Did you hear what happened in Amsterdam ?

A group of techies got together and came up with the idea to set up a LoRa WAN wireless network. They started a project on Kickstarter to raise money and within a few weeks they received twice as much money as they asked for. Within 6 weeks they had the city of Amsterdam covered and are now concentrating on the rest of the world and have already 25 cities growing. To name a few: Belfast, Boston, MexicoCity, Sao Paulo, Perth, and someone just started in Sydney. Consider, …. this all started in August 2015
What is LoRa WAN.
It stands for Low Power Wide Area Network. It is a wireless network unlike the one’s most of us know like: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Mobile phone.
Features:
• It is long range. ~15km ,5km CBD
• Uses very little power. Years on a battery.
• Uses free EM Spectrum. Like your garage door opener, / no telco contract
• Very low cost hardware. ~$10. for a fully-certified endpoint radio + controller + software stack.

And what these guy’s in Amsterdam are adding is open source hardware and software free to use to enable everyone to concentrate on their own application of the INTERNET OF THINGS.
What recently happened to make this take-off faster than an Australian bush fire was the release Rev. 1.0 of the open LoRa WAN standard in July 2015 and the availability of fully-certified low cost Radio modules with integrated LoRa software stack and easy to connect and control UART interface. (e.g. Microchip RN2903)
Having such a network can open-up huge opportunities for our electronics industry. From moister sensors at vineyards to smoke detectors in house or in bush to find your pet or other valuable. See YouTube video’s below for inspiration.
However, to get this going we have to get a number of gateway’s installed 5-10km apart which are connected to the internet. The gateway units the team in Amsterdam are producing cost 200 euro’s. The data rate is very low, thus hardly any drain on your internet data plan. My friend Marco will install a gateway and I will do one as well covering just under 60 km2 of S.A just the 2 of us. If we get about 20 we will have most of Adelaide and suburbs covered. Have a good look of the links below and join if you believe in innovation.
Cheers, Jan Minck. (jan@minck.com)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEvopr1FLtw
The Amsterdam initiative: http://thethingsnetwork.org/

Radio Module: http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?product=RN2903

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