Dear Folks,

After years of fiddling with embedded systems, more or less as a hobby (and in a professional context many years ago), I have recently embarked on a business venture to supply bespoke wireless sensor monitoring and control solutions, focusing particularly on farming and agriculture requirements but not limited to these.

The business is to based around a set of essential hardware and software building blocks, which I am developing here, so as to be reasonably independent of suppliers other than the major chip manufacturers. These building blocks provide a suitable data transport and processing infrastructure to which different types of sensors and actuators are connected depending on clients' needs. Much of the value add is then provided by applications that process the sensor data and display this, or enable remote control, using web technology.

The most fundamental technical requirement is for a long distance, very low power, wireless mesh capability to operate in difficult New Zealand terrain, which is also positioned to integrate with the 'internet of things'. Consequently current development is based on 6LoWPAN and also uses ARM processor technology.

The plan is first to complete development of the critical technical building blocks, then produce some prototype solutions to demonstrate, then market the service.

However, progressing this on my own is a huge elephant to swallow (actually with just one other partner on the web side of things), so I am looking for new colleagues, partners, in the Wellington area, with embedded systems skills and experience and an innovative, entrepreneurial outlook. The main outlay is time and effort rather than funding.

So I'd be keen to make contact with anybody who could get excited by a venture such as this, and who has the skills and time available.

Best wishes

Ron