February 28, 2017

RPMA Hackathon – Q&A with Team AC Power Monitor

Ingenu’s first company-sponsored hackathon, “The RPMA Omegathon and Wizard Battle”, has come to an end but we are still very excited about all of the different applications that our employees have created. One team, Team AC Power Monitor, won two prizes for ‘Best Software Integration’ and ‘Most Elegant & Efficient Use of the rACM’.

This is what Pratik Yadav, member of Team AC Power Monitor, said about his team’s efforts:

What did you make? We developed an Air Conditioner (AC) Power Monitor System using the rACM (Reference Application Communication Module) board powered by RPMA. The Monitor System takes four inputs from the user defined as: AC tonnage, desired temperature, and AC star rating. It then accesses the current temperature from Intellect and uses that to calculate various parameters – such as power consumed, CO2 emissions of AC in kgs, cost required to reach the desired temperature, time required that the AC will run to reach the desired temperature, cost of running the AC for 2400 hours/year, and average temperature of the room.

How did you make it? We decided to choose a DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor. DHT22 is a one-wire data line sensor and requires a unique set of protocols to communicate with the rACM board. Thus, we wrote drivers for DHT22 in embedded-C. We used uplink interval (UI) of five minutes and a read block interval of one minute. Therefore, for every UI we got five temperature readings. We then accessed the REST API for the Intellect and parsed the temperature data into a text file. We averaged the temperature data to get the current temperature for performing further calculations. A python script was written to access the text file and then calculate the various results as mentioned above. A GUI was created using wxpython, which lets the user give the four inputs as discussed above.

What made you decide on creating this application? The total AC costs in the US amount to 29 billion dollars per year. We need a system to monitor the AC costs and the corresponding environmental effect. Thus, we decided to develop an application which would make people aware of their AC usage and its corresponding effect on the environment using the RPMA technology.

Have you participated in a hackathon before or have any experience building applications? No, I have not.

After creating your own application, what advice would you give to first-time app developers? Equal importance should be given to the hardware development and the software integration of the application. The application developed should be user-friendly and easy to use.

What was your favorite part of participating in this hackathon? The spirit of transforming ideas into experiences.

Congratulations to Pratik and the rest of Team AC Power Monitor (Avinash Pawar and Reena Patil) for doing a great job in this year’s hackathon and making a very impressive application!

February 26, 2017

Ingenu Expands Global Network, Providing IoT Connectivity to over 29 Countries, and Growing

Network powered by RPMA, the only IoT connectivity that works anywhere in the world with a single radio

Mobile World Congress, BARCELONA, Spain – February 27, 2017 – Ingenu Inc.™, the company that delivers purpose-built IoT connectivity, today announced it has expanded its RPMA® (Random Phase Multiple Access) network to provide IoT connectivity in 29 countries across the globe.  The rapid deployment of the company’s Machine Network™ in the U.S. and its global licensing partnerships have driven the significant growth of the technology.

Ingenu has deployed its RPMA network across six continents, providing connectivity to the following countries:

Japan Italy United Arab Emirates
Aruba China Saudi Arabia
Chile Australia Qatar
St Maarten Thailand Kuwait
Canada South Korea Bahrain
USA Taiwan Oman
Dominican Republic Brazil Jordan
South Africa Portugal Angola
Puerto Rico Mexico Malaysia
Nigeria Panama

RPMA continues to be the only wide-area technology that delivers a truly global connectivity solution for IoT deployments. Leveraging globally available spectrum, Ingenu, through its growing number of operator partners, is able to provide seamless coverage around the globe – allowing solutions to cross borders without the need for additional radio hardware or software configuration.

“Having a single radio that operates anywhere around the world allows us to quickly deploy solutions to farmers from South Florida to South Africa, without worrying about hardware alterations or multiple certifications,” said Ben Worley, CEO of AgriSource Data. “With RPMA technology, we can bring our solutions to market faster which means we can have a substantially greater impact in helping to overcome the global food and water challenges we face in the coming years.”

