A rendering of Yabby’s remote floating storage level sensor and volume forecaster. Photo: Yabby

Myriota is partnering with sensor company Yabby Sensors, to provide dam operators and owners with a dam-monitoring solution in Australia based on Myriota's satellite Internet of Things (IoT) platform. The company announced the partnership April 20.

The aim is to help to dam operators identify and manage safety, regulatory, and water use issues associated with dams and storages in the mining and agricultural sectors. With plans to be rolled out internationally, the Yabby Floating Level Sensor is putting an end to manual monitoring of dam water conditions, and is reducing costs, saving water and aiding compliance requirements. The technology is able to automatically provide water levels, volumes, water balance and monitor water quality.

"For decades, dams have been manually monitored, with the process causing inaccuracies in reporting data due to highly variable dam levels caused by changing inflows, evaporation, infiltration and water use. Additionally, not all the water depth could be monitored as the measurements are generally taken near the shore. The misreporting of such data can contribute to the failure of dams or an unlawful discharge and damage to the environment," Myriota CEO and co-founder, Dr Alex Grant, said in a statement.

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A view of Globalstar offices. Photo credit: Globalstar

Oil and gas sector trading operations company Cisa Trading has selected Globalstar to deliver asset management solutions to its operations in Brazil.

Cisa Trading said it required satellite tracking and monitoring of 4,400 containers moving in and out of remote cellular coverage areas. The company selected Globalstar’s SmartOne Solar tracking devices because they met its operational requirements. Globalstar SmartOne devices are powered by solar energy and can be operational for up to 10 years with little to no maintenance.

"For our company it was an excellent opportunity to offer our client a state-of-the-art solution for controlling the location and movement of its assets, optimizing the use of the equipment and interacting proactively with its operational team. This strategic alliance demonstrates the confidence we have in the Brazilian oil and gas market and in the potential of our client," said Edward Karic, Executive Director of Cisa Trading’s oil and gas division.

Globalstar’s Brazilian subsidiary Globalstar do Brasil Ltda. led fulfillment of the contract order.

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Farmbot, a precision agriculture monitoring company, is a partner of Inmarsat’s new ASP program. Photo: Farmbot. 

Inmarsat has launched an Application and Solution Provider (ASP) program, the company announced April 1. This will be an ecosystem for providers of software, hardware and solutions, as well as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in commercial land markets.

ASPs will gain access to Inmarsat's global satellite connectivity and regional presence to scale their solutions into new sectors and geographies. This program aims to ensure that companies operating in areas without reliable connectivity, or with mission-critical connectivity needs, are able to access Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to enhance the efficiency, safety and sustainability of their businesses.

The program launches with two partners already on board: Australian-based agri-tech IoT company Farmbot Monitoring Solutions and Swedish company, MinFarm Tech.

"With this new initiative we are set to accelerate the roll out of IoT into remote areas of the world where the data points might be the most valuable. Key to this acceleration is the provision of innovative turnkey solutions that our ASPs are creating, along with Inmarsat's reliable connectivity, to ensure that the IoT solution works wherever it is needed," Mike Carter, president of Enterprise at Inmarsat said in a statement.

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Photo by Telesat

CloudOps, a managed services and software company based in Québec, will build the cloud infrastructure for Telesat‘s new Lightspeed Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network, the companies announced March 30.

Under the terms of a new strategic partnership agreement, CloudOps will serve as Telesat’s software prime contractor for the Lightspeed constellation. It will design and develop cloud infrastructure, cloud-native data platforms, and optimized system operations utilizing technologies from a variety of partners.

Ian Rae, CloudOps’ founder and CEO, said that the applications enabled by systems like Telesat Lightspeed would require network, cloud, and edge-computing technologies to work in concert. "This important work will support bringing these applications and experiences to a much broader audience, allowing Canadians and global industries to access more affordable and higher-performance internet experiences,” Rae said in a statement.

