A TINY, low-cost satellite communications device designed for remote areas that is suitable for outback transport operators has been given the green light to be manufactured in Adelaide.

The tick to start building the device, called Myriota and made by the company of the same name, comes from the founders behind the Cohda Wireless car communication system – a vehicle position monitoring system used worldwide in autonomous car development.

Myriota will invest $2.72 million in the manufacture of the new device in Adelaide, with half of that amount from a grant from the South Australian government’s Future Jobs Fund.

Boeing subsidiary, HorizonX Ventures, has invested in Myriota by participating in a $A20 million funding round led by Australian firms Blue Sky Venture Capital and Main Sequence Ventures, which manages the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Innovation Fund. Other investors include Right Click Capital and Singtel Innov8.

Funds will also be used to open an Adelaide laboratory for Myriota to further develop the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. IoT is the connection between computers and the sending and receiving of data.

The device, developed by Australians Alex Grant (CEO) and David Haley (chief technical officer), is a communications system that needs no ground-based infrastructure such as towers and gateways.

Dr Grant is also the founder of Cohda Wireless which is the Adelaide-based international supplier of communication software for autonomous vehicles.

“We formed Myriota to solve a major connectivity problem: hundreds of millions of devices that need to communicate but don’t have cost-effective, battery-friendly networks to do so,” Dr Grant said in a statement.

“The scale of this investment, with strong domestic venture capital leadership and strategic participation by global investors is significant for Myriota, and our vision to deliver IoT connectivity for everyone, everywhere.”

The Myriota system uses a direct-to-orbit technology that is affordable, has a long battery life and has the ability to operate anywhere on the planet.

Myriota devised small, low-cost transmitters that send small packets of data direct to a host of low-orbit nano-satellites.

Myriota CEO Dr Grant said the IoT industry “is set to boom across the globe”.

He said his company has already created about 40 jobs including software and hardware developers, data networking specialists and satellite communications professionals.

It also has the potential to create significantly more advanced manufacturing jobs over the coming years and undertake production runs of millions of units for export.

“Our low-cost IoT system has been deployed in field trials for months now and there are hundreds of companies here and overseas interested in using our product to provide connectivity for a huge range of applications,” Dr Grant said.

“This new IoT lab will enable us to build on our core technology and apply it across a wide range of industries including agriculture, defence, utilities, environmental monitoring, asset tracking and logistics.”

“Our system works from any location on earth, and we look forward to taking our product global.”

Myriota was founded in 2015 to commercialise technology generated at the University of South Australia.

The technology involves tiny low-cost satellite transmitters that send low-powered messages directly to a constellation of low-earth-orbit nano satellites. These satellites relay the messages to earth where they are decoded and sent to the end user.

The low-cost satellite IoT service suits a wide range of remote industries including agriculture, asset tracking, utilities and defence.

The company is now working with international companies in industries including agriculture, maritime, defence, utilities monitoring, environmental monitoring, and transport and logistics.

Its first trial was the fitting in June last year of a remote water tank monitor in a cattle farm in NSW. The device gives an accurate water level reading via the farmer’s mobile phone.

Myriota has won several global awards including best industrial start-up at the 2017 Internet of Things World Congress in San Francisco, Best New Business at the 2017 SA Telstra Business awards, and was selected as one of Westpac’s 200 Businesses of Tomorrow.

By Neil Dowling