A Portal Beam is a multi-function device that delivers occupancy measurements, environmental monitoring, IR beaconing for asset and badge tracking, and the infrastructure to support mobile indoor navigation. A Portal Beam can be set to one of the three occupancy modes - room, seat-level, or footfall traffic.
Topics include:
Measures the count of people in a room.
Use cases:
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Show availability of rooms such as offices, meeting rooms, or patient examination rooms.
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Show occupancy levels of large rooms or spaces. For example, showing the number of patients currently in a waiting room.
Example below illustrates: Image (1) Portal Beam thermal sensor image, (2) actual representation of people located in the space, and (3) real-time data available from Kio Cloud Smart Location.

Infrastructure |
Requirement |
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Gateway Devices - receive and send Portal Beam data to Kio Cloud over existing Wi-Fi network |
Kontakt.io Portal Lights (gateways) - configured and installed. For integration with Cisco Spaces - compatible BLE-enabled Access Points. |
Kio Cloud Smart Location setup |
Rooms created for each Portal Beam install location. During device installation, Kontakt.io stationary devices (Portal Lights, Portal Beams) are assigned to their room installation location and placed onto a visual floor plan. |
Portal Beam installation |
Portal Beam firmware - latest version. Portal Beam install location is within Bluetooth range of a Kontakt.io Portal Light or a compatible BLE-enabled Access Point. At the Portal Beam install location, the following is completed from the Kio Setup Manager app.
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Measures the count of workstation seats that are occupied and not occupied. Up to six stand-alone seats can be measured by a single Portal Beam.
Use cases:
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Measure utilization of specific seats in multi-person workstations.
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Show availability of specific seats in multi-desk workstations.
Example below illustrates: Image (1) Portal Beam thermal sensor image, (2) actual representation of people located in the space, and (3) real-time data available from Kio Cloud Smart Location.

Infrastructure |
Requirement |
---|---|
Gateway Devices - receive and send Portal Beam data to Kio Cloud over existing Wi-Fi network |
Kontakt.io Portal Lights (gateways) - configured and installed. For integration with Cisco Spaces - compatible BLE-enabled Access Points. |
Kio Cloud Smart Location setup |
Rooms created for each Portal Beam install location. Each room is set to the number of seats requiring occupancy measurement (up to 6 seats allowed per Portal Beam). During device installation, Kontakt.io stationary devices (Portal Lights, Portal Beams) are assigned to their room installation location and placed onto a visual floor plan. |
Portal Beam installation |
Portal Beam firmware - latest version. Portal Beam install location is within Bluetooth range of a Kontakt.io Portal Light or a compatible BLE-enabled Access Point. A single room can have up to two Portal Beams. At the Portal Beam install location, the following is completed from the Kio Setup Manager app.
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Measures the count of people entering and exiting a building or floor space. A Portal Beam is located at each entrance or interior space and people are counted as they pass through the Portal Beam invisible threshold line. By default, the space counter is reset daily at midnight.
Use cases:
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Measure and capture historical occupancy levels of buildings and their floors.
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Measure and capture historical occupancy levels of floor parts separately. For example, dividing a floor into separate wings or departments and capturing occupancy for each.
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Measure utilization of specific rooms, areas in open spaces.
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Measure utilization of very large rooms such as training centers or lecture rooms.
Example below illustrates: Image (1) Portal Beam thermal sensor image, (2) actual representation of people entering and exiting the space, and (3) real-time data available from Kio Cloud Smart Location.

Infrastructure |
Requirement |
---|---|
Gateway Devices - receive and send Portal Beam data to Kio Cloud over existing Wi-Fi network |
Kontakt.io Portal Lights (gateways) - configured and installed. For integration with Cisco Spaces - compatible BLE-enabled Access Points. |
Kio Cloud Smart Location setup |
Unique to a Portal Beam set to Footfall Traffic mode, Smart Location setup includes both Rooms and Spaces. For each Traffic Portal Beam, two rooms are created. An inbound room to identify people entering the space and an outbound room to identify people exiting the space. The two rooms are then assigned to a single Space. During install, a Portal Beam is assigned to the Space inbound room. |
Portal Beam installation |
Portal Beam firmware - latest version. Portal Beam is powered by AC. When in Footfall Traffic mode, battery power is for backup power purposes only; operates up to ten days on continuous battery backup power. At the Portal Beam install location, the following is completed from the Kio Setup Manager app.
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The Portal Beam is equipped with sensors that measure ambient air temperature, relative humidity, ambient light level, air pressure, and provides a calculated Air Quality Index (AQI) level. Additional sensors are optional.
Uses cases:
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Monitor the real-time environmental conditions in every room with an installed Portal Beam.
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Healthier workplace.
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Reduce building carbon footprint.
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Improve employee and visitor experiences.
In addition to occupancy and environmental monitoring, the Portal Beam IR beaconing capability can also be enabled. IR beaconing is for room-level location tracking use cases for use with the Kontakt.io Asset Tag and Smart Badge.
Use cases:
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Track the room-level location of wheelchairs, IV Pumps, or other valuable assets, and see where the assets are located in real-time from a floor plan map.
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See the real-time and historical location data of tracked assets or people locations.
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Get the real-time location of staff wearing Smart Badges when they press a badge button that activates an alert to notify those responsible for responding to emergency or duress events.
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Room-level contact tracing, paring visitors with hosts.