LoRaWan protocol for IOT

LoRaWan is a long range RF protocol that helps connect 'things' (IoT) to the Internet over a long range. It's main advantages are:

• It is Open Source and not tied to a vendor

• It is battery efficient-very low power consumption

• It is long range.

Battery life is something like 5 years(Wow!). It is Open Standard and uses the unlicensed spectrum as part of the Industrial, Scientific and Medical(ISM) RF band (868 MHz). In US the 925 MHz is used. The Open Standard is governed by the LoRa alliance, an Industry group with 500 or more members (Microchip, Cisco, Softbank, etc).

There is a round the world following for this technology including Comcast, Orange, SK Telecom, etc.

Download LoRa specs from here:

https://www.lora-alliance.org/Contact/RequestSpecificationForm.aspx

Pepper in Palo Alto

Another 6 days to go, Pepper the humanoid robot that can sense emotions will be in Palo Alto store b8ta between August 11 and 18.

  Pepper2.png
Robot developed by SoftBank and a robotics company Aldebaran Robotics  was unveiled in 2014 and it can read human emotions and respond to them accordingly. For all the sophisticated features, it sells cheap, about $1900+. Pepper still needs battery and needs a charge after every 12 hours of use. It uses programming languages like C++, Python and Android.

It is a hot sell in Japan after it started selling in 2015, but may not come to USA any time soon as the local demand is high.

Because of its ability to read and respond to emotions it appears to be ideal for customer facing situations and has even gone on cruise ships to assist passengers.

The images are from Aldebaran's site.

Pepper.png

Read more about Pepper here:

https://www.ald.softbankrobotics.com/en
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/robot-invasion-softbanks-pepper-lands-in-the-us/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/softbank-aldebaran-launch-pepper-an-emotional-robot/