Tasmanian LoRaWAN specialist Definium Technologies is planning to roll out a Tasmania-wide LoRaWAN network, after building one in Launceston in conjunction with others.
Tasmanian newspaper The Examinerreports that Definium plans to have 50 LoRaWAN base stations installed by July 25 and 100 by Christmas, giving it coverage of 90 percent of the population.
The paper said the network would be launched at an industrial IoT deployment event at Peppers Silo Hotel, Invermay on July 25, followed by a community launch event.
It said start-ups, students and community members would have free access to the networks as part of Definium’s ongoing collaboration with Enterprize Launceston and the University of Tasmania.
Enterprize Launceston was behind the Launceston network, that we reported in November 2016, built with $100k of Tasmanian Government funding.
It was formally launched by Michael Ferguson, minister for information technology and innovation in March 2017with four base stations built by Definium. A further six or eight were due to be added by April, giving coverage of the city and surrounding areas up to a range of about 25km.
$1.5m mining sector contract
In mid 2018 the Tasmanian Government announced that Definium had awarded a contract worth $1.5m to supply “31 cutting-edge multi-channel LoRa gateways and approximately 6 500 sensors for the Australian mining sector.” (It did not specify who the customer(s) were).
In March 2019 The Examiner reported Definium to be planning expansion. It quoted CEO and founder Mike Cruse saying, “We have been able to build a manufacturing capacity here where we can build 20,000 to 30,000 devices a month and actually export.”
Definium describes itself as “a full-service solutions provider which designs and manufactures intelligent sensors and control systems for a wide range of applications.”
The company says it is primarily interested in servicing the IoT market by producing an array of long-range radio client and gateway products using Semtech’s LoRaWAN technology.
In addition to building its own devices, Definium says it also provides contract services to third-party companies to design and/or manufacture electronic devices.
“Available services include complete ground-up design of electronics, in-line surface-mount assembly and vapour-phase vacuum reflow, manual assembly and through-hole soldering, x-ray inspection and analysis of devices, and firmware installation and device testing.”
