Research, innovation, Laboratory, LIfe Science & healthcarE

Boy Scouts of America, Always Prepared

 Mobile app and simple installation drive Boy Scout leaders to invest in Sonicu.

Camp Hugh Taylor Birch is a sprawling camp for Tecumseh Council, Boy Scouts of America with a simple mission: 

Provide the Scouts of Ohio’s Tecumseh Council with a safe location for retreats and summer camps. 

But it had a hidden problem with its aging walk-in cooler and freezer: a failing power breaker that would fail occasionally and then switch back on before anyone could notice. 

Until there was a costly snafu impossible to miss. 

The power failed and didn’t switch back on before the contents of the walk-in cooler and freezer were lost to the tune of $5,000 worth of food. 

“We knew about temperature monitoring and had thought about it, but after we lost so much food it was like “Oh yeah, we absolutely have to do this,” said Bartley Davis, who helped manage the temperature monitoring project at Camp Hugh Taylor Birch. 

“We have to feed a lot of hungry Scouts and knew we couldn’t afford another mishap."

Sophisticated enough for pharmacies, but simple enough for the Scouts 

The Sonicu system is trusted by scores of hospitals, pharmacies, and life science clients thanks to its powerful reporting capabilities. 

The wireless, remote temperature and environmental monitoring system helps customers simply and rapidly satisfy regulatory requirements around temperature and environmental monitoring. 

Most regulatory reports are available in just a few clicks. 

But the system is simple enough for virtually anyone to install and configure. 

The Tecumseh Council leaders at Camp Hugh Taylor Birch affirmed its simplicity. 

“I had it pretty much totally configured before I had the tech call with (the Sonicu) onboarding person. All thresholds and alerts and text messages and emails and everything set up and ready to go,” Davis said. 

“The install was done in about an hour and we had the app configured to get us what we needed in another half hour. It was definitely quick and easy.” 

Most Sonicu customers still rely on professional installations as well as annual NIST calibrations.

The monitoring probes and sensors are often placed in highly sensitive areas and protect costly pharmaceuticals and even irreplaceable research and sperm or eggs at reproductive facilities. 

But the combined system - American-made hardware and software - is designed with the non-technical user in mind.

It's meant to be as simple as setting up your home's wireless router and configuring some of your favorite mobile apps. 

“We’ve invested significantly over the past few years to help customers just like the Boy Scouts of America to be able to simply and quickly install and configure their remote wireless monitoring system,” said Jason Young, Chief Technology Officer, Sonicu. 

“Our mobile app has an install wizard that walks every customer through the process and we have included a picture–driven validation tool to help connect our customers to our customer support team to ensure a valid install.” 

Helping to identify their electric system challenges

Camp Birch encompasses 440 acres of woodland that serves Scouting and non-Scouting communities on a year-round basis.

Camp Birch - complete with a dining hall that serves 300, an Olympic size swimming pool, a 10-acre lake, and many other facilities - is an outdoor facility used to teach character, citizenship, personal fitness, and environmental awareness.

Besides Cub Scout Packs and Scouts BSA Troops, Camp Birch is also used by churches, schools and other youth groups, as well as the National Guard and college organizations. 

Every weekend, 10 to 15 different groups are camping or using the Adams Building or Turner Building (training and educational center) for activities and meetings.

Thanks to their investment in Sonicu, the Boy Scouts were able to determine the electrical breaker as their root cause. 

“After we had Sonicu, we had a couple of times where the breaker flipped and we knew immediately, and we were able to go up there, identify what the issue was, and flip the breaker back on,” said Rob Lavoie, another adult Boy Scout leader who was instrumental in the project. 

“So, within an hour or two, everything was good to go with it.”

The Sonicu system helped the Boy Scout leaders determine the breaker malfunctioning was tied directly to their refrigeration system. 

“The breaker is only failing when it is on defrost mode when it is coming back off of defrost. When you see the cycle coming up and down, it's trying to pull more power when it's coming back off of defrost, and then it just trips," said Lavoie. 

“And we have no idea why. It just trips occasionally.”

Davis said the Sonicu investment helped them identify the breaker issue. 

“The Sonicu system was incredibly helpful, not just in protecting our food, but also to help us identify the issue with the breaker and be thoughtful about how we go about a longer-term fix,” said Davis. 

Always be Prepared: Making Temperature Monitoring a Scout’s Best Practice

Lavoie said he’s advocating other local Boy Scout organizations consider a Sonicu system as an affordable and simple solution to protect their food coolers and freezers. 

“Our protocols include twice daily temperature logging for all our food storage systems, but we’ve shared our results with the larger Scout organization and recommended it as a best practice,” Lavoie said.

“Logging is clearly tedious and won’t help you in situations like ours. Having that continuous eyes on your systems and the app delivering alerts is a much higher level of protection.” 

It’s a reasonable investment when you consider the rising cost of food and the time we spent having to deal with our malfunction.” 

Joe Mundell, Chief Revenue Officer, Sonicu, echoed that sentiment.

“Temperature monitoring in food storage situations like the Scout camp is designed to be affordable and simple, so the non-profit organizations can benefit from the same reliable technology hospitals and laboratories rely on to protect precious drugs and research,” Mundell said.

“We’re always pleased to hear about success stories like the Tecumseh Council as it affirms our mission to help as many people and organizations as possible increase their safety and efficiency.” 

SMART Management Tools

• Eliminated manual temperature reading and logging to increase efficiency and eliminate error.
• Allowed MiraVista to input comment and context for alarm events and automatically organize reports for federal and state regulatory reporting requirements.
• Provide archived historical data to identify potential equipment problems, define operational issues and improve processes and accountability.

Simple Installation and Expansion

• Sonicu ultra-low temperature monitoring is installed easily and is fully scalable for future expansion as Cryopoint’s business continues to develop.
  

CONCLUSION

Sonicu helped the Boy Scouts with three essential services:

2. COMPLIANCE AUTOMATION: ALWAYS READY

Whether it’s an FDA, CDC or Joint Commission inspection or CMS auditor, the Sonicu platform will deliver ready-made reports that help you eliminate your tedious reporting process.

This transformative process improvement also reduces the opportunity for human mishap to damage your inspection or audit.

You can relax with improved peace of mind knowing that virtually any auditor and inspector will be greeted with a simple and accurate report that demonstrates your sensitive assets and environments are being monitored and you have a plan to react if your team experiences an excursion.

3. ASSET MONITORING: CONNECT, DETECT AND PROTECT

It’s more than just knowing your sensitive environments are monitored.

It’s having smart alarms that ensure your entire team is notified via text, email and even phone calls when a potentially dangerous excursion occurs.

And it’s about powerful redundancy that protects against power and network outages.

Sonicu has invested in the research and development to innovate a solution with a singular focus: your peace of mind.

We’ve architected our solution around easy installation, an intuitive user experience and rapid and enduring return on investment.

That’s why public and private organizations grow with us.

500+ customer in all 50 states 

American made products and customer service