Frequently Asked Questions

EWS Devices are 100% designed and manufactured in Australia by us. 

This includes all of our circuit boards which are designed by us and produced in volume using pick and place machines in our Melbourne facility, our plastics which are designed by us and tooled out into specialist injection mould press machines in Perth where we produce 1000's at a time. 

The final assembly and dispatch to customers in Australia and around the world takes place at our various operational offices including our HQ in Perth, our Sydney, NSW office and our Sunshine Coast, QLD office. 

Gobal coverage: Satellite communication provides IoT connectivity virtually anywhere on the planet, even in remote areas without terrestrial infrastructure. This enables IoT devices to be deployed in locations where traditional cellular, radio, or Wi-Fi networks are not available.

Reliable connectivity: Satellite communication provides a reliable and consistent connection, even in areas prone to terrain change such as vegetation, tailings dam lifts and more. This is important for environmental monitoring applications that require real-time data.

Scalability: Satellite IoT networks can support a large number of devices across vast geographic areas, making it an ideal solution for applications that require a high number of distributed sensors or devices.

No single-point failure risk: Utilising satellite communications eliminates the risk of single point failure of an entire monitoring network. While line of site radio goes down with a base station losing power and cellular devices go down if a cellular tower drops out, satellite enabled IoT devices continue working.  

Protects against changing cellular networks: Satellite connectivity protects against ever-changing cellular tower networks. The recent shutdown of 3G towers leaves cellular connected devices redundant while satellite devices continue to transmit critical environmental data. 

Cost-effective: EWS's device firmware features unique data compression techniques that make our Satellite IoT networks cost-effective for remote environmental applications. The benefits of satellite connectivity outweigh the insignificant cost difference between cellular and Satellite options. 

Security: Satellite communication provides a secure connection that is resistant to interference. It is trusted by the world’s largest mining companies, financial organisations and military operations. 

Our devices are integrated with Iridium, Myriota and Swarm satellite communication networks. 

To date, Iridium presents the most robust network for critical remote environmental monitoring.   

We are Iridium certified and a value-added plan reseller which allows us to activate plans directly through Iridium bypassing 3rd party telcos. Our high volume of deployments also gives us a significant price advantage.  

We continue to watch the market for new technologies and ensure our devices are integrated with the best and latest in satellite communication technology to provide highest reliability and lowest latency.

Cellular connectivity can be a good option in certain applications where devices are within good cellular coverage zones and monitoring campaigns are short to mid-term time spans.   

Some examples of how our devices can be used with cellular connectivity:

Urban Groundwater/Surface water Monitoring: Groundwater and surface water monitoring in urban areas may want to leverage our cellular connectivity ability. 

Tower construction monitoring: Where structural components such as columns, beams and walls need to be monitored for strain and movement to provide data to structural engineers throughout the construction period.

Urban Rail Monitoring: Urban rail tracks can utilise our cellular connected tilt meter for short to mid term track monitoring campaigns.

Urban Infrastructure and Geotechnical:  Large infrastructure projects in urban areas that require monitoring of geotechnical instrumentation over short to mid-term project life spans. 

Yes, the data is 100% owned by the customer which means data is exportable from Orion Cloud either manually or automatically by setting up scheduled exports. 

Data can be exported via FTP, SFTP or pulled using our API. 

Direct from device to third party database using MQTT or Iridium server is reserved for high volume clients.

Data from EWS devices is encoded and compressed using our unique device firmware, it is then decoded once received in Orion with our proprietary decoding scheme. This means transmitted data packets are much smaller which is critical for maximising information and reducing the cost of data over satellite as well as allowing the devices to be ultra-low power draw and therefore compact form-factor. 

High volume clients can be provided with our decoding scheme which they would need to integrate into their software backend.