[I’d Bet on Telesat: Dan Goldberg is All In on Lightspeed LEO Play]

The financial details of the CloudOps agreement were not disclosed. CloudOps is the latest Québecian space company to benefit from an investment agreement Telesat reached with the Canadian government in February. The government of Québec will invest 400 million Canadian dollars ($316 million) in the Lightspeed project in exchange for Telesat moving Lightspeed’s manufacturing and operations to the Canadian province.

Telesat is investing about $5 billion total into its new Lightspeed LEO constellation. Thales Alenia Space is the prime manufacturer for the system, which will be made up of 298 Ka-band satellites to provide global broadband internet service starting in the second half of 2024.

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A view of Globalstar offices. Photo credit: Globalstar

Globalstar Europe Satellite Services has announced a new partnership with Perth & Kinross Council in Scotland which will see its SPOT Gen4 devices deployed in Scotland to help workers in rural, isolated, and hazardous locations. Globalstar announced the partnership March 23. Globalstar has integrated the Trackplot lone worker monitoring solution into its devices to bring more features to these particular workers.

Globalstar launched its SPOT Gen4 device late last year. Globalstar's SPOT satellite devices provide security and emergency support to employees for a growing number of governmental and non-governmental entities across the world. Globalstar reports that around 7,500 rescues have been attributed to SPOT satellite technology around the world, to date.

Perth & Kinross is a remote area in Scotland. The council uses Trackplot’s lone worker protection system to monitor and safeguard the structures and flooding team of specialists charged with inspecting all the region's bridges for structural soundness and security, and to mitigate flooding. Trackplot has been supporting the Council since 2010.

“Together with Trackplot, we are delighted that SPOT Gen4 has now taken up the baton in safeguarding the council's lone workers," Gary King, Globalstar's SPOT regional sales manager said in a statement.

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The GoRainSat device. Photo: Goanna Ag

Myriota and Goanna Ag have teamed up to launch two new satellite-based products to help Australian farmers, the companies announced Wednesday. The two new products, GoRain and GoTank, aim to change how farmers manage water resources. Goanna Ag is a provider of on-farm sensor solutions, and Myriota is a provider of low-cost and low-power satellite connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT).

GoRain is designed to enable data-driven decisions to support stronger crop yields. GoTank is designed for the livestock industry, and remotely updates farmers on water tank levels. The partnership between Goanna Ag and Myriota will see GoRain and GoTank devices make use of Myriota's network of nanosatellites. For farmers, this means that data from rain gauges and tank monitors can now be collected from anywhere in the world where the sky is visible, and seamlessly displayed in Goanna Ag's apps – the first solution of its kind, the two companies claim.

"We believe that this technology will transform the Australian market and provide the information needed to support the industry in even the most challenging times," Goanna Ag's CEO, Alicia Garden, said in a statement.

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Swissto12 additively manufactured all-metal patch antennas. Photo: Swissto12

Fleet Space Technologies has selected Swissto12 to deliver additively manufactured all-metal patch antennas for its C4 and C5 satellites. Swissto12, which develops advanced engineered Radio Frequency (RF) products for aerospace applications, said in a Feb. 9 release that this delivery will be the first of its kind. 

The contract will include the manufacturing with Swissto12's patented and space qualified additive manufacturing processes specially optimized for RF applications. Fleet Space said the Centauri 4, or C4 payload will provide the most powerful communication nanosatellite in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), with the ability to connect millions of gateways for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. 

Fleet Space CEO Flavia Tata Nardini commented: "I have never been so excited by a technological breakthrough such as this latest generation of the payload. This and the new 3D printed antennas that my amazing team have built at Fleet Space. We can finally demonstrate how powerful nanosatellites can be in the comms world."

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Swarm co-founders Ben Longmier and Sara Spangelo holding the Swarm Tile, and a Swarm satellite. Photo: Swarm

Swarm's Internet of Things (IoT) network that connects sandwich-sized satellites to tiny, handheld hardware is now live, offering remote connectivity at the market-disrupting price of $5 per month per device. 

Swarm, which was founded in 2017 and garnered media attention in 2018 for launching satellites without FCC approval, is now an operational player in the satellite IoT market. The company announced its commercial availability on Tuesday, after it launched 36 satellites on the recent SpaceX rideshare mission. The company now has 81 satellites on orbit, 72 of which are commercial. 

