Lorawan and The Things Network

The Things Network

The Things Network is building a network for the Internet of Things by creating abundant data connectivity, so applications and businesses can flourish. The underlying technology used is LoraWAN

LoraWan

Lorawan is one of several Low-Power Wide-Area Network ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPWAN ) competing standards that has helped promote networks of battery power sensors. 

I came across LoraWAN and The Things Network as a result of my interest in the Internet of Things. Over recent months I have been closely following developments in the press and social media and attended some meetups in Manchester. I happened across the Things North Wuthering Bytes Build and Deploy workshop, which looked very interesting. I applied for a place but it was oversubscribed so I thought I had missed my chance. Luckily, they changed location and more places became available and this time I was able to get on the list of delegates. It was an extremely useful day and excellent value for money - I would recommended similar workshops if you you get chance. We were provided with a SODAQ Explorer ( http://support.sodaq.com/sodaq-one/explorer/ ) and there were a selection of sensors available for us to try. We built a few examples, connected to the network, and played with Cayenne & NodeRed to process the data from the sensors. Thanks to @davemee  @Julianlstar and Patrick for that workshop.

Unfortunately there was no LoraWan coverage local to me. I could have built my own gateway ( https://github.com/ttn-liv/rpi-gateways )but due to other commitments and lack of time this didn't happen. I did purchase a LoPy development kit and built a single channel gateway. While this worked, connected to the network and was seeing some traffic, it wouldn't work with my SODAQ and single channel gateways are not really supported. I switched the gateway off and all progress with this project stopped. I was still keeping an eye on LoraWan and TTN but not actively pursuing it. A new Gateway went up at the top of a tower about 7.5 km away so I ran up the SODAQ again but still couldn't connect to the network, so it seemed I would continue to be out of luck.