Author Archives: Paul

Meshtastic, solar nodes

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Meshtastic is a network without infrastructure—a true mesh network. However, if the goal is to achieve wide-area coverage, relying solely on portable nodes or devices installed at home is not enough. Deployment on elevated sites, ideally outside urban areas, becomes essential. One of the major advantages of this technology is that it does not require an Internet connection and consumes very little energy, making solar-powered operation a realistic and sustainable option. This also opens the door to deployment in open countryside or remote locations. With that in mind, I explored autonomous solar-powered solutions designed to extend network reach. I was able to test two of them, which turned out to be very different in both quality and price—unsurprisingly, the two aspects are closely linked.

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Milesight People Counting solutions

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For one of my clients, I had the opportunity to test several different people-counting solutions. Our requirement was for a system capable of communicating independently from the company network, such as through LoRaWAN, while also being available for purchase in single units. I turned to Milesight products, as the company offers a fairly broad range of sensors in this field. From a mechanical and hardware perspective, the sensors are generally of good quality. However, as we have seen, their performance in counting people varies greatly depending on the detection method used.

The entry-level sensors are very affordable, but the more advanced models—those based on image analysis with AI—quickly become much more expensive. Depending on the use case, each type of sensor addresses different needs, making it important to balance precision requirements against budget constraints.

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The Things Conference 2025: A Decade of Growth and a Shift Toward Diversity in IoT

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TheThingsConference took place once again in Amsterdam, marking what should have been its 8th edition. This year, however, the event carried a special significance: it celebrated the 10-year anniversary of TheThingsNetwork, now a yearly reference point for IoT professionals.

Traditionally, the conference has been strongly oriented toward the LoRaWan ecosystem, providing a deep dive into the technical and industrial advances surrounding it. But this year marked a shift. The organizers deliberately chose to broaden the scope, opening the stage to a wider range of IoT technologies and ecosystems. The result was an edition that felt more diverse, more dynamic, and undeniably more engaging.

With a larger audience and a wider array of perspectives, this year’s sessions offered a rich mix of technical depth and ecosystem insights. For me, the event was not only about the talks themselves, but also about taking a step back to reflect on the IoT market as a whole: how it has evolved over the past year, where it seems to be heading, and what genuinely new ideas and technologies are emerging.

As usual, this article is my way of revisiting those two intense days—sharing my key takeaways, my impressions of the conference, and my thoughts on the shifting landscape of IoT.

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Wirepas Open 2025

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A technology I haven’t had the chance to talk about until now, mostly because I hadn’t really gotten hands-on with it yet—but one with enormous potential: Wirepas is a managed mesh radio solution, or rather, a radio-agnostic mesh solution. While its most common current use is over BLE at 2.4GHz, it’s far from limited to that.

This week was Open, Wirepas’ annual event, which I had the chance to attend for Rtone, an official Wirepas partner that develops many client solutions using this technology, I work for. So, this is the perfect occasion to share with you the latest updates and my impressions of the event.

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Is making a Smart light bulb easy ?

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Creating a connected object is easy! This is often what we think, or what we believe we know when we create our first DIY project with an Arduino. When I attend IT conferences and listen to others talk about their projects completed over a weekend or two, that’s the impression I get. But strangely, when I design an object, I ask myself a lot of questions, write a lot of code, not just to make a simple lamp work, but to ensure that it works simply and securely… The saying goes that the “S” in IoT stands for security (geeks will understand), and if IoT has a bad reputation, it’s because of its history (though we can also talk about MS-DOS, W3.11, W95… too), but also because there is a lack of understanding of what IoTs really are. Through a personal experience to understand how a connected bulb works, I will attempt in this article to show you part of the non-functional code used in such a simple object, whose functional purpose can be summarized as adjusting the light intensity between 0 and 100% and changing the color hue.

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Frigate – Manage IP Camera with a Raspberry Pi

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As a long-time user of high-quality video surveillance systems like Synology and Ubiquiti, I’ve grown accustomed to deploying and relying on their robust, feature-rich ecosystems. However, this time I was looking for something more affordable, focused solely on video management, without the overhead of NAS capabilities or other advanced features. I needed a lightweight solution that could run on a Raspberry Pi—and on Guillaume’s recommendation, I turned to Frigate. This open-source tool offers live video stream management, recording capabilities, and even optional AI-based video analysis. It looks promising and well-built. This post is, as usual, a log of my journey testing this setup in real-time. It’s also an excuse to finally experiment with a Raspberry Pi 5, which I’ve paired with an NVMe drive for video storage, avoiding the SD card’s limited endurance under heavy I/O workloads. I’ll admit, it’s slightly ironic to now need this much power for tasks I used to run smoothly on Synology boxes over a decade ago. Even funnier is that Frigate may require a neural accelerator for its AI features—something that seems excessive when you consider modern AI models like YoLo run on microcontrollers with far less processing power. That said, I don’t plan to use AI in this setup (at least not yet), but I’ve still opted for a dual PCIe HAT to keep the door open for testing a Coral accelerator in the future.

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EchoStar IoT – the geostationary LoRaWan solution for Europe

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In previous blog posts, I introduced you to satellite-based IoT through technologies like Kinéis and Astrocast. Both of these solutions rely on constellations of satellites, typically in polar rotation around earth and low Earth orbits (LEO), which allow for global coverage—but at the cost of latency due to satellite revisit times.

This time, I want to highlight a different approach to satellite IoT: a solution called EchoStar IoT, which I had the opportunity to explore hands-on by developing a compatible device.

What sets EchoStar apart is its use of geostationary satellite technology. This means the satellite remains fixed relative to a specific area on Earth, continuously covering the same geographical zone. As a result, there is no satellite pass delay—connectivity is constant within the coverage footprint.

However, this also implies a trade-off: a single geostationary satellite cannot provide global coverage. As of today, EchoStar IoT services are available across most of Europe, parts of North Africa, and the entire Mediterranean region.

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ThingsBoard Open Source IoT platform

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ThingsBoard is an open-source IoT platform designed for device management, data collection, processing, and visualization. It supports a variety of communication protocols, including MQTT, CoAP, and HTTP, allowing seamless integration with diverse devices and sensors. The platform offers powerful tools for monitoring and controlling devices, as well as visualizing sensor data through customizable dashboards.

ThingsBoard provides essential features such as device provisioning, real-time data processing, and rule engine capabilities for automated actions based on data inputs. It also supports user role management, enabling secure access control. With its scalable architecture, ThingsBoard can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, making it suitable for a wide range of IoT applications, from smart cities to industrial IoT use cases. The platform is highly extensible, supporting integration with third-party systems and services, ensuring flexibility for developers and businesses alike.

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