The Portal Beam is a BLE-only occupancy sensor. It uses a built-in thermal camera to detect people in a space and reports that data to Kio Cloud through a nearby Portal Light — it does not connect to Wi-Fi directly. Four operation modes determine what the Portal Beam measures: Room Occupancy, Seat Occupancy, Footfall, and IR mode for room-level certainty in Kontakt.io RTLS solutions.
Kio Setup Manager is used to install, configure, and maintain Portal Beams on-site. Because the Portal Beam is BLE-only, Kio Setup Manager communicates with it directly over Bluetooth and synchronizes with Kio Cloud over the mobile device's Wi-Fi connection.
The Beam Mini is a separate device that broadcasts IR room numbers but does not have a thermal camera and does not detect occupancy. See Beam Mini in Kio Setup Manager for its installation and management workflow.
Operation modes
The operation mode is selected during installation. Changing the mode after installation requires completing the installation workflow again.
| Mode | What it measures | Typical placement |
|---|---|---|
| Room Occupancy | Whether the space is currently occupied, and by how many people | Ceiling or wall mount inside the room, aimed at the open space |
| Seat Occupancy | Whether individual seats or workstations are occupied | Ceiling mount above the seating area |
| Footfall | Count of people entering and exiting through a threshold | Above a doorway or entrance, aimed at the crossing point |
| IR mode | Broadcasts a room number via infrared that IR-capable Tags receive and include in their telemetry, providing room-level location certainty | Ceiling or wall mount; IR-capable Tag must be present in the space to receive the signal |
What you can do from Kio Setup Manager
| Action | When to use |
|---|---|
| Install | Initial deployment — selects operation mode and assigns the device to a Smart Location room |
| Verify thermal camera | Confirms the thermal camera is functioning and shows a live thermal image with detection overlay |
| Recalibrate thermal camera | Re-establishes the thermal baseline; run when detection accuracy degrades or after the physical environment changes |
| Test IR (IR mode only) | Confirms the IR signal is being received correctly by a Smart Badge in the space |
| Track your device | Triggers a proximity indicator to physically identify which Portal Beam you are working with |
Note: Cisco-integrated deployments are limited to the occupancy modes. The IR mode and the Track your device are not available.
How Portal Beam connects
The Portal Beam has no Wi-Fi radio. It broadcasts occupancy data over BLE and the gateway infrastructure (Portal Light or BLE-compatible Access Point) forwards that data to Kio Cloud. The Portal Beam depends entirely on a nearby gateway for cloud connectivity. Kio Setup Manager connects to the Portal Beam directly over Bluetooth during installation and diagnostics.
Live telemetry in the device detail view
When the Portal Beam is within Bluetooth range, its device detail view shows live data:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Occupancy | Current people count detected by the thermal camera |
| Detection time | Duration the current occupancy state has been active |
| In / Out | Cumulative footfall entry and exit counts (Footfall mode only) |
| Room number | IR room number being broadcast (IR mode only) |
| Battery | Current battery level |
| RSSI | Bluetooth signal strength between the Portal Beam and your mobile device |