However, the IoT will only be a reality if developers have the technology available to bring their ideas to life simply and pain-free. This is why Semtech is building out our resources for LoRa®-based developers, and creating tools that simplify development and reduce the barriers that developers encounter when trying to bring products to market rapidly. We have launched a couple of these tools, LoRaWAN Academy™ and LoRa Basics™, this week.
The first is LoRaWAN Academy, a collection of educational content for LoRa and LoRaWAN® developers who are new to the technology or simply need a refresher. Think of this as LoRa Technology 101; whether you are a student, teacher, hacker, system integrator, or an enterprise developer, you will need a foundation on which to hone your skills. The concept behind LoRaWAN Academy is to ensure you have easy access to the necessary fundamentals of the technology to get yourself up and running quickly.
LoRaWAN Academy is not a static resource and will grow over time. We will work to ensure that the content is up-to-date, and will add and augment the program as technologies and the LoRaWAN specification change. The program is open to all developers, and best of all, it is absolutely free!
The second resource we launched is LoRa Basics, a range of free-to-use code blocks that simplify the process of building great IoT applications. We are initially launching this resource with two distinct offerings, LoRa Basics MAC and LoRa Basics Station, both of which are intended to provide a level of best-practice and a minimum feature set across the LoRa ecosystem, while adhering to LoRa Alliance® specifications.
LoRa Basics MAC is what I like to call the LoRaWAN “golden” device stack, and serves as one of the LoRa Alliance reference implementations. We have focused on functional completeness and best practice, and are in full compliance of the LoRaWAN 1.0.3 specification (we will continue to update LoRa Basics MAC as the specification evolves). LoRa Basics MAC provides an event-driven run-time for your devices that is created in C and is suitable for a broad range of MCUs. It is multi-region capable at either compile or run-time, has full support for SX1261/SX1262 chipsets, and offers an emulator for you to test the behavior of your device’s logic in a virtual environment. LoRa Basics MAC also supports the latest firmware updates over the air (FUOTA) that have been standardized in the LoRaWAN specification.
While LoRa Basics MAC is geared toward actual end-node devices, LoRa Basics Station is aimed at the gateways that forward LoRaWAN packets to the network. Like LoRa Basics MAC, it incorporates a set of best-practices that will ease the process of creating a LoRaWAN-based gateway. It is portable across all Linux-based LoRaWAN-based gateways and provides a robust and secure communication protocol between the gateway and network server. It is light-weight, suitable for embedded platforms and has a built-in management protocol for remotely configuring and updating gateways running LoRa Basics Station.
Perhaps best of all, both LoRa Basics MAC and LoRa Basics Station are fully open-sourced, supported by Semtech and free for use in your solutions today!
While the IoT is an absolutely massive space with a ton of potential solutions for developers, we at Semtech want to make it easier for you to learn and create the applications of your dreams with LoRa Technology. LoRaWAN Academy and LoRa Basics are the first of great things to come for developers!
Visit the LoRa Developer Portal for exclusive resources and content like LoRaWAN Academy and LoRa Basics, plus much more – all for free!
Semtech, the Semtech logo, LoRa, and LoRaWAN are registered trademarks or service marks, and LoRa Basics and LoRaWAN Academy are trademarks of Semtech Corporation or its affiliates.