We build measurement systems that stay in the field.

Our standard

If you monitor water levels, drinking water or water quality, you have two non-negotiable requirements: the measurement has to be right, and the system has to stay running. For years. In the field. Without a maintenance visit every few weeks.

Our portfolio is built for exactly that standard: up to 10 years of battery life, IP68 from −25 °C to +85 °C, TLS end-to-end, and a fully open software stack. We believe that a utility or an environmental agency must be able to audit its own sensors. That's why our Bluetooth tools, our web configuration interface and our SDI-12 platform are open source.

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History

• 2007, Founded in BochumTerraTransfer GmbH is founded as a specialised manufacturer of environmental monitoring technology focused on the water sector.
• 2008, First Aquatos generationThe Aquatos product family enters the market. The first loggers operate on 433 MHz radio and dial-up modems.
• 2010, First gauge networks in the Ruhr regionBuild-out of a fleet of several hundred loggers at LINEG. The AHEM research project starts with measurement points at the Bigge reservoir (Ruhrverband), the Bochum tip and the LINEG measurement network on the Lower Rhine. Logger numbers from this era (021xxx, 100xxx) are still tracked in our maintenance database today.
• 2011, Swiss authority & German Founders’ PrizeThe Department of the Environment of Canton Thurgau becomes a customer, and remains one to this day. The same year sees the start of deliveries to Ruhrverband, a board partnership still actively maintained today. TerraTransfer is nominated for the German Founders’ Prize (Deutscher Gründerpreis) in the StartUp category, on a proposal from Sparkasse Bochum.
• 2012, Own radio platformTransition to in-house radio hardware and a proprietary stack for gauge networks. GSM/GPRS becomes the standard for the remote-transmission generation.
• 2014, International expansionFirst gauge station at the Rhine Falls in Schaffhausen, still one of the iconic TerraTransfer sites. Carl Hamm GmbH joins as an industrial customer. First devices are delivered to the Federal Waterways Authority Wilhelmshaven and to Inter Act / WIONIQ as a Dutch distribution partner.
• 2015, The NetherlandsHoogheemraadschap van Delfland begins effluent monitoring at greenhouse operations in and around Delft, continuously extended ever since.
• 2017, Aquatos in the High AlpsFirst sensor strings and climate stations on the Wildstrubel massif in the Bernese Alps. Helicopter logistics with Swisshelicopter become a standing element of service deployments in Switzerland.
• 2018, Bluetooth commissioning and long-term service contractsRelease of the open-source SDI-12 commissioning platform with Bluetooth 5, browser-based setup, no app required. The same year sees the start of long-term maintenance contracts with Emschergenossenschaft / Lippeverband and the Bislich-Landesgrenze dike association.
• 2021, Kisters OEM partnership and HyQuest distributionKisters AG sources TerraTransfer hardware for its own solutions. Distribution with HyQuest Solutions begins for Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific.
• 2022, LTE-M / NB-IoT generationThe Aquatos Web LTX (Type 1500) replaces the GSM generation. LTE-M with NB-IoT fallback instead of 2G. TLS end-to-end. Long battery life from a single pack.
• 2024, New marketsFirst deliveries to the Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) and to the Berlin Senate Department for the Environment.
• 2025, New consortium projectsStart of the consortial projects IoT4SRGK Gütersloh (January, heavy-rain hazard maps) and RIVERCAST (October, AI-based flood forecasting with Erftverband, BO-I-T and FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg).
• 2026, Aquatos around the globeActive devices on every continent except Antarctica, from Scotland, Wales and England across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Sweden to Oman, Uzbekistan, Australia and New Zealand. The footprint keeps growing.

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Research & Development

We don’t just build hardware — we contribute it to publicly-funded consortium research projects, both active and completed:

• RIVERCAST (2025–2028)EU ERDF/JTF project on AI-based real-time flood forecasting. TerraTransfer provides the gauge and rainfall measurements in the observation network.
• IoT4SRGK Gütersloh (2025–2027)Real-time sensor network calibrating the heavy-rain hazard maps of the city of Gütersloh. Aquatos loggers capture rainfall, air temperature, soil moisture and evapotranspiration.
• AHEM (2009–2012)North Rhine-Westphalia research project „Automatic Hydrological Real-time Model" (German: Automatisches Hydrologisches Echtzeitmodell), funded through the regional Wachstum für Bochum programme. Three field sites: a coal-mining tip in Bochum (City of Bochum), the Niep and Alpen subsidence zones on the Lower Rhine (LINEG) and the Bigge reservoir catchment (Ruhrverband). Scientific support from a four-person team at the Geography Institute of the Ruhr University Bochum.
• TaMIS (2015–2017)BMBF research project „Reservoir Monitoring and Information System for Natural Hazards" (FKZ 03G0854C). Bi-directional radio-networked measurement networks for water level, soil moisture and temperature, with OGC-compliant SOS interface to the Wupperverband control centre. Project lead Marcel Delker. Lessons learned for today’s NB-IoT/LTE-M generation.
• INTENT (2022–2023)EU ERDF / REACT-EU project (RU-1-1-037A). Low-cost probe system that uses electrical conductivity as a proxy for discharge and dissolved major ions. Consortium with Bochumer Institut für Technologie (BO-I-T) and Okeanos Smart Data Solutions; associated partners Erftverband (nine sites in the Erft catchment), TH Köln and TU München. Direct ancestor of today’s Aquatos Web LTX.
• SDI-12 with Bluetooth 5Open commissioning interface for SDI-12 sensors over Bluetooth 5. Browser-based configuration without an app.

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Awards

• Senkrechtstarter Bochum 2007One of the winners of the very first Senkrechtstarter competition run by Bochum Wirtschaftsentwicklung, the pioneering year of what is today the most renowned founder competition in the region. Senkrechtstarter Bochum →
• German Founders’ Prize 2011Finalist in the StartUp category, on a proposal from Sparkasse Bochum. From the jury statement: “… by combining existing hardware in a new way with intelligent software, the company replaces tedious manual data collection that would otherwise only happen at long intervals, opening up a new quality of data analysis.” Profile at Deutscher Gründerpreis →

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Location

Ottostr. 19a · 44867 Bochum · Germany
We design and manufacture in Bochum. Service, repair and calibration are handled in-house.

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Committed to open standards

We participate in SDI-12 standardisation and actively contribute to open-source tooling. Our sensor stack is published on GitHub under the MIT licence, free to use, adapt and audit.