Woodbridge Tide Mill

The opportunity to mix *really* old technology with the latest IoT is the kind of project we love doing, not least because you get to hang spend time with other passionate geeks and often in beautiful locations.

Over the past few months we’ve been quietly working on just such a project, and this week Mike and I headed off to do the installation at Woodbridge Tide Mill, a working mill and museum located by the River Deben on the coastal fringe of Suffolk.

I was introduced to Ian at the mill by the Suffolk County Council team back in March. Suffolk has been deploying a LoRaWAN network across the county for the past few years. They use it themselves for things like monitoring meeting room occupancy and smart streetlights, and they also make it available to local businesses, community groups and other organisations in the region.

Woodbridge Tide Mill
Continue reading “Woodbridge Tide Mill”

Things Connected for Local Authorities

One of the big projects of the last year has been running an innovation programme for Digital Catapult and four Local Authorities – Croydon, Suffolk, Sutton and Thurrock. The innovation programme was part of the Catapult’s excellent ThingsConnected programme – which aims to stimulate more UK interest in LPWAN, because we are woefully behind some of our European neighbours.

Group photo
The innovative UK businesses involved in the programme

Each of the councils put forward a specific challenge, and the idea was to invite UK businesses to work with the councils to understand the challenges in more depth, and then propose solutions to the challenges using LPWAN technology – LoRaWAN, Nwave, Sigfox, etc. The winning ideas would then be implemented in the borough for a live trial. Continue reading “Things Connected for Local Authorities”