>> Well, that was a LoRa device falling,
and with Johan today from Things Network,
we're going to show you how you can
connect the LoRa infrastructure and
devices to the Cloud in
order to detect the free fall of an object.
>> Right.
[MUSIC]
>> Hi, everyone. Thanks for watching the Internet of things Show.
I'm Oliver, your host,
and we have Johan with us from the Things Network.
Johan, thanks for joining us.
>> Thank you, Oliver.
>> I hear you're a bit jet-lagged?
>> I am. I woke up at 4:00 am this morning.
>> So where you're coming from?
>> I'm from Amsterdam.
>> You're from Amsterdam?
>> Yes.
>> What are you doing there?
>> I live there, and we
have our company there, The Things Network.
>> Okay.
>> So yeah.
>> So The Things Network,
we want to talk about what The Things Network is
about and what LoRa is about.
So tell me first about LoRa. What is LoRa?
>> So LoRa is a modulation to get information through
the air over very long range using very little power.
>> Very little as in way less than Wi-Fi for example?
>> Yes. Yes.
>> Less than 5G.
>> Is less than 5G. It's like 25 milliwatts.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah. You can actually run
sensors for a few years on a battery.
>> On a battery. On a regular like AAA battery.
>> Yeah
>> That's pretty interesting for IoT scenarios because you can
have these tiny sensors that are
actually in the dirt or somewhere,
cheap ones, and they're there forever and in their locations,
and now you can connect them, right?
>> Right.
>> So do we see use cases today?
Do you have customers you're working
with that actually have actual use cases for that?
>> Yes. So we have two types of use cases.
So already existing IoT deployments
where they use currently Wi-Fi or Bluetooth,
and then they switched to LoRa because
they don't need to throughput.
They don't need that much bandwidth.
But they just like the battery life more.
But there's also a whole class of
new use cases that were not possible before,
and that is now possible with LoRa.
>> Awesome. A little word about,
we'll talk about the gizmos that we have here and
solution and how it works and The Things Network as well,
but before getting into that,
the common question about IoT scenarios,
especially when you start connecting things that were
not connected, is security.
So is LoRa a network
that you can rely on from the security perspective
and have devices authenticate themselves and
really have a way to control
who is connecting and who is sending data?
>> Yes, absolutely. Security is really
at the heart of the LoRaWAN protocol.
So devices need to authenticate with a network,
otherwise there is no session.
>> Okay.
>> So devices join a network.
>> Okay.
>> You can actually choose which network you want to join
after you created or manufactured the device.
>> Awesome.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Makes sense.
So now these protocols is not API based,
you're not actually doing TCP/IP and having a full stack on top,
so you have to go through a gateway.
>> Yeah. You have to go through a gateway.
>> Okay.
>> This is one of our indoor gateways.
So this is a very cheap device, it's $69.
>> Okay.
>> You can plug it in your power outlet and it provides coverage
for the entire building typically, or a few floors.
So for big offices,
you can cover three floors with a single gateway like this.
>> Okay.
>> It has Wi-Fi back hole because
this gateways do need an Internet connection.
>> Okay. Yeah.
>> So they listen to
LoRa packets that are sent by devices like this.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> It's straightforward. So LoRa packets here and then this
into the Cloud or server which is the back end, right?
>> Yes, exactly. So this is typically just a forwarder.
So there is no logic on the gateway other than
just listening for packets and sending them to the Cloud.
>> Okay.
>> So the gateways are connected to a network server,
and a network server does
all the network layer logic of identifying the device,
decoding the packets, doing
all MAC layer stuff
that you would otherwise see in Internet protocol.
But as you said, there is no Internet in these things.
>> Yeah.
>> So that is what the network server is for,
but you can run the network server in the Cloud,
but you can also run it on-premises, for example.
>> Okay. Interesting.
>> Yeah.
>> So you can build your own private LoRa network
with these on-premise servers and so on.
>> Yeah.
>> So all that requires software,
and so this is where The Things Network and The Things Industries,
which is the company you're working with,
and you created, co-founded and entered into play.
So tell me a bit about
The Things Network and The Things Industries.
>> So The Things Network started about four years ago.
More of as an experiment to build
a community-driven LoRaWAN network,
a global network, and we basically
covered the city of Amsterdam with 10 gateways in six weeks.
It was a recipe for the rest of the world
to start building one big community network.
>> Okay.
>> That went really fast. So within a few months,
we had hundreds of gateways connected,
and then we've got a lot of demand
also for private networks for SLA,
for custom solutions, and integrations, and so forth.
So we decided to start a company next to it.
>> Yeah.
>> The Things Industries, and
that is where we do private networks,
commercial networks, and we still
contribute a lot to the open source community.
>> Okay.
>> So the community network today is around
eight-and-a-half thousand gateways in size and that
makes it the biggest global LoRaWAN network.
>> Okay.
>> We have a lot of private customers
ranging in different industries like agriculture,
logistics, smart buildings, maritime.
>> Okay. So we'll talk about an actual scenario.
