Adelaide-based Myriota, which is planning a network of nanosatellites for IoT applications, has teamed up with water pump maker Davey Water Products to offer AI based water tank monitoring for farmers.
Myriota said the joint product would be the first mass market water-level sensor to be connected via its satellites and will assist farmers to manage water usage and provide peace of mind around livestock water supply.
‘Davey’s sensors are bolstered by their inbuilt AI capability which rely on algorithms to increase the accuracy of predictions around when a tank will run out of water,” it said.
Myriota CEO, Dr Alex Grant, said the joint product would lower the cost of water management in locations that presently have no cost-effective way of retrieving data.
Davey Water’s general manager innovation, Joel Gresham, said the combination of its TankSense product with Myriota’s technology would provide a world first in terms of communicating with regional locations, following launch of the company’s first AI driven monitoring and control app for tank water management last year.
“Thanks to Myriota’s low cost satellite technology, farmers who have traditionally needed to manually check their tanks will now be able to monitor their assets seamlessly from any location” he said.
Davey Water launched TankSense in November 2018, targeted at homes with rainwater tanks. It said:
“What makes the AI application possible is a combination of sensor data from the TankSense sensor, historical usage data, rainfall predictions for the location of the tank and the size of the roof. The sensor monitors the water level in the tank and will provide a historical usage pattern over time. The algorithm will learn from past experiences to increase the accuracy of when the tank will run out of water. External data streams such as weather predictions and the roof size are used to enhance the algorithm even further.”
Myriota launched its first satellite in December 2018 but was already providing services using the low earth orbit satellites of ExactEarth of Canada, after being spun off from the University of South Australia in November 2015 with a $2m investment from ExactEarth.
