Since 2012, I have designed and evolved cellular hardware, embedded firmware and platform workflows for georeferenced customs cargo monitoring operating inside a regulated national environment.
Attribution. I designed the electronics, firmware and technical architecture. Consorcio Nettel holds the regulatory authorization to provide the service. The regulated service must be delivered by an operator authorized by Ecuador Customs (SENAE); Nettel is one of those authorized operators.
Cargo moving under customs control travels long road routes between ports, inspection points and bonded warehouses. Along that route the operator must know where each cargo unit is, whether it deviated from its authorized route, and whether anyone opened it. Without continuous electronic evidence, a discrepancy discovered at destination cannot be located in time or place — the loss is already consummated and the investigation starts blind.
This is not a convenience problem. It is a customs control problem with legal, fiscal and security consequences for everyone in the chain.
Continuous georeferenced traceability turns a discrepancy into a timestamped position instead of an unexplained loss.
Tamper events raise an alarm while the cargo is still in transit, not at final inspection.
Parameterized reports and controlled web access replace manual status calls and paper reconciliation.
Historical route and event records support customs, insurance and internal investigations.
Generic block diagram produced for this portfolio. It does not represent protected network architecture, addressing or internal integration detail.
| Geolocation | Real-time position acquisition and route traceability for each cargo unit. |
|---|---|
| Movement monitoring | Cargo-unit movement and speed monitoring against the authorized operating profile. |
| Tamper detection | PEMA tamper detection with alarm generation and event logging. |
| Reporting | Parameterized reports and controlled web access for authorized users. |
| Operations | Continuous monitoring workflows supported by the operations platform. |
Two generations of covert cellular tracking hardware. The next-generation variant places a Nordic nRF52840 at the centre: it aggregates local BLE sensor data from inside the cargo unit, applies event-detection logic on the edge, and only then retransmits over the cellular modem. Tamper-detection hardware runs throughout the enclosure.
| Edge processor | Nordic nRF52840 (ARM Cortex-M4) with non-blocking firmware state machines. |
|---|---|
| Local sensing | BLE sensor aggregation inside the cargo unit; PEMA tamper inputs. |
| Connectivity | 4G LTE with 2G fallback, selected for national road-corridor coverage. |
| Energy | Battery-operated for the duration of the customs transit, with power budgeting around the cellular duty cycle. |
| Backend | PostgreSQL/PostGIS ingestion, geofencing and historical traceability. |
Schematics, PCB manufacturing files, bills of materials, firmware source and credentials are protected and are not published.
| Cellular, not satellite | Customs road corridors have dependable terrestrial coverage. Cellular gives far higher reporting frequency per unit of cost than a satellite link, and reporting frequency is what makes a route deviation actionable. Satellite is the right answer for the maritime case — not for this one. |
|---|---|
| Edge aggregation before transmit | Aggregating BLE sensor data on the nRF52840 and transmitting events rather than raw samples cuts airtime and current draw. The cost is firmware complexity and a harder field-debug story. |
| 2G fallback retained | Keeping 2G alongside 4G adds modem cost and certification surface, but a tracker that goes silent in a coverage gap is worse than a slow one. |
| Engineering status | Field-proven · in production |
|---|---|
| In service since | 2012, across two hardware generations. |
| Authorized operator | Consorcio Nettel, authorized by Ecuador Customs (SENAE) to provide this regulated service. |
| Authorization | Renewed for three years following a successful on-site technical inspection in 2026. |
| Evidence | Resolution SENAE-SGO-2026-0021-RE · Issued 4 February 2026. |
Read this precisely. The regulated service must be provided by an operator authorized by SENAE. Nettel is one of those authorized operators. This page does not claim that any importer or exporter is required to contract Nettel specifically.
Complete regulatory documents are not republished here: they contain company and personal data that is unnecessary for a portfolio.