During a recent trial of our yet-to-be-released innovative drone platform HubX, a widespread telecommunications outage saw Optus customers lose access to the internet on November 8th.
Our team was able to continue a live trial with drones in the air thanks to an integration with Elsight’s (ELS) connection confidence Halo technology.
Introducing HubX
The HubX drone platform is a turnkey solution allowing businesses to operate drones from anywhere, to seamlessly collect data anywhere, anytime, off-grid and on the move.
Enabling autonomous data collection and improving operational safety for a range of industries, including mining, agriculture, and security.
HubX consists of an Australian-built all-terrain trailer which is powered by a solar and battery system to support continuous self-sustaining drone operations in remote locations.
The all-terrain solar trailer is fitted with a powerful watch tower, which acts as a connectivity platform and gateway to DJI’s Drone-in-a-Box (DiaB). This includes environmental sensors and a security system.
HubX's modular design across software and hardware allows it to be easily adapted to meet site and data requirements.
To reduce barriers to operating BVLOS even further, Hubx can be self-operated or our team can handle the operations, using our ReOC license.
How HubX remained operational
On November 8th, one of Australia's largest telecommunications providers suffered an outage resulting in customers going offline for around 12 hours. For BVLOS operations losing connection to a drone mid-flight is not an option and that is why we've worked with Elsight from the beginning to ensure HubX always has a connection to the internet.
In doing so, we specifically integrated Elsight’s (ELS) connection confidence Halo technology, allowing HubX to have multiple connections and redundancy to the internet.
At the time HubX was in an active trial on a mine in remote NSW connected to the internet via two Optus and two Telstra SIM cards with a satellite connection via Starlink.
Thanks to Elsight's prediction algorithm, the Halo device promptly detected network degradation on the Optus connections and switched the main connection away from the Optus SIM cards, allowing HubX to continue operating unaffected.
