Without a way to intelligently track endangered species, it is difficult for rangers to fend off poachers in many of Africa and Asia’s national parks. With Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, creating a sustainable and safe environment for animals and humans through technology is simple and efficient. Whether helping to monitor the whereabouts of animals living in the park or providing protection for humans that live in close proximity, wireless IoT solutions, such as those based on low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN), offer major potential for wildlife conservation efforts.

CavagnaGroup® is a leading creator of smart solutions and products for controlling and managing compressed gasses. These products have been successfully implemented into a wide range of markets including, energy, medical, alternative fuel, and even specialty cryogenics. With years of close collaboration, CavagnaGroup and Semtech have developed a range of innovative smart industrial products based on LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol. Recently, Semtech was invited by CavagnaGroup to participate in the World Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association (WLPGA)’s annual event in Amsterdam.

At Conserv, we built one of the first environmental monitoring solutions using Semtech’s LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol to bring better care to the world’s 450,000+ art and cultural collections in museums, libraries, archives, and private collections. Accurate and consistent monitoring is important because unhealthy collection environments – those with excessive heat, humidity, light, and vibration – do irreversible damage to valuable, sensitive objects. Sounds straightforward, right?

The emergence of smart buildings is not a new development. Building automation has been around (typically behind the scenes) since the mid-80s, having evolved from BACnet to a host of IEEE protocols, and recently from strictly wired, to both wired and wireless sensors. Building Management Systems (BMS) have played an important role in this evolution. However, historically these have had a limited role outside the realm of managing HVAC systems and the other physical operations within a building.

Inconsistency in crop yield is a major concern for farmers. Even with green houses presenting a controlled environment for crop growth, pests and disease are unavoidable. Additionally, a farmer’s lack of knowledge on the conditions in the farm’s soil presents further challenges. The amount of fertilizer used on crops is often left up to the farmer’s discretion. This usually results in over- or under-dosing, which affects crop growth directly. Human error has the largest impact on a crop's yield, with inefficient or inconsistent irrigation and errors in fertilization having serious negative effects on crop health.

In the past five years, farmers in the Cameron Highlands, which are located 250 kilometers from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, have taken the initiative to implement a simple monitoring system for their farms’ soil health. However, cost and connectivity presented a serious challenge for the farmers. Smarter solutions and machine-to-machine (M2M) services are often expensive and not available in rural areas. End users, typically the farmers themselves, are naturally very concerned with a solution’s power consumption, availability and reliability, as these factors directly affect the cost to deploy and operate these solutions. For the Cameron Highlands, the region’s various hills and valleys created additional challenges for service providers and reduced network signal strength. As a result, the farmers turned to solutions based on Semtech’s LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol.

The market for smart utility meters is growing at a rapid pace. A recent report by ABI Research predicts there will be an installed base of 1.34 billion meters by 2023*. IHS Markit forecasts almost 50 million smart water meters will ship globally in 2023, a number which is roughly four times its size in 2017. Year over year, the number of new meter shipments for water, gas, heat and electricity is increasing at a rate of four to five percent according to IHS. Globally, the proportion of smart meters will soon exceed half of all meters shipped annually. The largest utility adopters of Internet of Things (IoT) technology for smart metering devices are electricity (64 percent), followed by gas (38 percent) and then water (26 percent). Behind these strong growth numbers, the adoption of smarter technologies for metering is predicted to continue for the foreseeable future.

Semtech’s LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol offer several advantages for the Internet of Things (IoT) that have enabled it to lead in a competitive marketplace. Perhaps the most important of these advantages is LoRa devices’ unique capacity for long-range data communication. A single LoRa-based gateway provides deep indoor connectivity in underground or city environments, and connectivity to LoRa-enabled end nodes from up to 30 miles away in rural environments. This is especially important in parts of the world where Cellular connectivity is scarce or nonexistent. In places such as these, LoRaWAN-based networking and LoRa-enabled end nodes provide the quickest to deploy and most cost-efficient option for IoT connectivity, enabling smarter solutions that could not otherwise exist.

Lauak Group is a major aviation industry supplier with headquarters in the southwest of France at Hasparren-Ayherre in the French Basque Country, with factories in Portugal, Canada, Mexico and India. In the Basque language, “Lauak” means “the four,” representing the four factories that merged when the organization was created. Lauak Group’s esteemed customer list includes Airbus, Bombardier, Dassault, Embraer, Safran, and many more.

The 2019 InfoAg Conference recently concluded in St. Louis, Missouri. The two and a half day event highlighting precision agriculture consisted of a large program of panels, conferences and workshops, with an exhibition of approximately 200 booths in the main hall of the majestic Union Station Hotel. The conference provided educational and networking opportunities for more than 1,200 registered attendees. The annual event is an opportunity for scientists, farmers and solution manufacturers to meet with leaders in the precision and digital agriculture world, and collaborate with experts in Internet of Things (IoT), data, robotics, fertilization management, and more.

The LoRa Alliance® met in Berlin last month and hosted our most successful LoRaWAN Live! day to date. While over 60 presenters took the stage across both the business and technology tracks, a major highlight was the Momenta Partners LoRaWAN Startup Challenge finals. In their own way, the finalists represented a microcosm of the LoRa Alliance ecosystem with their wide range of offerings, and their decision to use the LoRaWAN® protocol, which is based on best-of-breed LoRa® technology. The quantity and variety of challenge entries made it clear why LoRaWAN has become the de facto industry standard for low power wide area networks (LPWANs).