another step in Kontakt.io’s commitment to reduce the complexity associated with IoT solutions while improving business outcomes, and driving cost reduction with environmentally friendly products. This launch ushers the new generation of Kontakt.io tags, with the most advanced technology currently on the market, targeting customers and partners in healthcare, workspaces and hospitality.

Say hello to Nano Tag - the world’s smallest, disposable BLE tag!

RFID tags have historically been too large and costly to be truly disposable, limiting their use for cases such as visitor trackers. For other use cases, such as stadiums and trade shows, there is no intent to retrieve tags and wristbands, making it infeasible to use smart tracking in these situations. For longer stay visitors, such as patients or hotel guests, there are fewer obstacles since tags are used for a greater period of time and can be more easily retrieved. However, the base fact remains that existing tag technology can be prohibitively expensive for use cases where tags will not be returned, and also tends to carry an environmental burden when tags are simply thrown in the trash. Nano Tags solve for worker safety, patient and visitor experience use cases for the healthcare, hospitality and events industries.

This amazingly small and waterproof (IP67) device measures just 0.9 in (23mm) x 0.7 in (18mm) x 0.3 in (5.3mm) and only weighs 0.07 oz (2g). The Nano Tag is powered by a Silver Oxide, a non-toxic battery that provides up to three months of battery life transmitting once every second (1Hz), extendable to a full operating year at a slower location update rate.

The Nano Tag is powered by Bluetooth 5.0 technology, making it compatible with iOS and Android mobile devices, Kontakt.io low-cost BLE gateways and inherently supported by Cisco WiFi 6 and Cisco Meraki access point equipped with a BLE radio. AI Cloud-managed, Amazingly-Simple-IoT™ solutions from Kontakt.io make it possible for a wide range of organizations to harness the power of IoT without the need to deploy massive IT resources or prohibit financial costs to transform building operations ‘Smart’.

Addressing size and unit cost limitations of older generation RFID tags, Kontakt.io’s BLE tag technology makes it possible for end users to deploy truly disposable beacons in a wearable form factor that makes a host of new use cases such as event delegate, sport fan, building visitor or healthcare patient localization and the applications that take advantage of such real time data, possible. Kontakt.io’s open API-First delivery architecture coupled with BLE’s promise for an open wireless standard that is vendor agnostic, stands to rapidly increase adoption of advanced use cases such as:

• In healthcare, Nano Tags is used by staff to prevent patient wandering and elopement, to monitor patient procedure wait times and better orchestrate emergency department and operating suites workflows; 
• For trade shows and in large music and sport events, Nano wristbands are used for crowd safety, emergency management and to enable new experience use cases such as location-aware food services, find my friend and other indoor location experiences;
• In smart-buildings, wearable lanyard and wrist Nano beacons make it possible to monitor visitor movements inside buildings, improving facility security and overall safety. 

You will also be able to get accurate insights into how many people are in the building and ensure safety in the event of a fire or other issue.

Nano Tags are available from USD $7.99 to $4.99 unit price through the Kontakt.io store, channel network, and in the Cisco IoT Device Marketplace. 

Meet Asset Tag 2

An IR-equipped, BLE tag with two buttons, Asset Tag 2 is by far the most long-lasting asset tag we’ve ever designed. Compared to other similar devices on the market, with two batteries and configuration adjustments, it can last for over 4 years! Whether you are trying to solve only one problem now or be prepared for multiple use cases in the future, Asset Tag 2 is a flexible platform that can keep your options open:

• Track assets with room-level accuracy. When combined with Kontakt.io Portal Beams and Location Engine, you can track all your assets tagged with Asset Tag 2 with room-level granular accuracy. It makes sure that you know the right location of your tracked assets 100% of the time. All this information can be easily displayed in Kio Cloud’s Smart Location.

• Maintenance & replenishment with a press of a button. Kio Cloud’s Policy Foundry allows you to use some predefined scenarios or let you define and trigger events with buttons press patterns. The buttons can be configured with your own app. Common uses include calling specialized staff in a hospital to handle an IV pump maintenance or warning managers about low inventory levels.

Fully compatible with Kio Cloud Device Management, Asset Tag 2 will keep your infrastructure up to date. Our Policy Foundry will send you a text message or any predefined notification so that you know when the battery is going down, and where the tag is located in your facility. 

Meet Anchor Beacon 2

Anchor Beacon 2 is the most efficient, long-lasting, future-proof, and high-performing BLE beacon we’ve ever created. Thanks to Anchor Beacon 2’s lean firmware and the latest Nordic chipset, you can expect it to run for +8 years (iBeacon; Interval: 1s; TX Power: 3). The batteries are also replaceable, you will need to just take out the front part of the casing and replace the batteries with new ones, without detaching the device.

Some of the Anchor Beacon 2 use cases include:

• Indoor positioning improvement - deploy Anchor Beacons around your facility to create a sensor network to improve the location accuracy for people and asset tracking use cases.
• Indoor wayfinding - Whether it’s a hospital, cruise ship, arena, stadium, or large theme park, you want to provide your visitors with a best-in-class experience. Guide your visitors from point A to B with step-by-step navigation powered by Anchor Beacon 2.
• Location- based content - Improve your customer satisfaction and experience through various mobile-based loyalty programs, arrival detection for order-ahead, proximity marketing and other location-based content solutions.

Just like any other Kontakt.io IoT device, Anchor Beacons 2 works with Kio Cloud Device Management to help you seamlessly manage your infrastructure at the enterprise level.

• Onboard and bulk-register all your IoT devices with one click
• Configure thousands of devices Over-the-Air 
• Manage your organization’s location hierarchy integrating multiple device feeds through a single cloud
• Monitor and receive real time alerts on battery life or other infrastructure issues
• And more!

We also can’t wait to hear from you! Tell us what you think about our new product lineup or share any questions or comments you might have below.

Need more? If you still have questions, feel free to reach out to us.