Myriota CEO Dr. Alex Grant with one of the company’s life satellite transmitters. Image provided by Myriota.

Satellite communications startup Myriota will open a ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) laboratory in Adelaide after winning a Future Funds Grant from South Australia.

Under the terms of the grant, the government will match Myriota’s $1.36 million investment to open the Adelaide facility, which they claim will create 50 new jobs in the state for software and hardware developers, and data networking and satellite communications professionals.

The announcement follows space startup Fleet’s Future Jobs Fund award and shores up an increasing concentration of investment in ‘new space’ satellite and space communications infrastructure in the South Australian capital.

Myriota is a startup based around commercialised technology developed at the University of South Australia, offering an ‘ultra-low-cost satellite IoT service’. Myriota develops very small satellite transmitters that send low powered messages directly to a constellation of low-earth-orbit nano satellites, which relay the messages to earth, where they are decoded and sent to the end user.

Current deployments of Myriota’s tech include asset tracking and monitoring, agricultural water monitoring and environmental monitoring. Dr. Alex Grant, Myriota CEO, welcomed the news of the award.

“Our low-cost IoT system has been deployed in field trials for months now, and there are hundreds of companies here and overseas interested in using our product to provide connectivity for a huge range of applications,” Dr Grant said.

“This new IoT lab will enable us to build on our core technology and apply it across a wide range of industries including agriculture, defence, utilities, environmental monitoring, asset tracking and logistics. Our system works from any location on earth, and we look forward to taking our product global.”