Distributed IoT Systems

Before the Internet of Things (IoT) became a common phrase, Otron was involved in building and supporting a number of distributed systems using embedded systems.

We continue to advance our knowledge in this area and can provide both hardware and software IoT solutions for commercial use in harsh environments where stability and resilience are paramount.

Just some of the projects we’ve been involved with:

remote deployment of 100’s of units monitoring 1000’s of devices deployed into the harshest regions of the planet
advertising screens which require constant updates with the ability to run offline
a fleet of embedded devices with limited memory requiring monitoring and remote update capabilities
creation of cloud monitoring and control panels for remote devices to ensure uptime and allow remote configuration and management

We’ve work with devices such as Arduino, Particle, Raspberry Pi, Windows Embedded and Embedded Java controllers.

Contact us if you have a need to deploy a distributed network of devices for data acquisition to the cloud and also need to know your fleet is online and healthy.

Indigenous Communication Program

Otron was contracted to design, build and manage a distributed network of embedded controllers throughout remote Australia.

The system was required to monitor the health and performance of 100’s of satellite-based telephones being deployed in remote Aboriginal communities covering all areas of Australia.

We developed the solution making use of embedded Java controller boards (Tini/TStik) coded with proprietary software to allow the installed telephone units to be monitored for health and performance.

The embedded controller was responsible for monitoring items such as:

Solar Input
Solar Charge State
Battery Temperature
Ambient Temperature
Internal Fan On/Off State
Fan RPM
Satellite connection status
Backup satellite modem connection status
Phone/VoIP Health

The embedded controller was responsible for pushing data points from monitoring back to a central server via the satellite link every 20 minutes.

The operations centre staff could monitor the health of each unit and, if required, could interrogate each device remotely and activate/deactivate fans and or different devices attached to the controller.

The health of units in the field was displayed on a map with traffic light style pins alerting operators to units that require attention or service.

Each unit can also be upgraded remotely as new features or functions were required.