ABI Research projects that by 2026, LoRa® will be the leading non-cellular LPWAN technology, accounting for over half of all non-cellular connections. By May 2024, 6.9M gateways with LoRa Integrated Circuits (ICs) had been deployed worldwide, supporting over 350 million LoRa-based end nodes. As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand globally and LoRa-enabled applications gain traction across industries, nearly every business sector stands to benefit from the capabilities and advantages offered by connected devices.
In this blog, we take a playful and festive approach to exploring the potential of Semtech’s LoRa devices by imagining their role in Santa’s Smart Workshop. Every application featured in the Smart Workshop Solutions infographic below is inspired by a real-world use case already in operation. Read more to learn how these solutions are making a difference today!
Reindeer Health Monitoring
A disruption in Dasher and Dancer’s health could compromise efficiencies at the North Pole, much like how sick cattle disrupt ranching operations. From ingestible bio-trackers to smart ear tags, there are an abundance of LoRa-based use cases for cattle health monitoring around the world.
Halter designed a smart collar that monitors and moves cattle. Transmission towers send data between the smart collars and a mobile app, offering 24/7 monitoring of the heat, health, rumination, and location of each animal.
The Caravan Tech Ecosystem is an integrated solution for the continuous and remote monitoring of agricultural and livestock operations. Caravan Tech has developed a suite of sensors, including cattle ear tags and ruminal boluses, designed to collect and transmit data to a centralized system. This system processes the information to provide insights such as geolocation, animal behavior patterns, alerts, and resource optimization.
Santa Sleigh Sensors
Weather conditions and other environmental factors can pose challenges for snowy sleigh rides. Using IoT-connected devices to remotely measure and report weather patterns helps identify problematic weather before it can cause damage. The low-power, long-range capabilities of LoRa devices make them ideal for climate monitoring applications, many of which are already in use today.
The all-in-one autonomous weather station from WeatherXM connects to a nearby Helium-LoRaWAN® gateway and offers cryptographic hardware encryption, is pre-configured to the Helium Network, and is powered by solar panels designed to last years.
Milesight offers LoRaWAN-based rugged weather stations that fit various application scenarios. Stations are easily configured via NFC and offer solar power and chargeable b backup options with robust data storage and retransmission.
“Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?”
What do Rudolph's shiny red nose and streetlights have in common? A failure to shine can lead to a major crisis. Street lighting is an extraordinarily costly portion of a city’s energy budget, often reaching up to 40 percent. The low power requirements of LoRa devices, and ease of deployment into an existing infrastructure, make IoT-based street lighting a proven LoRa use case for smart cities.
Tata Communication’s smart lighting solutions based on LoRa devices can be easily integrated into a city’s existing LED streetlamp infrastructure. The smart streetlamps automatically dim according to programmable schedules, detect moonlight, adjust accordingly, and send automated messages to managers upon malfunction detection.
Santa’s Secure Sleigh Entry
Smart door solutions provide remote security monitoring and peace of mind, whether for a private home or a workplace like Santa’s Workshop. LoRa devices' low-power capabilities enable battery-operated door locks to function reliably for several years without needing a battery replacement.
YoSmart’s smart door lock product is just one of its several LoRa-based connected devices for smart homes, demonstrating the scalability and flexibility of a network based on Semtech’s devices.
Santa Saves with Smart Metering
Even Santa Claus can benefit from the advantages of smart utility metering. The demand from water and gas utilities for LoRaWAN connectivity is growing globally, and reports predict that installations of new smart meters will reach over 53 million units for water and 26 million units for gas annually by 2025.
Long-range capabilities, low power consumption, and bidirectional communications make LoRaWAN smart metering an ideal choice for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), facilitating automated billing and consumption insights, enabling better water and energy conservation, and saving costs for utilities and end users.
The large adoption of LoRaWAN by leading worldwide smart meter suppliers is proving the superiority of LoRa technology in the smart metering industry. Among the top fifteen meter suppliers, ten have a LoRa-based solution.
In Germany, the Brunata Minol Zenner Group leverages the LoRaWAN protocol to deliver comprehensive end-to-end services through their submetering solutions.
In France, Veolia is spearheading multiple initiatives involving three million connected smart water devices, aiming to enhance operational efficiency and minimize non-revenue water.
In the UK, four major water utilities, Yorkshire Water, Severn Trent, Essex & Suffolk Water, Northumbrian Water, have all chosen LoRaWAN to connect their combined three million water meters.
Lastly, Meshify is predicting and preventing water loss that would otherwise shut down main street businesses and neighborhoods. Their solution offers sidewalk connected water leak detectors, shutoff valves, and gateways.
