In an effort to provide more great content and guidance to developers, the Semtech’s LoRa developer ecosystem team is proud to launch our new Learning Center!

The Learning Center consists of three main pillars for developers:

LoRa is now one of the most popular and fastest-growing IoT technologies. It is widely adopted around the world as it is affordable, secure and efficient for large-scale deployments. As a result, Semtech reported more than 1.2 million gateways deployed worldwide and over 180 million cumulative end-nodes at the end of 2020 (source: Semtech).

This week Semtech and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a collaborative effort, resulting in a new offering from AWS that integrates LoRaWAN® network connectivity with AWS IoT Core: AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN. A new way for customers to connect and manage wireless devices via the Amazon Cloud, AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN builds on the open LoRaWAN networking specification, which, in turn, is based on Semtech’s LoRa® chipsets.

The third edition of the makezurich.ch Hackathon For A Better City, an event that brought together the local maker community and the city administration, took place between 23-31 October in Zurich, Switzerland. The event—which, due to COVID-19 restrictions was held in a hybrid modality: both virtual and in-person—attracted roughly 100 participants working on 17 projects across seven different challenges.

Semtech’s LoRa® developer ecosystem team is always listening to our developers to better understand your wants and needs. We work to create content and tools that help you in your efforts to bring Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to life with LoRa chipsets and the open LoRaWAN® protocol.

What do you get when you combine the LoRaWAN®  protocol with Wi-Fi? A cost-effective approach to an Internet of Things (IoT) network deployment that offers significant opportunity for Wi-Fi providers and IoT developers. By employing a network mutualization scheme combining the LoRaWAN protocol and Wi-Fi connectivity, Wi-Fi providers can expand their business to provide coverage for both broadband applications and massive IoT deployments that leverage the (free) unlicensed radio spectrum.

The LoRa Alliance® is a global association responsible for designing,  promoting and certifying devices for the open LoRaWAN networking standard for low power, wide area networks (LPWANs).  LoRaWAN is an open networking protocol that delivers highly secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization features used for Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. LoRaWAN networks operate in the unlicensed portion of the RF spectrum. People and companies broadcasting using this portion of the spectrum do not need a license from a governmental body to do so. With 148 LoRaWAN network operators in 162 countries, LoRaWAN networks account for more than one third of all LPWAN deployments in the world, according to industry research firm IoT Analytics.

Sebastien Lebreton, Principal Applications Engineer at Semtech, has been building and testing devices  featuring LoRa® chips for eight years. An expert in the field, he has been working with wireless technologies since 2001, and has regularly been called upon to teach engineers across the LoRa developer ecosystem how to be successful in this arena.

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Over the years, I have explained how to test devices with LoRa® chipsets a dozen times or more during seminars, workshops and in informal meetings with customers. The need to write and publish these recommendations for the benefit of the industry has become more than apparent. So, sit back, enjoy a cup of coffee and read on.

DLMS is the suite of standards developed and maintained by the Device Language Message Specification User Association (DLMS UA). The DLMS UA is an international and non-profit organization driving utilities and meter manufacturers to develop and support a common standard for data exchanges when it comes to smart metering. The DLMS suite supports a variety of wired and wireless communication standards, such as Cellular, PLC, Zigbee, WMBus, and Prime-PLC. DLMS has the flexibility to offer an application layer that is independent from the media layer, enabling the use of a single application over any of the supported communication technologies – or even a mix of them. For its part, the DLMS UA is now extending adoption to new markets and applications (such as private EV charging station and monitoring of smart infrastructure for electricity, gas and water) demanding a standardized data model and available application layer to enable more intelligent and interoperable devices.

In partnership with the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and The Things Network, French start-up GreenCityzen is using LoRa®-based devices and deploying a LoRaWAN® network to provide an end-to-end solution to secure clean drinking water for refugee camps in Africa.