We give you the low-down on our recent attendance at ‘Things Conference’
The Things Conference was held on 31st January – 1st February 2019, in Amsterdam, Holland. It labels itself as the World’s Largest LoRaWAN Conference and sets out to connect industry innovators to reinforce the potential and opportunities of one of the world’s fastest growing open communication protocols.
Members of the Lucy Zodion Technical Team, Gavin Wagstaff and Mohammed Nakhuda, visited the recent conference to keep informed on the latest industry trends, technologies, trials and tribulations, where ‘Things’ and their deployment are concerned.
If you’re involved in the captivating world of IoT, you’ll have most definitely heard of LoRaWAN; if not, read on…
At the event it was evident that LoRaWAN advocates in attendance were part of a growing community, which mainly revolves around a thirst for knowledge and curiosity for all things connected. With around 1500 LoRaWAN developers, innovators and integrators, all under one roof, the event was loaded with know-how and information exchange to help progress the deployment of the specification through better understanding.
But amidst all the buzz and inevitable excitement, what can we expect to stick in a sea of IoT innovation and ideation around the rapidly growing LoRaWAN network? Here are the main elements we took away.
It’s real and it’s being deployed…
Until recently LoRaWAN has been somewhat of an aspirational paradigm; we know people want it and we have been innovating to consider the specification for future optimisation, but with use cases cropping up globally, it’s now a tangible asset that people want to use. And, the industry trailblazers amongst us have already started doing so. This was evident in the many conversations, talks and workshops we were involved in.
This was a great confidence boost for us, as we’ve been working to the LoRaWAN specification to innovate open IoT solutions that enhance the growth of smart city evolution. The exponential growth in popularity around the technology also means that our customers should equally have more confidence that the technology we’ve invested in is a widely used solution.
Data, insights and value
It was particularly interesting to see how many different industry types were in attendance at the event, all at different stages of LoRaWAN awareness, which proves the above and gives us further optimism in how the future looks for the technology. With the solution intrinsically secure, while optimising openness, the data connected ‘Things’ are able to gather can provide extremely valuable insights that span across a wide range of urban applications and markets.
Unlocking the potential of urban spaces by aggregating data, produced by enabling IoT technology, into insights that can be actioned upon in a way that solves multiple civic challenges, is what makes the technology exciting. LPWAN technology can enable information sharing for more efficient and effective smart city development; breaking down the barriers that siloes present and opening up the potential for a more considered and collaborative urban improvement plan.
Freedom of choice
Among its many advantages, the event highlighted just how flexible the technology is in scalability and interoperability; enabling the application of multiple ‘things’ upon a single network. Workshops welcomed attendees to use the platform in order to integrate a number of different IoT devices; proving its flexibility.
This presents a huge opportunity for Lucy Zodion, as it enables us to collaborate with other innovators to develop solutions that work for our customers. Additionally, for our customers, it offers a refreshing approach where proprietary solutions are no longer a suitable model – instead they are given freedom of choice in almost every aspect of smart city development, ensuring that they have a futureproof solution that will grow with the needs of their community.
The future is LoRa
Last year the LoRa Alliance exceeded its 100 global network operators milestone and celebrated its 50 millionth connection. This year, it is predicted that there will be over 80 million LoRaWAN connections worldwide. The growth of the technology says it all and with real projects deploying LoRa systems on a large scale, it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
At the event there were even talks of LoRa by satellite, with plans of this being implemented sometime this year; making the technology even more adept in reaching global coverage for devices both outdoor and indoor. And, while this was interesting to learn we feel it has a place in the fleet and logistics space, rather than smart city deployment.
We have this ‘Thing’ for smart cities
At the event we, Lucy Zodion, had our very own ‘Thing’ installed on the ‘Things wall’ – a showcase of the latest IoT devices that connect and communicate via LoRaWAN. Joined by hundreds of other devices, our ‘Thing’ was the Ki. Node; a smart device transforming lampposts into a LoRaWAN enabled two-way communication hub. It connects to an open ecosystem, creating a virtual flow of data within the smart city to generate actionable insights.
A solution that uses LoRaWAN to optimise openness and unlock the potential of tomorrow’s cities, Ki. is a next generation solution for the next generation of smart cities. For more information about this and any other topic we explore in this post, please contact us.
