LaRaWan

Global rollout of Dutch LoRaWan thanks to the FHI community We are still in the middle of the hype phase. But maybe it has become a bit more by now. The wide spread of The Internet of Things seems to be strongly linked to the rollout of free open source LoRa-Wan networks, Low Power, Long Range, Wide Area Networks. In the Netherlands and Belgium it is a 'fight' between the established order and in both countries a start-up with a bottom-up community. In Belgium it is Proximus versus Wireless Things. In the Netherlands KPN is rolling out a national network. But the most striking player is The Things Network, a bottom-up movement with driven entrepreneurs, Wienke Giezeman and Johan Stokking, in the background. The big difference between the latter and the others is the global ambition. Rollout in as many major cities in the world as possible is more important than national coverage in the Netherlands. A great example of 'think global, act local'. Both the local approach and the global rollout run via the FHI connection. The Things Network is fully involved in the KissLoRa gadget that is produced at the E&A fair. FHI member company Farnell is the company that sells TTN's LoraWan products worldwide, is responsible for the production and supports the designer communities all over the world via the Element14 brand. We spoke with Wienke Giezeman, but also with Hari Kalyanaraman, in Chicago, from Farnell brand Element 14. “When I sold my video on demand company to Sanoma in 2012, I started The Things Network together with Johan Stokking, with The Things Industries behind it. The goal of the foundation is to make the LoRaWan network accessible to everyone. With The Things Industries we provide value added services via an open source business model. So we have to get as many participants as possible. Two years after the start in Amsterdam in 2015, the protocol is already further than WiFi was after the same period.” The development of the LoRaWan products is done by the company Tweetonig in Rotterdam and Giezeman also thinks that in the future he will generate turnover from the servers that are needed to support the protocol. The products that TTN sells can be traded in a webshop; Gateways, Nodes and a LoRaWan enabled Arduino development board. Every hobbyist can get started with it. “The company Microchip was our component supplier. Farnell is the distributor of Microchip and that is how the connection was made. Farnell does more than just production and sales through Element14, which made the collaboration even more obvious. The previous success of the Raspberry Pi development kits can largely be attributed to the Element14 Community approach.” “The online community is what it’s all about,” confirms Hari Kalyanaraman. Element14 claims to have 450,000 registered members. “We met Wienke through Microchip. We helped him optimize the products, also in terms of production and cost price. Then we bring it to the market worldwide, through the community.” Kalyanaraman is part of a design & development group that can provide support anywhere in the world. With his history of involvement in various successful start-ups, he is enthusiastic about The Things Network. 'The promise is exciting'. The Arduino LoRaWan is innovative and IoT is 'quite exciting anyway'.” The commitment of the Farnell organization seems important for the chance of success of the Dutch venture. “We have an arms length community and this LoRa network initiative is the only one that is crowd sourced.” It could be exciting in the coming years. Blue Tooth and WiFi started in the Netherlands, LoRaWan could become the third world success in connectivity.