When you are considering buying geo-fencing software you need to understand one thing, that not every software company making these tools create them equally.
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In our earlier posts, we go over the basics of what a geofence is and we cover some of the best practices that you should consider when using them with your mobile app.
At Pulsate we’ve put a lot of work into understanding how the device and its sensors accurately plot customers entering and leaving these virtual zones.
In this episode we discuss everything that you need to know, the boxes that you need to check to make sure you’re selecting the correct vendor when it comes to geofencing.
When selecting a location based marketing vendor check that the software can create fences of any shape or size. Many geo-fencing companies currently only allow you to create circles that in some cases, can be the size of a city.
Possibly you only have a need to geofence around your business premises, a specific room within the building, or even geofence a competitor.
Whilst there are some use cases for geo-fencing an entire city and certainly, with a tool like Pulsate Locate™ you can do that, but bear in mind you will need to have the ability to go from the macro and zoom right down into the micro-location of that user.
It’s possible to reduce a geofence down to 20 meters in size with accuracy that doesn’t require you to create circles around specific locations.
But not every location, and in fact, most of them do not conform to being in a neat circle. Being able to draw polygons, triangles, rectangles and any other shape removes any associated limitations related to the geofence size or shape that you wish to monitor.
If you are simply targeting a standalone building or indeed a specific room in that building; you can target users that show up at these locations, or to engage with them in some way.
Make sure that you can monitor many locations at once. Believe it or not, there are some providers on the market that only allow you to monitor for 20 places at any one time which is a massive hinderence if have more locations that you wish to monitor.
With tools like Pulsate Engage™ , you can monitor for unlimited locations at the same time, without having to worry about being restricted to 20 locations.
What this means is that you as a business can supply the geofencing company with a list of addresses of your locations. The vendor can turn these physical addresses back into latitude and longitude, there by automating the creation of all fences around certain locations that you wish to monitor.
Similar to point three, but it’s more concerned with the competition. Make sure that you can bulk import all of your competitors at once using the geofencing platform. Tick this one off too to save your marketing team time and their sanity in the long run.
I’ve said before geofences have nothing to do with beacons, so your provider should be able to do all of this by integrating a plug-in into your mobile app (SDK).
The smartphone has some of the most sophisticated sensors onboard, much more than an iBeacon has, so you shouldn’t require any additional hardware at all.
It should work passively, meaning that you’re not reliant on your user having the app open. Again, believe it or not, some geofencing companies require you to have your app open as the user enters the geofence.
It’s pretty unlikely that your customers are going to have your app open on their at the exact time they show up at your location.
When customers visit you in the real world they passively run your app in the background or the screen is turned off or even terminated.
A lot of iOS users kill apps out of the app drawer because they think it’s saving battery.
Of course, it’s not.
You may not know it but it doesn’t even save any battery life even if all those apps are terminated.
However, people do kill those apps, which means that your mobile app SDK for geofencing needs to be able to restart in the background whenever they cross that geofence.
GPS is something that should be used as little as possible or not at all if you can help it.
As you may know, GPS is one of the most expensive battery-consuming radios that are onboard smartphone devices.
This should be used very sparingly, and it really should not be used in the background at all. A lot of geofencing solutions are a little bit lazy in the way they’ve been instrumented.
They run GPS pretty much all the time in the background, which makes geofencing from a developer’s standpoint, very easy to do, but absolutely horrific on the battery life of your customers.
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Your users will soon realize that this app is the drain on their battery and they will delete it from their device.
Geofences that are easy to implement could run into problems quickly with battery drain. As I’ve said, battery drain can happen from excessively using GPS, but also because of network calls, how noisy the app is pinging back to the server, and the way various services are managed on the device.
You may not know it, but geofencing is actually built into iOS and Android by default.
Technically, you don’t need to hire anyone to do geofencing, and as a developer, you could instrument it yourself.
But with the default system APIs you’re talking about very big locations, only circles, and to several hundred meters of accuracy, which may not meet your use cases or be complicated to suit your needs.
In addition to point 9, there are some problems with the default system, operating system APIs. Occasionally fences are triggered from miles away or in some instances trigger multiple fences at once.
Some of these things haven’t been fixed in the latest OS frameworks, right up to the most recent versions of these operating systems.