The company is vertically integrated, and built and designed hardware, software, and protocols for its satellites and the user modem it calls the Swarm Tile. The Tile costs $119 per device and is a modem that can be embedded into any IoT device that operates in a remote location. 

The Tile communicates with satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) that weigh just 400 grams. Satellites pass the data to ground stations, pulling customer data into an API where it can be easily accessed. It's a two-way network, allowing a customer to send a command to the sensor. At this point, satellites pass over Swarm's ground stations about every three hours. When the company has launched its full constellation of 150 satellites, it will allow data to be transmitted at any time. 

Sara Spangelo, CEO and co-founder told Via Satellite the Swarm pricing model is four to 20 times cheaper than similar satellite offerings today, and Swarm can transmit customer data more often because of its large number of satellites. Spangelo said this pricing allows customers who may pay $10,000 each month to another provider to spend $500 per month with Swarm. The company's goal with the pricing is to bring in new customers who haven't been able to afford remote IoT connectivity before. 

"For small companies that are bootstrapped, doing low-margin things like agriculture and logistics, this is an incredible benefit to their businesses – how they operate their price points, the risks they can take, the markets they can enter," Spangelo said. "It also is at the point where people that have only previously used cell [connectivity], but want to expand their business beyond where cellular coverage is, can start to think about it as affordable." 

The company has customers from small and medium-sized businesses to Ford-owned Autonomic, which has a connected vehicle infrastructure called the Transportation Mobility Cloud. Another company SweetSense, which offers remote water and energy monitoring solutions, has a partnership with Swarm, whose pricing allows SweetSense to monitor more water supplies in Africa. 

Spangelo said Swarm has the highest demand in agriculture for water monitoring applications, and logistics for tracking trucks or maritime tracking. She also reports demand in energy monitoring, environmental tracking, and government uses, but emphasizes that the service "vertical agnostic." 

"It’s not a moisture sensor or an asset tracker. It’s a modem, or a connectivity device that can be integrated or plugged into any sort of device," Spangelo said. "We do that on purpose. We have ideas of the verticals and use cases, but we’ve been very surprised what people come around with, ones we would have never expected."

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Myriota CEO Dr. Alex Grant. Photo: Myriota

Myriota will take part in a new project by the Australian government involving satellite, the company announced Wednesday. It will be involved in the SASAT1 Space Services Mission to deliver space services to South Australia. The $6.5 million project was announced by South Australian Government Premier Steven Marshall, and marks a new partnership between the South Australian state government and industry. Myriota will provide Internet of Things (IoT) space services for the new small satellite, which, once deployed, will support the improvement of state emergency, environment, water monitoring, and bushfire mitigation services.

Earth Observation (EO) imaging will be done via a hyperspectral electro-optical payload. Myriota's IoT connectivity will support the collection of data about multiple weather events, including rainfall and bushfires, both of which have been impacted by climate change in recent years. The mission is set to deliver the satellite in 15 months for launch into orbit, with the satellite available for a further three years to 2024 for data collection and operations.

Myriota CEO and co-founder Alex Grant believes this project could lead to greater collaboration across South Australia's growing space ecosystem:  "Myriota is proud to be involved in the SASAT1 project, and to partner with space industry leaders Inovor Technology and the SmartSat CRC, as well as and the South Australian government," he said. "South Australia sits at the heart of Australia's space industry, and is leading the growth of our national ecosystem. The Space Services Mission will benefit South Australians through the improved delivery of emergency services, and environmental monitoring."

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But at the same time, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine are rolling out across the globe – and each person that takes the vaccine brings hope for a return to normal life.

Yet vaccine rollout in the United States has already been criticized as too slow. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar predicted earlier that that 20 million people would be vaccinated by the end of 2020 – yet at press time, less than 10 million people have received it in the United States according to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tracker.

The vaccines themselves pose another challenge to coordinated rollout – their temperature needs. Pfizer's vaccine needs to be kept extremely cold – minus 70 degrees Celsius. And Moderna's vaccine needs to be minus 20 degrees Celsius, about the temperature of a regular freezer.

