Bed Pod - the automatic, continuous pest monitoring device
by Startacus Admin
Bed Pod - the innovative new solution to pre-empt and minimise the damage bed bugs can cause to guests, reputation and earnings
Hopefully, it isn’t a problem that many of us have encountered, but for those who have experienced bed bugs in a hotel bed, the night would not have been a comfortable one. Nor would the following, itchy days. Needless to say, that hotel would immediately make it to the top of that guest’s no-go list, and we all know that negative word of mouth gets around much faster than the positive. In this way, hotels can apparently stand to lose tens of thousands every year, so wouldn’t it be great if some heroic startup-related platform were to bring tidings of a startup with a solution to this creeping, crawling problem?
Ahem.
Cambridge-based startup Spotta has developed, after years of rigorous testing that brings interesting and entertaining images to mind, a device that is specifically designed to attract bed bugs from mattresses and bed frames and into a cold embrace from which they will never escape.
We have been unable to confirm whether testing involved the employment of tiny little circus ringmasters, but we can only assume that, yes, it did. The Bed Pod is simply placed between the mattress and frame for easy access to replace its battery once a year, and uses colour, shape, texture, and chemical lures - undetectable by the human nose - to make itself more attractive to the bed bugs than you.
Its shape has been designed to avoid what is known in technical terms as Princess and the Pea syndrome, and once a bed bug has entered its realm, the onboard artificial intelligence tuts, puts down its plans for world domination, and takes a photo of it. If the AI determines that that which doth disturb its slumber is a bed bug and not just a spider, for example, it emails the hotel the photo to alert them to what could be the beginning of an infestation. Staff can control what types of insect the AI alerts them to, so if a cat owner brings their cat’s fleas to the hotel, you won’t miss that either. So as to avoid draining battery and spotty connectivity, the Bed Pod uses a LoRaWAN connection rather than Wi-Fi in order to send the emails.
In July, Spotta raised around £900,000 in seed funding in a round led by Cambridge Angels and REMUS. This funding will go towards development of additional products, expanding its reach, and recruitment.
With a solution better suited to detecting infestations before they take hold, and less prone to errors, Bed Pod stands to save hotels a lot of money in loss of guests, pest control fees, and compensation to guests.
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Published on: 2nd September 2020
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