The emergence of the bike-sharing model in 2017 instantly disrupted traditional commuting of urban people in China. However, while it brings convenience to our life, it also incurs some disadvantages. Random stop and go not only brings much inconvenience to other residents, but also incurs great trouble to city managers and shared bicycle operators. To further improve the order of shared bicycle parking, city managers were prompted to regulate parking behavior. Advent of Bluetooth electronic fence simply address the issue. With its features of broadcasting, transmission and positioning, the Bluetooth electronic fence technology can demarcate boundaries for parking and count bikes in those specified areas.
What is a Bluetooth Electronic Fence
Bluetooth electronic fence refers to a virtual geographic demarcation system that enables operators or city managers to lay out and regulate certain areas for shared bicycles to park. The solution is realized by placing Bluetooth beacon devices in those specified areas. Cyclists riding shared bikes can locate the specified parking spaces with help of their mobile devices. The beacon devices can detect shared bikes within a specified radius. If the bike were parked outside the virtually fenced area or were ridden out of it, the system will send notifications, so that the manager can understand the dynamics of the relevant bikes in time, and take corresponding measures to deal with it. Public electronic fences realize data interaction with Bluetooth, its positioning accuracy reaches sub-meter level making it capable of accurately addressing cases of each bike in the herd. They can also accommodate shared-bikes of different operators.
Featuring bike wireless identifying, fine line geo-demarcation and ultra-long autonomy, Bluetooth electronic fences for shared bikes can provide reliable service of bike access sensing and parking management with little deployment effort.
Comparing electronic fence technologies
There are three major implementation technologies for electronic fences:
The first and second technologies rely on satellite positioning technology and the Bluetooth device in the bike lock respectively, which are relatively invisible. The third technology is more convenient for installation, and is suitable for mass deployment. At the same time, the Bluetooth electronic fence of latter technology can also count the number of bikes parked within the fence, and facilitate sharing data between the urban management authority and sharing bicycle operators. Thus overall load balancing and scheduling can be achieved.
For now, such electronic fence is available for all sharing bicycles featuring Bluetooth modules. Major bike-sharing brands such as Mobike, Meituan, Hello, and Didi are allow to park their bikes in the designated public electronic fences.
As a well-known Bluetooth solution provider in China, Shenzhen RF-star Technology Co., Ltd. (RF-star), has provided Bluetooth Beacon solutions for dozens of customers at home and abroad with its specialized RF technology and embedded development capabilities. It is also an early participant electronic fences building projects in China, and has accumulated rich experience in that regard.