The City of Melbourne LoRaWAN IoT experience is all about harnessing new technology and digital transformation to enhance their places and increase efficiencies. In 2019, City of Melbourne engaged in a competitive pitching process to address four City Challenge locations and requesting Expressions of Interest proposals to address these challenges.
Meshed led a successful consortium of partners including AWS, Peclet, Phoria, Smart City Solutions, University of Melbourne and City Wide Services who pitched for a “Smart Argyle Square” solution. The objective of the solution was to provide citizens and visitors with a rich and engaging experience when visiting Argyle Square, with data and visualisations via a Phoria Augmented Reality (AR) phone app, as well as providing council with valuable data sets about the park’s usage.
The Phoria App allows for data collected primarily through LoRaWAN IoT connected sensors to be represented in the AR 3D experience on a user’s smartphone, as well as rich images and historical data about Argyle Square. By pointing the phone camera in the direction of the park bins, users could see their fill levels, while also seeing other useful information such as the temperature and weather data for the area.
On top of the Phoria park visitor app, the Council was able to use the free LoRaWAN connectivity of The Things Network to collect valuable data on park assets such as waste patterns, park patronage, use of the park’s public sound stage, public toilet and park seating, human activity and movement, as well as environmental data about park air-quality and micro-climates. Peclet provided an Open Data platform for creating data sets that can be published both internally and externally, as well as visualisations and dashboards for the Council users.
