Steve Rogerson talks with Remy De Jong, founder of Skynet IoT, about expanding LoRa coverage out to sea.

Spreading a LoRaWan across the North Sea linking the UK and Netherlands has inspired operators in Florida to have a go themselves. And soon there may be similar projects as far apart as Dubai and South Africa.

I found all this out from a chat I had with Remy De Jong, founder of Dutch company Skynet IoT (www.skynetiot.io), which hit the news last week after adding the Helium network to the operators with which it integrates. It is this move that has played a big part in its expansion into Florida. But more of that later; let us have a look at what it has been doing in the North Sea.

“We started in the early days of LoRaWan, said Remy, “when it was first introduced into the Netherlands. We started to build IoT in the Netherlands for cities, ports, industries.”

Skynet is a subsidiary of Skylab, and the key to the company’s growth was it devised a way to work with multiple operators from a single gateway. This meant it could offer roaming on all networks that were connected with Skynet.

“We are a post office for all kinds of LoRaWan packages,” said Remy. “We built the network in cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but we found there were a lot of people who go sailing, swimming, surfing. You don’t have the connectivity at sea with cellular but we saw this was an opportunity for the long range of LoRaWan.”

What was happening in the UK was similar. LoRaWan was being rolled out and extending into the sea around coastal towns. However, there was a big gap between the edges of the LoRaWan reach between the two countries. That is the North Sea, which is home to wind farms, oil platforms, and ships and ferries that cross between the two countries. All these could benefit from LoRaWan connectivity.

“So we started to deploy gateways on wind farms and platforms in the North Sea,” said Remy. “There are no buildings to get in the way so we can get ranges of 20 to 30km from these gateways. We also have some connectivity on vessels that cross the North Sea.”

There are still some gaps but Remy is confident that by the end of this year they will be fully covered in the North Sea.

Applications range from monitoring the status of wind farms and oil platforms to tracking goods in trucks and containers being ferried across the water. It can also collect signals from lifeboats and life jackets to help search and rescue operations.

This success caught the eye of some people on the east coast of the USA, notably in Florida, where the Helium (www.helium.com) network is well established. Adding the Helium network therefore not only supports Skynet’s existing customers in the Netherlands but also allows its expansion into other areas including Boca Raton and Miami in Florida.

“Adding Helium is important,” said Remy. “It is a decentralised network with nearly a million stations around the world. It is a very good network to interconnect to the Skynet. Adding Helium makes us the biggest in the world.”

The work in Florida is still in its early stages but it has already found important applications such as checking water levels and fire detection so wild fires can be stopped before they get a hold. Florida has lots of high buildings but is also a very flat state making it easier to deploy wireless networks.

“We are not yet out at sea there,” said Remy, “but we are starting to do some tests on vessels. We want to roll out like we have in the North Sea. When you have coverage at sea, the possibilities are endless. You can track buoys, you can have search and rescue, you can monitor wind farms. All activities at sea need connectivity, which is why we built the network.”

For example, the company has installed LoRa gateways on vessels from ferry operator StenaLine to connect the sensors on containers for shipping goods across the North Sea.

“These monitor all kinds of things,” said Remy, “such as whether the doors are open, the state of the engines and the trailers on board. We can monitor things on the trucks in the vessel, which can be impossible with cellular coverage.”

The next stage in Europe will be to expand into the Baltic Sea. The company has also started working with people in Dubai, Australia and South Africa.

“Lots of people are watching what we are doing and are interested in doing the same,” said Remy.