Ingenu recently announced partnerships and integration efforts with companies that include Microsoft, Arrow Electronics and u-blox. The company’s growing network of hardware and software ecosystem partners, further highlights the fast-paced momentum of RPMA globally.

“During the Mobile World Congress event last year, we announced that Ingenu had accelerated its global licensing strategy based on international demand for dedicated IoT networks, and that demand has only continued to increase,” said John Horn, CEO of Ingenu. “Customers are looking for connectivity solutions which will scale with the ever-changing requirements of the IoT, and RPMA technology is ideally suited as it is purpose-built for machines, has been deployed on a global scale, is available today and will last for decades to come.”

About RPMA
Utilizing globally available spectrum, Ingenu’s RPMA® (Random Phase Multiple Access) technology is purpose-built for M2M/IoT connectivity, offering unparalleled range, coverage and capacity with extremely low power requirements and longer-lasting battery life. It uniquely enables devices to connect more efficiently and cost-effectively in both the uplink and downlink. Requiring fewer towers to provide coverage to large areas (1:10 to 1:30 radio towers needed for RPMA vs. cellular), RPMA is rapidly becoming a global standard for IoT communication. For more information on RPMA technology, visit  www.ingenu.com/technology/rpma/.

About Ingenu Inc.
Ingenu™ is building the Machine Network™, the world’s largest IoT network dedicated to LPWA (low-power, wide-area) connectivity for machines. Operating on universal spectrum, the company’s RPMA® technology is a proven standard for connecting Internet of Things (IoT) devices around the world. The Machine Network will have further reach, global range and longer lasting battery life than any existing network. Ingenu is led by a highly experienced team, including veterans from Verizon, T-Mobile, and Qualcomm. Information about Ingenu can be found at www.ingenu.com, or follow us on Twitter @ingenunetworks.

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February 24, 2017

What Rectangles Teach About Battery Life

One of the key technology developments that enables the IoT to reach its vision is much better battery life in wireless technologies. It’s important because it allows for devices to stay out in the field, serving its purpose without needing to be serviced (which costs a lot and reduces the product’s overall ROI). That’s why so many in the low-power, wide-area (LPWA) space are clamoring to claim long battery life.

Many try to look at the transmit power used to send a signal as a single metric for comparing battery life. Battery life is one of those complicated beasts that unlike coverage, which can be summed up using link budget, requires the whole system to be in place before you can know what it really is.

When it comes to battery life, it is better to transmit quickly at a higher power, than to transmit slowly at a lower power. Why? Well, that’s calculus my dear fellow! If battery usage is the area under the curve, then you want to minimize the area under that curve. So sending one acknowledged message at high transmit power very quickly (RPMA) uses far less battery than sending a single message three times because it isn’t acknowledged using less transmit power (e.g., Sigfox & LoRa technologies). Here’s a picture to demonstrate:

An analogous example, though with some differences but still illustrating the point, happens on our smartphones all the time. Assuming all else equal, when downloading a given large file or video, our smartphones use much less battery power on LTE versus 2G. The reason for this is that LTE uses a very short transmit time because it sends and receives data at a high data rate while 2G uses a much lower data rate over a longer time period.
This is a classic example of more advanced technology making things simpler for us as users. Technology is another word for making a machine of some sort do all the work we’d rather not do. That’s its job. And that’s what we’ve done with RPMA. If you want to have long battery life, with RPMA it’s simple, just use it.

Click here to download our white paper Six Secrets to Long Battery Life to learn the other things that go into building a device with long battery life.

February 23, 2017

RPMA Hackathon – Q&A with the Winning Team

This past week, Ingenu hosted a company-sponsored hackathon, “The RPMA Omegathon and Wizard Battle”, to promote the development of consumer-oriented RPMA (Random Phase Multiple Access) applications and encourage its employees to experiment with the technology. Five Ingenu teams participated and all came up with very different, creative applications utilizing our technology. The winning team, Team OnGuard, came away with the grand prize as well as a great learning experience on building an application—all without starting any fires!