Santa’s Conveyor Confidence
Production facilities, such as Santa’s toy shop, or industrial operations, such as mining sites, rely on conveyor belts to efficiently move materials through a process. When that process is interrupted by non-operational conveyor lines, efficiency grinds to a halt. This compromises business operations and potentially endangers operator safety.
Transco Industries leverages LoRa devices in sensors to remotely monitor conveyor belts in mining operations, preventing catastrophic damage of critical equipment, and saving millions of dollars while keeping miners safe.
Ho-Ho-Hot: Smart Food Temps
Food manufacturing operations, such as Santa’s cookie bakery, and food retail establishments can eliminate the manual labor and analog records for temperature monitoring by implementing a LoRa-based food safety application. Since IoT solutions integrated with LoRa can communicate through stainless steel doors, concrete walls and multiple stories of a building, the platform is ideal for restaurant and food processing applications where such building challenges are present.
MachineQ’s solution automatically tracks and logs temperatures in refrigerators, freezers, and other cold storage units in food chains such as Starbucks and sends real-time alerts if temperatures fall outside of predetermined thresholds. Such capabilities enhance food safety and quality assurance, automate and streamline compliance reporting, improve labor productivity, save staff time to focus on customers and mitigate costly food spoilage and loss.
Ricoh equipped administrative facilities in Japan’s supermarket chain Aeon Delight with solar panel-driven LoRaWAN sensors to measure temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, and light remotely, reducing both labor and running costs.
GND Solutions’ smart refrigeration system for restaurants connects LoRa-based sensors to the Cloud. In a demonstration of its cost-saving value, one deployment of its solutions saved a restaurant up to 40 percent of its operational cost due to greater food management efficiency.
Ezurio (Laird Connectivity) integrated LoRa devices into ComplianceMate, a temperature monitoring system for restaurants including Shake Shack and Five Guys. The system alerts management to extreme temperature risks, preventing inventory loss. This benefit was demonstrated when a ComplianceMate system alert prevented a $50,000 inventory loss at Hattie B’s in Nashville, Tennessee.
Axino Solutions’ LoRa-based smart refrigeration solutions use artificial intelligence algorithms to predict the core temperature of food in refrigerators to ensure food safety throughout the cold chain. The system has been implemented extensively throughout Migros stores, Switzerland’s largest supermarket chain.
Santa’s Smart Defense
With all those elves working nonstop, Santa’s workshop can become a messy place that can attract unwanted visitors. Since pest traps are usually hidden, using LoRa technology to be notified when a trap needs to be emptied and reset increases efficiency dramatically.
Rentokil offers integrated pest management (IPM) programs tailored to individual client needs, fully supporting regulatory and auditing requirements with knowledge and experience to identify and anticipate pest threats to your business
Microshare’s EverSmart Rodent uses sensors retrofitted existing rodent traps as part of an end-to-end solution including alerts and historical data. In a deployment in Ireland of 20,000 traps, the EverSmart Rodent improved resolution times by 57% and decreased physical site visits by 75% which in turn reduced Scope 3 carbon emissions between 30-40%.
Victor’s VLink has six rodent control traps that are capable of connecting via LoRa which will allow the user to check trap status and receive real-time alerts anytime, anywhere.
Smart Sleigh Parking
With smart parking, Santa never has to worry about finding an empty spot for the sleigh. Low-power wireless sensors are cost-effective to deploy and require virtually no maintenance.
PNI Sensor Corporation’s PlacePod smart parking sensors detect parking space occupancy to provide drivers, traffic coordination systems, and municipalities with actionable real-time data.
Gift Tracking Solutions
Santa manages one of the most intricate global logistics systems ever imagined. Ensuring all those gifts reach their destinations in a single night requires precise planning and real-time tracking. Kids everywhere can follow Santa's journey, while he relies on advanced routing tools to optimize his path for the big night. Want your own tracker or need a custom solution? Contact one of the many providers to make it happen! Tektelik, Digital Matter, OnAsset, Miromico, Truvami, Seed Studio, Moko Smart, Centegix, Abeeway, Milesight, GlobalSAT, Greenhouse and Tachibana/SMK.
Optimizing Global-Gift Delivery Operation
For optimal coverage of his global gift-delivery operation, Santa would need a strategic deployment LoRaWAN gateways to connect LoRa-based devices to the Cloud. Santa’s network would need gateways in several key places such as:
- the North Pole headquarters with multiple redundant and high-altitude gateway installations to maximize range
- the Arctic Circle with specialized weather units to handle extreme cold and elevated installations to overcome signal interference from snow and ice
- dense urban centers where innovations like Semtech’s newly announced 1-Channel LoRaWAN Hub connect smart home devices located deep indoors or on the boundaries of typical Wi-Fi coverage
- remote coverage areas without ground, satellite, or other connectivity
Happy holidays from the Semtech family to you and yours!
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