Meet The Maker
REGULAR
now if it wasn’t for us being at DoES Liverpool. They
gave us a break.
“One of the things I like is that we still refer people
to the makerspace as well. If a potential client comes
to us with an idea, we will sometimes say, ‘You don’t
want to spend loads and loads of money with us, but if
you go to the makerspace, there will be someone
there who can support you while you start off.’ It’s a
supportive community, and it doesn’t cost very much
to join.CLIENT WORK
“Everything we do is tailored to the client. We don’t
particularly invent things. We have one project, Push
to Talk, which is our in-house product that we’re
developing with Liverpool City Council as part of the
Council’s 5G project, and that’s going out to
people’s homes.
“The Environment Agency project that we’re
working on is a live level sensor. Because of the way
the Environment Agency monitors its rivers, they have
a big base station where you can see at that particular
point what the level is, but you don’t necessarily know
what the water level is like ten miles down the river,
because there isn’t any data being gathered until the
next base station.
“They wanted us to develop some smaller sensors
that they could tap into, through which they could
monitor the water levels along the length of rivers.
We’ve been using a new technology called NB-IoT
(Narrowband IoT ), which is a bit like LoRaWAN signal.
We started developing that while we were at DoES,
and we’ve done various different versions of it. We’ve
also created some bespoke sensor hardware for them,
so that they can train their staff on how to use these
small devices so that they can get the data they want
out of those sensors. We’ve done quite a lot of work
with the Environment Agency, including a national
training scheme for these devices.
“We’re currently at a staff level of five. We do a lot
of stuff for how small we are. This week we’re just
finishing off a build for the National Science and Media
Museum in Bradford. We’re putting together all theRight^
The river sensors that
DefProc built for the
Environment Agency
have recently gone
out into the fieSd and
are being tested