Solving Cold Chain Visibility with Disposable BLE Sensors

The cold chain — the temperature-controlled supply chain for pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and perishable food — loses billions of dollars each year to undetected temperature excursions. Traditional data loggers are reusable, expensive, and require manual retrieval and readout, which means most shipments simply aren't monitored at the unit level.

IN120, InPlay's second-generation NanoBeacon SoC, integrates a factory-calibrated ±1°C-accurate temperature sensor directly on-chip, alongside broadcast data logging and a TX-only BLE 6.2 architecture that draws sub-microwatt average power. The result is a sensor label cheap enough to be disposable and small enough to embed directly into packaging.

Because the sensor continuously logs temperature data via BLE broadcast — without needing a paired connection — any BLE-capable gateway, smartphone, or fixed reader along the route can passively pick up the data as the shipment moves. No app pairing, no proprietary reader hardware required.

For healthcare and pharma logistics teams, this changes the calculus entirely: instead of monitoring a handful of pallets, every individual carton or vial tray can carry its own low-cost sensor label, giving full visibility into the cold chain's weakest links.