The following sections provide further details on the technologies we use. These technologies are mature and sufficiently robust to make sense to a small operation.

Australia’s telecommunications carriers are proud that they have “coverage” out to 99+ % of Australians. Unfortunately, as anyone who lives or works in remote areas will tell you, rural telecommunication is patchy at best. Telecommunications services – especially those moving data – are either unlikely to be available or don’t have the capacity in the locations where you are working.

LoRa (Low power, long Range) is a radio technology that uses license free frequency bands to enable inexpensive devices to communicate over long distances for protracted periods of time with little maintenance. The Things Network (TTN) is an open-source movement that implements a version of LoRa (known as LoRaWAN) that promotes the adoption of LoRa world-wide. LoRaWAN uses a central gateway to connect thousands of devices to efficiently capture data and send it to the Internet through as low a cost backhaul as is available. This means that devices don’t require costly communications interfaces.