Johan, show me what you have.
Tell me what is it that we have here with
a gateway and we have a node. What are you going to show?
>> Yes, I have a gateway here.
This is just power connections,
so I use this for development a lot.
This is just a gateway.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> This is connected over
Wi-Fi to a network server that I'm running in the Cloud.
>> Okay.
>> This is our generic node.
This is our new device
that we build ourselves in The Things Network,
and it can be used for all kinds of use cases.
So it has nine sensors and you can think of around 20,
30 different use cases.
So in this case, I put
a small application on it to detect free fall.
>> Okay.
>> So you can attach this, for example,
to something, a valuable asset,
and when it's falls, like cargo or something,
you can get notified for that.
>> So you can code for that?
>> Yeah.
>> What are you using for that?
>> Yeah. So this is using Mbed OS ,
but you can also,
because it's just an ARM processor, M0.
So it's really a micro-controller unit and
it has an AA battery here in the back.
>> Yeah.
>> It's super low-power.
>> Yeah.
>> But you can actually run all kinds of applications on it.
You can also remotely update the firmware.
>> This is enterprise-grade, right?
>> Yeah.
>> This is not like funky maker's playing device.
>> No.
>> This is made for volume.
>> If you want to track your containers,
you're going to track like real enterprise scenario
you can actually use that node.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> So you code it now, it will detect free fall.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Awesome, and you have a solution right now, here?
>> Yeah. So here we go.
>> Boom. Free fall.
>> Free fall.
>> What's that thing?
>> Oh, IoT is here. So that's how you can configure.
So this is connected already to IoT Central.
>> Okay.
>> So we built integrations with different IoT platforms.
So we publish information through IoT Hub or IoT Central.
>> Okay.
>> So it can be analyzed further there.
>> Yeah.
>> So we really focus on the network layer.
>> I like it. So basically you are providing,
as The Things Network,
everything from the hardware all the
way up to having your data flowing into the Cloud
and from here on actually you have Cloud services like Azure IoT,
IoT Central and others that will take for analytics,
for visualization,
interaction with line-of-business applications and so forth.
>> Yeah. But what's good to mention is that
so even though we do build end devices,
we do build gateways,
we do build a network server,
but everything is standardized.
So we use standard interfaces.
>> Okay.
>> So we use LoRaWAN. So we also support all kinds of
other gateways built by other industry partners.
>> Okay.
>> So this one is really good for indoor use cases,
but if you want to deploy gateways on towers,
for example, you use industrial gateways.
>> Okay.
>> Which we also work with.
>> Actually, you have a catalog of all these devices, right?
>> Yeah. Exactly. That is what I wanted to show next.
So we have the marketplace on our website, thethingsnetwork.org.
>> Okay.
>> Here you find a lot of different devices
and we also segmented them already to vertical.
So here you see for example,
devices you can use in agriculture or smart buildings,
smart metering, logistics and tracking.
So you can get started really quick.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> One last question about,
what does it take to connect one of these devices?
We're saying that we need to authenticate
the device in the server.
So what does it take as a user to make it happen?
>> Yeah. So we're going to make that really easy.
That was actually a pain point in LoRaWAN,
in the last few years.
So what we're doing and we're adding a QR code on
the device which is going to be a standard LoRaWAN QR codes.
>> Okay.
>> So all the LoRa ecosystem is going to use that format.
>> Awesome.
>> You'll be able to scan it with your phone
and on-board the device directly in a network server.
This again, can be network server operated by us,
it can be operated by you,
yourself in the Cloud, in Azure.
>> Yeah.
>> Or you take the open-source distribution
or run it on a Raspberry Pi.
>> Got it.
>> It's super versatile.
>> That's awesome. I can definitely see the scenario of
the front-line worker with the actual deploying a new set
of devices and sensors and you just set your
[inaudible] and then just connects, right?
>> Right. Yeah.
>> I love it.
>> That's the idea.
>> Awesome. So you guys have an event coming up.
>> Yeah.
>> So you have The Things Conference.
>> Yeah.
>> Going to be in January.
>> Yes. January 3rd and 31st in Amsterdam.
It's going to be the biggest LoRaWAN event ever.
>> Okay.
>> We are expecting 2,000 people.
Last year we had 1,200 people, I think.
It's growing year-on-year.
That's going to be the third edition.
We're going to do a lot of announcements there.
We have a lot of industry partners.
>> Yeah. Something makes me
say or think that Microsoft will be down there as well.
>> I bet you will be there again. Yeah.
>> I hope it's not a void promise,
but they will be there for sure.
>> Yeah.
>> Thanks Johan for sharing all of that.
>> Yeah.
>> If you guys want to learn more about The Things Network,
you can go to aka.ms/IoTShow/TheThingsNetwork.
Very straightforward, just there.
Johan, thanks for making the trip all the
way here to Redmond. Hope to see you soon.
>> Sure. Thank you.
>> Thanks watching the IoT Show and see you soon.
>> See you.
[MUSIC]