You used the Atamo board for development. Did you use this for the final product?
Or did you develop your own design? If so, why?
Answer transcribed from webinar response by Rian Sullings (WaterGroup P/L):
We did use the Atamo development board for the prototype, but not for a final product. The Atamo development board is based on Arduino. It has the Atmega microcontroller. What we've ended up using for a final product is the arm.com. They are more power efficient and stable. They do everything that we need them to do. They've got that little bit extra processing power that can future proof things and also enable a bit more of the calculation in the device. Did we develop our own design? We've partnered with electronic designers from other parts of the world.
For us to design a solution in Australia, and have it make business sense, we would have to be distributing it in other parts of the world as well. It makes sense in the short-term for us to do it other way around and partner with those who are in much larger markets than the Australian market, such as the European market, and simply work with them to bring over technology to Australia. However, in doing that, we've had to work with them on improving their designs or adapting them to suit Australia. Obviously, the weather conditions here are significantly different to those in Europe, and in many cases we want more detail of data available than a lot of what's on the European market simply because water is a higher priority in Australia than a lot of European markets. It's not just smart metering for the purpose of getting a meter reading and sending a water bill. It's more required for that network operation, understanding and delivering more detail of data.
