Meeting held at Arup on 19th February 2018

Present:

Chris Dymond: Sheffield Digital & Unfolding.
Roy Woodhead - Sheffield Hallam University
Sarah Cullen: Sheffield City Council, People’s Portfolio
Patrick Fenner: DefProc, Liverpool
Matt Brailsford: Outfield Digital, Barnsley
Steve Jubb: The University of Sheffield / Urban Flows Observatory
George Taylor: Caudata
Gareth Coleman: Aquaponics Lab
Perry Ismangil: Teluu Telecoms

Late Arrivals

Simon Needem: Spire Digital, Chesterfield
Simon Redding: Spire Digital, Chesterfield
Hamish Cunningham: University of Sheffield

Communications & Organising:

As of (15/03/2018 when this is being written up), there are:

28 people on the mailing list.
20 registered as contributors on the TTN Sheffield Community Page.
31 members of the #internetofthings channel on Sheffield Digital's Slack.

If you are not on the mailing list, but would like to be, please drop Chris Dymond a line).

Communication is imroving, although we still need to spread the workload around a bit more.

We also need to make sure upcoming events and meetings are well-publicised on the TTN Sheffield Community page.

Upcoming Events

First Smart City Hackathon on 15th April (11.00am to 4.00pm): See EventBrite for more information

IoT Tribe Open Doors, "Dragons Den"-style event. Barnsley DMC, Tuesday 27th March (3.00pm to 5.30pm). See EventBrite for more information

Future Sheffield TTN community meetings:
It was agreed that different members of the TTN Community meetings will organise them and report back to this TTN page.
The next TTN Community meeting will be:

Monday 16th April - Roy Woodhead to organise and report on the first Smart City hackathon
Monday 14th May - Hamish Cunningham to organise
Monday 4th June - Organiser to be confirmed

Infrastructure

Current/imminent gateways:

1 TTN LoRaWAN multichannel gateway on the Hicks Building at Sheffield University, owned & operated by the Sheffield Flows Observatory.
1 TTN LoRaWAN multichannel gateway on Electric Works, owned by the Sheffield Flows Observatory & operated by WANdisco.
1 TTN LoRaWAN multichannel gateway on Park Hill owned& operated by Hive IT.
1 TTN LoRaWAN multichannel gateway in Attercliffe owned & operated by Caudata.
A number of single and mulit-channel gateways owned by TTN members.

Apparently not all the TTN Gateways showing up on the TTN Mapper (https://ttnmapper.org/ ) for some reason. Monitor this.

We also learned there are:

2 TTN LoRaWAN multichannel gateways Chesterfield.
3 TTN LoRaWAN multichannel gateways Barnsley

The hilly topology presents difficulties for TTN in the area. A more reliable coverage is expected as more and more gateways come online.
There were also a discussions about max range and number of nodes supported. Patrick Fenner informed us that in Liverpool they had had around 20,000 nodes on a single gateway.

Public WiFi Network

IDAQ’s wifi network, which is being rolled out in the city from June/July onwards uses Ruckus access points which can have additional boards fitted that provide LoRa and BLTE capabilities. The UrbanFlows Observatory is investigating the option to fund a number of these upgrades (maybe 20?). Question is whether they can be confidgure to handle TTN traffic & what Ruckus’ roadmap looks like. TTN also has a plan to integrate BTLE (BT Smart) apparently.

Things Connected

Digital Catapult have funded two "Things Connected" multichannel LoRaWAN gateways. One in Sheffield on top of Sheffield Hallam University's "Owen Building" and one in Huddersfield on one of Huddersfield University's buildings. The two different systems, Things Network and Things Connected should be able to coexist without interference.

Sites

As discussed last month. there are the following site options for more Sheffield gateways:

Water tower at Norton (this would provide connection towards Chesterfield).
Hope valley cement works.
Chimney in Rotherham. (Caudata have access, need a gateway. We can either find a gateway sponsor, ideally Rotherham based, or perhaps UFlO would provide?)
Gripple at Riverside. (Chris will ask Gordon McCrae about collaborating - still need to do this).

If anyone can provide location, power and backhaul, UFlO will provide the gateway.

Architecture & Development

As we've discussed previously, now that the infrastructure is being built out we need to galvanise a community of people who have the skills to build and prototype things.

Sheffield Smart City Hackathons ###

Roy Woodhead has organised a series of six monthly hacks in partnership with Sheffield Harware Hackers and Makers at the Sheffield Hackspace at Portland Works.

Current dates for these, with links to all the details on Eventbrite are as follows:

The purpose of these hacks is to "bring the open source culture in to the act of building a Smart City in Sheffield. This is about being open and inclusive and no matter what your skill level to help you play a valuable role in building technology that benefits Sheffielders."

We'll promote these through our networks and test the demand to see if we will need to find a larger venue (Sheffield Hackspace will hold around 10 people), and whether we can extend the series beyond six months.

Applications

The Urban Flows Sensor competition received 12 entries and they are funding 9. There’s a spread of Lora, GSM and wifi projects. Several on air quality. Some mobility projects. Mix of students & industry.

Phase 1 of the IoT North accelerator is now drawing to a close (that's flown by!), and the startups are about to go into the second phase where they seek investment. In addition to the Open Doors event mentioned earlier, there will be a Showcase event on the 6th June, hosted at Arup. This will also be a “Dragon’s Den” type event. More info will follow.

AOB

No specific AOB.
Actions are to:

Write up the meetings, and develop a quicker way of doing so that others can do.
Promote & communicate the Smart City Hacks.
Orgnise the TTN meetings in between the SmartSheffield ones (and so they don't fall too close togeher).
Look at the additional site options.

Meeting #6

Chris Dymond