As a final thought.
When you’re selecting a provider it’s important for them to have a deep understanding of this area.
It’s tricky to get right, but choosing the correct vendor and checking off these ten points will ensure that you avoid some of the aforementioned issues such as battery drain, poor accuracy or being too dependent on GPS.
Chain link fence is one of Canada's most popular fence types. There are hundreds of thousands of miles of it installed around the world, and we sell tens of thousands of feet of chain link fabric every year.
However, while chain link is cost effective, durable, forgiving of minor gradient changes and quick to install, there are security tweaks that can be made to make it a better barrier. Here is our list of the most important things you can do to beef up the security of your chain link fence installation:
Chain link fence fabric comes in various gauges, or wire diameters. The lower the number, the thicker the wire is. So a 6 gauge chain link is much thicker than a 9 gauge fabric, with 11 gauge being suitable only for light residential applications.
Chain link fence fabric is woven with various selvage options. Fence material for residential projects and public spaces that will be 6' high or lower will usually be knuckle-knuckle, which means that the top and bottom selvage have wire ends that are bent over completely, and have no sharp ends visible. This is important for safety.
Security fence installations of chain link fence usually make use of either knuckle-barb or in rare cases, barb-barb. These selvages are twisted vertically, creating a "barb" that protrudes about an inch above the top of the fabric. When installed correctly, this adds a little extra security along fence top (and sometimes bottom) rails.
Fences aren't always breached by climbing over them. Sometimes, people choose to go under them, and, particularly in older chain link fences where the bottom of the fence has had a few years of snow load against them, it may become easier to do this over time. Adding a bottom rail to your fence creates a rigid edge that's much harder to manipulate.
If a bottom rail is not an option for your chain link fence, burying a foot or so of mesh in the ground can create an effective underground barrier, and can help to keep smaller burrowing animals out too! Buried mesh does increase the labour to install a chain link fence, but it's a lot easier to do at the same time the fence is installed than after it's in place, so if you think this is an option, consider it early!
If you look at two chain link fences, they might seem to be made from the same components, but there's a lot going on under the surface that you don't see.
One of the major differences is the pipe or tubing that makes up the structure. Residential and light commercial chain link fences have structures made from lightweight tubing with thin walls. Industrial and security chain link fences are made from much heavier pipe, up to Schedule 40 or SS40 in some cases. It may look the same from outside, but it's a whole lot tougher on the inside!
This is not a common change to chain link fences, but if you are at all concerned that people may cut the fence and drive through the opening (which is usually 10' wide, and can accomodate smaller cars!), you might consider spacing posts closer together. Post spacing of 7 or 8' will make it a lot harder to access any site using this sneaky trick!
Another good way to beef up the security on your chain link fence is to choose steel fittings. These fittings are a little tougher than cast aluminum, but that's not what makes them a higher security option. The reason high security fencing like prison fencing uses steel fittings is that they can be tack welded in place after the installation is complete - making it much harder for people to tamper with the fence.
Razor coils are not legal on most sites in Canada - but if they are, they're a very effective detterent and barrier.
Barbed wire, however, can be installed on most fences, and three or six strands above a chain link fence offer just a little extra protection, and a little more of a reason not to climb the fence!
There is no fence on earth that is completely impervious - or wall for that matter. However, that's not what fences are for. They're supposed to slow down people trying to gain access or exit, and give you time to respond. Another way to make your chain link fence more secure is to install a fence detection system, which works by detecting vibrations on the fence. These systems can be linked to an alarm system, and when the fence is tampered with, the alarm will sound.
One of the best ways to increase security when installing a chain link fence is to choose a smaller aperture. We're one of the few manufacturers in Canada who make a wide range of chain link fabrics, including so called "mini mesh." A smaller mesh aperture or opening makes it harder to cut and climb the fence.
Rite-Way Fencing has been manufacturing, supplying and installing chain link and other fence systems for decades. We're members of the chain link fence manufacturer's institute, and we weave our own chain link in our Calgary shop.
If you need a chain link fence - high security or otherwise - reach out to our team to get more information, and get the right fence for the job.
For more information, please visit Precise Positioning Type Fiber Intrusion Detection System.