Warehouse temperature, humidity and door monitoring

At a glance

Item	Typical answer
Problem	Large halls drift out of their storage band near roofs, walls and docks, dock doors stay open, and storage customers ask for condition records that the warehouse cannot produce quickly.
What is connected	Battery temperature and humidity sensors per mapped zone, dock door contacts, power and HVAC signals read by a licensed gateway, and the cold zones' refrigeration states.
Who uses it	Shift managers, the quality or compliance lead, facilities, account managers and the storage customers themselves.
Typical first scope	One warehouse: its ambient halls, one chilled zone and the dock.
Time to first screen	Typically a day or two after the LoRaWAN gateway is up, starting from the Sensor regions solution. Plan four to six weeks to cover a hall properly and agree limits per customer.

The situation

A third-party logistics warehouse stores goods for many customers in halls of 10,000 m² or more, often with a chilled zone, a hazardous goods room and a cross-dock. Customers' contracts and product labels set storage conditions: 15 to 25 °C for most pharmaceuticals and many cosmetics, below 60 % relative humidity for paper, electronics or tobacco, 2 to 8 °C in the chilled zone. Heights of 12 metres and roofs that heat up in summer make the top racks very different from the floor.

Today a handful of data loggers are read once a month, one per hall, on a pillar near the office. A summer heatwave pushes the top beam levels past 30 °C for a week, a dock door is left open through a cold night, a roof leak raises humidity in one aisle. The warehouse finds out when a customer's goods are damaged or when an auditor asks for evidence, and producing records per customer takes days of spreadsheet work.

This blueprint covers each hall in mapped zones, alarms on the conditions that damage goods, records per zone and customer, and a customer-facing view that the warehouse controls.

Goals and measures

• Zone compliance = time each zone stays inside its band ÷ time in the period. Practical form: hours minus the summed duration of zone temperature and humidity alarms, divided by hours.
• Worst position per zone = the daily maximum and minimum of each sensor from day aggregates; the hottest sensor of a hall in July tells you where not to store sensitive goods.
• Dock door open time per door per day, where the contact or controller reports a counter or open time; otherwise the count of door-held alarms.
• Excursions per customer = alarms on sensors in the zones assigned to that customer, with duration and acknowledgement.
• Data completeness = readings received ÷ readings expected, per sensor, so a lost sensor never hides an excursion.
• Energy per day of the HVAC and refrigeration plant from the energy meter's increase, compared with the outdoor temperature.

Limits come from contracts and labels, not from the warehouse. Store them per zone as data, so that a new customer with a different band does not need new rules.

Architecture

Warehouse sensors are spread over large distances and mounted on racks, where cables are expensive and move with reconfigurations. Battery LoRaWAN sensors suit them. Fixed equipment in plant rooms and at the dock is better read by a licensed gateway.

• Zone sensors: LoRaWAN temperature and humidity sensors at the positions found in the mapping study, typically at floor, middle and top beam levels near the hot and cold spots. One or two LoRaWAN gateways mounted high in the hall connect to Hermetry's own network server (EU868, OTAA, class A for batteries). The codec library covers common temperature, humidity, door and leak sensors.
• Dock and plant: a licensed gateway running Hermetry Edge reads dock door contacts on its digital inputs or through a Modbus digital input module, the HVAC controller and refrigeration controllers over Modbus RTU or TCP, and an energy meter. It sends over MQTT with TLS on one outbound connection.
• Leaks: LoRaWAN water leak sensors under roof drains and near sprinkler valves.
• Uplink: the warehouse network where IT allows outbound port 8883, or a licensed 4G router with your own SIM. eSIM management from the platform is in development (Hermetry Connect).

