Thanks Jeff the drinks are on me 
Sure Descartes I’d love to share my proposal. It’s for the .IE Digital Town Awards - Judging criteria - .IE
I’ve attached the whole doc (a work in progress! ) and here’s its executive summary followed by the 500 word pitch to the award’s judges.
Executive Summary
We all use radio frequencies each day. Whether it’s our mobile phone or the WiFi in our house. But if we wanted to say make an air quality sensor for the Shannon Wetlands it would cost us at least 10 euros a month to base it on mobile phone technology and it would eat up the battery forcing us to recharge it frequently. Well, LoRaWAN is a free wireless technology that is ideal for such a sensor and a lot more. It would last for months without charging or indefinitely with a small solar panel and would not cost a penny to run. So I propose we submit a Large Town entry proposing the €9,000 (or €5,000 runner up) grant money be used to buy €40 LoRaWAN nodes (which are used as sensors) and €200 LoRaWAN Gateways that connect these nodes to the internet so the sensor data can be shared with the community. We would then have environment data on an ongoing basis (sensors send data every 30 mins) that we can use to plan our town. This could include air quality sensors outside our schools, a weather station at the Model Aircraft Airfield, water depth and quality at the Wetlands and more. And the beauty of this system is as it is open (i.e. not propriety to any manufacturer or network operator) so we can extend and enhance it as our community groups see fit. I believe we would be the first town in Ireland to have such an environmental network infrastructure. It would also be a fantastic educational resource. Want to know more? Then please read the rest of this document By the way, The Things Network which is the community based web portal my proposal is based on has 17754 gateways and 140632 developers worldwide so we are in safe hands https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/
Grant Award Proposal
Please visit the following website for full details: .IE Digital Town Awards - Judging criteria - .IE
Their criteria and points for the Digital Vision (Strategy) award is to describe the ambition, thinking and rationale behind the initiative (10 points), as well as the expected outcomes and the impact it will have on the town (10 points). Explain how it contributes to the overall digital development of the town (10 points) and changing of attitudes/culture (10 points).
The entry must be 500 words or less and address all the above issues. Below is my entry (please let more how I could make this more effective). I will also attach to my online entry a document of endorsements by different Shannon Community group chairs. But that won’t be used for judging.
The entry must be submitted by Friday 23rd April 2021
The ambition of this proposal is for the residents of Shannon Town to become actively engaged in monitoring, maintaining and improving their immediate environment. My thinking is that wireless tecnology has moved on in leaps and bounds over the last 10 years and The Things Network, formed in 2015 is a mature, worldwide technology which harnesses a long range, free to use wireless protocol (LoRaWAN) to allow people to monitor sensors so let’s use it so see how own town is doing environmentally. The rationale being “you cannot manage if you don’t measure” as we all know too well from our experience of the continued importance of the Covid-19 test and trace process.
The initial outcome of winning the award is heightened awareness that we in Shannon are actively monitoring the quality of our environment, long-term Shannon could become the poster child of enviromental based community planning with access to accurate before/after data for all initiatives taken in by the town. The impact of this will be a greater sense of environmental empowerment to the residents of Shannon.
By installing the handful or so gateways and dozens of assocaited sensor nodes of the Shannon LoRaWAN Area Network (SLÁN) we would be developing a resilient, future-proofed digital infrastructure unique in Ireland. Something our community can grow and enhance ourselves which being an open source project facillitates. In addition, the opportunities for educational involvement are immense as people can design ther own gateways and sensors in addition to buying off-the-shelf products. And as the historical data begins to accumulate we will have an excellent opportunities for studying it.
I see having such a network in Shannon changing so much. It will promote engagement between all community groups. From 10 year olds in CoderDojo in the library “data wrangling” sensor data in Scratch, to Mens’ Shed members helping build and install attractive, weatherproof housings for sensors and gateways, to schools monitoring the traffic polution outside their gates, to the model airclub having an online weather station so members can check windspeeds before travelling to the airfield. Each allotment holder could monitor the unique micro-climate of their plot from ground temperature to slug detection! The wetlands could monitor water levels and quality. And I’m sure each resident of shannon you ask would think of 10 more uses. The resulting attittude and environmental culture change would be seismic.
Winning this award would install pride in the residents of Shannon Town that their town’s technology matches it’s already incredible industrial zone technology and we can start to saying SLÁN to a healthier, more enviromently aware community.
(429 words)Dot IE DIgital Town Vision v0.4.pdf (594.3 KB)
Coal is the least of your problems!
Spent more time at Shannon Airport than I care to remember over last 2.5 decades! Though could never get enough of travel to the west coast area. Entry to DN’s granted … may join you for one there in the future should travel ever restart and a good reason for new LoRaWAN deployments in the area arise.