One crucial building block in smart cities is sensors that count, measures and communicate with the right recipient. To make this happen the City of Stavanger got together with Atea AS and Lyse AS to establish a network that wirelessly connects battery operated "things" to the internet.
The network, LoRaWAN, makes it possible to offer powerful wireless communication that uses little battery, over a wide area.
The sensor network is installed on strategic locations on a per-demand basis. As of today, the sensor network extends from Stavanger and south to our neighbor city Sandnes. This has had a significant impact internally since we now can test and run smart city projects much more straightforward and cheaper than before.
Several projects are connected to the sensor network. One example is automatic temperature gauges which are placed at popular bathing areas around the city. The measures send the bathing temperature into an open dataset, and the temperatures are automatically published on the city's website.
The LoRaWAN network was installed during the fall on 2017. To give the new network a kick-start we invited the citizen to an open hackathon where they worked on solutions that would benefit them in their daily life. Over 30 smart city enthusiasts joined us for the weekend.
