Satellite communications firm Iridium has announced commercial availability of a secure, maintenance-free, solar-powered remote asset tracking and management device.

With over-the-air configuration capabilities, the Iridium Edge Solar is for vessel monitoring systems, fisheries management, tracking of freight shipping containers, scada applications, monitoring of oil and gas pipelines, and heavy equipment telematics data reporting.

The beta trials, which are nearing completion, are testing its real-time, two-way communication, over-the-air configuration ability, built-in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity and secure, ruggedised packaging. The addition of BLE technology enables development of customised deployable sensors that can be positioned on machinery, vehicles, vessels or across worksites.

“The Iridium Edge Solar is a unique and versatile solar-powered asset-tracking device, when compared to alternatives available in the industry,” said Bryan Hartin, executive vice president at Iridium. “No other solar-powered IoT tracking device matches its geographic coverage, capabilities and cost-effectiveness, and we believe the addition of BLE local wireless connectivity adds a new level of customisability for applications requiring multiple and disparate sensor readings.”

The history of solar-powered satellite IoT tracking devices has been marred by questionable field lifespan due to failures of charging batteries, solar panels and packaging susceptible to water-intrusion or cracking. These issues have been exacerbated by the lack of two-way communications with the deployed device, leaving organisations wondering if the equipment suffered a terminal malfunction.

Iridium Edge Solar resolves these issues through complete encapsulation of all vital electronics, military-grade ruggedised packaging and an, intelligent dual-power system, ensuring two-way communications delivery even in low-light conditions.

When combined with Iridium’s global coverage and services such as CloudConnect helping to simplify back-office integration through Amazon Web Services, businesses, governments and NGOs can rapidly scale and deploy this solar-powered asset-tracking device anywhere on the planet for up to ten years without maintenance.

Edge Solar now joins both the Iridium Edge and Edge Pro as finished products, each with specified, yet complementary, use cases to extend the reach of IoT services beyond cellular coverage.

Iridium is a mobile voice and data satellite communications network that spans the entire globe. It enables connections between people, organisations and assets to and from anywhere, in real time. In 2019, the company completed an upgrade of its satellite network and launched its broadband service, Certus.

Iridium Communications is headquartered in McLean, Virginia. As of the third quarter of 2020, its commercial IoT subscribers grew 20% from a year ago to 924,000 customers.