Component	Role	Notes
LoRaWAN temperature and humidity sensor	Zone conditions	Mounted on rack uprights with a clear air path, not on outer walls unless that is the mapped worst case.
LoRaWAN gateway	Coverage of halls	High mounting; metal racks and full pallets attenuate radio.
LoRaWAN water leak sensor	Roof leaks, drains, sprinkler valves	On change plus heartbeat.
Licensed gateway with Edge	Dock doors, HVAC, refrigeration, energy	Claimed into the organisation; factory identity.
Dock door contacts	Door open and closed	On the door or from the dock door controller's output.
Energy meter	HVAC and refrigeration consumption	Modbus RTU.
Hermetry	Storage, alarms, boards, records, customer access	EU, US or Türkiye region, or on-premises.

Licensed gateways authenticate with X.509 certificates from the platform's own authority, other devices with an access token or a user name and password over TLS. The gateway can report the HVAC unit, each refrigeration controller and the energy meter as separate child devices, each with its own readings and alarms.

Point list

Per zone sensor, per dock door, and the shared plant. Registers are placeholders; adapt intervals to the sensors' battery budget.

Point	Telemetry key	Unit	Source	Interval	Notes
Air temperature	air_temp	°C	LoRaWAN sensor	10 min	The Sensor regions profile uses this key.
Relative humidity	air_hum	%	LoRaWAN sensor	10 min	Same profile.
Sensor battery	battery	%	LoRaWAN sensor	with each uplink
Position on the floor plan	plan_x, plan_y	px	Stored once per sensor at commissioning	on change	Places the sensor on the region's floor plan.
Water leak	leak	bool	LoRaWAN leak sensor	on change	Plus heartbeat.
Dock door open	dock_open	bool	Gateway digital input per door	on change	Plus a heartbeat every 15 min.
Dock door open count	dock_count	count	Door controller counter, if available	15 min	Openings per day from the increase.
Dock leveller in use	leveller_up	bool	Leveller controller contact	on change	Shows a door open with no trailer.
HVAC supply air temperature	hvac_supply_c	°C	HVAC controller, Modbus	60 s
HVAC running	hvac_run	bool	HVAC controller	60 s
HVAC fault	hvac_fault	bool	HVAC controller	on change
Chilled zone air temperature	cz_air_c	°C	Refrigeration controller, input register 30001	60 s	Controller probe; zone sensors give the mapped values.
Chilled zone defrost	cz_defrost	bool	Refrigeration controller status	60 s
Plant active energy	energy_kwh	kWh	Energy meter	15 min
Plant active power	power_kw	kW	Energy meter	60 s
Mains present	mains_ok	bool	Phase monitoring relay, gateway input	on change
Outdoor temperature	outdoor_c	°C	Weather sensor or LoRaWAN sensor outside	10 min	Context for summer peaks.

Asset model

The tree has to answer two questions at once: where is a sensor, and whose goods does it protect. Model the building physically and record the customer allocation as attributes and relations.

• Site (the warehouse) with address, time zone, site_code and mapping_study_date.
• Building per hall, with height_m and storage_class (ambient, chilled).
• Area per mapped zone, for example Hall 2 aisles 10 to 18, with temp_low, temp_high, hum_high, customers and a floorPlan image of the zone.
• Area for the dock with one Machine per dock door.
• Room for special rooms: chilled zone, hazardous goods, returns.

Place each sensor on its zone. When the warehouse reallocates aisles to a new customer, change the zone's customers attribute and the limits on its sensors; the sensors stay where they are. Sites and areas roll up status from the devices below, so a hall turns amber when any sensor in it does.

Alarm rules read limits from the sensors' own server attributes. The Sensor regions solution's profile already uses maxTempThreshold, minTempThreshold, warnTempThreshold, maxHumThreshold, minHumThreshold and warnHumThreshold; keep those names. A sensor without a given attribute is simply not checked for that limit, so set them as part of commissioning. A short script or the REST API can copy a zone's limits to all its sensors.

Device setup

Start from the solution

Install the Sensor regions solution. It creates a sensor profile with temperature, humidity, battery and floor-plan position keys, threshold alarm rules on the attributes above, a battery rule and an offline rule, plus a board with regions, a map, each region's floor plan with its sensors coloured by alarm state, a sensor page and an alarm list. Rename regions to halls or zones, point each zone asset's floorPlan attribute at its plan image, and adapt. Add profiles for Dock door gateway, HVAC unit, Refrigeration controller and Leak sensor.

