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On 15 October, Xose Pérez gave a TTNCat workshop, in San Pol de Mar, with the support of XOIC. The first one in person for 20 months! The aim was to learn more about LoRa protocol, LoRaWAN network and The Things Network (TTN) community in order to make it grow.
The workshop started with a series of slides explaining, from scratch, how radio waves and frequencies work.
Xose also talked about what LoRa is and how LoRaWAN network works, showing us the entire path that data takes from devices, through gateways, to TTN
platform to the cloud.
Do you know how data gets from devices to the cloud? Well, devices, normally class A devices that receive and send data, wake up every few minutes and then go back to sleep, taking advantage of the time they are awake to send data via a LoRa chip that they incorporate. This data is collected by one or more gateways, which have some kind of internet connection (3G, ethernet, Wifi) in such a way that they can take this data sent on a radio frequency and send it to the cloud via internet. In other words, gateways are in charge of translation from one data sending protocol to another.
Devices must first be registered on the platform. There are different applications that can use this network. The main application and the most used in IoT world is the tracker. A tracker is responsible for sending data on the current position of the device via a geolocation chip using LoRaWAN network.
During the workshop, Xose showed the whole set of material necessary to make the operation of this network possible. We saw all kinds of devices such as mappers and sensors, different gateways that can be bought on the market and even some that can be easily created by ourselves such as a RAK, a LorixONE and a gateway developed by TTN.
This workshop conveyed his enthusiasm and passion for TTN, leaving the attendees eager to come back and continue learning!