Internet of Things
On the wireless this morning was report about a local who has invented a device which tells how much beer is left in a keg so that the owner can change it rather than it running empty when there is a queue of patrons waiting for their schooner. Originally devised by a home brewer for his keg system, it was developed commercially for craft brewers but looks like being taken up en masse by main stream commercial producers.
That is all by the by... what interested me was the method it uses to tell the owner that the keg is empty. In a pub it would obviously be impractical to use a separate SIM card for each keg (as used to happen with vending machines) however it uses a low powered radio system called
LoRaWAN. This is a
proprietary low powered wide area network that give people like Realist such nightmares eg his scare campaign about the radiation dangers of Smart Meters.
I didn't realise that the Uni of Wollongong already has a LoRaWAN based at its Innovation Campus for businesses in the Wollongong area from Coniston to Austinmere.
How fascinating is this technology?