Provisioning

Import LoRaWAN sensors in a batch from the supplier's list with their DevEUI and intended zone; they join over the air with OTAA. Licensed gateways are claimed by scanning their code. Mark each sensor with its zone and position number. The floor-plan card places a sensor by the latest values of plan_x and plan_y in pixels; sensors do not send these themselves, so store them once per sensor as part of commissioning, for example with a small flow that saves them as telemetry.

Intervals and settings

Ten minutes is a good default for ambient zones: hall air changes slowly and battery life stays in years. Use five minutes in the chilled zone. The gateway's Modbus addresses, inputs and polling intervals are set through remote device settings; configure the first site, save a baseline and apply it to other warehouses with a bulk job in waves, after a dry run. LoRaWAN sensors are configured with their vendor's tool before mounting.

Clocks and gaps

LoRaWAN uplinks are stamped by Hermetry on arrival unless the sensor sends a reliable time. Gateway readings need a synchronised clock; records more than ten minutes ahead are dropped. Licensed gateways keep readings during an uplink outage and send them later, with a capacity that depends on the model. Late readings are evaluated by the alarm rules as a backfill and appear in the history marked Backfilled, without paging anyone after the fact.

Firmware

Signed gateway firmware is rolled out per profile in waves with soak times and stops itself if a wave fails its gate. Start with the smallest site.

Dashboards

Board	Audience	Widgets and what they show
Warehouse overview	Shift managers	Regions table with sensor counts; floor plan per hall with sensors coloured by alarm state; stat cards for open alarms and sensors offline; alarm table; dock door state cards. On a screen in the shift office through a read-only display link.
Zone page	Quality, shift managers	Zone attributes card with limits and customers; table of the zone's sensors with temperature, humidity, battery and online state; line chart of all the zone's sensors over 7 days; alarms of the zone.
Customer view	Account managers, storage customers	Zones of the customer with current values and daily minimum and maximum; line charts for a chosen period; excursions with times and notes; downloadable history table.
Dock and plant	Facilities	Dock door states and openings per day; heatmap of door openings by hour; HVAC states and supply air temperature; daily kWh against outdoor temperature.
Summer watch	Quality	Top-level sensors of each hall against the high limit; stat with trend of the hottest sensor per hall compared with the previous period; key filter for sensors above the warning band.

Entity parameters let one zone page serve every zone and one customer view serve every customer: the parameter picks the customer's zones, and each card follows.

SCADA screens

The floor plans from the solution cover most needs. A drawing earns its place at the dock and in the chilled zone, where equipment states matter.

• Dock drawing: dock door, dock leveller, high-speed door and trailer-at-dock symbols from the logistics family of the Factory pack, one per door; doors turn amber when open and red when held open past the delay; a leveller shows in use. See the SCADA library.
• Chilled zone: cold room, unit cooler and refrigeration compressor rack symbols from the food family of the Food and pharma pack, with defrost and fault states.
• Racks in 3D: pallet rack symbols from the logistics family can make a simple 3D view of a hall with sensors at their levels; it keeps the 2D bindings.
• Reuse: the dock drawing is the same for warehouses of the same layout; attach it as a site view and use Match everything to bind each site's devices.

