The questions teams ask most.

MeshTrack gives you zone-level location — which room, zone, bay or mapped area an asset is in — plus movement history, dwell time and alerts. Anchor spacing of 10–15 m delivers sub-5 m positioning. It answers "where is it and has it moved", rather than a centimetre-precise coordinate.

Which level: yes. Height within an open volume: yes, to a band — and it comes down to where the anchors sit. Every floor, level or platform is normally its own anchor grid (radio doesn't pass through a slab or rock), so MeshTrack always knows which level a tag is on. In an open volume like a furnace there's no slab between heights, but the same principle works vertically: a tag is heard by the anchors nearest it, including the ones above and below it, so if you place anchors at the heights that matter, MeshTrack resolves which vertical band the tag is in from proximity to the closest anchors. Two things make it work: anchor placement is the whole game — plan anchors at the right heights and around the structure, with clear line of sight and Ex-rated, heat-tolerant hardware for a furnace; and where you only need 'which point or level it's nearest', a BLE proximity layer (we support both mesh and BLE) resolves the closest anchor directly. What you get is band- or zone-level height, not a continuous millimetre coordinate — so tell us the height bands that matter and we'll design the anchor layout to resolve them.

Steel does affect radio: it reflects and absorbs 2.4 GHz signals, and coverage won't pass through a solid metal mass — so it's a genuine planning factor, not something we wish away. It's also exactly why metal-heavy sites — steel-racked warehouses, factories, plants and mines — are core environments for MeshTrack rather than edge cases: the system is designed around metal, not in spite of it. Three things keep it accurate. MeshTrack reports zone-level location rather than a centimetre coordinate, which is far more tolerant of the reflections (multipath) metal creates. The mesh is self-healing and multi-hop, so data routes around obstructions. And anchors are placed for it — mounted high, clear of large metal masses, with enough density and line of sight to the zones that matter. Orbit's coverage check (or an RF survey on larger sites) flags any weak or blocked spot before go-live so it's fixed up front, and in very dense metal we simply plan more anchors, or a proximity layer, for the affected zones.

Two different jobs, two different ranges. A gateway or BLE reference point covers roughly up to 50 m indoors, and further where there's clear line of sight — it tells you a tag is near it (proximity). A Wirepas mesh anchor is about precision, not distance: anchors are spaced 10–15 m so several hear each tag and the system can place it to within about 5 m. That's why the anchor grid suits defined areas — workshops, stores, processing plants, underground drives — where you need the exact zone, and why it isn't practical to blanket a whole open pit with anchors at 10–15 m spacing. Over a large open area, where you usually only need 'which area or which point', BLE proximity is the better fit: fewer devices, each covering a wider radius, placed where it matters — benches, haul roads, access control, refuelling. And for genuinely open-sky ground, satellite positioning (GPS) is the natural tool — MeshTrack can show outdoor GPS positions and indoor or underground zones on the same map, so a site uses the right technology in each area. Send us the layout and we'll map technology to area.

Assets and equipment (forklifts, tools, pallets, medical devices), people and visitors (occupancy, lone-worker safety, mustering), vehicles (indoor depots and outdoor routes on one map), and sensor conditions (temperature, humidity, tamper).

No. Tags and anchors are wireless and battery-powered over a Wirepas mesh — nothing to wire in the workings. Only the gateways need a network and power connection.

Anchors run for years on a coin cell; tags last up to ~18 months and are motion-aware to conserve power. Battery level is reported per device and a low-battery alert is raised before it runs out — so replacement is scheduled, never a surprise.

It's a guided self-install with the Orbit app: sign in, place anchors, bind tags and validate coverage — no contractors and no separate site survey. How long depends entirely on the area. Indoors, where the phone's LiDAR can scan the space, most rooms map in 3–5 minutes and a floor can go live in an afternoon. Areas you can't scan with a phone — mines, large open outdoor yards, anywhere without a usable LiDAR view — instead work from a CAD file or an accurate floorplan you provide, which we align to the space during setup. The anchor and tag steps are the same either way.

Both are supported. Cloud is hosted and operated by Sethala (operators just use a browser). On-site runs the platform on a dedicated server or VM on your LAN, so tracking keeps working even if the internet drops. See the Site Readiness guide for the full requirements of each.

Yes — it's built for real operational environments. Devices use IP67 housings, intrinsically-safe (ATEX / IECEx) variants are available where the hazardous-area classification requires them, and every level or shaft station gets its own anchor grid (coverage doesn't pass through rock or slab).

