South Oxfordshire tech company wins funding to help fight rural crime

Business News

By Nicky Godding

30 September 2019

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A South Oxfordshire company has won funding to develop a technology to help fight rural crime

uWatch Ltd, based in Cholsey, South Oxfordshire secured the funding from AgRIA (Agri-Tech Research Innovation Accelerator) supported by the European Union Development Fund and led by Rothamsted Research to develop innovative technology to assist the agricultural industry and boost economic growth.

uWatch Ltd has spent four years developing a generic, sensor rich, battery powered IoT hub called “The Cube”, that has many applications especially in rural areas.

The company will be working with the electronics department at University College London for six months aiming to dramatically increase The Cube’s remote sensor range from 20 metres to significantly higher, double the battery life and interface with intelligent sensors that could detect polluting gases, sample water quality and detect gates being opened to a farm when they shouldn’t be.

The Cube is already at the forefront of fighting rural crime, as it is an instantly deployable device which operates without the need for Wi-Fi or mains power that will alert your smartphone in under 30 seconds if there are any intruders.

The Cube was awarded with the polices “Secured by Design” approval in 2018 and is now recommended nationally for a variety of security applications.

Louis Bennett, Product manager at uWatch, said: “The Cube is unique. It has a range of sensors including PIR, GPS, Shock, Temperature, Bluetooth and a Day/Night Camera. We can get 400 alerts from one set of AA batteries and it works anywhere using its in-built roaming SIM. The rural community can use The Cube to combat rural crime together and share information to protect themselves.

“Rural Crime is one of many applications for what is a sensor rich computer that fits in your hand, which can be redeployed to different locations and reconfigured in seconds, straight from your smart phone.”

uWatch currently operate in numerous markets including: pest control, home monitoring, and numerous reals of security such as rural crime, shipping containers, vans, caravans and boats.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.