BM Smartbox and BM System: logging from plough and spreader

It picks up signals from the plough and spreader and sends them via Bluetooth to a tablet running the BM Combo app. The tablet logs the GPS position and communicates with the main system.

Who BM System are

BM System was founded in 1991 by two entrepreneurs with a background in the defence industry. The company started with command and control systems for the army and GPS-based alarm receiving, and today has customers in Sweden and also in Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Iceland. Since 2025, BM System has been part of Nordtech Group. The company states that it has over 10 000 connected resources in the field.

BM Road Service System

The system is designed for the operation and maintenance of streets, roads and green spaces and can be used both by the client and by the contractor doing the work. BM writes that the system automates the process from planning to invoicing. It consists of several parts:

• BM Combo: app with maps for field workers, for automatic reporting of recurring work, such as snow clearing.
• BM Primo: web client for supervisors, for planning, optimisation, management, follow-up and invoicing.
• BM Exito: app for on-call duty and call-outs.
• BM Figo: app with maps for inspecting and recording damage and defects.

Winter maintenance and routes

Among the recurring planned operations, BM mentions snow clearing, anti-skid treatment and collection of gritting sand. BM writes that it is also working on navigation support, digital call-outs, route optimisation and spreader control. The BM Dynamic Routes service was named Innovation of the Year by SBUF in 2019 and uses the detailed road condition forecasts available today.

The Smartbox in Mesta's vehicles

In September 2023, TU wrote that Mesta was adopting Road Service System from BM System. The solution had been tested at full scale in five projects for almost a year and is adapted to the needs of Mesta and its customers, including data capture and reporting of ploughing and gritting quantities. All Mesta's vehicles, including the snowplough trucks, are getting screens with navigation support for optimised routes, and voice-controlled assistance is to provide, among other things, more precise salt spreading. According to TU, the system helps both Mesta's own employees and subcontractors.

Mesta's instrumentation guide, updated 15 August 2023, says that all vehicles must be fitted with new data capture equipment, and that the old RTCU unit is to be replaced by a smartbox and a tablet with the Combo app. The Smartbox passes sensor information from the plough and spreader to the app. The tablet logs the GPS position and communicates with the main system, and the app must be active for production to be logged. According to the guide, the box has these connections:

• ignition (12/24 V, not permanent power) and earth
• separate inputs for plough, underbody blade and side plough
• one input for spreaders without data capture or other equipment
• a separate data cable to the spreader
• Bluetooth to the tablet, so the box must be mounted where the driver can reach it

Installation and checks

The equipment must be connected to the correct input, because Mesta cannot change the set-up for each vehicle as it could in the old Open Route system. After installation, it is checked in the app under “saltsprederdata” (salt spreader data), where the data from the Smartbox is displayed. The guide warns that the format and length of the spreader data vary, and the example in the guide shows data from a Falköping spreader.

Falköping and BM in Swedish research

The research project on forecast-controlled winter maintenance, which Svevia coordinated from April 2019 to October 2021, describes how the system can create control files from the forecasts and send them to the salt spreaders, so that the right amount of salt ends up in the right place. According to the project participants' description, the work on the control files was done by Friggeråkers Verkstäder (Falköping), which supplies salting systems, and BM System, and the salt spreader can thus be automated.

As early as 2018, the final report from an earlier phase mentioned a collaboration with Friggeråkers on GPS-controlled spreading width based on historical data and automatic salt rate from the decision support system. The report from 2023 describes a first meeting between Svevia, Vaisala, BM System and Friggeråkers about a test in Enköping in the winter of 2023/24. It was considered that Vaisala could send a forecast-based salt rate via BM to a connected Falköping spreader, and a similar arrangement was planned with Mesta and Klimator in Norway. We have not been able to find out whether the test in Enköping and the arrangement in Norway went ahead.

In Denmark, Klimator has an agreement with Næstved Municipality to connect Klimator's Road Status Information (RSI) to BM System's platform (press release from October 2025). Read more in the guide to Klimator and Saltera and Vaisala in winter maintenance.

What the Falköping control system can transmit

Falköping's Panel PC is prepared for data collection, GPS and GSM transmission, control according to road surface temperature and external communication with the CEN/DAU protocol. The data collection is designed to check and read off a running history of all actual values controlled from the control panel. Our old website states that the C-312 and Panel PC are prepared for data collection with Falköping's own software Halka 32, and that they can be used with software from other suppliers that can read Falköping's data string. According to Falköping, forecast-controlled spreading has been developed exclusively for, and is available together with, its own control system and Panel PC.

Before the spreader is connected

• Ask the company you drive for which box and which app apply. In Mesta's set-up, spreaders without data capture have their own input, while spreader data goes through a separate data cable.
• Check in the app that the spreader data comes through once the box is installed. Mesta writes that the format and length of the data vary.
• Find out which control system the spreader has. Ask us about Falköping's control systems and data collection, or get in touch via the contact page.
• What Falköping itself writes about GPS control and forecast control with its own control system and Panel PC is covered in GPS-controlled gritting and forecast-controlled gritting.