A sovereign IoT architecture
Building a luggage tracker that works everywhere forces one founding choice: depend on no third-party phone network. That choice has a cost, and it then decides almost the entire architecture.
Why Bluetooth alone is not enough
A Bluetooth tracker does not report its position: it waits for a compatible phone to come within range and relay it. The model works remarkably well where device density is high — a European station, a shopping centre. It collapses elsewhere.
Yet bags get lost precisely where nobody passes: sorting areas, cargo holds, transfer warehouses. The use case sits in the technology's blind spot.
The structuring choice. Adding a cellular modem costs hardware, battery and a data plan. In exchange, the device becomes autonomous: it reports its position with no intermediary, anywhere the LTE-M network reaches.
Three radios, three roles
| Technology | Role |
|---|---|
| GPS | Determines the bag’s absolute position |
| Bluetooth 5.0 | Immediate proximity and pairing with the owner’s phone, at low power |
| LTE-M with eSIM | Transmits to the cloud without relying on a third-party device, in covered countries |
The eSIM avoids managing a physical card per country: the carrier profile is provisioned remotely. That is what makes the promise of worldwide operation credible without any user handling.
Where the data lives
A timestamped geographic position is sensitive personal data. A position history is far worse: it reveals movements, habits and frequented places. Several players in the sector have been criticised for reselling such data.
So we set the constraint before writing the first line: hosting in the Canadian region, no resale, and bounded rather than indefinite retention. Compliance with Law 25, PIPEDA and GDPR follows from that starting point instead of being retrofitted.
The app
A single Flutter codebase serves iOS and Android. This is not only a development saving: it is the condition for not reproducing the exclusion of Android users we hold against competitors.
Let's talk about your cloud trajectory
Compliance audit, target architecture, governance automation, or simply picking the right solution — write to us and we'll reply within 48 hours.