Right in the centre of Germany, in the centre of Europe, the team at Alpha-Omega Technology works every day on offering and implementing IoT solutions for customers. With iot-shop.de they run one of the largest online shops in Europe for LPWAN technologies such as LoRaWAN, NB-IoT and mioty, as well as products with 4G, 5G or Bluetooth.
In addition to supplying hardware, the company also offers its customers consulting and support. The headquarters is also home to the SMARTinfeld smart village. In this model village for IoT applications, products such as street lighting controls, traffic counters and weather stations are in use.
Easy Engineering: What are the company's main areas of activity?
Jan Bose: IoT products: Our extensive range allows us to offer our customers exactly the products that are ideal for their project. With a well-stocked warehouse, we can deliver many products EU-wide within 1 to 4 working days.
IoT consulting: Our IoT consultants support our customers to any extent and in any form, from a workshop for building technicians to the development of an IoT strategy.
IoT projects: We take on complete IoT projects from planning to implementation. Depending on requirements, we work with partners from our large partner network, which makes us the ideal first point of contact.
Easy Engineering: What's new about new products?
Jan Bose: In future there will be more complete IoT solutions put together from our product range. We use our experience to develop practical, easy-to-use packages, such as a low-cost starter kit in various sizes for retrofitting street lighting. The advantage with us is that the customer can try out a professional IoT solution without entering into a long-term contract. The hardware belongs to the customer, who has full flexibility to switch to another IoT platform with that hardware or to continue using the dashboard. Once the IoT network has been set up on the basis of LoRaWAN, additional use cases can be integrated according to the customer's own project plan. This is ideal for small municipalities that cannot implement a large-scale IoT project but still want to digitalise their community step by step.
Easy Engineering: What does the product range look like?
Jan Bose: IoT products from the LPWAN field, including sensors, actuators, modules and gateways with LoRaWAN technology. LoRaWAN is already established among municipal utilities and local authorities and is increasingly used by industrial and medium-sized companies to gain advantages in energy management or to use resources more efficiently. We also offer matching accessories such as adapters, antennas and anti-vandalism housings.
The applications for the products are enormously varied. They start with automated heating control for an entire building, which can be made dependent on conditions such as whether windows are open or the temperature in each room. Or environmental sensors for a whole village that make transparent to all residents how much electricity the village consumes or the condition of the local watercourse, including its water level. Since it also matters how the products are used, one of our most important products is our know-how. We advise and support municipalities, utilities, companies and private individuals.
Easy Engineering: At what stage is the market you are currently operating in?
Jan Bose: Many pilot projects have been carried out successfully in recent years. As a result, projects are now being rolled out on a large scale and business ideas built on them are being implemented. This includes companies that want to implement energy-saving requirements. The market has not yet reached its target size and there is still a lot of potential.
Easy Engineering: What can you tell us about market trends?
Jan Bose: There is a strong trend towards using the Internet of Things increasingly to monitor and save energy. For example, the energy-saving regulations in Germany have led to a sharp rise in demand for LoRaWAN radiator valves. In addition, it is increasingly smaller municipalities that want to make the benefits of digitalisation available to their citizens, similar to the smart city projects in large cities. We also see a major trend in environmental monitoring in response to the consequences of climate change, be it measuring soil moisture to use water in a targeted way, early detection of forest fires, or recording water quality and water levels.
Easy Engineering: What are the most innovative products being marketed?
Jan Bose: The innovation potential usually depends more on intelligent use. However, many products already have a certain degree of intelligence built in. One example is a current sensor that powers itself and is therefore energy self-sufficient. Another good example is a vibration sensor that learns the vibration patterns of large machines and raises an alarm when they change, so that planned maintenance can be carried out before production comes to a standstill.
Easy Engineering: What are your expectations for 2023?
Jan Bose: Energy and environmental monitoring will remain strong trends, as will the development of smart villages. In the LoRaWAN field in particular, there is also a growing trend towards interoperability between different platforms and products. Many established IoT platforms, for example, have created templates or decoders for many sensors, which makes onboarding considerably easier for the user. In addition, there are more and more complete packages that make entire smart building or smart lighting projects possible even without dedicated IoT specialists.
The interview was published in English in Easy Engineering Magazine