Here is what Varun Sood, Ingenu employee and member of Team OnGuard, had to say about his team’s experience:

What did you make? Our team made a home/fence security device that detects intruders and sends an alert to a mobile device using RPMA.

How did you make it? We made it by using a light source/laser in line of sight with a photo-resistor. When the link is broken between these two devices, the voltage is pulled high and this triggers an alarm SDU to be sent by rACM (Reference Application Communication Module) over RPMA and we use an app to pull the data off of the REST (Representational State Transfer) interface where the node is connected. We configured the Digital Input pin on the rACM board to send an alarm when voltage is high (edge triggered).

When brainstorming what application to create, what made you decide on doing this? My team and I were discussing how to best use the rACM to send alarms and we decided to make this since it would be wouldn’t take too much time and was pretty straight-forward to execute.

What problems will your application solve? It helps where Wi-Fi is not easy to come by. This app enables us to use the attributes of our RPMA technology to provide coverage even in the most remote of areas. Also, this could be viewed as a cheaper option to what is currently available in the market.

Have you participated in a hackathon before or have any experience building applications? No, this was my first time.

After creating your own application, what advice would you give to first-time app developers? To play around as much as possible and not be afraid of blowing things up.

What was your favorite part of participating in this hackathon? I got to experience some very cool applications that were showcased as part of the hackathon.

Congratulations to Varun and his team, (Siddhartha Agrawal, Will Nordgren, and Jignesh Patel) for winning our first company-sponsored hackathon!

February 3, 2017

The Machine Network Comes Home

Each time our Machine Network™ deployment team lights up another tower with RPMA coverage they hit a gong that Goliath could have used for a breastplate. Even downstairs you can feel the vibrations in the walls. Just today it jarred me from thoughtful stupor 7 times.  It’s fun to have a way to celebrate the progress of the network as it spreads across 100 US markets. As the map becomes more colorful with coverage, the IoT becomes less a distant light, and more a present reality.

This really hit home when I received one of the usual notification emails. Each time a tower is lit up, I get a warning email of the “gong-ing” to come. In this email, we see a description of the market, how many towers are needed to provide coverage, the tower location, and other details. Just the other day I received one that drove home how far-reaching the IoT is.

As I clicked open the email I saw some very familiar places. I saw cities where I made memories going to Boy Scouts, skateboarded with my friends, and went on weekends to rock climb with my buddies. I saw the place where, daily as a young boy, I ran through the woods and jumped across creeks, looked at lichen patterns, and knocked over dead trees. We had just lit up my childhood home with IoT connectivity. My parents, who have heard me talk about what we do and how the technology works, are still living there. They now have coverage right where they are, without having to do anything. And in a small way, I feel like I’ve reached back to my home through my work.

February 2, 2017

Ingenu touts RPMA network in hometown of San Diego

Fierce Wireless – February 1, 2017 – If you’re a relatively new kid on the block, it’s always nice to be able to offer your technology in your hometown, and it’s even better if that town agrees to work with you, which is what Ingenu is doing in San Diego.

The Internet of Things (IoT) tech provider announced that its Random Phase Multiple Access (RPMA) network is available in the greater San Diego metro area. Created by some of the pioneers who invented CDMA, RPMA is designed to be highly scalable and address specific needs of IoT, with long battery life and wide coverage with fewer access points. Read more >>

January 27, 2017

DistribuTECH 2017

As a company that has a fairly hefty list of events that we attend/participate in every year, DistribuTECH is one that seems to have a recurring spot on our list. This event, as described on their website, is,

“the leading annual electric power transmission and distribution conference and exhibition event that addresses technologies used to move electricity from the power plant through the transmission and distribution systems to the meter and inside the home. Bringing together 11,300+ individuals from 78 countries, DistribuTECH offers industry professionals from electric utilities, water utilities and other municipal utilities more information and networking opportunities than any other annual T&D event.”

So what role do we play in this utility-based conference? Many of the companies attending this event are in one way or another trying to become smarter and more efficient, and we help them do that by assembling an IoT solution for them to use. The things that we have done with companies such as LED Roadway Lighting, Libelium, Energate, and EnTek prove that our mission is to find the right solution for your application.

