How chat bot can help you accelerate support for IOT project

An IOT project has to provide 2 types of deliveries :

useable datas for the customer ( the most valuable data you get, the most insights you will have)
Controlable process

The second part is really key and should be managed using abnormality. Each project we are doing, is a new source for abnormalities that must be tackles to ensure that the customers is getting what he expect. But what are abnormality :

Device not sending data
Device sending too many datas
Device message missed
Device without battery
Low signal
Somebody moving fixed device
Somebody trying to dismantle the devices
…..

To reduce the risk of failure, the first things we did was to improve quality of installation — ensure that each and every installation is done using the same checklist — independently of the responsible person.

At this stage you can use simple application in your phone to take pictures/register numbers/base on your predefined process.

Once your devices are installed, you need to change your dimensions and here chat bot are going to help you managing your process.

Ensure your devices are alive

Root cause could be double — device not alive or base station not alive. The best solution put alerts on both side ( 1 hour on BS, X hours on your device — X being equal to 2 standard time between 2 heartbeat. If X is too small, you will get too much spam, if X is too long, you may miss critical moments).

example of set up for device in sigfox not sending informations

We can do similar set up at the basestation level

and here what you get :

The beauty of this vs emails or SMS is the following :

it is totally free
creation of group base on business requirements
You get all in one place which allows to treat the informations with whom needs.
once the issue is solved you can just delete the message — resolution is online

Now, at least you will manage by exceptions. You have set up the baseline to trigger any other type of message thanks to the Telegram API webhook.

The same could be set up for missed message if they are critical for you.

2) Add additional alerts

To add additional alerts, we need already to dig inside each device and manage it base on their own set up. For this, keeping the free spirit, we will use a google script application that will help us to manage :

low battery
not predictable event ( jamming, moving of positions)
moving out of planned area ( geozone analysis)

And here we add the chat bot part :

All this takes only a few minutes to be prepared and can heavily help you to scale your projects — by ensuring business get business data and the technical team focus on the appearing issues. The beauty of it is the following one :