Every year, but especially around Christmas and other popular (end-of-year) celebrations, many oysters are stolen from oyster farms around the globe not only resulting in loss of income for the farmers (the ostreiculturists) but also in damage done to the farms. Oyster farms tend to be spread out over rather large areas making monitoring difficult or even impossible. A French company now has come to the rescue with an IoT spy oyster.

The spy oyster developed by FlexSense is a fake oyster stuffed with electronics including an accelerometer and a radio. When placed between real oysters unexpected activity and movements will wake it up, and make it send a text message through the cloud to the farmer’s mobile phone. The cloud in this case is a wireless waterproof network run by FlexSense.

 
spy oyster with beacon
Transparent spy oyster demo with radio beacon

The electronic oyster can remain undercover for five years before its batteries need recharging. It does not have a visible antenna and uses special wireless techniques to communicate from below the water surface with the network beacons above the surface.

Pearl hunters are in for a surprise when they open a spy oyster instead of a real one.