The weighing instruments are very important for effective functioning of  a country economy. They protect consumers from cheating.

The Weights and Measures department in any country requires all weighing instrument used for trade to meet  metrology properties satisfying the target purpose by providing accurate measurements otherwise consumers may fail to get value for their money. For instance the accuracy for a weighbridge may be 20kg and due to this fact, may be unsuitable to weigh products such as a 25kg weight of sugar. However, for weighing of a truck with a gross weight of say 20,000kg, the accuracy of 20kg is acceptable.

The ordinary person, may not be in a position to detect a weighing instrument which is defective or has been tampered with. It is then important to learn about the basic features which are found in the weighing instrument that determine  the credibility of the instrument.

One key feature of a trade weighing instrument is the weighing and measures mark put by a Weights and Measures inspector on the the weighing instrument in a visible location, a consumer can see. The mark placed by the bears the  coat of arm. The material where the mark is printed is made of lead and the mark object is fixed on the weighing scale using some wires as a seal, in manner that to remove it, the wire must be broken and this would mean the seal has been broken and signify an attempt to tamper with the scale.

In addition to the weighing instrument seal, a verification certificate that was issued when the weighing scale seal was put should also be displayed for the consumer to see.
If you are a consumer and find a weighing scale used to weigh some commodity you are purchasing for instance cooking gas, has no seal and no verification certificate, it is your right to complain to the Weights and Measures department for action to be taken on the trader.

The weighing scale must be placed in a position where consumers can see the seal and also see the weighing scale is at zero reading before any weighing is done.

If you are the owner of a weighing instrument you can fit your weighing scale with the Dotmobi IOT weighing scale tampering guard (WSTG) so as you are alerted in case the users of your scale attempt to tamper with the weighing scale.

The Internet of things (IOT) is now here with us in Kenya and with the successful rollout of the Sigfox IOT network, Kenya is now more than ready for the IOT technology.   DotMobi has taken advantage of this technology and utilized it in two of its products:Dotmobi iot-waterSOFT  and IOT weighing scale tampering guard.  IOT technology has a couple of good things.

The cost of transmitting messages from the device to the cloud server is very low, currently at about US$10 for 140 messages per day for a whole year.   140 messages per day is more than sufficient for most of the IOT applications.   For instance, a water meter may transmit a reading every hour and that only works out to 24 messages in a 24hrs period.

The other key advantage of the IOT is that it is based on very low current, making it possible for an IOT  device to be powered by a battery lasting several years.

The owner of the IOT device can also access the messages transmitted by the IOT device without having to invest on any additional ICT infrastructure by ONLY using a device with an internet browser and accessing the messages from the IOT network provider cloud portal.

The development of IOT based devices messages management software is made easy as a simple software logic can handle thousands or millions of devices from one central point without direct communication with the devices as all the devices messages are transmitted to IOT network provider cloud server.

Dotmobi shall in addition to the two software in weighing and water , rollout other software targeting other IOT applications in the coming years.