Playing around with Unabiz’s LTE UnaBell button

For the last week, I’ve been playing with a connected LTE button from Unabiz that uses the LTE-M network and Unabiz’s UnaConnect software to send and show device data. The review unit came with the button itself, some batteries, and a temperature probe. The UnaBell button is designed for industrial use, and costs $59 for the button and a year of connectivity. The price drops to $53 if you buy 10 or more.

As part of the review, I’m also spending time playing with the UnaConnect software platform, since that’s where most customers will end up spending most of their time. It’s what translates the button presses or sensor data collected by the device into code that lets customers build dashboards or ambient alerts.

First up, I am not the intended audience for this particular device. It’s aimed at small or large enterprise clients that might find they need a connected button. I’ve seen companies use such buttons in an enormous number of ways — from placing them in front of customers as a way of assessing happiness (press the button if the restrooms were dirty) to a way of triggering an action (press the button if the inventory in this slot needs replacing).

The button measures short presses, long presses, and has a 3.5mm jack that can accept both a temperature probe and a magnet sensor. Clients can also work with Unabiz to create their own accessories. My button came with a temperature probe, and someone from Unabiz set up a use case for me.

The use case was to attach the button to my fridge and insert the probe inside. Then the software was programmed to alert me if the temp in the fridge rose above 6 degrees Celsius (42.8 degrees Fahrenheit). And if I pressed the button on the device, I’d get a notification that I needed to buy milk. Both notifications work well, and since taking out the probe I’ve gotten hundreds of reminders via email that the temperature in my fridge is too high. I can even track the temps on an available dashboard (see image above).

So let’s talk about setting up the device parameters and the dashboard itself. It’s almost intuitive to use, but lacks some features that will get updates over time. And underneath the UI is a pretty powerful set of advanced features that make sense for larger enterprise clients, each of which will also likely have a Unabiz employee helping them set things up.

I didn’t set up the device parameters but a Unabiz sales specialist walked me through the steps of how to add a new device and then program it. Under the Configuration menu in the Device section of the dashboard I can select what types of sensors I have, can choose whether I want to use long presses or short presses on the bell as a trigger, and can set various individual elements, such as how often I want to have the device upload and download data.

In my case, the device downloads data every 24 hours, although I can force a download if need be, and uploads data every half hour. I can select more frequent intervals for both uploads and downloads if needed, but that will affect battery life. One way or another, once the device was configured I had go to a different section of the dashboard to create the rules that will generate notifications.

Under the Notifications menu, I was given the option of getting notifications through the mobile app, via email, or in Slack. I needed to configure the parameters for each type of notification, which may be annoying if you want the same notification in all three places. Here’s where the software was a little cumbersome.

To create a high temperature notification via email, this is what I needed to type: “Careful, the temperature of the fridge is too {temperature>6:high} at {temperature}°C. The door might be open.” The words are not important, but the code tracking the temperature is specific to the UnaConnect platform and a lay user will have to look it up in the documentation. Since this is a core reason to use this device, I would think an easy way to understand how to “program” the sensor is probably necessary.

Guillaume Pigeard, a solutions architect with Unabiz, told me the company was working on that. He added that if a client with a large fleet needs to send notifications to a specific platform, Unabiz can potentially add it. It would then be made available to everyone in the org using the UnaConnect software. A customer could also use what Unabiz calls “connectors” to push data to any platform and then create their own notifications, such as a light going off.

I used the Webhook connector and IFTTT to create a connector to notify me if the temperature in my fridge got too high. Other connectors include MQTT, AWS IoT Core, Zapier, Splunk, and SAP IoT. The platform also generates JSON code from the device and sensor data, so it’s easy to export that and do something with it if you wanted to custom-code your own dashboard or notification.

One biggish complaint I have is that the battery status still isn’t working yet. If I want to see how much power is left on my UnaBell, I need to scroll through 24 hours of raw message snippets (which are generated every six minutes) to figure out how many volts from my 3-volt battery are left. This is made more difficult by the fact that the dashboard only shows up to 25 raw message snippets at a time. That’s 10 screens to go through. I quickly gave up.

All in, I don’t have a personal use for this device. But playing with it and trying to understand all of the options available in the software platform did make me realize what a pain the IoT is to manage at large scale.