The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has deployed satellite IoT transmitters from Australian startup Myriota on buoys to monitor ocean currents, sea surface water temperatures and barometric pressure.
The Myriota sensors transmit around 160 bytes of data a day to AIMS’ data centre via low earth orbit (LEO) satellites operated by Myriota early investor, ExactEarth of Canada.
Myriota CEO and co-founder Dr Alex Grant, said AIMS was the first organisation to deploy Myriota’s technology for oceanographic tracking.
“Previously, oceanographic drifter satellite communications for organisations like AIMS have been cost prohibitive, but our direct to orbit technology has allowed AIMS to trial robust and cost effective tracking and data collection,” he said.
AIMS technology development team leader Melanie Olsen said the drifting buoys with Myriota communications would enable AIMS to scale-up projects on demand, be sustainable and flexible.
“In the future, the deployment of such devices will enable AIMS to retrieve oceanographic information every hour from any location – something that would provide scientists with the essential data they need to understand our oceans.
“Data is an essential tool if we are to understand how our oceans behave. We need to bring every tool to bear if we are to protect one of our nation’s most precious natural assets, our marine environment.”
Myriota was spun out of the University of South Australiain November 2015 with a $2m investment from ExactEarth to commercialise technology developed at the University.
It is using ExactEarth’s polar orbiting satellites for the space segment of the service, but plans to launch its own satellites.
According to its web site its standard transmitter is “a clever little module (20mm x 32mm) with the ability to interface with a huge range of sensors and devices [and that] can be programmed to log and transmit data to suit a huge number of IoT applications. It has exceptional battery life and can withstand the harshest of elements.”
Messages are received by satellite ground stations and processed by software hosted in the cloud and made available to users via standard APIs.
