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Getting up to speed with IoT chatter

titleIn OpenTRV's Internet of Things (IoT) Launchpad project we're not going to be streaming cat videos nor turning on TVs across the room. Generally we are going to be sending infrequent data-dense 'telemetry' from widely distributed sensors across an office building or from bus stops, and don't necessarily have a convenient network port to jack into.

This 'M2M' (machine to machine traffic) is lightweight and often simply not practical to wrap in Internet protocols right from the sensors.

OpenTRV's project is comparing candidate carriers for our M2M data, and today we took delivery of an Iridium satellite comms loan unit c/o Rock7, and also had a long chat with IBM and Microchip about LoRa(TM) "Long Range" radio tech for covering distances of kilometers in urban areas on battery power.  Thanks all for the support!

And yesterday those awfully nice people at the Digital Catapult said that we could put an antenna (eg for LoRa) on their roof.

Several Christmases arrived early at OpenTRV towers!

Here is a slightly more extensive note on OpenTRV and M2M data carriers.

Damon Hart-Davis / OpenTRV

OpenTRV sets out to make it easy to save lots of energy by just heating the rooms that you’re using, and by no longer trying to use a single thermostat to get your whole house comfortable. It is designed to be simple to (retro-)fit to existing UK housing stock with radiator central heating.
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