AWS re:Invent 2020: Announcing AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN

AWS re:Invent 2020: Announcing AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN

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hello everyone and welcome i'm excited that you could join us today for our launch of aws iot core for laura wan my name is michael mckenzie i'm the gm for aws iot connectivity and control and with me today is priyanka jindal our senior product manager so just a few words about what we'll be covering today i'll share a little bit about the background and motivation of why we chose laura wan i'll talk about our launch and i'm going to share some of the use cases that we've gathered from our private beta program um priyanka is then going to dive deeper into the product details and also discuss the great partner ecosystem that we're enabling for aws iot core for laura wan so a little bit of background i guess there's really no one size fits all solution for iot connectivity there are a number of factors to consider like distance and bandwidth power consumption uh so really depending on your application you need to pick the right tool wi-fi for example is high bandwidth short-range technology this is great for things like smart home cameras um but you know the the high power nature always also means that they need to be plugged into the wall or recharge frequently 5g and lte offer great long range but they're high bandwidth also means that they use a lot of power and again need to be plugged in or recharged frequently so this this is a little bit inconvenient sometimes for wireless applications and it relies on having a stable signal zigbee and bluetooth are also nice options they're lower bandwidth but because they operate in the 2.4 gigahertz range this range can be somewhat limited um and so this really brings us to these low power when technologies um low power wind or lp when is you know long-range wide area network technology and this is particularly useful when devices or sensors are located in remote areas perhaps where cellular connectivity is spotty or when you want to transmit a message uh data over long distances or when you want to augment an existing sensor control application with a wirelessly installed battery powered stick in place sensor lower land solutions provide a really great alternative in these cases so in many cases you need these sensors to last years on a single battery and the low energy consumption of lorawan is really ideal it's also important to note i think that customers don't have to just pick one connectivity mode most customers who choose to deploy iot in complex applications choose the right tool for the right job and may have a mix of different connectivity types throughout their architecture and really you know laura wan has some excellent benefits lorawan can provide coverage uh over one to three miles in urban areas so it's really ideal for applications like ride share bicycle tracking or reading data from utility meters or even used for predictive maintenance in industrial applications in wide open areas it even has a line of sight range of up to 10 miles so this is a really great long range solution it's also a great fit for indoor use cases like thermostats door locks even light bulbs because it can penetrate between walls and floors of buildings or or thick concrete structures things like that and i think the other thing is that the low data rates of lorawan means that lorawan sensors often have these huge battery lifes which is really advantageous especially if these are put into difficult to reach situations or you know far distance situations the other thing about lorawan is that these sensors are really really cost effective and because there's little to no battery replacement you save a lot of time on rolling trucks for maintenance uh and other things like that and really you know something else to really consider is that laura the specification is based on a security standard that only allows legitimate devices to be connected to the network and it checks that the network traffic has not been altered and ensures that network traffic cannot be listened to or captured or replayed um so this is uh you know it's built on a very secure standard and this is you know very important feature of laura wan um i mentioned before that you know lots of companies use mixed connectivity for iot solutions and as an example we're working with a company called halter halter uses lorawan to connect with actuators and sensors on dairy cattle in the field so that farmers can monitor the health and patterns of their cattle but it's also really interesting they use these these collars on the cattle to actually be able to train the cattle and steer them on demand so that we can get cattle for example to return to the barn when they're when they're ready to be milked um halter uses wi-fi in the barn for the high bandwidth operations like updating the collars on the cattle and it gives them a nice low cost solution to use lorawan out in the field compared to using something like a cellular device for the same application we're also working with a global oil and gas company who's continuing their journey of digitizing their manufacturing operations in the field this equipment is often located in remote areas and they're constantly evaluating new ways of gathering data in order to optimize their maintenance schedules things like that recently this company decided to add temperature and vibration sensors to some of their equipment and laura wan really provided an excellent low-cost wirelessly deployed solution for them to do that using these lorawan sensors they actually managed to replace a lot of ad-hoc data checks and maintenance with predictive maintenance reports by automating the data collection and integrating that in with some machine learning algorithms so a very very clever system using these lower land sensors to augment their architecture the new system provides operators better insight into their assets helps them reduce unplanned down times and of course does get them that magic bar of predictive maintenance so a really interesting story there now operating lorowan does come with some challenges setting up laura when connectivity in a privately managed site requires users to operate their own lorawan network server or an lns and the lns is used to manage the device connections to the cloud so while data devices can transmit over over long distances gateways are used to serve as a bridge and carry that data from from those devices to the lns usually over wi-fi or ethernet and what we've heard from our customers is that setting this up can take days or sometimes even weeks and involves hosting a lorawan network server stack in their own cloud environment and there's also a lot of additional overhead operational burden and maintenance you know associated with that infrastructure and even just in providing technical assistance and another i guess challenge that that we've heard about is that you know once they've set this up successfully in one location it can actually still be really challenging to replicate the lns solution