Indoor base stations awarded to help bring IoT apps to market

The Tele2 IoT Challenge, which extended from 12^th January to 30^th March, gathered 135 start-ups, enterprises and students from 28 countries to imagine design and demonstrate creative, useful applications for the LPWA network in various domains.

The applications were demonstrated on Tele2’s new LPWA IoT network in Greater Gothenburg, Sweden, which was launched last November in collaboration with TalkPool AB and powered by Kerlink LoRaWAN Wirnet iBTS Compact stations. The recently announced winners are:

• GuardPuck: Preventing fuel theft from vehicles with a monitoring puck placed on the vehicle. It not only reports theft attempts when it detects vibration, but it includes an anti-jamming and vandalism-resistant feature that transmits signals at regular intervals. When those signals are interrupted, the vehicle owner is alerted to a potential incident. Combined with geolocation capability, the device also could be used to help police reduce crime. The winning makers were Martin Johannesson, Johan Eliasson and Nils Ingelhag.
• Smart Fields: A smart-farming system for easily measuring the moisture content and nutrient level of soil, from Etteplan with Marcus Carlberg and his team.
• Advanced Life Ring: A connected life buoy, activated when in contact with water, from Leon Layas.                    

The iFemtoCell base stations from Kerlink are part of products and services valued at €27,000 given to the winners to help them transform their prototypes into working commercial solutions. Combined with Kerlink’s Small Private Network embedded LoRaWAN server, the base station can help application developers and device manufacturers to easily design, prototype and test their connected products.

“Having Kerlink, a founding member of the LoRa Alliance, on board to support this challenge was a great experience, and we really appreciated the design, the performance and the reliability of the network deployed to enable this initiative”, said Stephen Bryant, Tele2 IoT CTO and member of the jury. “Leveraging LPWA, cloud technologies and open hardware make it easier and faster to create and demonstrate new use cases identified in Sweden and many other countries where Tele2 IoT operates”.

Robert Spertina, Head of IoT at TalkPool, which helped sponsor the challenge, commented: “We are very impressed with the high number of contenders and the innovative content of the submissions. Our partnership with Tele2 and the reliable telecom-grade gateways from Kerlink helped build the LoRa-network that enables Gothenburg to strengthen its position on the Nordic IoT arena. We see great potential to further explore new innovative IoT solutions at very competitive price points that are possible with LPWAN.”

“Inviting ecosystem players to investigate new types of applications through such initiatives will undoubtedly boost the IoT market and bring immediate value for businesses and societies, worldwide”, said Aurélien Seugnet, Kerlink Sales Representative Network Operators. “The participation of so many contestants in the Tele2 IoT Challenge and the impressive array of potential IoT applications they created demonstrated again how LPWA networks can improve safety and security, promote efficiency and make lives betters.”