Meshed IoT secures LoRaWAN base station, IoT sensor contract with Victorian councils

LoRaWAN Internet of Things specialist Meshed IoT has been awarded a contract to supply base stations, services and sensor devices to a consortium of councils in central Victoria.

Meshed will supply 30 LoRaWAN base-stations, maintenance and professional services, as well as IoT sensor devices to the Smart Shires consortium, which includes the Golden Plains Shire Council, Hepburn Shire Council and Moorabool Shire Council.

The network will also connect to coverage provided by the City of Ballarat Council, City of Greater Geelong and Corangamite Shire Councils, Meshed IoT co-founder Paul McManus announced in a LinkedIn post. 

This would create one of Australia’s largest contiguous free-to-access IoT networks, McManus stated.

“The LoRaWAN infrastructure will deliver benefits to both internal Council operations and the general public through better asset visibility, management and planning,” McManus’ post reads.

Once completed, residents and businesses within the coverage area would be able to deploy sensors on global LoRaWAN network The Things Network (TTN) with no cost of transmission.

“The Smart Shires consortium has a large proportion of agricultural land use, so farmers will be able to deploy sensors to help cut costs and boost the productivity of their businesses,” McManus stated.

Council and commercial users will have the choice of deploying sensor devices in the field on TTN or the MeshedX “industrial strength private LoRaWAN network including enhanced SLAs and uptime available from Meshed.” The same base station infrastructure will be used for public and private networks.

The participating councils will also be able to have commercial third parties and utilities pay for access to the LoRaWAN coverage “to assist the cost of maintaining the network and avoid further infrastructure duplication”.

McManus stated that initial uses cases councils will deploy include people and traffic counting, soil moisture sensing, water tank monitoring, river flood level monitoring, micro-climate sensing and electric fence monitoring.

The project is funded by the Victorian Government Rural Councils Transformation Grants program, which provided $250,000 to each council, or a total of $750,000.

In August, the Golden Plains Shire Council announced that the consortium had secured the $750,000 for the network. In that announcement, Golden Plains Shire Mayor Gavin Gamble stated, “It is expected this network will deliver savings and efficiencies within our organisations, creating better outcomes for our communities.”

“With the establishment of this network and the installation of IoT sensors across the Shire, Council and other local businesses, farm enterprises and tourism operators will be able to obtain sensor data and insights, supporting data-driven decision making and growth.”