Electronics Hardware & Firmware

Data collection starts with sensing devices of some kind (sensors). Sensors connect to some electronics that provides the required interface, power requirements and approiate signal conditioning circuitry.

We develop electronics hardware and firmware for your data collection device to suit your needs. The data collection device typically connects to the Internet using either cellular (2G or 3G or 4G or CDMA etc.), Ethernet/WiFi,telephone line or satellite — we have vast experience with all these communication types.

Already have hardware or an existing product? We can add/develop firmware for your existing hardware or integrate our communications protocol on-top of existing firmware so that your devices can deliver data a server (ideally to our web platform).

See our electronics design section for more details.

Communications

Call it what you like (IoT / M2M / telemetry) - making things communicate electronically is what we do and we take great pride in doing it well. A communications protocol defines how devices talk to each other and exchange data. Our communication protocols are lightweight, robust and can support industry standard security (SSL/TLS), all the time ensuring data size is kept to a minimum to reduce the cost when using mobile networks.

Our protocols have been designed to work over poor quality links where connections will break often, as with poor cellular signal (e.g. under ground). See our firmware section for protocols we've used and our hardware section for cellular modems and technologies we've used.

IoT SIM Cards

We can also provide data-only IoT / M2M SIM cards with flexible plans. You can choose from various plan options in terms on minimum contract length and amount of data included - all for a fixed monthly cost.

IoT Server Software

Our server side applications are modular to allow the most flexibility. You can pick and choose the modules you need and then implement your own and plug yours into ours to get a system tailored for your needs in a very short time period – we understand that time is money when it comes to development.

Web Platform Hosting

We also have flexible hosting solutions should you wish us to host the system on our ultra-reliable cloud hosting system, or you can host it – whatever suits you best.

IoT Website

An IoT / M2M system needs a method of processing and viewing the collected data and a way of specifying how remote devices are configured and controlled. A web site is a perfect way to provide a universal method of doing this. A web site has the following advantages over a dedicated viewing application.

• Platform independent i.e. you can use it on any machine that can run a web browser including PC, smart phone, tablet etc.
• One central location that be accessed by multiple users.
• Standard and recognised security and encryption mechanisms can be employed e.g. HTTPS.
• No data stored locally.
• No local application software to keep up to date.
• Multiple levels of user access allowing only certain users to do certain things.

Mobile Apps

Many users already have a smart phone so an app can be an easy and user friendly way to interact with your device or service. It can provide some innovative deployment strategies taking advantage of many technologies in a modern smart phone such as bar code scanning using a phones camera or GPS information to streamline deployment.

See our mobile apps section for more details.