Hewlett Packard (HP) is one of the world’s largest printer manufacturers. In addition to traditional printers for home offices and offices, the technology company also develops innovative printing solutions for industrial applications, such as the construction industry. One of these solutions is the new HP SitePrint, an autonomous robotic printer on wheels that prints the floor plan of a construction site directly onto the foundation slab.
With the smart HP SitePrint, the entire surveying process on the construction site is reduced from several weeks to just a few days, despite the lines being applied with millimeter precision. The layout printing robot operates with absolute precision, even on uneven or damp surfaces.
If there is a problem with one of the printing robots in use, HP Support can connect to the device remotely—and, in the vast majority of cases, get it up and running again within just a few minutes. Remote access allows HP to significantly reduce travel related to maintenance and, as a result, conserve resources in line with its sustainability goals.
Remote access is made possible by M2M SIM cards from WhereverSIM, which are used in the new construction layout robot. They ensure that the robot can be accessed at any time via cellular networks.
“Our robotic printer is already in operation at construction sites in France, Sweden, Spain, England, and the U.S. More countries will be added as part of the major rollout in 2023. That’s why it’s important for us to have a SIM partner who can provide a reliable connection to our robots at every location, in every country. We’ve found that partner in WhereverSIM. Theoretically, we could have looked for a local SIM provider in every country, but the administrative burden would have been immense and the costs significantly higher. It also wouldn’t have been easily feasible in production,” said Eric Pascual, Product Manager for HP SitePrint at HP Construction Services.
Thanks to the national roaming capability of the M2M SIM cards, the construction site robots can access different cellular networks even within a single country, thereby minimizing the risk of losing connection. “For our initial tests in Barcelona, we used a standard SIM card from a local provider. It was a complete disaster—the connection kept dropping. That changed with wherever SIM , despite the rather challenging conditions for cellular service on construction sites. No matter which construction site an HP SitePrint is working on, we no longer have to worry about the connection thanks to these SIM cards.”
A stable connection is important for the construction layout robot, in part because support for the HP SitePrint is provided centrally from Spain. “If there’s ever a problem with one of the robotic printers, a member of our support team can remotely access the robot in real time. In more than 70 percent of all support cases, this resolves the issue within just a few minutes,” adds Pascual.
“Remote access to the robotic printers offers our customers many benefits. The fact that our support team can connect directly to the printer and diagnose the problem in case of an issue speeds up troubleshooting. This significantly reduces any downtime for a robotic printer, as well as service and maintenance costs,” adds Pascual. No one has to travel out to the site just to figure out what the problem is anymore. Even if on-site intervention is necessary to resolve the issue, remote access allows the support team to obtain information about the device and the cause of the error in advance.
Information that the team would otherwise have received much later and that helps them prepare for troubleshooting. “Our printer greatly speeds up the surveying process on a construction site. Even if a malfunction does occur, we can usually resolve it so quickly via remote access that the printer still marks the lines on the construction site significantly faster than would be possible with a manual process,” Pascual concludes.
For HP, in addition to globally guaranteed network coverage, two other features were decisive in choosing WhereverSIM. One of these is the ability to pause M2M SIM cards at no cost. “After our layout printers finish production, it’s initially unclear exactly when the printing robot will be deployed at a construction site. That can happen very quickly, but it can also take some time,” explains Pascual. For this reason, HP deactivates the M2M SIM card in the robot until it’s needed, after comprehensive functional tests have been conducted during production. HP can reactivate the SIM card on its own at any time via the WhereverSIM online portal, without causing any delays in the use of the layout printer.
“In addition to the free pause option, the ability to book a data pool played an important role for us,” Pascual continues. When it comes to data pooling , a fixed data allowance is not assigned to each individual M2M SIM card or printer; instead, only a single data pool is allocated. All M2M SIMs assigned to this data pool consume data from this shared allowance as needed.
“Some IoT SIM cards use more data, others less—the shared data pool balances out the fluctuating data needs of the M2M SIM cards,” explains Tim Müller, CEO of WhereverSIM. For HP’s use case, the shared data allowance is more cost-effective than a fixed monthly data plan for each individual IoT SIM, which might not be fully utilized or might be exceeded.
