The IoT company Alpha-Omega Technology adds the LoRaWAN provider The Things Industries (TTI) to its portfolio for seamless integration of LoRaWAN data into IoT systems
Berlin, 18 June 2020: The IoT company Alpha-Omega Technology GmbH & Co. KG is cooperating with The Things Industries (TTI). The goal: professional users should be able to integrate data captured in a Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) into an existing Internet of Things (IoT) as easily as possible. Using the TTI server offers maximum flexibility with regard to the hardware used and the incoming data. The partnership with TTI is already the fourth project by Alpha-Omega Technology within the last six months aimed at making LoRaWAN applications in the electricity and gas sector easy to set up and operate. The Things Industries is the founder of The Things Network and an active member of the LoRa Alliance.
Together with partners, Alpha-Omega Technology implements IoT solutions based on low-power networks such as LoRaWAN for municipalities and companies and advises them on implementation. The Things Industries (TTI) is part of the global community-based LoRaWAN initiative The Things Network (TTN) and is aimed at commercial users. Its core product is a network server solution that collects IoT data, decrypts it and passes it on to other interfaces, so the data can be processed, analysed and visualised in the next system. Compared with other network providers, TTI guarantees maximum flexibility regarding incoming data: while providers are usually limited to certain data, the TTI server supports any kind of data, whether maintenance, measurement or status data. Flexibility also shows elsewhere: since TTI is not a hardware manufacturer, users are free to choose the infrastructure and hardware on which they build their IoT.
"At The Things Industries, our goal is to remove the complexity of LoRaWAN development, improve data integration, enable interoperability across the entire value chain and reduce the total cost of ownership of LoRaWAN deployments. By saving resources, time and effort for market launch, companies can focus on their core business. It is great to see that Alpha-Omega Technology follows the same product philosophy and that we are bringing it to market together," says Wienke Giezeman, CEO and co-founder of The Things Industries (TTI).
Extending an existing IoT with LoRaWAN data
Users can extend any existing IoT with a LoRaWAN-based data source, for example to maintain and control devices and systems using wireless, battery-powered sensors, or to capture building status data, billing data from heat cost allocators or maintenance data from smoke alarm systems. The technology is interesting for energy utilities or larger industrial companies that already operate IoT platforms in buildings or on their premises. Another example is a farm that already monitors its stables with an IoT. If the farmer wants to integrate pastures or a remote building into the system wirelessly, the TTI network server is the perfect solution. It is also ideal for companies that rent out individual small workshops, residential or storage units in a building complex. They can offer LoRaWAN connectivity as an additional service for their tenants: the landlord provides the infrastructure of server and gateways, while the tenants take care of processing and evaluating their data according to their individual requirements.
"With TTI we have found a partner who pursues the same goal as we do: making the use of IoT via LoRaWAN as easy as possible. Most of our customers who want to run a LoRaWAN-based IoT start with The Things Network (TTN), because the flexible technology and the worldwide community keep the entry barriers very low. Those who then want to set themselves up professionally can easily switch to TTI," says Jan Bose, managing director of Alpha-Omega Technology. The cooperation with TTI thus brings Jan Bose another step closer to his vision of LoRaWAN applications in the electricity and gas sector that are as easy as possible to set up and operate.
Partnerships for low entry barriers
"As IoT experts, we continuously expand our hardware and software portfolio to give our customers the best possible overview of the solutions on the market. This is also shown by the recently concluded partnerships with the hardware manufacturers Ursalink Technology and ELSYS," says Jan Bose. He and his team started at the beginning of this year in cooperation with TTN and the product package for getting started with LoRaWAN at home, the "KLAX Bundle". The "KLAX Bundle" contains the reader for electricity and gas meter readings KLAX and the The Things Indoor Gateway (TTIG) from TTN. This was the first time a combined gateway-and-sensor product designed as plug-and-play was available for LoRaWAN. Alpha-Omega Technology recently completed the plug-and-play concept with the user-friendly front end of Datacake , which also includes a ready-made dashboard for KLAX. The cloud-based platform connects the optical reader to the desired LoRaWAN provider with a mouse click. Customisable dashboards present the received data to the user.