Deployment

Agriculture & Collection Points

Traceability starts at the scale, in the dust — with a label that has to survive the cold room.

Farm-to-fork traceability is sold as a software platform and lost at the collection point. That is where a crate of produce is weighed, labelled and linked to a farmer and a plot — outdoors, at 38 °C, with dust on the lens and no reliable network. The device only has to do three things: read the label, keep the record when the signal drops, and take the weight from the scale instead of from a person typing it. The label it prints has to still be readable after a night in the cold room.

Who actually makes the purchase

Export packers, cooperatives, agri-tech vendors building farm-to-fork traceability, and input suppliers running farmer registration.

Where these projects stall

Typical software in this stack

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The label fails before the record does

A direct-thermal paper label on a wet, chilled crate lifts at the corner within a day. If the QR will not scan at the packing house, the crate becomes anonymous and the audit claim fails on the first check.

The shift outlasts the phone

A consumer phone at full brightness, camera running as a scanner, in 38 °C heat, is out of power by mid-morning. The operator switches to paper, and the paper becomes the traceability record.

The weight never reaches the system

The scale has an RS232 port and the app has no serial path, so someone types the number. That typed number is where the farmer's receipt and the buyer's system start to disagree.

Data flow

How the information actually moves

This is the part that decides the device. Each step below has a different requirement for screen size, scan engine and connectivity.

01Farmer and plot identifiedID card or farmer barcode scanned at the collection point; master data cached on the device before the shift.

02Weighed and labelledWeight read from the scale over RS232 or Bluetooth; crate label printed with farmer, plot, date and lot.

03Intake scan at the packerCrate label scanned again at goods-in; mismatch against the collection record is flagged at the door.

04Grading and packingGrade, pack date and carton code added; the carton inherits the lot lineage of every crate inside it.

05Shipment linkedCartons bound to the export order; the audit trail resolves from carton back to farmer in one lookup.

Reference deployments

Agri collection programmes we can talk about

Same workflow, same failure points, different scale. The kit column is what was actually deployed.

All deployments

8 h → 30 min Retail & apparel

Fashion chain, 200+ stores

Full stock-take of a two-floor store, done before opening instead of after closing.

UHF RFID handheld + fixed reader at the stockroom door

10 M parcels / day Parcel & logistics

Global logistics hub

Sortation reads at belt speed; no manual re-scan when a label is creased.

Pistol-grip UHF reader + vehicle terminal on the tug

1,800 spindles Production & MES

Smart textile mill

Spindle-level traceability replaces paper travellers on the spinning line.

Rugged tablet at the line + UHF handheld for the doff round

Hardware

Devices we quote for this deployment

BH-F1

Android · Handhelds

4.0" Android rugged handheld

6.0" Android rugged handheld

AndroidFingerprintNFC

View specs

BT-T81X

Android · Tablets

8" Android rugged tablet

5" Android rugged handheld

AndroidNFC2D scan

View specs

Questions we get

Before you ask

The questions that come up on almost every project in this sector, answered before the first call.

All questions

01Will the device work where there is no signal at all?

Yes. Master data is downloaded before the shift and every transaction is written locally with a device-generated ID. Sync is a batch upload that retries until acknowledged, so a duplicate retry cannot create a second record for the same crate.

02Can it read the weight off our existing scale?

Where the scale exposes RS232 or Bluetooth SPP, yes — we test the cable and the output format on the same desk before dispatch. Typed weights are the most common source of disputes between the farmer's receipt and the packer's system.

03Do we need a rugged tablet or is a handheld enough?

Handheld for the collection point and field registration; an 8-inch tablet where the operator also works the scale and prints labels at a fixed station. Most projects end up with both, in one mixed batch.

04Can you supply five units for a pilot?

Yes. A pilot is the normal entry point. We quote single units at sample pricing and support the pilot with spare parts on the same order — a spare battery and a cradle, not a pallet.

05Do the Android units ship with GMS?

Most Android models ship with GMS. For builds where Google services must be absent, we supply a GMS-free firmware on the same hardware — say so at the quotation stage, because it is a firmware decision, not a setting.

06What warranty do you give?

One year as standard, covering the unit and the battery against manufacturing faults. Extended cover and advance-replacement terms are available for fleets — ask for them with the quotation, not after the first failure.

At the collection point: traceability starts with a label that survives the crate

Why farm-to-fork records break at the scale: label materials, offline queues, scale cables and the heat that ends a consumer phone by mid-morning.

Running a agri collection project?

Send the workflow and the software stack. You will get two models and the caveats, not a catalogue.

Get a sample Talk to an engineer