Rules and alarms

Alarm	Condition	Delay and hysteresis	Severity	Notified	Escalation
Zone temperature high	air_temp > attribute maxTempThreshold	Debounce 2 samples; hysteresis 0.5 °C	Major	Shift manager and quality, push and in-app	Reminder every 30 min until acknowledged
Zone temperature low	air_temp < attribute minTempThreshold	Debounce 2 samples; hysteresis 0.5 °C	Major	Shift manager, push	Reminder every 30 min
Temperature warning band	all: air_temp > attribute warnTempThreshold, air_temp <= attribute maxTempThreshold	Debounce 2 samples	Warning	Quality, in-app	None
Humidity high	air_hum > attribute maxHumThreshold	Debounce 3 samples; hysteresis 2 %	Major	Quality and facilities, e-mail and push	Reminder every 60 min
Chilled zone too warm	cz_air_c > 8, defrost not active	Debounce 15 min	Critical	Shift manager and facilities, SMS	Reminder every 15 min
Water leak	leak == true	Debounce 1 sample	Critical	Facilities and shift manager, SMS and push	Reminder every 10 min
Dock door held open	dock_open == true	Debounce 20 min, longer in summer if agreed	Warning	Shift manager, in-app	Reminder every 20 min
Dock door open, no trailer	all: dock_open == true, leveller_up == false	Debounce 5 min	Minor	Shift manager, push	Reminder every 15 min
HVAC fault	hvac_fault == true	Debounce 2 samples	Major	Facilities, e-mail and push	Reminder every 30 min
Mains failure	mains_ok == false	Debounce 30 s	Critical	Facilities, SMS	Reminder every 10 min
Sensor offline	Inactivity rule, 45 min		Warning	Facilities, e-mail	None
Battery low	battery < 20	Hysteresis 2 %	Warning	Facilities, e-mail	None

Lasting heat. Short peaks at the top beam are common on summer afternoons and many contracts tolerate them for a limited time. Use a Rules card on the hall: when air_temp of any top-level sensor is above the high limit and stays so for 2 hours, raise a Critical alarm heat_excursion and notify quality and the account managers. The wait is a timer that survives restarts and is dropped when a reading ends the condition.

Acknowledgement and records. Each alarm opens after its debounce and clears itself. The shift manager acknowledges it and writes notes on the alarm's timeline, such as door closed, goods checked, customer informed. Acknowledgements and clearances are audited under the person's name. A runbook text on each rule says what to check and whom to inform for that zone.

Maintenance. Mute sensors during rack reconfiguration or roof work. Alarms are still recorded, marked as muted; a mute ends by itself and lasts at most 90 days.

Floods. A heatwave can push dozens of top-level sensors over their limit within an hour. Use the warning band for early notice to quality only, keep zone alarms Major with a sample debounce, and let the timed heat_excursion rule carry the Critical. Above 20 alarm notifications a minute, the rest go out as a five-minute digest.

Automation and integrations

• Ventilation or beacons: on a licensed gateway with relay outputs, a command catalog on the gateway profile can switch a destratification fan or a dock warning beacon, if the gateway model and firmware support the method. A Rules card rule can send it: when the top-level hall temperature stays above 27 °C for 30 minutes, then send fan.on and notify facilities. Every command is tracked from queued to successful, failed or timed out. Commands to devices behind a gateway are in development, so keep such outputs on the gateway itself.
• Manual mode: switch a hall to Manual during maintenance and its rules stop; notify-only rules can be marked to keep running.
• Warehouse management system: the signed webhooks alarm.created and alarm.cleared let the WMS block put-away into a zone while it is out of range; the decision stays in the WMS.
• Customer reports: the customer view's history table downloads to Excel for monthly condition reports. Scheduled or e-mailed reports are not built in today.
• Limits from contracts: a contract system can write zone limits to sensors through the REST API with an API key limited to attribute writes.

Roles and access

Who	Role or group	Can
Shift manager	User	See all zones and the dock, acknowledge alarms, add notes, send basic commands.
Quality lead	User + IoT viewer group	Read every record and alarm timeline, export history.
Facilities	User + IoT operator group	Devices, batteries, gateways; write limit attributes after approval.
Account manager	User, narrowed to their customers' zones	See and export their customers' records.
Storage customer	User, narrowed by a policy to their zones' devices	See their zones' readings and alarms on the customer view; no changes.
Administrator	Admin	Profiles, rules, boards, commands catalog, mutes, firmware, members.

