Nordic-powered commercial fridge and freezer monitoring device oversees stock availability and temperature levels

CoolR’s VistaZ employs ultra low power nRF52840, enabling it to be continuously powered using solely ambient energy

U.S.-based company CoolR has released a wireless monitor incorporating a camera designed to monitor stock availability, door positions, and temperature levels for commercial coolers, freezers, and shelves. The ‘VistaZ’ can be easily installed inside existing glass doors using a simple peel-and-stick method. From there, the monitor records data and automatically relays it to the Cloud for analysis and action by retail companies and consumer packaged goods (CPG) suppliers.

Continuous inventory and temperature monitoring

VistaZ integrates Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52840 System-on-Chip (SoC). The SoC acts as the master controller for the product, supervising its cellular IoT, Wi-Fi modules, and integrated sensors, as well as providing Bluetooth® LE connectivity for local data acquisition. The device features an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for monitoring door open and close activity, a camera for checking product availability, and the internal temperature sensor of the nRF52840 SoC that ensures products remain within a safe temperature range. With extremely low power consumption, VistaZ can run using ambient energy harvested from the environment, allowing continuous product monitoring and daily data transfer to the Cloud for 36 months or longer.

Once the data is relayed to the VistaZ Cloud platform, the company’s AI solution ‘StoreAware’ provides retailers and CPG sales and marketing teams with near real-time actions, suggested orders, and insights.

The decision to use the nRF52840 SoC was influenced by the chip’s large memory capacity and low power consumption that met our stringent low idle power consumption targets

Durlabh Jain, CEO and CTO at CoolR

“There are over 120 million existing commercial refrigerators, freezers, and ambient shelves in use,” says Durlabh Jain, CEO and CTO at CoolR. “The VistaZ can make these devices smart without needing to replace them. It provides on-shelf availability insights for reliable restocking, helping to reduce the number of supplier visits. With improved on-shelf availability using our products, consumers can find their desired items more easily, minimizing unnecessary trips to the store. Additionally, the integrated temperature sensor allows companies to identify potential product spoilage due to cooling issues.

This product is already being implemented in real-world applications, including at Unilever Ice Cream,” says Jain. “The company has experienced double-digit sales growth wherever they have deployed our solution to address on-shelf availability challenges.

Ultra low power consumption

Aside from the Bluetooth LE connectivity, the decision to use the nRF52840 SoC was influenced by the chip’s large memory capacity and low power consumption that met our stringent low idle power consumption targets,” explains Jain.

This low power consumption was crucial, as the VistaZ employs a rechargeable battery coupled with ambient energy harvesting for continuous charging. This enables the unit to function for years without the need for external recharges.

When creating our application code, we used the Nordic nRF Connect SDK [Software Development Kit],” says Jain. “We found it to be invaluable throughout the software development process.”