22nd October 2026By Neil Skoglund
LDS03A Use Case
A steel shipping container in the corner of a yard holds a surprising amount of value: power tools, generators, copper and cable, fencing, event kit, stock. It usually sits somewhere quiet, with no mains power and nobody around after the gates close. When someone gets into it overnight or over a weekend, you tend to find out when the first person arrives on Monday morning and sees the door ajar.
This guide is for construction sites, plant hire firms, farms, events companies, self-storage yards and anyone with containers, site cabins or storage units off the grid. It shows how a Dragino LDS03A outdoor door sensor on each container, reporting into Trackpac, alerts you the moment a door opens out of hours, flags doors left open at the end of the day, and keeps a log of when each store was accessed. For the general picture of LoRaWAN door sensors, see our overview of door and window monitoring without cameras.
Most small door sensors are designed for indoor doors and timber frames. A container is a different job: a heavy steel door, a rough yard, rain, frost and the odd knock from a forklift. The LDS03A is built for it. A weatherproof enclosure holds the battery, radio and antenna, and an armoured, steel-sheathed cable runs from it to a heavy-duty magnetic contact. A separate magnet goes on the door itself.
Two details matter most here. The contact works across a gap of about 30-45mm on steel doors, so it suits heavy steel container doors and site stores. And it needs no power or wiring: an 8500mAh battery is rated for up to 10 years. Battery life depends on how many reports the sensor sends, and a container door opened a handful of times a day uses less than a busy shop door.
Magnetic contact
Heavy-duty contact on an armoured cable. Works across a 10-30mm gap on wooden doors and 30-45mm on steel.
Reports every opening
Sends each open and close as it happens, plus a status check every 2 hours.
Open-too-long alarm
Raises an alarm if a door stays open past a time you set.
Counts & durations
Keeps a running total of openings and how long the last one lasted.
Built for outdoors
Weatherproof enclosure, rated from -40 to +85°C.
Up to 10-year battery
8500mAh battery. Life depends on how often the door is used.
Specifications from Dragino's LDS03A documentation.
Many sensors report on a fixed schedule, every few hours. That's fine for a tank level, but no use for a door. The LDS03A sends a message the moment the door opens and again when it closes, plus a status check every 2 hours so you know it's still alive. Coverage permitting, a Trackpac alert reaches your phone within seconds of the door moving, by email, SMS or push through the Trackpac mobile app.
Be clear about what that buys you. An alert tells you a door has opened. It doesn't lock anything and it won't stop a determined thief. What it gives you is the chance to respond while it matters: ring the keyholder or site manager, or pass it to your security contact. That beats walking into an empty container hours later and trying to work out when it happened.
The setup is the same wherever the container sits: one sensor on each door you care about, grouped by site in Trackpac. What changes is who gets the alert and when.
Tool stores, site cabins and materials containers on sites that are busy in the day and empty at night. Alerts go to the site manager out of hours, and the history shows when stores were opened across a project.
Containers used as workshops, chemical or feed stores and tool sheds in a far corner of the yard. A night-time opening sends an SMS straight to whoever is on call.
Staging, lighting and catering kit stored in containers between shows, often in a rented yard you rarely visit. Alerts tell you if a store is opened when nobody is booked in.
Container units let to customers on an open yard. Openings outside your access hours stand out, and the log helps answer questions about when a unit was last opened.
No electrician and no mains power needed. The step that needs most thought is where the enclosure goes, because a closed steel box is very good at blocking radio signals.
Order "Trackpac Ready", scan and name it
Buy the LDS03A from Hexaspot with the Trackpac Ready option, scan its QR code in the Trackpac app and give it a clear name such as "North yard - tool container". Tag it by site so it picks up that site's alert rules.
Contact on the frame, magnet on the door
Fix the contact to the fixed frame and the magnet to the door so they line up when the door is shut, within about 30-45mm on steel. On double doors, fit it to the leaf that has to open first. Each sensor monitors one door, so a container with doors at both ends needs two.
Route the armoured cable out of harm's way
The cable is steel-sheathed, but still run it tight to the frame and clip it down, away from hinges, locking bars and anywhere forks or loads could catch it.
Give the enclosure a way to get a signal out
A sensor sealed fully inside a closed steel container can lose its signal. Mount the enclosure on a sheltered outside face, or inside close to a vent or gap where radio can escape. Outside, pick a spot that is out of the way of knocks and not obvious to a passer-by.
Test with the door shut before you leave
Open and close the door a couple of times and check each event appears on the dashboard. Then close and lock up as you would at the end of the day and confirm the close still came through. It's the closed container you need to hear from.