to other sites or other geographies and this wasted time really adds up quickly what this is time that you would lose for for solving business problems and is really undifferentiated work so i'm very excited to announce today that we've launched aws iot core for laura when this is a fully managed capability to enable you to connect wireless devices that use lorawan technology you can set up a private lorawan network by bringing your own devices and your own gateways and connecting them to aws iot with no lorawan network setup required this capability pardon me no lorawan network server setup required this capability is generally available starting today so we're really excited to announce it what's great about this fully managed lns is that we've eliminated the undifferentiated work that i mentioned earlier and that operational burden required to set up and manage the lns and the associated infrastructure we've also provided built-in integration with other aws services like dynamo s3 through the iot core rules engine we can also connect to analytics machine learning and really you can take advantage of that full aws application ecosystem now uh by connecting your lorawan devices we've also made it easy for you to onboard your devices and gateways uh with support for the lorawan standard an open source gateway software and a gateway qualification program prank is going to discuss this in more detail later in the presentation but our ecosystem is a really big strength of this launch and maybe best of all you really only pay for what you use we've provided consumption-based pricing that we believe will save our customers a lot of money compared to diy or third-party service options so through our beta program we've been working with a company called compliancemate and compliancemate provides food safety systems for quick serve restaurants like chick-fil-a shake shack and five guys they enable quick serve restaurants to maintain compliance to food safety regulation and perishables and compliance mate is using aws iot core for laura wan to connect temperature sensors in restaurant refrigeration and freezer units these lower end device signals can penetrate the thick walls of these refrigeration units and they can last for years without battery replacement thanks to their low power consumption which overall reduces their operating costs the combination of the wirelessly connected temperature sensors and real-time access to the temperature data means that compliance mate's customers can quickly identify operational problems and prevent food safety mishaps before they occur so i really want to thank them for being a part of our beta program and learning with us but a really interesting use case for using lorawan sensors we've also been working with a company in the smart connected buildings area called quest in the multi-family dwelling space and the solution that quex provides allows property managers to provide safer buildings and lower utility costs for their owners quest uses aws iot core for lorawan to provide connectivity for wireless connected home devices across the entire property without the need to manage their own custom lns back-end solution and one of these devices is a connected smart home thermostat this not only allows them to manage the energy efficiency of the building better it allows them to use the thermostat as a connected home gateway for other lorawan enabled devices so a really cool application as an example they connect to the lorawan enabled smart door locks which allows property managers to remotely re-key units after a tenant vacates a property but also increases the building security and efficiency and aws iot core for laura wan allows them to replicate this solution really quickly across multiple properties so another really great example there from from one of our customers in the beta program and again i want to thank them for being part of our beta program we we certainly appreciate learning together so i'll pass over to priyanka now to talk a little bit more about the product details thank you mike hello everyone super excited to be here today to tell you a bit more about aws iot core for laura aws iot core for laraven offers you five integrated features first of all connectivity for your laravel devices so that you can connect hundreds thousands or even millions of floravant devices with zero laravel and network server setup required to set up a private network you also need to connect lorawan gateways ws iot core for lauravan provides gateway management service so that you can connect your gateways securely to aws iot core and manage them remotely at scale third integration with aws iot rules engine it provides a built-in integration to automatically route messages from connected lorawan devices to aws iot rules engine so that you can accelerate your iot application development fourth it provides visible device and gateway health so that you know what's going on with your connected devices and gateways and have the ability to troubleshoot issues and lastly aws iot core for laravan qualified hardware program so that you can source pre-tested gateways and developer kits from our manufacturing partners to get started easily now let's look into each of these features a little bit deeper aws iot core for laraven provides a fully managed network server in the cloud along with lorawan device provisioning and gateway management service so you can just bring your own devices and gateways and then connect them with aws iot code for laravan using our console experience in a few simple steps let's dive into the gateway provisioning and management features in laravel networking gateway is the physical layer interface for the laravel network server and lauraven gateways run a software called packet forwarder as the name suggests it's responsible or its primary function is to forward messages from your devices to the network server in the cloud for aws iot core for laraven we decided to support laura basicstation which is an open source implementation of the lorawan packet forwarder we supported basic station for a few different reasons first and foremost its security and gateway management features and then secondly its adoption in the market for security the gateways can obtain a server trust client certificate and private key from aws iot core and then a tds mutual authentication is established before the messages are exchanged for remote management basicstation supports a protocol called cups configuration and update server protocol aws iot code for laraven provides you a managed cup server for configuring both your aws iot endpoint on your gateway and for distributing firmware updates during the gateway management life cycle and lastly and very importantly basic station is being adopted by leading gateway manufacturers the source code is distributed and maintained by semtech the company behind laura technology so all of these things made us confident that with basic station our customers will find it easy to secure the right hardware without the need to develop or test custom gateway software now let's look at how the device connectivity features work aws