[HH] IOT and LoRaWAN™ (Long Range wide-area networks)

[Stephen Ronan]

This article, with accompanying video, describes a city-wide LoRaWan
network for IoT being established in Amsterdam within 4-6 weeks during
the summer of 2015 using 10 gateways costing $1200 each.

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/19/the-things-network-wants-to-make-every-city-smart-starting-with-amsterdam/

There has been a Kickstarter campaign aimed at lowering the cost of
gateways to under $250 each
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/419277966/the-things-network as
well as provide Arduino Unos with LoRaWan compatibility.

The Things Network <http://thethingsnetwork.org/> has links to efforts
around the world to replicate the Amstardam project in other cites,
including one in Boston led by W. David Stephenson and Chris Rezendes
of the Boston IoT Meetup Group

http://www.stephensonstrategies.com/free-citywide-iot-data-networks-will-catapult-iot-spread-to-hyperspeed/
http://www.stephensonstrategies.com/boston-crowdsourced-campaign-to-give-city-1st-citywide-free-iot-data-network-in-us/

One can sign up to receive info at http://thethingsnetwork.org/c/boston

 Stephen Ronan

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 10:36 PM, Stephen Ronan <sronan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone here have familiarity with LoRaWAN? Know of any budding related
> activities/planned deployments in this area? I'd be curious to learn
> more... Below is from an IBM press release last year:
>
> "For years, the enormous potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for
> business  — to collect data from scores of devices, analyze and act
> upon it to make quick and accurate decisions — has been held back by
> technical challenges such as limited battery life, short communication
> distances, high costs and a lack of standards.
> "The technology, called LoRaWAN™ (Long Range wide-area networks),
> overcomes these hurdles. Based on a new specification and protocol for
> low-power, wide-area networks that taps an unlicensed wireless
> spectrum, the technology can connect sensors over long distances,
> while offering optimal battery life and requiring minimal
> infrastructure. This allows it to deliver such benefits as improved
> mobility, security, bi-directionality, and localization/positioning,
> as well as lower costs.
>
> "In support of LPWAN technology, IBM, Semtech, and other companies
> also announced the LoRa™ Alliance, a new association to support and
> develop and standardization LoRaWAN.
>
> "The LoRa Alliance aims to combine hardware and software based on the
> LoRaWAN standard for telecom operators and network operators, enabling
> them to offer IoT services to both businesses and consumers. From
> sensors and machines to monitors and wearables, soon connecting
> billions of devices together could be as seamless as sending an SMS to
> your local telecom provider.
>
> "LoRaWAN sensors can communicate over distances of more than 100 km
> (62 miles) in favorable environments, 15 km (9 miles) in typical
> semi-rural environments and more than 2 km (1.2 miles) in dense urban
> environments at data rates from 300 bit/s up to 100 kbit/s. This makes
> them well suited for sending small amounts of data, such as GPS
> coordinates and climate readings, where broadband can’t reach. The
> sensors also require very little energy to operate; most can run for
> 10 years or more on a single AA battery and AES128 keys make
> communication tampering and eavesdropping virtually impossible...
>
> "IBM has also made the LoRaWAN protocol open source (Eclipse Public
> License) for end-node development known as “LoRaWAN in C”.