A couple of weeks ago we were exploring 850-year old technology at Woodbridge Tide Mill, and this week we are right at the cutting edge.
As those great explorers and philosophers of the 1990s rave scene, The Prodigy once said:
Pay close attention.
Screengrab from Out of Space video by The Prodigy, 1992
Now I’m not going to take your brain to another dimension, but yesterday my Lacuna Space LS300 dev kit successfully sent a LoRaWAN message into space, where it was picked up by a passing satellite and beamed back to Earth.
Little did I know that The Things Conference in 2020 would be the last big event I’d go to for well over 2 years – thanks COVID 😭
After a forced break The Things Conference made a glorious return last week, and so I found myself on the Eurostar direct to Amsterdam, eager for two very full days with more than a thousand other folk geeking out together as once more Amsterdam became the global epicentre of all things IoT.
TL;DR – feedback from students has been built into the new version of MyWay. Key changes include the ability to report incidents of drink spiking, and a more intuituve and faster user experience.
Our student safety app (MyWay) has been co-designed with groups of women students from the University of Reading over the past 3 years, and we have just released a new version which incorporates feedback from this year’s Freshers.
The Things Network posted about their 5th year anniversary in August 2020. I had in mind that they started in July, but like most projects, pinning the start to a date is a difficult task and usually done retrospectively. I heard a similar discussion about Google’s birthday.
The Things Network 5th Anniversary August 2020
I learnt about The Things Network (TTN) in November 2015 when Mark Stanley presented the project at the monthly Reading Geek Night event. He concluded by saying how he loved the project for it’s open source aims and goal of bringing simple connectivity to everyone across the globe. Mark wanted to make Reading and Berkshire a leading adopter of the technology, and invited the audience to join him creating TTN Reading. I loved the idea too! The rest is history and is written up in other posts here and elsewhere. We will celebrate our 5 years in November and I am keeping my fingers crossed that we can do so face to face, rather than via video. We haven’t stopped during lock-down, though our projects have been hampered and rollouts delayed, as Autumn arrives we are seeing unseasonable green shoots, which is great, and as I think on how TTN has grown from zero to …. well, as they write in their blog ::
“Together, we are embracing open standards, creating a breeding ground for innovation and pushing the boundaries of IoT. Among the most significant achievements of these years are: 117 000 users from 150 countries 1000 communities 13 000 gateways 340 000 devices“
And with this smart new look to Thingitude, here’s to the next 5! – Mike
One of the big benefits of winning a project like the Falls Prevention System is that it has allowed us to grow the team, which is exactly the point of the Local Growth Fund.
I started my career in IT at 18 and am eternally grateful that a business was willing to take a chance on me, and I would like to do the same for other people. Thingitude has worked with students every summer since 2016 with great success and so it feels natural to hire a student as a full time trainee.
Say hello to our newest team member, Traecy!
Please meet Traecy Elezi, our new trainee programmer. She has just passed her 3 month probation period with flying colours and is a fully fledged member of the team.
