Tag: smart cities

Posted on

eleven-x Leads the Way in Canadian Smart City Connectivity

The last few months have been busy for Accelerator Centre client, eleven -x. The network operator, who launched Canada’s first carrier-grade low power wide area network built for IoT, has started a pilot project with the Region of Waterloo which is a North American first, expanded their network across Canada, and increased their role in the LoRa Alliance™.

Founded in 2014, the eleven-x network, built on  LoRaWAN™ open standard technology, offers private businesses, manufacturers, and public institutions the ability to connect to “things” remotely and collect data from them via inexpensive, low power devices.

In 2015, they joined the Accelerator Centre in order to leverage the mentoring and resources available to startups to help their business grow. “We came to the Accelerator Centre for the mentorship opportunities. We had a lot of great ideas in the beginning, but there wasn’t necessarily a market fit. The mentors helped us through that,” explains CEO and Co-founder Ryan Hickey.

New IoT Projects

A recent development with the Region of Waterloo will result in Canada’s first Smart City Water Monitoring project utilizing the LoRaWAN network. Currently, the Region collects data on its water supply through a manual series of data collections from over 700 wells. The delays in data collection limits the ability for the Region to make decisions on it’s important water supply. The implementation of low-cost monitoring devices connected to the eleven-x network allows for real-time data and automated event-driven alerts that have the potential to save time and money and provide better quality services to residents.

Expanded Network

As a response to the increasing demand for Smart City programs nationwide, eleven-x announced this week the expansion of their network to 22 markets covering 60% of Canada’s population. “Our coast-to-coast network expansion supports Smart City programs, enabling application and low-cost device connectivity to take IoT to another level and reinforces our leadership position. The list projects we are involved in continues to grow alongside the numerous organizations across Canada looking to reduce costs, increase productivity and enhance their service offerings.” says Chairman and Co-Founder Dan Mathers.

Leading the Way 

As leaders in the Canadian IoT space, eleven-x has also expanded their role within the LoRa Alliance, a global association of some of the world’s top companies which provides open standard technology for secure, low-cost, low power IoT connectivity,. The transition to the Contributor Member level will allow the Alliance to leverage eleven-x’s expertise to further innovation in the global IoT space.

The worldwide IoT market is expected to continue growing rapidly and is estimated to be valued at more than $10B by 2023. As the market expands, eleven-x will continue to innovate and lead the way in Canadian IoT connectivity solutions.

Posted on

Swift Labs and Miovision team up to make smart city magic

1024px-Mexico_City-12

Miovision – a company with a history of teaming up in the Waterloo Region sandbox – has just announced its most recent strategic partnership: with hardware design and testing startup Swift Labs.

Swift Labs and Miovision are both the sort of hardcore, engineering-focused company that’s becoming the hallmark of Waterloo Region tech, and they’ve joined forces on a mysterious project codenamed “Magic Sensor”. According to McBride, developing the prototype meant Swift Labs “stretched the laws of physics beyond what we thought was possible.”

NDAs are keeping details mum, but the tea leaves suggest a wireless, connected sensor designed specially for the smart city. Miovision is no stranger to smart sensors: the company’s flagship product, Spectrum, tracks vehicle movement in real-time, collecting data that planners use to make roads and cities more efficient.

Swift Labs specializes in wireless hardware, with particular focus on regulatory and compliance testing: whatever the two companies are cooking up, it’ll probably play nicely with others. Swift Labs prides itself on working with the world’s top labs to make sure their clients have full predictability before entering the certification cycle.

“Smart cities are going to be driven by the Internet of Things,” said Miovision CEO Kurtis McBride. “Cities are basically made up of little point-problems. Some of the larger, more well-known companies are coming in with a top-down approach, saying ‘you’ve been a dumb city for a long time, now we’re going to make you a smart city, just pay us oodles of money.’ 

