IoT Decoded Podcast EP#7

IoT decoded #7, the monthly LPWAn podcast analyzing the IoT news and trends. Register to podcast : looking for feed subscription on bottom right of this web page or search for IoT Decoded on Apple Podcast application.

This month the podcast is addressing news on:

  • STM32WL LoRaWan chip
  • Seong Ji (Wisol) Sigfox module SRM100A
  • Module market evolution on Sigfox
  • The Things Virtual Conference
  • IoT and pandemic
  • Sigfox Low cost design success transmission on RCZ2
  • Short other news.

The musical theme is Cascade by Kubbi (CC)

What IoT can make against pandemics ?

Pandemic prevention and management is an interesting territory for IoT. I’ve seen different projects and solutions made in emergency to help during the Covid-19 crisis like some connected button distributed in hospitals to get assistance for going to toilets. That’s an interesting use case for IoT where you can deploy quickly a solution (20K have been produced in this example) and make it working in an existing environment (an hospital) with no integration complexity with network or other existing infrastructures.

My favorite example is the Us health Weather Map reporting the human temperature sensor information across the USA. I love this use-case because it works on prevention: detecting the rise of the pandemic, show its movement and scale. The current problem is that these data comes from high-end thermometers, using Bluetooth and the number of device is limited. The other problem are the personal information attached to these device.

This is where LPWAN and Sigfox in particular can be used to propose a innovative solution I’m going to detail a bit.

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Low-cost outdoor solar powered LoRaWan Gateway

I really love Reece Innovation Solar powered pod product developed by my friend Jose Marcelino. They’ve made a agricultural / industrial autonomous solar powered LoRaWan gateway for a really competitive price. With much more money to extend TheThingsNetwork in my city I would have used a such solution. But as this is just a hobby for me, I’m looking for really low cost solution, something under 500€ per gateway.

My main issue to extend the network is not really to find roof but to find some where I can pass an Ethernet cable and provide the power from it. I have some place where I could deploy new gateway in conduction to be cable-less. The network is not the main issue as most of the time a WiFi network is accessible. Powering is a larger problem to solve. Advantages of outdoor gateway: you have sun available. So, as Reece Innovation did, I decided to make my solar gateway, the main differences are: my will have no LTE communication capability (only WiFi) and it have to cost as less as possible.

Let see what I’ve done

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The Things Industry is taking the lead on LoRaWAN ecosystem

Today was the first day of The Things Conference (TTC) 2020 in Amsterdam. TTC is the yearly event organized by The Things Network initiative. Years after years this event is becoming THE world LoRaWan event. The Things Network let the floor to The Things Industry, all the LoRaWan industrial ecosystem is coming to Amsterdam to discuss about the future of this LPWAn technology. The community spirit is still here, strong and awesome: I had plenty of discussions with many tech & business guy I never met before ; I’ve learned a lot of thing through the high quality conferences. Two days of conference will be too short for meeting people I’ve listed and follow the conference track.

So let’s talk a bit about the content of this first days and the direction The Things Industry is giving to LoRaWan ecosystem. Because, trust me or not, even if the LoRaWan alliance is full of big telecom companies, it really seems that, this small group of 20 awesome people from TTN are taking the lead.

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IoT Decoded Podcast EP#5

IoT decoded #5, the monthly LPWAn podcast analyzing the IoT news and trends. Register to podcast : looking for feed subscription on bottom right of this web page.

This month is about different news on LPWAn:

IoT Decoded Podcast EP#4

IoT decoded #4, the monthly LPWAn podcast analyzing the IoT news and trends. Register to podcast : looking for feed subscription on bottom right of this web page.

This month is about Sigfox Connect event:

As usual you have 2 version of the podcast in French and English but that time, the English version is different. I’ve record a round table with some of the Sigfox Ambassadors (Jose, Marc and Claudio). Thank you so much for joining me in this episode friends !

Some more content about the news in this episode:

The musical theme is Cascade by Kubbi (CC)

The other Sigfox Connect news

During Sigfox Connect 2019 we had different announcement like ultra-low power devices and ultra-low-cost IoT devices with a BOM under a single $. There are the main announcement in my point of view but we have also had much more coming with updates on previously seen technologies.

At first Sigfox announced the ability to deploy a private network, we are going to see what it could means as the details have not yet been given. Next I’ve got update on satellites connectivity and bubble service announced last year.

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All about the Sigfox Connect button

As a gift to the participants of 2019 Connect forum, Sigfox has offered a connected button. This button is the first official device based on the ultra-low cost technology detailed in my previous post about $1 Iot. This device is based on a single SoC, a CMT2189C chip from CMOSTEK. This chip usually made for garage door remote controller is offering a low-cost solution ($0,25) with a MCU+Radio solution, compatible with Sigfox.

In this post I’ll detail what are the components of this solution and the real price you can achieve for a such device to verify the low cost promise.

Sigfox published the reference design for this type of IoT devices, including the button elements. Where writing this post, I did not add a chance yet to read the final version of the document and the estimate is based on reverse engineering of a prototype I’ve got a month ago. The reference design can be obtained from build.sigfox.com.

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