The coverage of The Things Network continues to grow impressively. But there likely will always be gaps in coverage between the cities and in remote places on the Earth. Lacuna Space is flying gateways on satellites to fill in the voids, enabling monitoring in remote locations or tracking of mobile ‘things’, no matter where they are.

We will describe the recent advances in satellite technology that have made this economically feasible, and also describe the technical challenges to be overcome, for example: establishing links over hundreds of kilometres and Doppler effects.

We will describe the results from experiments with our first satellite and also the trials that we will be performing later this year once the next three satellites are in-orbit.

Rob is a space industry veteran, having worked on satellites and space technology for over thirty years. His original specialisation was thermo-fluid dynamics where he worked on satellite propulsion systems and rockets for hypersonic launch vehicles. More recently he worked on many telecommunications satellite systems and also the space-based ship tracking system known as AIS. He co-founded Lacuna Space with Thomas Telkamp who brings a vast knowledge of Internet of Things technology and LoRa® devices as well as LoRaWAN® protocol™ in particular. Lacuna’s first demonstration satellite launched earlier this year, and there are three more satellites that will follow before the end of the year. Contact him at LinkedIn or @lacuna_space

An exploration of how data from IoT can lead to improvements in AI by overcoming the historical biases and flawed methods that current algorithms have been built from.

Sharon is an entrepreneurial thinker, tinkerer and talker with a background spanning cognition and computing. She is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. Her research is focused on cognitive analytics and spatial intelligence. Sharon previously worked in the ICT industry, advising industry and government clients worldwide about emerging technologies disrupting human behaviour.

With LoRaWAN, and TTN, it’s relatively easy to collect a lot of data from a multitude of sensors, but what are you actually doing with this data?

How are you using this data to gain meaningful insights into your monitored system?

The use of Digital Twins is a hot topic in IoT and in this presentation David will go through what a Digital Twin is, the collection of large-volumes of LoRa data and then building a simplified Digital Twin of the monitored systems to gain better understanding of the overall environment.

IoT data is, by its very nature, Time Series Data, and for that, you need a Time Series Database to collect, store, visualize and react to your data.

In this workshop I’ll get you up and running pulling all your TTN data into InfluxDB and creating both visualisations and alerts based on the incoming data.

David is the Senior IoT Developer Evangelist at InfluxData, helping developers around the globe manage the streams of data that their devices produce. He helped to develop the very first IoT Developer Platform before “IoT” was even ‘a thing.’

FossaSat-1 is a 5cm sided pocketqube satellite developed by Fossa Systems, a non profit juvenile association based in Spain and dedicated to the development of picosatellite technologies.

FossaSat-1 will test LoRa IoT telecommunications from space without the need of any ground infrastructure. $5 transcievers with monopole antennas at 10mW will be capable of connecting to the fully free and open network. FossaSat is a fully open source project developed by a group of Students from all over the world. Fossa aim to democratise access to space by reducing launch costs and democratise access to IoT by reducing necessary ground infrastructure.

This talk will also cover some of the less known characteristics of LoRa regarding its long range and behaviour at extreme settings (36,000km range at 7.8khz SF12 and TCXO modules) as well as practical tests beating national LoRaWan records.

Julian is a 16 year-old student, CEO and Co-Founder of Fossa Systems, a non-profit association dedicated to the development of picosatellites for IoT telecommunications. He is passionate for sharing his ideas with the world and inspiring the youth.

Using optimisation techniques, machine learning models can now run on small microcontrollers, enabling raw sensor data to be turned into actionable insights locally.

This technology is the perfect partner to LoRaWAN sensors, enabling just the event metadata to be transmitted.

Since joining Microsoft in 1994, Paul Foster has worked across a wide range of sectors and customers, providing a mix of technical and strategic guidance around the creative use of technology in relation to their business needs. Paul is currently a senior software engineer at Microsoft. Paul is currently focusing on the building of next generation sensor webs which automate the gathering of data from disparate sources, and how to enable the creative analysis of this data to start a new era of perception. He is the initiator of The Things Network Norfolk community group. For a short-time Paul was a member of a high-wire flying trapeze circus troupe, is a keen roboticist and an international marathon runner.

This workshop talks about hands-on low level Embedded engineering. It revolves around the problem of powering and running ultra-low power devices. It teaches you to respect batteries and how to test if they are up for the job. After attending you will have the confidence in designing your own Ultra-low power device. You will learn what to do and what to avoid.

What users will need to participate in the workshop

A bit of time (30-40 minutes) and a listening ear.

What level of knowledge / experience is required for the workshop

Basic Electronics.

Workshop where we build a reference for each member to take home.

Bart is a passionate electronics designer with a soft spot for RF technology. Recognising the potential of LoRa, he went on designing the first LoRa products back in 2014. Bart has his roots in servicing and repair of electronics from the tube era, right into the transistors and IC’s of now. Counting 40+ years of getting the most out of the electronics experience he has developed himself as an all-round electronics designer. Bart owns and runs his electronics design company Ideetron b.v. where he and many more engineers think up all sorts of new and exiting electronic devices for lots of happy customers. He is a specialist in wireless telecommunication, analog design, digital design and power electronics. Bart is author of 'Draadloze communicatietechnologie', ISBN: 9789053812037