SOM II, Sub-project: Teaching IoT Technology
“It works like the song of birds — although many birds sing at the same time, you can make out each species separately”. This is how Anders Hedberg from Sensefarm described how the myriad of sensor signals in a network can still find the right computer to communicate with. During the Smart city testbed workshop conducted on several occasions in 2017, participants had the opportunity to pair sensors with a computer and see how it might work.
Finanisär
The workshops were organized at the start of the SOM project to provide basic knowledge to many and were led by Anders Hedberg and Daniel Lundell from Sensefarm, Filip Harald from Sensative together with project managers Anders Trana and Fredrik Malmberg from Future by Lund. The participants had varying basic skills, but the idea was that by the end of the day, everyone would be able to get sensors to send signals over the open LoRa network to their computers.
Anders Hedberg told us about the wireless sensor network in LoRa technology, which is located in Lund. It is free to use for private and pre-commercial use and at the time covered an area that stretched about two miles outside Lund city centre. The network is particularly suitable for sensors that transmit environmental and spatial data, for example.
During the project, several different techniques were used to send sensor data into the test bed. The different techniques have partly different advantages and uses that make them complementary.
During the workshop it was presented that there are of course many different sensors to choose from, for example for street lighting, tracking pets, measuring litter and for parking. The collected data is encrypted and secure all the way across the network and the owner of the sensor data can choose to share it openly or to selected people.
“Lora provides good coverage and allows you to build a smart city cheaply,” said Anders Hedberg.
At the workshop there was technical equipment so that participants could try programming sensors and apps.
“We found that the participants found it interesting. The technology and the premises worked and the network was enough even though we were many,” says Fredrik Malmberg. The participants were on different levels but I think everyone got something useful.
How is the project taken forward?
In 2020, the concept of a workshop on IoT technology was taken further and the project supported the development of a new deeper course that was run in the City as a Platform project in autumn 2020.
Håkan Lundström from Sensative held a workshop on how to set up a sensor in a sensor network and get values from a platform to a service. The workshop was organized by Johan Lindén at Mobile Heights, Anders Trana at Future by Lund and Lund Municipality and was held within the project City as a Platform. Participants came from several municipalities — Gothenburg, Eskilstuna, Sundsvall, Kalmar, Halmstad and Lund. The IT department, the city building office and Future by Lund participated in Lund. The uniqueness of the workshop was that it was completely digital and the support was provided through Teams.
The project is a sub-project of the SOM project is part of the Strategic Innovation Programme for the Internet of Things, IoT Sweden, which is funded by Vinnova. Anders Trana at Future by Lund was the project manager for the entire project. The project started on 1 September 2017 and ran until December 2020.
