LoRaWAN technology expands in Goondi region

New technology LoRaWAN has a growing foothold in the Goondiwindi region, thanks to funding from Agrifutures Australia.

Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) provides a cost-effective open-source telemetry network that allows businesses to set up low-cost sensors for a wide range of purposes suited to agriculture, such as remote measurement of weather, tank and trough levels and electric fences. The network can communicate data up to 15km without the need for phone service or WIFI.

MAA has been trialling and prototyping LoRaWAN technology over the past two years, with five farmers in the region trialling sensors and seeing great advantages in the technology for their operations.

After technology issues saw the gateways go offline, MAA employed local business Goondiwindi Communications to get the gateways and sensors back into working order. To ensure the robustness of the network going forward, Goondiwindi Communications will work with landholders to ‘health check’ the network on a regular basis, aiming to keep the network ‘up time’ to a maximum.

MAA has also been working with Talwood farmer and ag-tech enthusiast Scott Bate to expand LoRaWAN technology on his farm “Bundah”. In June this year, MAA showcased the working technology to local producers at a field day at Bundah, demonstrating the variety of applications available to farmers to improve their farm businesses with a new technology that can save them time, money and resources. See our separate blog post about the field day.

Our hope is that the LoRaWAN network will continue to expand across the Goondiwindi region, as more landholders see the benefits of the technology and connect to the current gateways or deploy their own gateways and sensors.