Less than most people expect, and it scales with the deployment rather than being a single fixed number. The tracking mesh itself uses no internet — anchors and tags talk locally over 2.4 GHz radio. The internet link only carries gateway-to-cloud traffic, and how much that is comes down to two things. First, the deployment option: on-site, tracking runs entirely on your LAN so the link only carries monitoring, alerts and the nightly backup (very light); on cloud, every position message is sent up, so the link is part of the live tracking path. Second, the size of the rollout — traffic scales with the number of gateways, anchors and tags and how often they report. Because each location message is only a few hundred bytes, even a busy site with thousands of tags sits comfortably inside a business-grade link. Sethala sizes the connection from your device counts and reporting cadence; the Site Readiness guide sets the minimum service class and redundancy for each option.

The honest answer is that it isn't a single fixed number, and it isn't truly "unlimited" either — the mesh radio sets the ceiling. Every tag shares the same 2.4 GHz airtime, so the real capacity of a single gateway (mesh cell) is a trade-off between how many tags there are and how often each one reports. By default a tag reports about once a minute, bursting faster only while it's moving — that's very light on airtime, so one gateway comfortably carries a large tag population, and a site scales into the thousands by adding gateways and anchors. Push every tag to sub-second updates and that same cell holds far fewer. Worth correcting a common assumption: anchors don't "hold" tags — they're reference points, so adding anchors improves accuracy and coverage, not tag capacity. So rather than a headline number, we size it from your tag count and how live you need each one, and scale coverage by adding gateways. Tell us the counts and the reporting cadence you need and we'll design the gateway and anchor layout to match.

There's a rough rule of thumb — enough to budget before the detailed plan. Three numbers: tags, anchors and gateways. Tags: one per asset or person you want to track. Anchors: think roughly one per 100–200 m² of the area you want covered — that's the 10–15 m grid that gives sub-5 m accuracy — or, per room, about three to four anchors each; dense metal, pillars or awkward shapes push that up. Gateways: at least one per level, building or separate structure (two per level if you want no single point of failure), and one gateway covers up to around 30,000 m². So a simple 2,000 m² single-floor warehouse would ballpark at roughly 10–20 anchors, one or two gateways, and a tag per tracked item. Treat it as a budgeting estimate only — the exact counts come from your drawings and a coverage check, which the Coverage & Anchor Planning guide walks through.

Anchors are small battery-powered beacons that stick or screw to a surface, and the goal is a clear radio line of sight over the area they cover. The sweet spot is about 3–4 m high — high enough to clear people, racking and machinery, low enough to keep a strong signal down to floor-level tags — mounted within the grid they serve and clear of large metal masses (an IP-rated enclosure underground or in harsh areas). On a normal ceiling of up to ~4–5 m, mount them to the ceiling or high on a wall, facing down or out into the space. In a high-bay area — a warehouse or plant with an 8–12 m roof — don't go all the way up: an anchor far above the tags gives a weaker signal and poorer geometry, so mount at ~3–5 m on walls, columns, beams or racking instead. With no ceiling at all — open areas, yards, outdoor structures — wall-mount where you can and use a bracket, pole or mast where you can't, positioning each anchor at the planned height with its face toward the coverage area (not flat against, or buried behind, metal), and keep the orientation consistent across the grid. Every anchor is scanned into Orbit, dropped onto the floor plan and confirmed by the coverage check, so a poor position shows up before go-live. The exact heights and mounts come out of the placement plan — see the Coverage & Anchor Planning guide.

Yes. MeshTrack is POPIA-aligned, people-tracking is opt-in (tags can be issued anonymously and retention is configurable), data is encrypted in transit, and there are no inbound ports into your network. You choose whether the platform runs in our cloud or fully on-site. See our Security & Data Privacy page.

Yes. Location events, alerts and movement data can be shared with the tools you already run — ERP, warehouse or building management, reporting or BI — via REST/webhook, plus email, push and Telegram notifications.

Support is delivered fully remotely, under one of two SLAs: a business-hours plan, or 24/7/365 for sites that run around the clock. Under either, Sethala monitors the platform — and, for on-site deployments, the server and services too — for gateway heartbeat, message throughput, positioning health and alert-engine state, so a problem usually surfaces before a user notices. Security patches and upgrades happen in agreed windows. Everything runs over the encrypted management link — there's no on-site call-out.

The hardware belongs to you, and the software is billed annually, scaled to your site, devices and deployment needs. Every site is different — tell us about yours and we'll put together a quote.