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Crayonic RTLS

Status: Beta. Crayonic RTLS is in beta testing with selected customers. Capabilities marked planned are not yet available; details may change before general availability.

Where this fits

Crayonic RTLS is part of Option 5 in the Solution Architecture, together with Crayonic Comms; both ride on the BLE coverage formed by Crayonic Bridges and, where needed, IoT infrastructure.

Overview

Crayonic RTLS (Real-Time Location System) turns the Crayonic Badge™ from a credential into a presence device. Every badge already broadcasts Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertisements; RTLS listens to them through the Crayonic Bridges on your workstations and locates badges indoors from what each bridge hears — no extra hardware on the badge, no app on a phone.

The headline use is the panic button: one press on the badge, and security sees where the badge is and who is nearest to respond. The same data answers "where is Dr. X right now" and feeds occupancy and workflow analytics.

How it works

  • Badges beacon. A Crayonic Badge advertises over BLE as part of its normal operation; the advertisement identifies the badge and carries basic state such as low-power mode and firmware version.
  • Bridges listen. Each Crayonic Bridge reports a per-second summary of the badges it sees, with signal strength, through the Crayonic Agent to Crayonic Device Manager. Together the bridges on your workstations form a BLE mesh of listening points.
  • Coverage is extended where bridges are sparse. Corridors, wards and open areas without workstations are covered with IoT infrastructure: Wi-Fi access points with a BLE gateway — existing enterprise APs with BLE radios can often be used — or dedicated gateways. A site survey sizes this.
  • The service aggregates. An RTLS aggregator rolls the reports into minute-level signal and state history per badge and per bridge, from which presence, movement and "last seen" are derived. History is retained for 90 days by default.
flowchart LR
  subgraph FACILITY["Facility"]
    BADGE["Crayonic Badges<br/>BLE beacons · panic button"]
    BR["Crayonic Bridges<br/>on workstations (BLE mesh)"]
    AP["Wi-Fi APs with BLE gateway<br/>(where bridges are sparse)"]
    BADGE -. "BLE" .-> BR
    BADGE -. "BLE" .-> AP
  end
  subgraph DC["Your data centre / cloud"]
    RTLS["Crayonic RTLS<br/>aggregation · positioning · alerts"]
    CDM["CDM<br/>badge & bridge inventory"]
  end
  DESK["Security desk · responders"]
  BR --> RTLS
  AP --> RTLS
  CDM -.-> RTLS
  RTLS --> DESK

Capabilities

Available in the beta

  • Badge presence and history — for each badge, which bridges see it now and saw it over the last hours and days, with signal strength; for each bridge, the badges visible right now. Shown in Crayonic Device Manager on the badge page (Live & History) and the machine page (Visible badges).
  • State events — sparse, timestamped transitions such as low-power on/off, crash flag and firmware version changes, alongside the location history.
  • Organisation scoping — location data is visible only within the badge's own organisation, following the same tenancy model as the rest of CDM.

Planned

  • Panic button — a press on the badge raises an alert with the badge's location and the nearest badges and responders.
  • Floor plans and positioning — badges placed on a floor plan rather than listed per bridge.
  • Zone policies — safe and restricted zones with transition rules (for example, automatic workstation lock when a user leaves a secure area).
  • Occupancy and workflow analytics — headcount, dwell time and movement patterns per area.
  • Lone-worker safety — check-in intervals and no-motion alerting.

Integration points

  • Crayonic Badge — the wearable that beacons and, when available, triggers panic events
  • Crayonic Bridge and Wi-Fi APs with BLE gateway — the listening points
  • Crayonic Agent — reports what each bridge hears
  • Crayonic Device Manager — inventory of badges and bridges, the presence views and organisation scoping; RTLS depends on CDM (Option 3)
  • Crayonic Comms — location-aware delivery of messages and pages (planned)

Typical use cases

  • Hospitals and care homes — panic escalation, response-time metrics, staff location
  • Industrial facilities — personnel presence and emergency response
  • Secure labs and data centres — zone-based policies and automatic workstation locking
  • Critical infrastructure — live headcount and evacuation support

What you deploy

The RTLS service runs in Docker alongside CDM. BLE coverage is the prerequisite: the bridges already on workstations form the mesh; add Wi-Fi APs with a BLE gateway or dedicated gateways for the areas you care about that bridges do not reach.

Beta access

Contact Crayonic if you would like to pilot Crayonic RTLS or shape the panic-button and positioning features for your environment.