Cowbell Engineering

Cowbell Engineering Co., Ltd, established in 1974, headquartered in Nagano, is a company that develops, manufactures, and sells hotel card locks, payment terminals, and Azure-based IoT gateways. One of the priority directions of Cowbell includes IoT solutions for agricultural equipment. The NailEdge sensor gateway helps to improve operational efficiency of agricultural hardware with IoT-based data acquiring and remote control.  

Cowbell’s clients often reported that the price they pay for IoT operating, such as connectivity and cloud services, was too high. Moreover, they expected devices to function in outdoor and remote areas, which implies battery-powered options operating independently.  

Cowbell united with 1NCE to overcome the above challenges and enable lower costs and extended IoT software for their NailEdge sensor gateway. With 1NCE IoT Lifetime Flat subscription, Cowbell eliminated recurring monthly communication fees, that used to be a solid financial burden for the provider and the consumers. The flat-rate pricing model implies predictable costs, which means the problem of uncertainty and fluctuating network costs vanished. On the other hand, 1NCE OS provided several crucial features. The IoT Integrator enabled device-to-device communication without the need for cloud connectivity, reducing reliance on expensive cloud services. The Device Inspector allowed remote monitoring and management of devices, ensuring that even devices in hard-to-reach areas could be controlled and maintained from afar. Additionally, the Energy Saver function optimized data communication, reducing power consumption and extending the battery life of devices operating in off-grid locations.  Through these solutions, Cowbell Engineering was able to reduce communication and cloud costs by 100%. Furthermore, the development time for their IoT gateway devices was shortened by approximately 40%.