“Our approach is to come in at the point-problem level. Focus on intersections, focus on data-collection, focus on parking. Understand the real problems, and come up with smaller tools to actually solve them, but always with a mind to the bigger picture: how it will all come together to create a smart city. We’ve found an incremental approach is a lot better than one-time, transformational change.”

For Swift Labs, the partnership was most unique for its intimacy.

“Miovision is a big company with a really strong reputation for its engineering talent,” said Swift Labs co-founder and CEO Anthony Middleton. “But the team really trusted us and enabled us to provide services to them. In a way, we were able to augment the teams. Rather than just be stand-off and deliver a service or product in six weeks, we really integrated ourselves and embedded ourselves within their teams to understand their use-cases, customers, and culture. This delivery wasn’t stand alone, we were really enabled by Miovision and I think that’s reflected in the result.”

As Miovision brings the “Magic Sensor” to market, details will start trickling out. For now, McBride and Middleton are basking in the success of a locally-grown partnership bearing fruit.

The biggest surprise that came from these firms collaborating?

“Anthony hitting the date,” said McBride. “It was impossible.”

Photo: Mexico City-12 by Edmund Garman is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Posted on

Miovision Celebrates 10 Years of Innovation and Success

Looking back at the success of the AC’s first Graduate

McBrideIt’s been almost 7 years since Miovision became the Accelerator Centre’s first graduate and started down the path of defining what the next generation of tech companies looked like in Waterloo Region.

The company came into the AC when three students were looking to commercialize an idea that would change how cities think about tracking and managing traffic flow. CEO, Kurtis McBride had spent one too many days sitting in a chair at an intersection with a clipboard counting cars – he knew it could be done better.

Since then Miovision has evolved as a pioneer in city planning technologies, allowing planners to map the flow of traffic at key intersections and make better decisions about how to create smart cities.

The AC is extremely proud to see our first Graduate celebrate their 10th anniversary, marking them as a leader in smart city engineering and a pillar in the Waterloo Region tech community.

“I knew when Kurtis and his Co-Founders first applied they were ideal candidates for the AC,” said Gary Pooley, CFO and initial board member of the Accelerator Centre. “They were truly engaged with the program and showed tremendous focus and dedication to building a great business. It is a great pleasure to see how far they have come and an honour to celebrate their success.”

“The Accelerator Centre has played a huge role in Miovision’s success,” said McBride. “They provided us with the mentorship, guidance and resources that have helped us build the company we are today.”

Miovision has also played a tremendous role in the success of the AC. During their time here the founders were always focused on giving back, sharing knowledge and acting as advisors to other AC Clients. Today that tradition continues with McBride sitting as member of the AC Board helping to guide the success of the AC itself.

The AC Staff and Mentors congratulate the team at Miovision on continuing to raise the bar and define success for Waterloo Region!

 

Posted on

Feature on AC Grad Miovision in Wired Magazine

Miovision is, in many ways, answering a call from cities worldwide that are seeking ways of unclogging congested roadways without building more of them. Technology like Miovision is developing could help make travel less painful while addressing broader societal problems like pollution and driver fatalities. But while the size of the market is vast, so is the competition from entrenched players and other startups looking to bring novel technologies to market.

That’s one reason Miovision plans to use this cash infusion to expand its technology beyond car counting and turn it into a traffic management system for so-called “smart cities.” Until now, Miovision has helped cities collect data on what’s happening at a given intersection, by installing its video systems at that intersection and analyzing the data afterward.

But simply providing the data, McBride realized, could make Miovision just another commodity product. After all, there are other video detection systems out there, as well as lower tech options, like magnetic loops embedded in the road that record passing traffic. Now, McBride wants to help cities find practical ways to use that data as well.

The company is slowly rolling out new hardware that will connect switchboards at each intersection to the cloud so street lights can communicate with each other and respond to traffic data from the video feed in real time. In other words, where once traffic data was updated every year or so by a college kid at the side of the road, now, it’ll be updated every instant.

To read the full article, click here.