END OF THE YEAR 2022 - THANK YOU FROM ECONODE TEAM
Wow, it's that time of the year already!
When we tidy up our desks for the weekend, the pohutukawa tree is blooming outside the office’s window. The year has gone by so fast.
Here is a quick reflection on our journey in 2022.
The Taranaki Taku Tūranga - Towards Predator-Free Taranaki project is successfully rolling into Year 4. We would like to thank IoT Taranaki and Primo Wireless for their support of the project. We noticed an increasing number of birds when we visited Taranaki Maunga and Egmont National Park in early December. Listening to their chorus is the most rewarding for us. In Auckland, we are beginning to work with the University of Auckland and local enthusiasts to use our IoT devices to monitor the holistic well-being of the environment around Orangihina Park.
Fifteen thousand SmartTrap nodes have been deployed around New Zealand since 2018. This year, we celebrate the Motatapu project on the South Island with support from Central Radio Service (CRS) with network connectivity and communication. We watched our nodes in the dashboard during the winter months with excitement. The SmartTrap nodes maintain their reliability in performance using sleep mode to minimise their power consumption.
We often joke, "if a product survives in New Zealand's rugged outdoor conditions, it can survive everywhere". In the Internet of Things (IoT) field, outdoor wireless sensor devices face many challenges. When we started Econode in 2015, we made our own LoRaWAN IoT gateways to support the SmartTrap nodes on Great Barrier Island, one of the first LoRaWAN networks in New Zealand. The LoRaWAN network has proven to be a good choice, and now many network providers are giving coverage to large parts of New Zealand. Installing and maintaining a radio network is hard work, and having commercial networks available will certainly boost conservation projects.
We would like to congratulate the IoT/Innovation team at Auckland Council for winning the 2022 New Zealand CIO Award for Sustainability through Technology. Auckland Council is using Econode technology to monitor; stream water quality, CO2/Air quality, soil moisture, water tank levels, and animal traps. Econode has an open systems / open source approach, allowing a high degree of collaboration and integration in any bespoke monitoring requirements.
In 2023, we have a new “universal node”, which allows an expansion board and additional features can be added either by Econode or a third party. This node is pin/software compatible with the open-source Arduino Feather LoRa boards, making the node applicable to many open-source projects. The electronics supply chain has been challenging during the year, but we have a good level of stock on hand after our 2022/Q4 production run for projects in 2023. We’ve had to adjust our pricing as freight and component costs are up significantly.
Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini.
Our team at Econode would like to thank our partners, friends, families, suppliers, and customers for sharing this journey with us. We wish you all a great summer and holiday.
A quick heads up that we will be taking a well-deserved break during the holiday period. Our office will be closed from Friday, 23rd December 2022 and reopening on Monday, 9th January 2023.
Mēre Kirihimete me te Tau Hou! 🎄🥂
From Matt, Ann and Manuka Way of Team Econode
