What Is the WTH310 Temp & Humidity Beacon and Why Cold Chain Fleets in Kenya Need It
A pharmaceutical distributor in Nakuru received a call no logistics manager wants to take. A batch of temperature sensitive vaccines delivered to a rural clinic outside Molo had arrived warm. The delivery van's cooler box had a paper log with three handwritten temperature checks, taken at loading, at a fuel stop, and at arrival. Nothing in between. The clinic rejected the batch. The insurer rejected the claim because there was no continuous record proving where in the four hour journey the cold chain broke. The distributor ate the full cost of a spoiled shipment worth several hundred thousand shillings, and still did not know whether the failure was the cooler unit, a door left open too long, or heat buildup during a roadside stop.
This is the exact gap the WTH310 was built to close. It is a compact, battery powered Bluetooth beacon that continuously logs temperature and humidity inside a vehicle, container, or storage unit and feeds that data directly into the Venus platform, giving fleet managers a timestamped, tamper resistant record instead of a driver's handwriting.
Who Actually Needs Continuous Temperature Monitoring
Cold chain failure is not only a pharmaceutical problem. Several distinct fleet types in Kenya carry cargo where a few degrees of drift means real financial loss or regulatory exposure.
- Pharmaceutical and vaccine distributors moving stock between Nairobi depots and county-level clinics, where cold chain breaks can void an entire batch and trigger a Pharmacy and Poisons Board compliance issue.
- Dairy and milk transporters running collection routes from Rift Valley farms to processing plants, where even short periods above the safe threshold can sour a full tanker load.
- Seafood and perishable exporters moving product from Mombasa and Lake Victoria landing sites to airport cold stores, where a single flagged shipment can affect an export certification.
- Blood bank and medical logistics providers transporting blood products between hospitals, where temperature excursions are both a financial and a patient safety issue.
- Brewery and beverage distributors running refrigerated delivery routes into hot coastal or lowland towns, where product quality complaints trace back to unmonitored transit heat.
- Agrochemical and seed distributors storing temperature sensitive inputs in transit trucks parked overnight at depots with no active refrigeration monitoring.
Why Spot Checks and Paper Logs Keep Failing
The manual method fails for a simple reason: a spot check only tells you the temperature at the exact second someone looked. A cooler box can hold its temperature during loading, drift upward during a 40 minute roadside delay in direct sun, recover slightly once the vehicle is moving again, and arrive within range at the final check, while the cargo inside was actually out of tolerance for the entire middle stretch of the trip. Paper logs cannot capture that. Drivers under time pressure round numbers, skip checks when running late, or simply forget, and by the time a claim is disputed weeks later there is no way to reconstruct what actually happened inside the vehicle. Insurers and clients increasingly know this, which is why continuous digital logs are becoming the baseline expectation rather than a nice-to-have.
The WTH310 and Venus: How Continuous Monitoring Actually Works
The WTH310 solves this by removing the human step entirely. It sits inside the cargo area, cooler box, or storage unit and reports continuously, with no wiring and no driver intervention required.
1. Wireless BLE Sensor With No Installation Wiring
The WTH310 communicates over Bluetooth Low Energy to a paired GPS tracker or gateway device, meaning it can be mounted inside a cooler box, container, or storage room in minutes with no cabling through the vehicle body. This makes it practical to move between vehicles or add to a fleet incrementally without a workshop visit.
2. Dual Temperature and Humidity Readings
Unlike a basic temperature-only probe, the WTH310 logs humidity alongside temperature, which matters for cargo like pharmaceuticals, seed stock, and packaged foods where moisture exposure is as damaging as heat.
3. Real-Time Threshold Alerts on Venus
Fleet managers set safe temperature and humidity bands for each cargo type directly on the Venus dashboard. The moment a reading crosses that band, an alert fires to the fleet manager and, where configured, to the driver, so action can be taken mid-route rather than discovered at delivery.
4. Continuous Historical Logging for Compliance and Claims
Every reading is timestamped and stored, building an unbroken record for the full duration of a trip. This is the exact data set that resolves the kind of dispute the Nakuru distributor faced. Instead of three handwritten numbers, there is a full temperature curve showing precisely when and for how long a threshold was breached, if at all.
5. Long Battery Life for Unpowered Cargo Areas
Because many cold chain assets, trailers, and storage containers do not have a reliable power source, the WTH310 runs on battery for extended periods, making it suitable for the same category of unpowered assets that devices like the GL50B Lite magnet tracker are built for.
6. Multi-Sensor Fleet View Alongside Location and Fuel Data
On Venus, WTH310 readings sit on the same dashboard as GPS location and, where fitted, fuel sensor data from a device like the Jupiter BLE. A fleet manager can see in one view that a delivery van deviated from its route, idled for 35 minutes, and that the cooler box temperature climbed during that exact window, connecting cause and effect instead of guessing.
What This Looks Like on an Actual Route
A dairy transporter running the Nakuru to Molo collection route fits WTH310 beacons inside each of its four refrigerated collection vans. On a hot afternoon, one van's compressor underperforms on a stretch with heavy traffic near Njoro. Venus flags the temperature crossing the safe threshold within minutes, and the fleet manager calls the driver, who diverts to the nearest depot to transfer the load into a working unit before spoilage sets in. Without the alert, the load would have continued for another 45 minutes before reaching the processing plant, likely arriving outside tolerance and triggering a rejected batch. The same historical data later supports the transporter's case when negotiating with their insurer over a separate claim, because six months of clean, continuous logs demonstrate consistent cold chain discipline across the fleet.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How does the WTH310 send data without any wiring into the vehicle?
The WTH310 uses Bluetooth Low Energy to transmit readings to a nearby paired GPS tracker or gateway, which then relays the data to Venus over the cellular network. This means the beacon itself only needs to be mounted inside the monitored space, with no cabling run through the vehicle chassis.
2. How long does the WTH310 battery last before it needs replacing?
The device is built for extended standalone operation, similar in design philosophy to other unpowered asset sensors in the Trackalways range, and is designed to run for months on a single battery depending on the reporting interval configured.
3. Can I set different temperature and humidity thresholds for different cargo types?
Yes. Thresholds are configured per vehicle or per route on the Venus platform, so a pharmaceutical delivery van and a dairy collection tanker can each have their own safe band, with alerts triggered independently for each.
4. Does the WTH310 only work for refrigerated cargo, or can it be used for dry storage too?
While it is most commonly deployed for cold chain use cases, the WTH310 is equally useful for dry storage where humidity control matters, such as agrochemical warehouses, seed stores, or grain in transit, where moisture exposure rather than heat is the primary risk.
5. How do I get a WTH310 fitted to my fleet or storage units?
Call Trackalways Africa on +254 116 257285 or visit trackalwaysafrica.com to arrange a fitting for your vehicles or storage sites and get WTH310 readings connected to your Venus dashboard.
A cold chain failure that is caught in transit costs a phone call and a diversion. One discovered at delivery costs the entire shipment and the client relationship behind it. The WTH310 turns that gap from a guess into a graph. Call +254 116 257285 or visit trackalwaysafrica.com to fit your cold chain fleet with continuous temperature and humidity monitoring today.