Customers are invited as members of the warehouse's organisation, and attribute-based policies narrow each to the devices of their own zones; a shared board shows every viewer only the data their permissions allow. Test each customer's view with the policy simulator before inviting them, and change the policy when aisles are reallocated. A customer that needs a fixed screen can get a read-only display link of a board whose parameters are fixed to its zones; it expires after up to 365 days and can be revoked at once. The audit log records sign-ins, attribute changes, acknowledgements and commands in a verifiable hash chain.

Sizing and data

As an order of magnitude for one warehouse with 90 zone sensors, 10 leak sensors, 24 dock doors and one plant gateway:

• Zone sensors: 90 × 144 uplinks a day at 10 minutes = 12,960 messages a day.
• Leak sensors with heartbeats: about 1,000.
• Dock doors: 24 doors × about 60 changes and heartbeats = 1,440.
• Plant children (HVAC, two refrigeration controllers, energy meter): 4 × 1,440 = 5,760.
• Total: roughly 21,000 messages a day, about 650,000 a month per warehouse. A network of 15 warehouses comes to around 10 million a month.
• Values: about 60,000 a day per warehouse.

The plan's retention class, from 7 to 1,095 days, sets history length: raw readings are kept for at most 90 days, minute aggregates for up to 31 days, and hourly and daily aggregates for the full class, which long-range charts use. Customer contracts often ask for records for the storage period plus a year; check the longest one, pick the class whose aggregates cover it, and archive monthly exports of the readings within the raw window. Commands, alarms and connection events do not count toward the monthly message allowance.

Rollout plan

Phase	Weeks	Work	Exit criteria
0. Mapping	1-3	Temperature mapping study or review of an existing one; zone list; limits per customer; radio survey with racks full.	Approved zone list with sensor positions and limits.
1. Pilot hall	4-6	Sensors in one hall and the dock; Sensor regions board adapted; alarm rules; leak sensors.	Two weeks of complete data; every alarm forced and acknowledged; sensor readings agree with a reference logger.
2. Whole site	7-9	All halls and the chilled zone; plant gateway; customer view for one pilot customer.	Pilot customer signs off its view; nuisance alarms under one per zone a week.
3. Network	10+	Other warehouses one at a time with baselines and the same profiles; WMS webhook.	Each site passes the commissioning list; quarterly review of the hottest positions in place.

Commissioning checklist

1. Each sensor joined, on the right profile, placed on its zone, with plan_x and plan_y putting it on the right spot of the floor plan.
2. Each sensor compared with a reference logger at its position for 24 hours; offsets within the sensor's stated accuracy.
3. Limit attributes present on every sensor; any sensor missing one is not checked for that limit.
4. Radio checked with full racks; no sensor with repeated gaps in the first week.
5. Each dock door opened and closed; state correct; held-open alarm after its delay.
6. Leak sensor wetted; Critical alarm by SMS; clears when dry.
7. Gateway uplink unplugged for 30 minutes; offline alarm opens; buffered plant readings fill in.
8. Customer account tested: sees only its zones on every board and alarm list.
9. Rules card heat rule tested by lowering its limit temporarily, then restored.

Pitfalls

• One sensor per hall. It shows the average and misses the top racks. Place sensors from a mapping study, at several heights.
• Sensors on outer walls or near heaters. Unless that is the mapped worst case, they show the wall, not the goods.
• Customer limits in rules. Every new contract then means new rules. Keep limits as attributes per sensor.
• Radio tested in an empty hall. Full pallet racks absorb signal; survey with stock in place.
• Customer access tested by assumption. Check each customer's view with the simulator and with a test account before inviting them.
• Dock alarms in summer. Doors stand open for ventilation; agree seasonal delays rather than ignoring the alarm.

What Hermetry does not replace

Hermetry measures, alerts and records. HVAC and refrigeration control, fire detection, sprinklers and door safety stay in their own systems. Put-away rules and stock blocking remain in the WMS. Contracts, storage conditions and decisions about damaged goods stay with the warehouse and its customers; Hermetry supplies the readings, alarm timelines and notes that support them.