LoRaWAN a community built wireless network for your things.
Heater.
Posts: 21,230
Just a heads up on a brilliant kickstarter project.
If you have not heard of LoRa it is a low power, low bandwidth (~50Kbps), secure, wireless mesh networking protocol with range of up to 10 miles or so. See here: https://www.lora-alliance.org/ Ideal for communicating with your distributed things.
I have been interested in the progress of LoRa for a year or so now, ever since a local electronics design company here (Espotel) was doing some experiments with it. With great success. What put's you off of course is the high cost of the LoRa base stations available. The actual radios for your "things" are very small, low power and cheap.
Now I read that there is LoRa coverage for the whole of Amsterdam. Basically put together by the hacker community there using very cheap equipment. See here: http://thethingsnetwork.org/
They have a Kickstarter project going on now. Get your LoRa base station for only 200 Euro and the things radios for 40 Euro (includes an Uno)
These guys seem to be legit and competent so I'm throwing in to their pot. We want to get Helsinki covered
Just thought you might be interested. I have no connection to these chaps.
If you have not heard of LoRa it is a low power, low bandwidth (~50Kbps), secure, wireless mesh networking protocol with range of up to 10 miles or so. See here: https://www.lora-alliance.org/ Ideal for communicating with your distributed things.
I have been interested in the progress of LoRa for a year or so now, ever since a local electronics design company here (Espotel) was doing some experiments with it. With great success. What put's you off of course is the high cost of the LoRa base stations available. The actual radios for your "things" are very small, low power and cheap.
Now I read that there is LoRa coverage for the whole of Amsterdam. Basically put together by the hacker community there using very cheap equipment. See here: http://thethingsnetwork.org/
They have a Kickstarter project going on now. Get your LoRa base station for only 200 Euro and the things radios for 40 Euro (includes an Uno)
These guys seem to be legit and competent so I'm throwing in to their pot. We want to get Helsinki covered
Just thought you might be interested. I have no connection to these chaps.
Comments
National wide networks targeting internet of things such as critical infrastructure, confidential personal data or critical functions for the society has a special need for secure communication. This has been solved by several layer of encryption:
Unique Network key (EUI64) and ensure security on network level
Unique Application key (EUI64) ensure end to end security on application level
Device specific key (EUI128)
Of course we don't trust any of that and will be encrypting data in our applications just in case. In the same way that we use HTTPS over WIFI.
I think this LoRa thing is going to be huge. Yesterday, googling around, I find companies are like Microchip are tooling up to make LoRa modules. http://www.microchip.com/pagehandler/en-us/technology/personalareanetworks/technology/lora.html#utm_medium=Press-Release&utm_term=RN2483_PR_3-2-15&utm_content=WPD&utm_campaign=LoRa+Module
They have this nice development board coming in February http://www.microchip.com/DevelopmentTools/ProductDetails.aspx?PartNO=dm164138
I we can use it without becoming dependant on the cell phone providers I will be very happy. Hence interest in the Kickstater community LoRa project.
I'm in & pledging - let's get Oslo wired!
Erlend
Now it's time to unwire Oslo
We are backing that Kickstarter but it's going to take till next summer at least to become reality. In the mean time I'm thinking of getting some of those Microchip modules. No idea what to do for a base station but there is a company nearby that has been experimenting with LoRa for a year or so and we know the CTO quite well...
About LoRa - it is incredible how more and more advanced modulation techniques continue to push the limits; I could not understand why such a long range, but LoRa claim to read good data even 20dB below the noise floor, and it seems to be very robust to all sorts of interference. It's going to be exiting to see how this plays out - it's like SciFi, really.
Erlend
Most of the way it all works dates back 20 or more years and the awareness of what the traffic is doing at an intersection is pretty crude and limited. Which is something my current company is trying to fix. Not much luck so far, the entrenched controller suppliers have a near monopoly market and are not interested in improving anything much.
LoRa gets it's amazing low power and long range by only offering low data rates. I've read that it can be good for 50Kbps or so but I have also read that available transceivers from Microchip or Semtec are much lower than that. I have not worked it all out yet.
I'm tempted to spring for some LoRa kit from here https://www.cooking-hacks.com/shop/wireless/extreme-range-lora and do some experiments with a Raspberry Pi. Not a cheap start but likely I can get the boss to pay
Jim
My colleague backed the kickstarter I mentioned in the opening post. No sign of the goods yet. Although I gather there were some encouraging news updates recently.
Meanwhile I keep meaning to order LoRa modules from elsewhere but always seem to get distracted.
So if you don't want the hassle of the backbone installment,
and you don't mind using certified modules and paying the French company $5 (or less)/year/device.
Talk to some companies and they will insist that LoRa requires a base station and and backbone connection etc. For example the guys from Microchip I talked to in the Sensors Expo San Jose.
There does seem to be a push to have LoRa as service provided like the mobile phone network.
On the other hand, there are plenty of suppliers now of tiny, cheap LoRa modules that can be used point-to-point on their own.
The former WAN solution is OK form me as long as I own the base station and control the backbone with my own servers.