LoRaWAN Enables Us All To Make The World Better
Getting value from lora Internet of things solutions
Michael Ellyett
28 August 2025
Michael Ellyett
28 August 2025
I am motivated by making the world a better place. The emergence of LoRaWAN and the availability of increasingly smaller, cheaper and more efficient sensors and electronics provides new ways of improving the environment and the life of animals. On-device AI allows exponentially more data to be captured, analysed and processed. Satellites, relays and meshes enabled hybridised networks that can deliver coverage exactly where it is needed for the least cost. Consequently many things are becoming possible at lower costs that will allow the health and wellbeing of animals, plants and equipment to be monitored with increasing fidelity. The knowledge gained can provide both immediate and longer term value.
What sets us apart from many is that we focus end-to-end. We believe that only by optimising each element in the LoRaWAN technology value chain will you get an optimal solution. This covers devices (electronics, enclosures, fittings) to the firmware, to the network architecture (terrestrial, satellite, relay, mesh, etc) to the systems (logic, UI, etc). We aim to enable rapid iteration across this end-to-end spectrum i.e. adding sensors, updating messages, changing the rules and what a user sees on their phone in days of effort (not weeks or months).
Many try to apply a hobbyist approach and build unique LoRaWAN solutions with a ‘plug and play’ approach with off the shelf components, no-code systems etc. While that may quickly produce a PoC and even a Pilot it is not a strategy that we think will lead very directly, or affordably, to a fully optimised solution. It also doesn't effectively engage the end users or those seeking the value effectively enough i.e. too many variables are assumed to be fixed constraints (e.g. size, cost, messages, etc.).
One really needs to understand the materiality of the data and what exactly is required to allow decisions to be made. The goal must be to optimise LoRaWAN devices to do exactly what is needed and no more (to be sure there are no unnecessary components that can increase costs or complexity). One also needs to ensure devices do just what is essential to achieve the specific value sought while ensuring qualities of service (e.g. message rates, device life, etc.). By enabling dynamic control and visibility, users can monitor and adjust the state and behaviour of the devices, sensors, etc. so they live within their energy and bandwidth budgets.
We hide most of the complexity of LoRaWAN to ensure a simple user, and engineering, experience. We have established a modular end-to-end technology framework that deals with many of the complex problems and many of the common business objects. We then enable solutions to be built on top of that framework that can do precisely what is required (hardware, firmware, network, software) for a specific scenario. It has taken a great deal of work, experience and experimentation to find the right balance between achieving reuse and allowing specialisation.