At this year’s DistribuTECH conference, we will be conveying a “smart city” message, and have many exciting RPMA-enabled smart city devices that will be on display. We are always looking for ways to expand our ecosystem and believe that we can create a solution for any need. Come visit us at DistribuTECH and see what Ingenu can do for you.

DistribuTECH details

When: January 31-February 2

Where: San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA

Booth #1540

January 26, 2017

Get the Data You Pay For

Is this enough data for IoT?

How much data do you truly need for IoT? Historically, cellular carriers would always be very cautious using large data plans to ensure customers do not pay overages while using their applications. Ingenu is changing the game. Big data is becoming smart data. Applications using 10’s of MBs over cellular are being cut down to size through techniques like compression, data logging, and event-based reporting. Utilizing the ultra-efficient RPMA networks allows GPS applications to function on plans in the mere KB’s per month.  As an additional example, an electrical power line may be monitored to watch voltage crossing a wire, but does it really need to establish a full cellular data session to inform them daily that all is well? This can affect battery life and allow unnecessary amounts of data to traverse the network. While some devices lay dormant and can be “shoulder tapped” to establish a session and improve battery life, it is truly selling the application short for what it can actually do.

Round it up!

Rounding is a term that is used with cellular data sessions and can make a very simple, active IoT application use 10x the data it actually needs to use. Ted Myers, CTO of Ingenu, states “1MB on an RPMA network may provide much more value than 1MB on the cellular network due to the cellular industry performing 1KB rounding on billing. As an example, if your average message transaction is 32 bytes, you will be billed for 1KB of data each time. RPMA billing does not work that way.”

Although there is definitely a need for large data amounts for very involved applications, 90% of all IoT applications use less than 3MB. This is right in the sweet spot of RPMA technology. RPMA can also allow a device to report back while using minimal amounts of battery to show the user that all is well. This allows an extension to the life of the application for 10, 15, even 20 years past their previous deployments.

Everyone in IoT is ultra-focused on robust applications using the least amount of power and utilizing all of the billed data for their customers. So, when building the next generation device for your deployment, please ensure you are looking at all avenues to maximize your IoT application and get the data you pay for.

January 22, 2017

2G – Stranded at the Bus Stop

It seems that every couple of years, we typically upgrade our mobile phones for newer models so we can get the most out of our devices.  This is what drives the cellular industry to continually upgrade its network to accommodate faster data speeds, greater capacity and enhanced reliability.

But what about the devices on the network that use minimal bandwidth and don’t need to be constantly upgraded?  Many of these types of devices have utilized the 2G cellular network and are being abandoned as the spectrum has been re-farmed for higher bandwidth networks.  Carriers have planned this upgrade for more than five years, but many users have not been able to invest in upgrades due to the lack of funding and resources.

Case in point, the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Agency’s (SFMTA) NextBus system went offline at the beginning of January 2017 as a result of the shutdown of AT&T’s 2G network.  The SFMTA claimed it was not notified in advance of the impending shutdown, but AT&T cites a notification to the agency as early as 2008.   Regardless of who is to blame, the citizens of San Francisco are now faced with interruption of a valuable service which provides real-time transit schedules for the city’s bus system.  In a metropolis that is the second greatest user of public transportation, the outage has massive ramifications to say the least.

So, how do cities, businesses and consumers insure that their devices will not be affected by a network shutdown in the future?  There are a few important questions to ask.  First, does the provider of the network guarantee the length of time the network will remain operational?  Second, do the devices on the network consume minimal power so they will last at least as long as the network? And, finally, does the network have the capacity to grow as needs change?  For many networks, the answer to these questions is no.

However, Ingenu offers an alternative to cellular with its RPMA (Random Phase Multiple Access) technology.  It is a low-power, long-range connectivity solution that has been built specifically for machines.  It offers network guarantees and won’t leave you stranded years down the road.  So, before the cellular bus leaves you stranded, check out Ingenu’s RPMA for a welcome alternative.

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