On a working site, containers open and close all day. You don't want a ping every time someone fetches a drill. Trackpac rules can alert on door opened or closed, the open-too-long alarm and battery level, by email, SMS or push, and each rule can have a time window. Rules can also target a tag, so every container tagged with a site shares the same rules. A few rules cover most sites:
Quiet during working hours, then an SMS and push alert for any opening in the evening, overnight or at the weekend, sent to the keyholder or site manager.
Set the open-too-long alarm on the sensor, and a Trackpac rule tells the site team if a door is still open long after it should have been shut, before they have left for the night.
When the door shuts, a "resolved" message follows the alert, so whoever got the first message knows the container has been closed.
With a battery rated for years, a low-battery rule makes sure a sensor on a forgotten container doesn't quietly go silent.
A trigger-lock interval stops one door being opened and closed a few times from sending a flood of alerts. If a security company or your own incident system should know too, webhooks can forward door events to it. Trackpac passes the event on; it doesn't dispatch anyone itself.
Every open and close is kept in the Trackpac history, with how long the door stayed open and a running count of openings. Over a project that becomes an access log for each container: when it was first opened in the morning, whether it was left open over lunch, and any visits on days the site was meant to be shut. It tells you when, not who. Matched against your rotas or sign-in sheets, though, it narrows things down quickly when kit goes missing.
Tag containers by site, client or project and the dashboard groups them for you. A read-only dashboard link lets a site manager, main contractor or storage customer see their containers' status and history without being able to change sensors or alert rules. Reports and exports give you a record to share if a client or insurer asks for one.
Containers move when jobs finish, and the sensor goes with them: there is nothing to rewire. The LDS03A uses LoRaWAN, so there's no SIM card per container and no reliance on site Wi-Fi, but coverage still varies from site to site. Before a container goes somewhere new, read what to check about LoRaWAN coverage, then repeat the open-and-close test once it lands. If the network drops for a while, the sensor stores its events and sends them when it reconnects, so the log fills in even if an alert comes late.
When it arrives, change its tag to the new site so the right people get the alerts and the right dashboard shows it. If you also need to know where a container or its contents are, pair the door sensor with a GPS tracker - see our guide to LoRaWAN asset tracking. Costs are simple: see Trackpac pricing for the subscription. Containers in farmyards often sit near gates worth watching too - see farm and yard gate monitoring, and for brick or timber stores off the beaten track, read about remote outbuilding door alerts.
Get Started
One LDS03A per container door, fitted to the steel frame with no wiring - sending an alert to your phone when a store opens after hours or is left open at the end of the day.
Yes. The LDS03A's heavy-duty magnetic contact works across a gap of about 30-45mm on iron and steel doors, so it suits steel container doors, steel site stores and metal cabins. The contact is fixed to the frame and the magnet to the door, and the contact connects to the sensor's enclosure by an armoured cable. The main thing to plan is where the enclosure goes: a sensor shut fully inside a closed steel container can struggle to get a radio signal out, so mount it where the signal can escape and check it is reporting before you leave site.
Usually within seconds. By default the LDS03A sends a message the moment the door opens and again when it closes, rather than waiting for a scheduled report, and Trackpac turns that into an email, SMS or push alert. Timing depends on LoRaWAN coverage at the site. If coverage drops, the sensor stores the events and sends them once the network is back, so the history stays complete even if an alert arrives late.
Yes. Trackpac alert rules support time windows, so you can stay quiet during the working day and only alert on openings in the evening, overnight and at weekends. Every opening is still recorded in the history, so you have a full log of when each door was opened and for how long. An open-too-long rule can run separately to catch a door left open at the end of the day.
No to both. The LDS03A and Trackpac record when a door was opened and how long it stayed open, not who opened it, and the sensor doesn't lock anything. What it gives you is time: an out-of-hours alert to a keyholder, site manager or security contact while something is happening, rather than discovering it the next morning. Your response, and your locks, still do the protecting.
The Dragino LDS03A is sold by Hexaspot, Trackpac's sister company in the Connect IoT group, for €59.92 ex VAT, with VAT added at checkout based on your country. Choose the 'Trackpac Ready' option and the sensor is pre-registered on Trackpac, so you only need to scan its QR code. A Trackpac subscription from £15 / €18 per sensor per year covers connectivity, the dashboard, alerts and data storage.
Protecting containers and site stores across several yards or projects? Get in touch and we'll help you plan sensors and coverage.
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