Unscheduled stop
Know when an asset waits a long time in the middle of a trip. An unscheduled stop rule reports the pauses inside a trip: a queue at a gate, an hour at the roadside, a wait at a barrier.
Use it to find where a round loses its time, to spot a breakdown before the driver calls, or to check that a vehicle is not sitting somewhere it should not.
What a pause is
Blecon reads an asset's history as stops and the trips between them. A stationary period shorter than the workspace's stop time does not end the trip. It becomes a pause, carried on the trip it happened inside, so a lunch break does not chop one delivery round into a dozen trips nobody wants to read.
That design is what makes a pause invisible by default. This rule is how you see one.
How it works
The rule fires once for each pause on a trip that lasted at least the length you set. A trip with three long waits produces three notifications. Each one is reported once, however many times the trip is re-read afterwards.
A pause is only reported once it has ended. While the asset is still stationary the period can still grow past the stop time, and then it is a stop that ends the trip, not a pause.
The message names the asset, how long it waited and where:
Van 12 stopped for 45 minutes mid-trip at Dartford Crossing
The notification carries the full trip detail, plus:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
min_pause_seconds |
The threshold that was passed |
pause |
The pause itself: start, end, duration, place and local timezone |
Setting the threshold
The threshold must be shorter than the workspace's stop time, which is set under Tracking then Trips. A wait longer than the stop time is a stop, which ends the trip instead of pausing it, so a rule asking for pauses longer than that could never fire.
Blecon refuses to save such a rule, and names the number that makes it impossible, rather than accepting it and staying silent forever.
Parameters
| Parameter | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
min_pause_seconds |
Yes | Alert on any pause at least this long. Must be below the workspace stop time. |
ignore_zone_ids |
No | Pauses inside these zones are not reported, up to 10 zones |
device_type |
No | Only assets of this type |
device_tags |
No | Only assets carrying at least one of these keywords |
exclude_device_tags |
No | Never assets carrying any of these keywords |
Like every rule, you can set its severity, and limit it to chosen assets with Filter by Asset Keywords in the rule form.
See the rule types reference for the full specification.
Example: finding lost time on a delivery round
A distributor's rounds are taking longer than planned and nobody can say where the time goes.
- Set the workspace stop time to 90 minutes, so a long unload still counts as one round.
- Create an unscheduled stop rule with longest acceptable wait set to 20 minutes.
- Add the depot and the two main customer sites to places where waiting is expected, so planned unloads are not reported.
- Set the severity to notification, and read the results in the notifications list rather than as alerts.
Notes
- Raising the workspace stop time makes longer waits into pauses, so more of them can be reported. Lowering it turns those waits into stops, which end the trip instead.
- A pause carries the place it happened, so you do not have to open the map to find out where the asset waited.
- Pauses are reported on trips still in progress as well as finished ones, as soon as the asset moves off again.