I have a grocery customer who has little to no coverage inside coolers and freezers. At the new market district we placed an AP5131 on the outside of the cooler and ran an antenna inside the diary cooler. This cooler was easy since it is a big cooler like 40 feet by 20 feet or something. My concern is the mid size coolers that are big enough to walk in but would be over kill for one ap inside of it. At some stores we have placed them just outside the cooler so when the door is open they use the handhelds. Do you guys have other retail customers that are placing access points inside coolers or doing application rewrites to perform ordering, shrink, and inventory on the handhelds? Just looking for something since I will be asked later today of what we can do to cover them better.
Walk in cooler RF coverage// Expert user has replied. |
2 Replies
Generally customers go one of 2 ways; If the users work in the chiller / freezer with the door open then put an AP outside the door in such a way that it will cover inside the chiller and as much of the rest of the storage area as possible. Or if they work in the chiller / freezer with the door closed then an AP is placed on the outside with antennae run through the wall. I have never seen a customer change their processes so that they didn't do any of the checking in the chiller / freezer even when the whole store could be covered by 2 APs they have changed their RF design so that and additional AP is placed outside the chiller / freezer door. IJ
My grocery acounts place AP's outside the coolers (AP300's or 650's) in the store locations and run antenna cables inside the cooler to provide coverage. Although this pretty much dedicates the AP to the cooler, its generaly only one more on top of their standard AP count (which varies site to site, customer to customer). For example if a store requires 6 AP's for coverage, then use 7 to include the cooler if required. In their DC's, the coolers and freezers are big enough to warrant AP's directly inside using AP5181's for temp specs.