addanode is a South African industrial technology company. Our mission is simple: bring leading-edge Industrial IoT to emerging markets at a price that makes sense here. We build the hardware and the software in-house, so we can deliver end-to-end solutions that fit local conditions — and finalist places in four 2026 award categories — the Africa Tech Week Awards (AI Innovation; GreenTech & Circular Economy) and the Nedbank Oliver Top Empowerment Awards (Digital Transformation; Sustainable Business of the Year) — say we're on the right track (the full story).
addaScan, based in Johannesburg, designs and integrates machine vision inspection systems for manufacturers across South Africa. Its automated inspection solutions cover label verification, date code inspection, surface defect detection and dimensional measurement, with each station developed around your products, inspection requirements and production line.
An addanode brand. addaScan and CISH are sister brands under addanode: addaScan designs and integrates machine vision inspection stations, and CISH coordinates wider production-line projects.
Use addaScan for inspection applications, equipment selection and station integration, or request a vision assessment for your line.
addanode is a South African Industrial IoT company based in Douglasdale, Johannesburg, founded in 2025 by Frank Guo, the founder and former CTO of Informed Decisions. The company is new; the engineering team is not. It has been building IoT hardware and software since 2016, has deployed more than 120,000 devices, and designs its core field devices and the addaNet platform in-house.
| addanode at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2025; team and technology since 2016, formerly Informed Decisions |
| Founder | Frank Guo, founder and former CTO of Informed Decisions |
| Based in | Douglasdale, Johannesburg, Gauteng |
| Deployed | More than 120,000 devices deployed by the team since 2016 |
| Hardware designed in-house | 4G data terminals (N5, and N5W for water quality), LoRa industrial gateways and nodes (N2, N3), and a LoRaWAN gateway (NG) and nodes (N4) — details |
| Gateway router | IGR300 industrial gateway router for PLC and complex-system integration, supplied, configured and supported by addanode |
| Connectivity | LoRaWAN and 4G for wide-area links; LoRa, Wi-Fi and Ethernet on site |
| Protocols | 500+ at the edge, across analogue and digital I/O, field buses, proprietary instrument protocols, PLC, VSD and UPS protocols, and TCP/IP and MQTT |
| Platform | addaNet, also working with third-party sensors and existing PLCs |
| Focus | Industrial IoT, water and mining |
| Team | Founders with 50+ years of combined hardware and software engineering experience — meet them |
| Named project | Completed project with Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa, with water specialist Talbot |
| Recognition | As Informed Decisions: 2019 MTN Business IoT Solution of the Year and Best Industry 4.0 Solution. As addanode: finalist in four 2026 award categories |
The team started in 2016 as Informed Decisions, a Johannesburg company that designed and produced its own IoT hardware and ran it on a private LoRa network. In 2019 it won the MTN Business IoT Solution of the Year award, along with Best Industry 4.0 Solution. Informed Decisions stopped trading in 2024, and its hardware and software development team moved across as a whole to become the core of addanode, founded in 2025.
Hardware and software in-house, affordable, vendor-neutral, and engineered for local reality.
Read more →The engineers and operators who design the hardware, build the software and commission it on your site.
Read more →The addaNet platform, our devices, and how we connect to the equipment you already own.
Read more →Where we work, who we serve, and how we support sites across South Africa and the SADC region.
Read more →The platforms, integrators and standards we work with — including our delivery partner CISH.
Read more →Mission: bring affordable, cutting-edge technology to frontier and emerging markets. Vision: to be Africa's leading end-to-end Industrial IoT solutions provider — measuring precisely, aiming clearly, and closing the gap between where operations are and where they could be.
Talk to addanodeEvaluating suppliers? What addanode is as an IoT solutions provider in South Africa sets out the company, the in-house build and the delivery model in one place — and how to choose an industrial IoT provider is the vendor-neutral version of the same question.