Practical experiences from building a successful Things Network Community. Presented to the "Kickstarting Hull's Smart City" event

1. Building The Things Network in Norwich
To build skills and inspire

3. The core principles of The Things Network
community are:
• Endorsing the principles mentioned in the Manifest of The Things Network
• Open for anyone
• People are the foundation of the community, not gateways
• Regular social contact is the driving force of the community’s development
• Diversity is crucial

4. Manifest
(https://github.com/TheThingsNetwork/Manifest )
We believe that this power should not be restricted to a few people, companies or
nations. Instead this should be distributed over as many people as possible
without the possibility to be taken away by anyone.

5. Building a community
Vision
• Define
• Communicate
• Evolve
Stack holders
• Event funds
• Venue
• Gateway
budget
Progress
• Starter
projects
• Skills
development
• Deploy
network

6. Building a community
Vision
• Define
• Communicate
• Evolve
Stack holders
• Event funds
• Venue
• Gateway
budget
Progress
• Starter
projects
• Skills
development
• Deploy
network

7. Defining the vision
• Why?
• Inspire – demonstrate ease and accessibility
• Build skills in local population
• Innovate to solve problems – personal, business, societal
• Help Norwich be a ‘go to’ technology City. – Tech City status

8. Selling the vision
• Councils meeting – organised by leading local connector
• Community – Started with local conference and meetups
• Norfolk Developers (NorDev)
• Sync Norwich (technical business community)
• Norwich Hackspace (makers)
• Norwich BioMakers (science community)
• Step into Tech (young persons tech club)
• University of East Anglia
• Event funding support from Tech East
• Social media support by Dev East
• Flyers
• PR – held back from local press for ‘big bang’

9. First steps
• First TTN community meetup
• Educate and enlist
• Second TTN community meetup
• Build your own sensor node (TTN hands on lab)
• Not for profit provision of materials
• Subsequent TTN community meetups
• Building and exploring projects using basic sensor node
• Members purchasing own hardware and gateways
• Connecting across communities to provide specialist IoT skills

10. Current status
• Core team of 12
• Broad range of
population
• 6 gateways across Norfolk +1
to be commissioned
• Councils commitment to
purchase 6 additional
gateways
• Successes:
• Incubating several
startups
• Inspiring young members
• Influencing County
Council vision of services
• Connecting with other
groups

11. Legal
• OfCom
• Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006, Communications Act 2003, The Radio
Equipment Regulations 2017 SI No. 1206
• Device Certification (LoRa Alliance, CE)
• Community charter with defined roles
• Indemnity insurance for members

12. BYO TTN Gateway
• https://github.com/ttn-
zh/ic880a-gateway/tree/spi
• Ic880a network concentrator
• Raspberry Pi

13. Testing Range
• Blue is theory
• Tested in red
• 0.5Km diameter with minimal aerial
• Locations:
• Residential: Newmarket Place
• Commercial: Union Building

14. TTNMapper.org

15. First Project: Building
sensor nodes
• Thethingsnetwork.org has lots of labs
• https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/labs/s
tory/creating-a-ttn-node

16. Urban Tracker
• MCU & WiFi - ESP8266
• LoRa – RFM95W
• LiPo 3.7v 150mah battery

17. Adult Social Care
Homealoneguardian
• Water
monitor
• Private
routine
• Anomaly
notification
Dementiabuddy
• Urban
Tracker
• On-
demand
location
• >1 year
battery life
Careoversight
• RFID card
reader
• Registers
care
episode
• Oversight
of service

19. Get Involved
• Meet up to explore TTN?
• Sensor design and build
• Application innovation
• Can you host a gateway?
• ttnNorfolk@outlook.com

20. Testing Range
• Walking range for UoS: 650m
• Theoretical range: 5km radius
• Large enough for a single hub to
instrument the whole of Ipswich

21. What
• A microcontroller
• A radio module
• HopeRF RFM9x
• SX1272/SX1276
• LMIC library
• https://github.com/matthijskooijman/arduino-
lmic

23. BYO TTN Sensors
Arduino Pro-Mini AT328p 3.3v
Adafruit Feather Lora M0/32u4
https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/labs/story/build-the-
cheapest-possible-node-yourself
http://syncchannel.blogs
pot.co.uk/2016/06/loraw
an-featherwing-for-
adafruit-feather.html