Intelligent Service, Box Plus

——————Debut of IBOX Family at Daikin’s Customer Appreciation Party on July 19

Abstract

On July 19, Shanghai Ocean Hotel, an event that can go down in the history of BoxPlus took place. At the Appreciation Party held by Daikin, BoxPlus delivered a feast of IoT for the logistics and container industry to all the guests. The IBOX product family made its first public appearance in front of many connoisseurs from the industry, including marine air conditioning suppliers, shipping line operators, container leasing companies, container service providers, depot management, and container manufacturers.


Every day, millions of containers are moving around the world. From the Pacific Ocean, which is densely covered with liner routes, to the Suez Canal, through which cargo ships sailing between Asia and Europe need to queue; from the Port of Hamburg in Germany, where freight trains are parked outside waiting to be loaded, to the Yangshan Port in Shanghai, China, where trucks gather to transport containers in and out of the gates, with the rapid changes in transport technology, the efficiency of container operation is getting faster and faster, while the lagging information updates are becoming an obstacle slowing down the development of the industry.



BoxPlus, a professional shipping IoT technology company, leads the market with its stable hardware products and mature application platform serving the upstream and downstream of the industry and is committed to become the leading provider of smart container solutions. Daikin, a well-known marine air conditioning supplier, has gradually gained more and more share of air conditioning units for reefer containers with scientific market strategies, superior products and excellent services.

BoxPlus' IBOX for Reefer products have authorized protocol license from the reefer manufacturers to interact with the controller of the reefer machine. The integration of IoT products and reefer units is important to make sure they are harmonious coexistence, and after years of cooperation, Daikin and BoxPlus have gradually worked out an open and shared co-work mechanism that mutually promotes each other’s product optimization. Thus, for the first public appearance of the IBOX series, BoxPlus chose Daikin's customer appreciation event as the platform to create a great industry story for the two companies together.

A "Blind Spot" of Information

Traditionally, when a container leaves the depot, it becomes a "black box", until it reaches a certain operation node, no matter cargo owner, freight forwarder, or container operator, shipping line operator, no one knows what has happened to it on the way, and no one knows the situation inside the container. In some countries or regions, the security of the cargo or container makes shippers and container owners both worried.

In addition, the legal disputes and liability determinations brought by cargo problems, which are caused by different factors like temperature deviations and reefer unit errors, often lead to multiple parties shirking their responsibilities. By studying the pain points of all parties and identifying the needs in this area, BoxPlus, with its accumulated technical experience, soon developed and launched IoT devices for various types of containers and scenarios.

IoT Device for General Purpose Container (BPD)

The IBOX BPD is "hidden" in one of the ventilation hoods, so that the container with the IBOX BPD looks like a normal one from the outside, apart from that, this solution also allows the device to be installed without the need for additional drilling.

Despite the limited space inside the ventilation hood, the IBOX BPD provides many useful features such as global satellite positioning, temperature and humidity sensing, acceleration (hitting) sensing, door status monitoring (from an individual sensor installed on the inner side of the door) and a wealth of communication means such as 2G/3G/4G LTE, Bluetooth, and the leading application of Sub-1 GHz Low Power Radio Frequency in industry. The device's battery can last up to 5 years, which is sufficient for long-term use for customers.

IoT Device for Reefer Container (BPR)

As an intelligent IoT monitoring device for reefer containers, the IBOX BPR device is installed in the controller box of the reefer container and can collect environmental and operating data from the reefer unit of Daikin, Carrier, Thermo King and other brands, such as location, temperature, humidity, compressor conditions and fault code logs during the operation. After that, it uploads them to the data centre through the communication network for box management staff, business personnel and relevant clients to supervise the application.

The BPR DC-300 is the third generation of this series of products, which was officially launched in 2021. It builds on the foundation of the previous generation of products and adds a Bluetooth module to facilitate maintenance personnel to use handheld terminals for a quick inspection. In addition, BoxPlus has designed a pairable door sensor device that can be used to quickly detect abnormal door activities and send alerts to the platform in response to shippers' needs for instant reefer container monitoring.

IoT Device for Vessel (BPV)

The IBOX BPV is a data visualization system installed in the bridge to assist the crew in managing the IBOX and other reefers without smart devices fixed but could be connected into the BPVS by BoxPlus vessel devices and then monitored remotely at the crew’s office. The system helps the crew to get information instantly and reduce the hassle of going out for daily inspection and climbing up and down the deck to read maintenance data. In addition, it can help ship crew and staff on the land to get timely and accurate information of emergency events to ensure the safety of ships and cargo.

IoT Device for Terminal/Depot (BPT)

Similar to the IBOX BPV, for the monitoring needs of the depot and terminal scenarios for reefer containers, BoxPlus has introduced the BPT device, which can read maintenance data from the reefer unit through a common data port and send it to a companion visualization system in the office. In this way, the terminal or depot staff can easily sit indoor to monitor the status of the reefer containers in real-time.

Post Launch Story

A container was picked up from a depot of a leasing company by a freight forwarder hired truck driver to be loaded at a designated warehouse. As soon as the truck left the depot, the shipper saw an update on the track of the container from the online platform provided by the freight forwarder, as well as the estimated time of arrival at the warehouse.

Once the loading was complete, the driver left with the full container. Seven hours later, the shipper logged back into the platform, where he saw that the container had moved along a highway to the port after the last door closing, with stopping at a rest area on the middle way for two hours.

Early the next morning, the shipper saw an alert on the app platform that the container was moved again, which he knew was the completion of the land transport phase and the start of ship loading. Two weeks later, the container's icon appeared in the port of a country across the ocean as promised, during which there were no temperature or smoke alerts popped on the platform, and also no unusual door open/close alerts, and the shipper was finally relieved that the order has been successful.

What happened is due to the combination of a small box and a big “box”, where "intelligence" and "service" are perfectly "boxed" into one.