Case study
High security trucks, digitalized
How a leading Spanish cash transport company piloted the digitalization of its armored trucks: one onboard controller that reads every lock and every position, and only authorizes an action where and when it should happen.
- Interlocked doors
- Openings tied to location
- Remote immobilization
- Alerts on anomalies
- Client
- Cash transport firm
- Sector
- Cash in transit
- Location
- Spain
- Hardware
- Revolution Pi PLC
- Thinger.io role
- Built it end to end
Who they are
A cash in transit operator
The client is a leading Spanish cash transport company, kept unnamed here as in the original account. Its business is moving cash and valuables under strict security requirements, and the core of that business is its fleet of armored vehicles.
As the sector overhauled itself for efficiency, in step with falling cash usage after covid, rethinking the electronics inside the trucks was the natural next step.
Profile
A cash in transit operator
- Business
- Moving cash and valuables under strict security requirements
- Core asset
- The armored vehicle fleet
- Project
- 2020, a custom solution designed and built by Thinger.io
- Scope
- A retrofit of the trucks’ onboard electronics, down to workshop and installation documentation
The digital truck
A controller that authorizes every action
Each truck already carried an onboard controller: an ageing unit that managed vehicle state to allow or block actions, with telemetry travelling over separate channels. The company set the rules it wanted enforced, and Thinger.io designed and built the replacement: an industrial PLC on the vehicle's CAN bus, running a static program where those rules are defined. One device reads every lock, position and machinery parameter, actuates the doors and the ignition, and authorizes or blocks each action. The sheet below redraws that logic as it was designed for the pilot.
One controller for the truck
FIG. 01A new onboard controller built on an industrial PLC, wired to the vehicle's CAN bus. It replaced an ageing unit and the separate channels its telemetry used to travel on.
INDUSTRIAL PLC · CAN BUS · TELEMETRY AND ACTUATION
Locks and compartments
FIG. 02The state of every lock on the vehicle, cab doors, side hatch and rear doors, read by the controller and recorded as events.
CAB · HATCH · REAR DOORS · EVENT LOG
Doors that interlock
FIG. 03The interlock rules: with one door open no other door opens, and with the valuables compartment open the engine will not start and the alarm goes off. Every button on the panel is mediated by the controller.
ONE DOOR AT A TIME · START INTERLOCK · ALARM
On route, or flagged
FIG. 04Geofencing and route control: the solution knows the route each vehicle should be on and flags the moment one leaves it.
GEOFENCING · ROUTE CONTROL · OFF ROUTE ALERTS
Openings tied to location
FIG. 05Openings are conditioned to location: doors can only be opened when the truck is at its expected service point. Anywhere else, the request is blocked.
EXPECTED LOCATION · AUTHORIZED OPENING · ELSEWHERE BLOCKED
Machinery, watched ahead
FIG. 06Machinery parameters trended vehicle by vehicle, the basis for preventive maintenance instead of failures on the road.
ENGINE HOURS · WEAR TREND · SERVICE THRESHOLD
Results
Safety, quality and service efficiency
Exhaustive monitoring of location, lock status and machinery is the basis for preventive maintenance, automated fleet management and a surveillance that raises alerts on anomalies. And the controller went further than monitoring.
The company benefited from agile development, reduced time and costs, and a highly flexible platform that let the service adapt to the particularities of its project.
Outcome of the 2020 collaboration, as documented by Thinger.io.
The controller
What every truck now enforces
Door interlock
Enforced by the onboard controller
Enforced
Every opening
Conditioned to the expected location
Immobilization
The vehicle can be immobilized remotely
Anomalies
Raise an alert from location, lock and machinery data
Under the hood
Built from scratch, end to end
During 2020, the company and Thinger.io worked on this custom solution side by side. Thinger.io built it end to end: it chose the hardware and the materials, assembled the cabinet around a Revolution Pi industrial PLC, wired it to the vehicle's CAN bus, set up the communications and wrote the control rules. Part of the logic, such as geofencing and route control, runs on the platform itself.
On top, Thinger.io is the secure data transport of the deployment: the baseline that feeds the company's own fleet management software, with device management, data buckets, alarms and endpoints underneath.
Built by Thinger.io
- Hardware and materialsEvery part selected and specified for life on board an armored truck.
- Revolution Pi PLCThe industrial controller that runs the static rule program.
- Control cabinetDIN rail build with relays, protection and an isolated DC/DC supply.
- CommunicationsAn industrial cellular router linking each truck to the platform.
- Control rulesDoor interlocks, openings tied to location and remote immobilization.
- CAN bus readingLocks, positions and machinery parameters read from the vehicle bus.
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Put your fleet online
This pilot is one fleet solution built on Thinger.io. If your vehicles, armored or not, need to report where they are, how they are secured and how they are doing, we can help you build it.