In food and pharmaceutical facilities, warehouses, offices, and public buildings, the presence of rodents and other pests is more than just a hygiene issue. It can compromise product safety, cause operational downtime, damage equipment and materials, and create issues during audits and inspections.
Traditional rodent control systems are often based on traps and bait stations that must be inspected periodically by operators. While this approach remains essential, it has an obvious limitation: an event may go undetected between one inspection and the next.
A natural evolution is to integrate a compact IoT device into existing traps, designed to detect the passage or presence of an animal and send an immediate alert. The traditional trap is not replaced but transformed into a connected monitoring point.
Such a solution can use capacitive sensors distributed across multiple areas of the trap. The variation in the electric field generated by the animal's movement is analyzed by the device to distinguish a genuine event from environmental interference, vibrations, or accidental contact. A detection logic based on multiple sensors and the sequence of events can help reduce false alarms.
The device can be designed to operate on battery power for extended periods, communicating through LoRaWAN, cellular networks, or other low-power communication technologies. The collected data can feed a dashboarddisplaying trap locations, device status, detected events, and the need for intervention.
In sensitive environments, the main advantage is not simply knowing that a trap has been triggered. The real value lies in detecting the early signs of an infestation, analyzing event frequency, and identifying the most critical areas before the problem spreads.
The same architecture can be adapted to different types of traps and various animals or pests by modifying sensors, geometry, thresholds, and detection algorithms. Each application therefore requires a dedicated study of its real operating conditions.
TechCrafters develops custom hardware, sensing systems, firmware, and data management platforms to integrate IoT capabilities into existing products and equipment. A project can start with a single trap and a controlled pilot test, then evolve into a distributed monitoring network fully integrated with professional pest control services.
