Hospitality / Smart Buildings
Hotel call-button system: Battery-powered Wi-Fi call buttons on a self-healing mesh for staff alerts and guest requests
For a hotel client in Oman we built battery-powered Wi-Fi call buttons on a mains-powered, self-healing mesh for staff alerts and guest requests, with alert location, a dashboard and an app. Completed by early 2025.
What we did: We designed the compact, battery-powered buttons and their RTOS firmware, the mains-powered, self-healing Wi-Fi mesh of relay nodes that carries their messages across the property, alert location and nearest-staff routing, the cloud dashboard and mobile app for managers and security teams, and end-to-end encryption designed with Oman's Personal Data Protection Law (and GDPR for EU guests) in mind.
Hospitality client, Oman3 monthsTeam of 5
Status: Completed (case study first published February 2025)
Published Last reviewed:
Illustrative imageThe challenge
Hotels need a reliable, real-time way for guests and staff to call for help: emergency alerts, staff distress calls, room-service and housekeeping requests. Wired panic buttons, radio alerts and intercoms have limited range, cost a lot to install and maintain, and are hard to scale across a large property.
Property-wide coverage
Alerts have to get through from every room, corridor and back-of-house area.
Infrastructure cost
Running cables for wired buttons and intercoms is expensive and disruptive in an operating hotel.
More than a panic button
The same button should serve guest service requests and automation triggers, not only emergencies.
Low maintenance
Battery-powered buttons across a whole property are only practical if batteries last a long time.
Impact figures describe the situation before the project, as the client reported it to us; we did not measure them.
Our solution
We built compact, battery-powered buttons that sleep until pressed, then wake and send their message over a self-healing Wi-Fi mesh of mains-powered relay nodes designed to cover the whole property. The buttons are leaf nodes: they never relay traffic for other nodes, which is what makes a multi-year battery life possible, since a mesh relay has to stay awake. Each button can be configured for a different job: a staff distress button, a guest request for room service, housekeeping, concierge or maintenance, or an automation trigger such as Do Not Disturb. Alerts carry their location and service requests are routed to the nearest available staff member. Managers and security teams receive notifications in a cloud dashboard and mobile app, and communication is end-to-end encrypted.
System architecture
Buttons, a property-wide mesh, and a cloud dashboard with a mobile app.
Buttons
- Compact, battery-powered button hardware
- Low-power RTOS firmware; sleeps between presses, never relays mesh traffic
- 2-year battery life (design target; depends on presses per day and check-in interval)
- Configurable functions: distress, service request, automation trigger
Wi-Fi mesh network
- Mains-powered relay nodes designed for property-wide coverage
- Self-healing mesh: traffic re-routes if a relay node drops out
- End-to-end encryption
Cloud and mobile
- Alerts with location for faster response
- Service requests routed to the nearest available staff
- Dashboard analytics on response efficiency
Key design points
- Network
- Self-healing Wi-Fi mesh of mains-powered relay nodes
- Button role
- Battery-powered leaf node; sleeps until pressed
- Power
- Battery; 2 years (design target)
- Functions
- Staff distress, guest requests, automation
- Location
- Included with each alert
- Security
- End-to-end encryption
- Privacy framing
- Designed with Oman's Personal Data Protection Law (Royal Decree 6/2022) and GDPR for EU guests in mind
What we delivered
- Battery-powered button hardware
- Low-power RTOS firmware (wake on press, sleep between presses)
- Self-healing Wi-Fi mesh of mains-powered relay nodes
- Staff distress alerts with location
- Guest service requests: room service, housekeeping, concierge, maintenance
- Automation triggers such as Do Not Disturb and housekeeping notifications
- Nearest-available-staff request routing
- Cloud dashboard and mobile app with real-time notifications
Outcome
The system gives the property real-time alerting over a Wi-Fi mesh designed for property-wide coverage, without the new cabling a wired intercom needs. One button type serves both staff safety and guest services, alerts carry their location, and requests go to the nearest available staff member. The 2-year battery life is a design target that assumes the buttons sleep between presses and only wake to send or check in. We do not publish a coverage survey or a response-time improvement because no measurement of either is on record.
How to read the labels: Design target = an engineering target, not a field measurement; Client-reported baseline = the client's own figure for the situation before the project; we did not measure it. Figures without a label are specifications or project scope.
Battery life
Design target2 years
Per button; sleeping leaf node, depends on use
Coverage
Property-wide
Design goal: self-healing mesh of mains-powered relay nodes
Installation
No new cabling
Unlike wired intercoms, no new signal cabling is needed
Design duration
3 months
Team of 5
Technologies used
- Wi-Fi mesh
- RTOS
- Low-power design
- End-to-end encryption
- Cloud dashboard
- Mobile app
- Location-based routing
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