Where, exactly
The floor, not just the address.
During an active alert, the worker's position streams to the monitoring centre and updates every 5 seconds. Outdoors that is GPS. Indoors, where GPS is unreliable, BLE beacons give room-level positioning, so dispatch gets a floor and a room rather than a street address. Location is private until an alert is raised.
The problem it solves
A street address is not much use in a twelve-storey hospital, a shopping centre, or a depot with six buildings. The time between arriving at the address and reaching the person is where a response is won or lost.
The other half is movement. An incident is rarely static, and a location captured once at the moment of activation sends help to where the worker used to be.
Step by step
- 1
Nothing is tracked until it matters
Location is private until activation. Duress is not a staff-tracking tool, and that distinction is usually what gets a rollout through consultation with a workforce.
- 2
An alert opens the stream
Raising an alarm starts live positioning to the operator, who has it on screen when they answer rather than having to ask for it.
- 3
Outdoors, GPS fixes the position
Falcon uses GPS and GLONASS to roughly 5 metres. Eagle uses multi-constellation GNSS. The Duress App and Phoenix use the phone's GPS.
- 4
Indoors, beacons take over
Where GPS degrades, BLE beacons give room-level positioning, with LoRaWAN indoor positioning to around 1 metre available through the app.
- 5
It refreshes every 5 seconds
Position updates every 5 seconds for the life of the alert, so a moving worker does not strand the response at their starting point.
What each device does
Including the ones that do not have it. A device paired to a phone does not inherit the phone's capabilities.
Duress App
Supported
Phone GPS, with BLE beacons for room-level indoor positioning or LoRaWAN indoor to around 1 metre.
See Duress App →Phoenix
Supported
Phone GPS and BLE beacon indoor positioning through the paired phone. Phoenix has no standalone data connection of its own.
See Phoenix →Falcon
Supported
GPS and GLONASS to about 5 metres on its own 4G connection, plus BLE beacons indoors. Works with no phone present.
See Falcon →Eagle
Supported
Multi-constellation GNSS including GLONASS and Galileo, plus BLE beacon indoor positioning.
See Eagle →Comparing devices rather than features? The full comparison table puts all four side by side, or the device selector asks six questions and recommends one.