Looking for collaborators to develop a platform Co-op LoRaWAN Network for rural areas to form the basis of a low cost Internet of Things to launch a range of digital services from. Applications include remote access to support, healthcare, monitoring, safety and security subscription services. Let’s make the IoT a Co-op reality and help build digital resilience in rural communities to build back better from Covid! Get in touch if you think you have something to contribute. Let’s seize the means of co-production!
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It might be worth talking with @astraliam as he is based in rural Wales, and has access to some very technically-minded people. 
He also has experience of how the Welsh Development Agency awards grants and funding, so would be able to chase up on the rural development funding that is available.
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Thanks Billy, we’re based in Herefordshire and Worcestershire so Wales isn’t too far away! 
Hi Nick,
We are a technology co-operative based in the West Midlands and were actually having a discussion internally about LoRaWAN IoT ideas and solutions last week. We’re more than happy to have a call with you to discuss.
Let me know and it’d be great to explore it further.
Thanks,
James
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Thanks James, would be great to have a conversation and discussion. What date and time would suit you for a Zoom/Teams/Cisco thingy? Nick
Hi Nick,
I’d be very happy to talk to you about this. We network of techies based out in Snowdonia and have some good experience with LoRaWAN and IoT. I’m writing an application today but can talk to you any other day this week.
@BillySmith thanks for the tag
Liam
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This sounds really interesting, as someone involved in a social care cooperative covering a party rural area and looking at how to better serve remote user members using digital tools.
Hi Graham, we now know what you have been doing in lockdown, what with all that rural partying! #partyrural
On a slightly more serious note, as the Rural Community Council for two very rural counties we think the rush to 4G and 5G will leave us out in the cold, along with rubbish mobile phone signals! LoRaWAN gateways at Village Halls covering around 30 square kilometers would provide a low cost, robust and reliable network as a platform to develop new services using LoRaWAN sensors in the home.
We think remote monitoring and alerts for falls prevention, flooding, fire, security, hypothermia, inactivity and asset tracking of clients would all be possible and require very little user input once set up.
Thanks for your interest, if you’d like to be involved in any discussions just let me know?
Cheers,
Nick
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Is there any particular reasoning behind setting up a new platform coop for a LoRaWAN network versus using the existing The Things Network community approach?
It isn’t a coop, but is a grassroots community effort, and has the benefit of being well established. I’d rather it was a coop, but given that it already exists, it seems to me that something competing would need to at least explain why people shouldn’t just use TTN.
Also over in North Wales the North Wales Tech group ran a project called a Year of IoT, which was deploying LoRaWAN devices in a rural setting. Carwyn Edwards, who led it, gave a talk about it at IoT Liverpool (that I run) last year, which was recorded and is up on YouTube
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Hi Adrian, thanks for your comments. The reason why the proposal is for a co-op is that the network is the platform on which we want to develop a range of subscription services and need to put in the infrastructure first. This would be easier to achieve through a Community Share Offer which would need a Co-op or Bencom structure. Rather than relying solely on volunteer community deployment of gateways and sensors we think we can create a structured, organised and sustainable model that retains community ownership and benefits whilst developing social enterprise IoT solutions. Please let me know what you think the disadvantages of this model would be? Yours in co-operation, Nick
Thanks for spotting the typo.
This makes sense. I do however think that a coop could own a load of Things Network gateways and nodes.
As far as I understand their model there is nothing which precludes community ownership of these assets.
On a slightly tangential note, I’m interested in exploring solar-powered LoRa mesh networks of https://www.meshtastic.org/ for community resilience in rural areas. Snow, power cuts etc.
An autonomous solar node is ~£50. This is a different use case to LoRaWAN, but i’d be interested in chatting about if anyone is interested. I have an idea to do a pilot in the highlands of Scotland as I have a connection there.
I came to the idea via https://disaster.radio/ but Meshtastic seems to have more momnentum.
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