Paris was our final #GOINVENT World Series IoT workshop and we have to say, it was one of the best yet. Everything came together and everyone got up and running with almost no hiccups.
Our wonderful venue this time around came in the form of Deskeo, a very funky co-working company. The space was perfect for a workshop and we had everything we could possibly need to make the workshop a success. (And there was enough food to go around at least twice over).
We had a wonderful mix of attendees, from long-time Pycom ambassadors to large automotive company representatives – the world of IoT appeals to everyone! With the number of IoT devices predicted to reach 18 billion by 2022, our workshops are a great way to introduce yourself to easy to set-up IoT devices and the world of connectivity.
We thought that we would change the itinerary around a bit and our ground team was made up of Catalin and Ahmad – the dream duo. Catalin was there to support everyone with the hardware setup and gave everyone a run-down of what our LoRa-based Mesh network does and how it works.
This workshop was a little different to the others as the kits consisted of a FiPy multipack, an expansion board and an external temperature sensors, as there were no cellular LTE-M networks available. Everyone had a fantastic time getting started!
Ahmad stole the show with his introduction of our new device management platform, Pybytes. It’s available as an app from the Apple store (we’re currently working on Android now) and allows users to provision multiple devices in seconds. He gave a live demonstration of Pybytes’ OTA capacity and how easy it is to get your device up on the dashboard. The workshop showed just how simple it is to start receiving data over networks such as Sigfox and LoRa. It has several different features, for example, it allows the user to specify which devices run what code and if a new iteration of a code doesn’t work, there is a code rollback option. Attendees got to grips with sending and receiving messages and the different integrations offered with Pybytes, such as AWS, Azure, Google and Webhooks. We’re happy to say that they were quite impressed 😉
We were lucky enough to have one of our sponsors, Sigfox, speak at the event. Nicolas Lesonnec, their Head of Technology Adoption, took to the floor and gave the audience an introduction to Sigfox and their network – it’s fantastic for low-cost devices. Sigfox has franchises globally, for example in the UK, the Sigfox network operator is WND UK. One of the network’s use cases is a tracker that utilises Sigfox technology to allow owners of Louis Vuitton’s Horizon luggage range to track their luggage throughout their journey – pretty darn nifty. Nicolas’ presentation was the perfect way to introduce a network that attendees could later join, as Sigfox-compatible hardware from Pycom comes with one year’s connectivity, included in the price of the device.
As one attendee neatly summarised, the workshop was simply ‘fantastic’. We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
We have had a fantastic run for our #GOINVENT World Series in 2019, and we are looking forward to what 2020 holds. A massive thank you to everyone who has attended our workshops throughout the year, you are the drivers behind why we do what we do.
We’ll be seeing you all in 2020!
A special thank you to all our partners who have supported us with sponsorship for this series of #GOINVENT’s 2019 workshops: Espressif, Mouser, Semtech, Sequans and Sigfox.