That's where satellite technology comes in. Satellite Internet of Things (IoT) company Orbcomm has offers a cold chain telematics solution, which its customers – shipping companies – are using to deploy the vaccine. The end-to-end product allows shipping companies to monitor the temperature of shipments at the level of a trailer, container, or even a pallet.

Orbcomm supplies a piece of hardware that connects to a refrigerated device, which passes information by satellite or cellular connection to Orbcomm's application. The application is integrated into customers' systems, and so managers, dispatchers, and drivers can monitor temperature in real-time and adjust the temperature if needed.

Other IoT products can track and report temperature, but satellite connectivity as part of an end-to-end solution is what sets Orbcomm apart, Chris MacDonald, Orbcomm senior vice president and general manager for the Americas tells Via Satellite. Orbcomm has a satellite constellation of its own OG2 and OG1 satellites, uses third party satellite networks, and works with multiple cellular providers for access to terrestrial networks. This allows shipping companies to keep eyes on the vaccine, or whatever they are shipping, with continuous communication, even in the most remote areas beyond the scope of cellular networks.

"It provides visibility redundancy," MacDonald says. "If there’s a weak cell signal or a busy cell signal – which we see more and more in busy metropolitan areas, cell networks go down due to many people utilizing it – our devices will route over to our satellite constellation, and offer a service independent of either of either signal."

Orbcomm has offered this product before the pandemic, and more than 2 million of its IoT devices are in use tracking assets worldwide. MacDonald says Orbcomm was already working with pharmaceutical transport companies and specialized shipping, but the company has heavily focused this product for food safety in the past.

Orbcomm is working to hone the product to fully meet pharmaceutical compliance, which is more strident than food safety standards. Where some pharma applications may want updates every 15 minutes, and food service may require an update every 20 minutes or every hour, COVID vaccine shipments need to be monitored constantly. Now, Orbcomm can even provide data at the level of the actual product, by using either Bluetooth connectivity with a sensor, or Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) connectivity within the trailer.

"The trailer becomes more of a smart trailer with multiple avenues of communication paths. RFID, Bluetooth, cellular, and satellite could all be coming out of one trailer," MacDonald says of the different modes of connectivity working together.

He emphasizes that the goal is to have complete visibility on the status of the vaccine. "It's visibility to be able to monitor compliance, but it’s also visibility to people," he says. "The driver, for example, has visibility to temperature in the cab so he or she could react to the temperature going out of range. It's essential to have multiple sets of eyes on the shipments."

MacDonald says the COVID-19 vaccine is among the most precious cargo that Orbcomm's technology has supported for deployment, but the company is no stranger to disaster relief. Orbcomm's technology supported vaccination for the bird flu and other critical flu vaccination deployments, and assisted with disaster relief for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas.

"We've worked closely in the past with the American Red Cross because when national disasters come, they tend to take cell networks down. With our satellite offering, we’re able to have maximum uptime," MacDonald says. "We've been at the forefront in Puerto Rico and in Houston to get resources, food, and water into these places. We’ve been able to help regenerate life in some of those areas."

MacDonald says that as vaccine deployment is rolled out to more groups and then the general population, it will make last-mile transportation more important. More transportation will need to specialize, to have this type of connectivity in order to roll the vaccine out to local drugstores or elementary schools, for example.

As the trucking industry in North America has gone through an economic adjustment in recent years, the industry is now investing in equipment, its workforce, and avenues of growth, MacDonald says. He sees connected transportation solutions like Orbcomm's cold chain telematics product as part of the rebound in North American transportation.

"Many of our shipping companies already have the solution in place. UPS and the FedEx Custom Critical division have really been at the forefront, and pharma and bio transport [companies] are set up for this. To them, it’s just another load," MacDonald says. "Some of the other carriers, the IoT technology has opened their eyes to a new avenue for their business to explore. As we roll out the national and international disbursement of vaccination, I think you’re going to see a lot more players emerge to be able to support and transport the vaccine, provided they have full IoT connectivity." VS

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