Another CES is in the books, and as usual, it was a blur of visionary concepts demonstrated alongside very useful, near-term technology. While much has already been written about CES 2020, I will focus my impressions on the connectivity technology choices for the smart home and building. While the market continues to evolve clever ways to present, manipulate and use data to make our lives and businesses simpler and more efficient, feeding the appetite of the big data engine presents many challenges in the smart building connectivity market.

It has been 10 years since the invention of LoRa®, the long range, low power Internet of Things (IoT) platform currently implemented in over 100 million devices worldwide, and accelerating the global adoption of IoT. These three inventors will share their personal story and shed light on the future of LoRa devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol at The Things Conference in Amsterdam, from January 30 to 31.

Wireless counter readout in the smart utility and housing industries is one of the most promising applications of all processes involving counter reading, data evaluation and billing, and offers high optimization potential. A new white paper produced in collaboration with Minol-ZENNER Group explores how the deployment of Semtech’s LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol for smart homes, multi-dwelling units, buildings, and smart utilities must comply with current German laws and regulatory statuses.

IHS Markit predicts up to 43 percent of all low power wide area networks (LPWANs) will be based on Semtech’s LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol by 2023*. As of December 2019, more than half a million LoRa-enabled gateways have been deployed globally, supporting 135 million LoRa-based end nodes**. With the global adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and the growing market share of LoRa-enabled applications, it is becoming more and more difficult to identify a business segment that could not benefit from some level of connected devices. With new LoRa use cases being announced regularly, and growing numbers of worldwide LoRaWAN network deployments (public or private), it seems the only limit to these applications is the imagination of the developers and system integrators solving real world business challenges today.

Real estate is the second highest operating expense for employers behind salaries. At the same time, the workforce is rapidly transitioning into an “anytime, anywhere” work ethos. Despite these realities, little has changed in the way office space is utilized. As a result, very expensive office space is going unused. Worse still, without adequate data to prove otherwise, facility managers often request additional budget to lease even more space due to the belief that they are out of room in their existing facilities.

As the vertical market director for Smart Homes and Buildings in Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group, and lead for the Smart Buildings Working Group of the LoRa Alliance®, I recently had the pleasure of attending the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) World Workplace® Conference and Expo in Phoenix, Arizona. According to IFMA, the event is the largest and longest-running event series for facility management (FM) and workplace professionals, attracting an audience of nearly 5,000 professionals from 17 countries.

As the global market for smart water meters continues to grow, Semtech hosted, “Deploying Smart Water Meters: How to Transition from AMR to AMI with LoRa®-based Solutions from Birdz,” a webinar with Birdz, a subsidiary of Nova Veolia and a global leader in optimized resource management. The webinar discussed strategies for utility providers to improve meter efficiency by adopting fixed network solutions based on Semtech’s LoRa devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol.

The world of computer gaming has come a long way since those distant days of challenging friends to beat the Frogger high score on my TRS-80 32k color computer. Back then, I could only imagine the possibilities this next generation of computer technology would enable. If I recall, back then I also wanted to be a rock star… the next Paul Stanley (don’t laugh!). Fast forward to 2019, and thanks to the Internet and social media, in the heady world of gaming and esports, you can be a “rock star” or at least as famous as one.

The SPACE 2019 agriculture exhibition recently concluded in Rennes, France. The four-day event, highlighting today’s innovative precision agriculture technologies, brought together industry experts from around the world for a series of conferences, workshops and exhibitions. Approximately 1,400 booths occupied the exhibition floor at the Parc Expo Rennes convention center, and the exhibition provided educational and networking opportunities for more than 100,000 registered attendees.

In 2019, smart electricity meters will account for 63 percent of the nearly 200 million electricity meter shipments expected around the world, according to a 2018 IHS report. This volume of smart electricity meter shipments is forecasted to increase in size over the next five years. With the rise of low-power wide-area networking (LPWAN) technologies, such as Semtech’s LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® open protocol, new “smarter” metering solutions are proving to be a compelling alternative to other connectivity options for both Internet of Things (IoT) networks and smart grid applications. With several hundred known use cases (and growing), LoRa-based devices and LoRaWAN networks represent the leading choice for IoT solutions today.