A big question to ask and not that easy to answer, if you don´t have the right means of getting insights about what actually drains the battery in your device. With this question we arrived in Amsterdam at the biggest LoraWAN community conference, The Things Conference, just little over a week ago. First time there, we were impressed by the event organization but above all by the LoraWan community and its openness and willingness to share. Vanja, our CEO shared some thoughts on that in a brief interview on the site of the event.

We asked this question at our booth and in a keynote, and the response was overwhelming! We had some great conversations with individuals and companies, sharing everything from the “war stories” to tips and tricks from their experiences on how the battery life has impacted their customers´ maintenance cost and reliability, and how it could have been or was avoided.

The big picture thinking is of huge importance, understanding the current consumption in the device seen in the context of the application that it is used for, in what network, environment and with what enablers (technologies, chipsets, batteries). In our keynote Vanja digs into this, for example highlighting the importance of design for minimum battery life rather the average one, and profiling your battery so you can avoid the bad ones that will never give the battery life that you just promised to you customer. Check out the keynote video for this kind of insights.

We also did a LOT of demos! A LOT! Thanks to our customers Bintel and Sensefarm for working with us on a LoraWAN demo, providing an excellent show case of what you should be thinking about when optimizing for low power.

We are humbled by the great response that our product Otii received during the event. So many came by and we got to measure a lot of exciting new devices! It was also very exciting to see our customers demoing their products with Otii. Congrats to our customers SODAQ on a great workshop on low power, teaching the community with our Otii. Thanks for the shout -out!

Thank you all who came by and dared to get the real insights into your device battery life! We are looking forward to see those LoraWAN products on the market with exceptional battery lives!