Making connections
Glasgow team aim to give rural farms better access to IoT technology
PIONEERING satellite technology is set to bring internet connectivity to Scotland’s remotest fish farms, if a pilot project with a salmon producer is successful. Glasgow tech start-up w, begun by former Clyde Space colleagues Allan Cannon and Kevin Quillien last year, is trialling its devices with ‘a major global salmon producer in Scotland’, aiming to tap into the multi-billion pound Internet of Things (IoT) market.
The technology allows data to be transferred from rural sensor networks to the cloud, via satellite, in a bid to make data collection more timely, efficient and cost-effective.
It is aimed at industries that could benefit from access to real-time data from isolated operations, such as remote healthcare, oil, gas, renewable energy and, of course, aquaculture.
The devices remove the need to send people in planes or boats to collect data, which can be time consuming, expensive, and lagged by the time the data is delivered to decision makers.
Allan Cannon, co-founder and chief executive of R3-IoT, told Fish Farmer: ‘Connectivity is one of the major barriers to enabling the industry to grow. We see a huge opportunity to provide our service to remote fish farms across Scotland.’
Simply put, the Internet of Things is the concept of connecting any device with an on and off switch to the internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from mobile phones, coffee makers, washing machines, lamps, a jet engine, to a drill on an oil rig.
Proponents argue this giant network of connected ‘things’ brings many benefits: for example, if you are late for a meeting, your car could access your calendar and know the best route to take or send a text notifying colleagues that you will be late, or, if your office equipment knew it was running low on supplies, it could automatically re-order more.
Cannon explained: ‘Our technology enables farmers to set up a small, secure network where a variety of sensors can be connected to enhance knowledge of operations.
‘The R3-IoT service will provide not only the means to connect third party environmental sensors to central operations centres, but also the data analysis that will provide farm managers, environmental, production and senior management the means to gain better insight into operations.
‘With frequent environmental data, farm managers will be able to take action to avoid potentially catastrophic stock losses, improve fish welfare and manage impact on the local environment.’
The technology has ‘the potential to save hundreds of thousands of pounds’, he argued: ‘The service will reduce operational costs by reducing manual collection of data, improving insight into environmental parameters, allow producers to potentially avoid stock loss during an environmental event such as an algal bloom.’
The installation and running costs are ‘very competitive’, Cannon added, and are ‘very dependent on the specifics of the farm, sensors and data requirements’.
‘The service will be extremely easy to set up, and it is our intention that we will be able to have a farm up and running in under a day. We have designed the technology to be capable of withstanding marine environments.
‘We should have the first system up and running on a fish farm [in] one to two months.’
Cannon and Quillien are former heads of Missions and Spacecraft Design at Clyde Space, a Scottish company offering nanosatellites and data delivery. Their R3-IoT venture aims to bring these applications to land and sea agriculture, environmental monitoring, remote healthcare, and renewable energy.
R3-IOT is being assisted by Scotland’s Censis Innovation Centre for IoT, sensor and imaging technologies.
Censis’ senior business development manager, Craig Fleming, said R3IoT brings a ‘game-changing’ technology to market.
‘R3-IoT gives businesses the opportunity to understand their operations where previously it wasn’t technologically feasible or economically viable,’ he said.
‘What R3-IoT is doing underlines the transformative potential of IoT and the hidden value it can unlock in companies, whether they are tech focused or operating in more traditional industries.’
The company recently won the top prize of £100,000 at the Scottish Edge awards.
‘We are looking to raise our first round of funding in quarter one of 2020,’ Cannon said. ‘We have a healthy grant pipeline and are supported by some initial revenue.We expect our system to be in high demand, and have already validated this with the industry,’ Cannon added.
‘There is another trial ongoing in Orkney [with another company]; however, the communication solution requires a higher capital and operating expenditure, whilst relying on fixed local infrastructure. A major advantage of our solution is that we don’t rely on any other telecoms infrastructure.
“We see a huge opportunity to provide our service to remote fish farms across Scotland”
‘IoT systems are being used in other parts of the world. There are some fantastic new sensor products on the market and we will look to provide these to our customers to enhance the offering.
‘Now that we are able to provide a cost-efficient communications service, producers will be able to leverage these new technologies anywhere in the world, no matter how remote.’
Broadband
Some rural communities still have problems simply connecting to broadband, as the Scottish government’s Reaching 100 per cent programme struggles to bring superfast broadband to every home and business
With the latest report finding the worst blackspots in Argyll, Orkney and Shetland, several rural communities and fish farmers are coming up with their own solutions.
Residents of Drimnin, at the end of a 30-mile road on the Morvern Peninsula, recently formed an enterprising collaboration with Scottish Sea Farms (SSF).
The village, home to 57 properties, a post office, shop and distillery, strained under an unreliable satellite connection 30 times slower than terrestrial systems.
At the same time, the local fish farm hoped to enable remote feeding at its salmon farms around the Sound of Mull for those times when severe weather makes it unsafe to travel out by boat to the pens.
By joining forces, the two successfully funded Drimnin Community Broadband Community Interest Company (CIC) to install a 200mb leased line from BT, and, over a year on, locals haven’t looked back.
Further north up the coast on the remote peninsula of Knoydart and Loch Nevis, SSF partnered with a second community, and the rural broadband company HebNet CIC.
The satellite system SSF relied on for internet access wasn’t able to support the growing business need for high speed, high capacity connectivity between its three Loch Nevis farms and the shore base.
SSF and HebNet CIC upgraded the local infrastructure with a stateof-the-art enterprise-grade wireless link between Skye and Knoydart, capable of delivering superfast broadband of 30Mbit/s or more to end users, putting the area on a par with parts of central Scotland.
For SSF, this faster, more reliable solution enabled each of the company’s three Loch Nevis farms to be equipped with remote feeding and monitoring systems.
And in another development, the latest fifth generation of network cellular technology, 5G, is being trialled at 20 sites on Orkney, including at Scottish Sea Farms’ salmon farm in Scapa Flow.
5G Rural First, a government funded project pioneering new ways to bring connectivity to rural industries, said it is working with SSF ‘to deploy oxygen sensors and video technology to enable the farms to improve efficiency with more automation, become more productive and, importantly, minimise risk to the workforce and the environment’.
‘The salmon farms are offshore, so fixed line connections are not practicable. The farm infrastructure is also subject to the Orkney weather and the movement of the waves, so the mobile communications technology the project has deployed works to overcome these challenges. Remote monitoring of the farms keeps the salmon and employees safe.’
Earlier this year, the Isle of Rum became the first Scottish island to receive full fibre to the premises (FTTP) broadband, when Mowi needed to establish a network link between its shore based office and feed barge, which are separated by 5.5km of land and sea.
HebNet CIC decided fibre-optics gave the best solution for the distance and terrain, capable of 1Gb/s (1000Mb/s). The 5km fibre enabled real time production data sharing, quick image sharing to aid in fish welfare and a safer working space with timelier communications.