回到地球：Semtech 和 Lacuna 从太空接收消息

这些年来，我参加了太多的会议，纷纷攘攘的讨论中往往只有少部分的内容是我感兴趣的。但这次绝对是我近年来参加过的最令人振奋的会议，没有之一。

The Things Network (TTN) was started two years ago by Wienke Giezeman and Johan Stokking and has become a tremendous success, spreading their concept of ‘Let’s build this thing together‘ based on their open standard LoRaWAN®-based gateways. TTN has gained tremendous traction, now with over 30,000 active developers, and close to 3,000 gateways deployed across 90 countries. (No matter what I write here, it will be quickly out of date). Over 600 lucky developers were at this first conference and I am sure they will be proud to claim ‘I was there’ as it (gains further momentum each year forward).

So what makes the TTN community special? Firstly, the culture of TTN is very much ‘less talking, more doing’ and this was in evidence at the conference. To quote Wienke, ‘We don’t want booths, we want workshops and teach-ins’ so developers can get down and dirty with the latest technology.

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Secondly, whilst that may give the impression of a maker conference for ‘hobbyists’, it was far from that. The calibre of the keynote presentations and speakers was exceptional, and the workshops were dense with users figuring out real solutions, in real-time with the kit manufacturers. Whilst the debate about the best IoT protocol rages on amongst the large players, the 500+ members of the LoRa Alliance®, quietly press on with ‘doing not talking’ in getting their system out into the wild!

The Internet of Things is an incredibly hyped thing, and to paraphrase TTN, at the moment it is like a main street without any shops. Here I witnessed a developer community building out the malls to make use of thriving distribution network. Anyway, enough of the gushing – thank you TTN – you did a great job!

对于 Lacuna 来说，这也是我们发展过程中具有里程碑意义的时刻。我们需要分享我们一直在做的事情（但还没有谈论太多）。首先，我们的主要合作者之一，也是 Semtech LoRa® 器件和无线射频技术（LoRa 技术）的架构师之一，Nicolas Sornin 做了主题演讲，介绍他在 Semtech 将如何领导团队确定 LoRa 的未来发展方向，告诉我们他“心爱的项目”稍后会发生什么。这里有他的演讲视频。

Nicolas Sornin presenting on the Future of LoRa and his ‘favourite project’.

接下来，我们的首席技术官 Thomas Telkamp 解释了我们通过提供卫星连接来扩展 LoRaWAN 网络的使命，以填补地面网关之间的空白，帮助确保全球覆盖。他的完整演讲即将发布（将在下面的评论中以及我们的 Twitter 网站上发布链接）。我们将使用一组极近地轨道卫星来接收由地面上集成 LoRa 技术的传感器发送的信息。在距地面约 500 公里处，卫星每 100 分钟一圈绕地球两极旋转，地球在它们下方旋转，卫星可覆盖全球。

          Thomas Telkamp 介绍 Lacuna Space 和卫星物联网连接。                      

为了遵循“少说多做”的会议主题，Thomas 还进行了后期演示，包括卫星接收的现场演示。演示之神回应了我们的祈祷，一切都很成功。在整个会议期间，我们借用了 Norsat-2 卫星，感谢我们在 Space Norway、挪威航天中心和 ESA 的朋友，在短时间内 TTNSat-1 诞生了！当卫星经过会议时，我们从这颗卫星传输了一条基于 LoRa 的消息。我们将基于标准 Semtech 芯片的接收器放置在会议大楼的屋顶和代尔夫特理工大学，每次卫星经过时，我们都将其打印在一台已有 60 年历史的电传机上（见下图和这里的实际操作）。感谢我们的朋友 Dario Buma、Marc Buma、Nicolas Sornin、Stefano Speretta、Bart Root、Frank Olaf Sem-Jacobsen、Lars Løge、Hans-Christian Haughli、Nader Alagha、Frank Zeppenfeldt 促成了这个了不起的项目。

The Past, Present and Future! 

Why do that you may ask? Well, it proved to be a nice demo of old and new tech and as we came to realize, some of the younger participants didn’t even know what a telex machine was so had fun figuring out the analogy between its moving mechanical parts and the computer equivalents! OK it wasn’t quite the same as launching a Tesla Roadster to Mars, but we had fun, and thousands of people have viewed it on-line afterwards. For those that want to know more about the details, we will do a later blog, and Thomas’ second video will be online later. It was a very tangible demonstration of the robustness of the LoRaWAN radio protocol and will be remembered by many as the point when it was unleashed on a truly global commercial scale.

So that’s far too much ‘talking’ for now – back to some ‘doing’.

Rob

P.S. If you are interested in participating in our beta-service trials later this year, then register at our website and in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled on our social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn) for some exciting announcements over the coming weeks.

原博文发布在 Lacuna Space 网站上。

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