(Pycom and LoPy featured in an article in Land Mobile Magazine)
by Sam Fenwick
Highlights
- Meeting machines’ needs
- Enter LoRa
- The Things Network
- Devices, gateways and hardware
- The importance of networking groups
- Wider perspectives
As interest in the Internet of Things grows Low Power Wide Area technologies are competing for the comms industry’s attention. One that’s widening user access is LoRa, explains Alun Lewis
While the cellular community is working on standards to provide the kinds of connectivity required by the IoT, such as LTE-M and NB-IoT, other unlicensed spectrum solutions have been appearing from multiple other directions.
The main current options in this field, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, supporting business models and promoter and user communities are known as Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technologies: SIGFOX, Weightless, Ingenu, nWave – and LoRa. The last, in particular, has cost and performance characteristics that are generating huge interest from an incredibly diverse community, ranging from local communities of geeks and engineering enthusiasts to some of the largest high-tech companies on the planet….
Pycom content and Fred’s extracted comment:
New developers and manufacturers are also recognising the potential LoRa brings to IoT innovation, using inventive models to fund R&D.
Fred de Haro, a co-founder of Pycom (a start-up IoT module manufacturer), says: “We have been totally overwhelmed by the support for our LoPy Kickstarter campaign; an IoT development board featuring LoRa WAN, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth that also doubles up as a Nano gateway. The project was fully funded in just five days, was selected as a Kickstarter ‘Project We Love’, and now has more than 1,000 mixed enterprise and developer backers from 56 countries who have pledged 176 per cent of our initial funding goal. Funding options for the LoPy start at just €29, which will provide the backer with one LoPy board. The LoPy’s LoRa Nano gateway feature also means users don’t necessarily need access to a LoRa network.”
The Pycom team is currently working with a number of LoRa network providers to ensure wide access when the product ships in August 2016. For some backers this will mean free access to and use of LoRa networks. For example, Senet, a LoRa network operator in the US, has pledged that it will give all LoPy backers free access for up to two LoPy units.
LoPy: an IoT development board featuring LoRa WAN, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; credit:Pycom
LoPy 240% funded on Kickstarter