Announcing Haystack’s LoRaWAN Replacement Program

We are excited to announce the availability of the Haystack Software Developer Toolkit for Semtech’s LoRa® wireless IoT platform.

First, let me emphasize that we like LoRa. We believe LPWAN technologies operating in unlicensed radio spectrum will eventually dominate the enterprise and industrial IoT arena and for now, Semtech is running at the front of the pack with LoRa. (Note to IoT analysts: enterprise and industrial are where those extra commas in your IoT forecasts come from.)

Despite LoRa’s front-runner status, some LoRa networking freeware called LoRaWAN is still alive. LoRaWAN is basically a one-way, barebones networking stack that enables tags to upload small bits of data to the cloud. It’s not secure, it doesn’t work in real-time, it’s expensive to maintain, and you can’t really send commands to a LoRa endpoint with it. Still, a few companies you’ve heard of appear to be trying it despite the risks.

So we are here to help. Haystack’s SDK for LoRa solves for those risks while providing additional features that are unmatched by anyone in the industry. Including:

• Total compatibility and co-existence with LoRaWAN
• Complete bi-directional communications vs. LoRaWAN one-way
• Real-time indoor location with up to one meter precision
• Over-the-air firmware updates for easier maintenance and better security
• Real-time endpoint queries and commands
• 50% greater range vs. LoRaWAN
• 200% greater system density vs. LoRaWAN

So to sum things up, with Haystack your LoRa solution has much better range, costs less, is more secure, can do high-precision indoor location, and can still work with “legacy” LoRaWAN gateways.

Security

We believe Haystack’s security story is unmatched among low power IoT networking stacks. Haystack enables two-factor authentication, an encyrpted MAC address, listen-before-talk operations, AES/CCM 128-bit crypto, and methods for public key exchanges. We have not solved everything about IoT security, but we don’t think anyone has come this far.

Anyone contemplating a LoRaWAN implementation is exposed to serious security risks.

UPDATE: More LoRaWAN security risks http://bit.ly/2Lorasec

The SDK

The Haystack SDK for LoRa includes:

1. Haystack OpenTag firmware for LoRa
2. LoRaWAN integration (optional)
3. Haystack sample apps for LoRa, including:

• indoor location example, using node-to-node multilateration with seamless LoRaWAN integration
• ultra-low-power wireless TTY example
• ultra-low-power bulk data transfer

Availability

The Haystack SDK for LoRa is available today to Haystack subscribers. For all subscription details, click here.

Resources

For more information on LoRa technology, visit Semtech’s site.

For a comparison between Haystack and LoRaWAN:

To see how Haystack provides a single, unified networking stack across most LPWAN technologies, click here.

For more on Haystack security capabilities, click here.

Our media contact is Jennifer Skorlich (650) 302–1716 or media@haystacktechnologies.com

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