Selected work
What we’ve shipped.
Four case studies across smart metering, industrial RF, and the small-but-essential systems that hold them together. Where clients have asked us not to be named, we describe the work rather than the company.
A decade on three penlight batteries.
Smart water metering · Firmware · Production
The problem. A Southern African smart-water-metering OEM was building its flagship product: a battery-powered meter that had to live in the ground for a decade, report consumption wirelessly, and survive without intervention. Battery replacement isn’t a service call — it’s a write-off. Every microamp counted.
What we built. The flagship product’s firmware, end to end. Ultra-low-power MCU operation, woken only by water flow and by the RF schedule. A custom wireless stack that tolerated dropped packets and long radio silences. Sigfox and LoRa connectivity. A production-test system that exercised every meter at the end of the line before it was shipped.
Outcome. A meter that hits its design life of ten years on a handful of AA cells. Tens of thousands of units in the field. The production-test system became the OEM’s reference rig — used by their contract manufacturer to qualify every batch.
Highlights
- Ultra-low-power design (single-digit µA average)
- Sigfox + LoRa, custom MAC layer
- Production-line test software
- 10-year field life on AA cells
Turning a dumb electricity meter into a smart one.
Smart electricity metering · IoT · Manufacturing
The problem. An African smart-meter startup had a partner-developed “dumb” electricity meter with an on/off relay. The need: a piggyback board that would turn it into a Sigfox-connected smart meter without redesigning the host. Power budget tight. Antenna budget tighter. Sigfox certification non-negotiable.
What we built. Schematic, PCB and firmware for the piggyback board. A custom serial protocol with bespoke encryption between the meter and the board. Sigfox uplink and downlink messages, carefully compressed to fit the protocol’s tiny payload window. Single-phase and three-phase variants. Production-test software for the contract manufacturer. ICASA certification (in partnership with iSERT). When the original Sigfox module went end-of-life mid-project, we re-spun the design — and the new variant achieved Sigfox class 0 (the strongest signal class) inside a 3-square-cm antenna footprint.
Outcome. First production batch of 1,000 units built and tested successfully. Both single- and three-phase variants ICASA-approved and ready for the next production run.
Highlights
- Sigfox class 0 in 3 cm² antenna
- Custom encryption on serial link
- ICASA certified (single- and three-phase)
- 1,000-unit first production run
Where commercial networks don’t reach.
Industrial RF · Custom networks · Field deployment
The problem. A platinum mine needed to get tailings-dam sensor data back to a central point. Commercial cellular and LoRaWAN networks didn’t cover the area, and bringing them in was uneconomical for the sensor count.
What we built. A custom LoRa gateway and a private radio network designed around the site’s topography. End-devices sized for the sensor power budget. Backhaul to a central point so the mine’s existing systems could read the data.
The bigger lesson. Most “we need LoRaWAN” briefs in South African industry are actually “we need a network that does what LoRaWAN does, on our terms, for a tenth of the cost.” Custom radio networks are alive and well — and often the right answer.
Highlights
- Custom LoRa gateway hardware
- Private radio network design
- Difficult terrain, no cellular
- Backhaul to central SCADA
From research to a room full of engineers.
AI / deep learning · Workshops · Knowledge transfer
The problem. A South African defence-research organisation wanted to bring its engineering staff up to speed on deep learning — not just what it is, but what’s actually practical to deploy on the hardware they already have.
What we built. A practitioner-focused AI workshop, built from first-principles deep-learning models implemented from scratch in Python. The companion report and demonstration code became the team’s reference material.
Why it matters. Esyber doesn’t only ship products — sometimes the most valuable thing is to put the knowledge in your team’s hands so they can ship the next ten products themselves.
Highlights
- First-principles AI workshop
- Python implementations from scratch
- Companion report for ongoing reference
Could yours be next?
If any of these sound like the kind of problem you’re carrying around, let’s have the conversation.