SK Telecom is using the Internet of Things to… farm eels

By definition, the Internet of Things should connect with anything, even writhing, kinda gross, but often delicious eels. SK Telecom’s latest project is aimed at showcasing its IoT skills with a pilot connected eel farm that uses a network of sensors to monitor thousands of eels, mostly autonomously. Sensors dotted across multiple 20-foot-wide tanks check on water temperature, pH and oxygen levels, Data is then collated and analyzed by the Korean carrier’s cloud system, and bounced to a simplified smartphone app, all in pretty much real time.

That unagi you scarf down at your local sushi restaurant may soon have a link to the internet of things. SK Telecom is working with eel farmers in its native South Korea to develop a system of wirelessly connected water sensors that can be monitored and managed from a smartphone. The first pilot of the IoT aquaculture management system is being tested on an eel farm in Gochang, South Korea this month. A set of sensors in dozens of 20-foot-wide eel tanks wirelessly transmit data on water temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen levels to a sensor hub (in fact, the system probably works similarly to your smart home), which in turn connects to SK Telecom’s LTE network using a machine-to-machine radio. That data is sent to Mobius, a cloud platform developed by SK Telecom for consumer and industrial internet of things apps. Mobius then routes that data to an aquaculture management server for analysis and to a smartphone app where the eel farmer can monitor the sensors in real time.