iot core for laura vance supports lauravan specifications 1.0.2 1.0.3 and 1.1 so that you can purchase any compliant lauraven device sensor or actuator and be sure that it will connect with aws iot core for laravan for a plug and play experience with no embedded software development required lauraven supports two ways of provisioning a device and three different classes these classes support different power and latency requirements to support a wide range of application needs customers can also register so aws iot code for lauravan supports both ways of provisioning a device and all three classes customers can also register lauravan device profile to define supported data rates configure channels and other settings which will be used when lns communicates back to the device for data protection and security aws iot code for lauraven ensures that device traffic coming through the gateways belong to the same aws account and the device traffic will be discarded if the devices in gateways do not belong to the same account all the data sent to aws iot is sent over a tls connection established by the gateway in this case so it is secure by default and transit and for aws iot code for laura van we use aws managed keys to encrypt the data at rest when bringing the power of cloud connectivity to your devices the primary goal of our customers is to be able to reason on top of that data collected from your devices and it's of course desirable to do so without having to manage any infrastructure or without having to use different cloud platforms for your connectivity and application needs aws iot code for lauravan integration with aws iot rules engine solves for this problem when you register a device with aws iot go for laravan you will also specify a rule name that would process the messages coming from the devices in real time rules engine transforms the messages based on the expressions that you define and then routes them to aws services of your choice for analytics database storage and so on for example a routine reading from a temperature or a vibration sensor could be dragged in a dynamodb table or if an abnormal reading is detected you could set up your application to trigger a notification using amazon's simple notification service one thing to note is that payload sent by lauraven devices are encoded and this is due to the need to optimize the bandwidth used by devices so as a as you set up your rules in aws iot rules engine you can include a decoder step that invokes an aws lambda function and then route the decoded messages to downstream aws services so this diagram brings the whole picture together you can see the uplink data flow from the devices to the application which is being routed through aws iot rules engine and then the downlink flow from the application back to the devices when your application sends messages to devices aws iot code for lauravan selects the optimal gateway to send those messages to your target devices as we run our private beta program we learn from our customers the need to have visibility into the device and gateway status so that they can know what's happening with the devices when the devices are active when they are transmitting data as expected versus where there are issues which require troubleshooting to help engineers gain visibility into the fleet status aws iot core for lauravan enables customers to query the status of devices and gateways on the console and as well as through apis for each device message you can query um the transmission data for example the device frequency and data rate the gateway that received the data and also the quality at which the gateway received the data for example its signal to noise ratio lastly we also have logging capabilities provided through amazon cloudwatch so that you can visualize event logs in real time and have a visibility into what's going on with the gateways and devices that are registered in your aws account we wanted to make it really simple for you to get started with the service by simplifying your hardware discovery process so we are very excited to launch aws iot core for lauraven qualified hardware program starting today we have 12 gateways and four developer kits available from our manufacturing partners ready for purchase at aws partner device catalog aws qualified gateways and starter kits are pre-tested to make sure they meet the basic station software requirements and desired configuration and they include a step-by-step guide by the manufacturer on how to connect this hardware with aws iot core for lauravan next i wanted to put a spotlight on the work we have been doing with aws partners since they are incredibly important to the success of our customers as part of our aws iot core for laravan efforts we partnered with three leading system integrators clickatec leverage and tensor iot all of whom offer design and integration services to help our customers quickly build applications and develop proof of concepts for example clicker tech provided the smart building solution used by quext the customer whom mike discussed earlier in the presentation leverage also provides an asset tracking solution built on top of aws iot core and in a joint partnership with tensority and semtech we're also excited to bring two laraven solution starter kits for smart building and asset tracking using these kits customers can easily build a proof of concept with access to a cloud-hosted dashboard provided by tensor iot for example using their industrial kit you can connect sensors and then track the assets and visualize them easily on a map in the dashboard these kits are also immediately available for purchase at amazon.com and other websites so if you are excited to try out aws iot code for auravan you can purchase the aws qualified hardware the gateways or the developer kits at aws partner device catalog and then log into aws management console to get started you can also find sample lauravan solutions from our partners and solution architects at aws github repository with that i'll hand it over back to mike to talk about our partnership with semtech so thanks priyanka i wanted to give a special mention to semtech who have contributed to the aws iot core for lorawan journey and all of our related activities for those of you who are unfamiliar with semtech they are the company behind the lorawan technology and all the lorawan technologies um mohan from semtech shared with us that this is not just about offering our customers a single pane of glass for their iot connectivity and application development but it's really about empowering aws customers to take advantage of the long-range low-power data communication that is revolutionizing iot across a ton of different use cases a ton of different applications from smart home to industrial to urban and indoor and outdoor so we really appreciated semtech's involvement and again i just wanted to thank them a lot for their their involvement throughout our process thank you for joining our session um with that thank you very much and please fill out your session surveys thanks very much

2021-02-13 19:12

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