Episode 20

LoRaWAN in Japan - Kevin Cantrell & CropWatch

Kevin Cantrell, CEO and founder of CropWatch, discusses how LoRaWAN technology is transforming IoT applications in rural Japan. Kevin shares insights into how CropWatch is addressing specific business needs in agriculture, infrastructure, and public safety.

Kevin details the critical benefits of LoRaWAN for cold chain monitoring, emphasizing how it effectively solves connectivity issues in industrial refrigeration, where traditional methods like WiFi and Bluetooth struggle. He highlights practical business advantages, such as increased reliability and operational efficiency in challenging environments.

He also explores IoT disaster monitoring, describing innovative applications such as LoRaWAN-equipped sensors for lightning rod damage detection, improving maintenance efficiency and safety in areas vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes and typhoons.

Kevin addresses unique local challenges with animal tracking solutions, explaining how CropWatch employs LoRaWAN-enabled devices with computer vision capabilities to detect and mitigate threats from wild boars and bears, protecting crops and residents.

Key discussion points include:

  • Practical solutions for cold chain monitoring using robust LoRaWAN sensors.
  • Applications of IoT disaster monitoring to enhance safety and resilience.
  • Effective animal tracking methods using LoRaWAN and computer vision.
  • The business strategy behind offering ruggedized hardware combined with comprehensive data services.
  • Challenges and opportunities of implementing IoT solutions in rural and mountainous regions.

Learn how CropWatch is leveraging LoRaWAN’s long-range, low-power capabilities to provide innovative solutions that are both scalable and economically viable for rural communities.

Links:

Kevin Cantrell LinkedIn

CropWatch website

  • Helium Global IoT Coverage - Want to know if Helium coverage exists where you need it? Check out this map!
  • Helium Foundation - The Helium Foundation's IoT Working Group (IOTWG) has generously provided support for the first 6 months of shows, please go check them out and consider using the Helium LoRaWAN as a primary or backup on your next deployment. With over a quarter million gateways deployed worldwide, it's likely that you have and can use Helium coverage.
  • Support The Show - If you'd like to support the MetSci Show financially, here's where you can donate on a one-time or an ongoing basis. Thank you!
  • MetSci Show - If you'd like to use our IoT or AI Data Value calculators, or you'd like to contact me, the MetSci Show site is the best way to do it.
  • MeteoScientific Console - Use LoRaWAN - The MeteoScientific Console allows you to use LoRaWAN today. As long as you have Helium coverage (and you probably do, about 90% of populated areas in the world have a gateway within 2 miles), you can onboard a sensor. You can always check coverage at https://explorer.helium.com and switch to the "IoT" tab in the top right.

Transcript
Speaker:

Today's guest

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on MeteoScientific's

The Business of LoRaWAN is Kevin Cantrell,

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founder and CEO of CropWatch, a pioneering

IoT company based in Miyazaki, Japan.

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Originally from Boston, Kevin transitioned

from fintech software development

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into the dynamic world of LoRaWAN, driven

by a fascination with the technology's

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unique capability to deliver data over

challenging terrains and remote areas.

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Under Kevin's leadership,

CropWatch addresses critical challenges

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in agriculture, cold chain logistics,

and infrastructure monitoring, leveraging

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LoRaWAN strengths to bridge connectivity

gaps in Japan's mountainous landscapes.

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He and his team have developed robust IoT

solutions, from monitoring temperatures

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in industrial refrigeration units

to innovative wildfire detection systems

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that mitigate agricultural threats

from wild boars and bears.

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Yeah, boars and bears.

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His innovative work

also extends to disaster monitoring,

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tackling unique local challenges

like earthquakes and typhoons.

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In addition to running CropWatch,

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Kevin serves as digital transformation

advisor for Saito City,

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aiding the city and harnessing IoT

for public safety and civic improvement.

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In our conversation today, we explore

his journey from coding financial forms

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in Boston to revolutionizing rural

connectivity and safety in Japan.

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Discuss his entrepreneurial insights

on building ruggedized IoT solutions,

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and get his perspective on a future

of LoRaWAN based monitoring systems.

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Let's dig in.

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Kevin, thanks for coming on the show, man.

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Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm psyched to have you here.

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So you're in Miyazaki,

Japan, in Saito City.

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I think originally you were in Boston

before this, and we were just talking.

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You're telling me

that you were not fluent in Japanese?

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I was assuming anyone who moved to

Japan would be.

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Walk me through why you started an IoT

venture in rural Japan?

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Yeah, sure.

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So basically,

it started when I was in Boston

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and things were going great, but I sort of

wanted to do more with what I knew.

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I sort of got to the point

where I was feeling like I was just

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creating these forms for banking purposes,

like over and over.

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But then I started looking into

what I could do with microprocessors,

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and I learned about LoRaWAN

for the first time.

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And I'm like, this is really cool.

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Like the ability to send you like,

I looked into longer distance Wi-Fi

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sending, but sure, it's not that great,

but the ability to send data

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extreme distances was just too exciting.

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And, yeah, I figured I'd start to build

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LoRaWAN devices

and use them and place them around.

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Okay, so there's a bunch of challenges

to agriculture

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in Japan, and some of those challenges

face farmers all over the world.

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Is there anything specific to Japan

to where you are, where you're like,

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oh, LoRaWAN

really help solve this problem?

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So specifically, we're like in

Japan, it's a very mountainous area.

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So you've got a lot of places

where you just

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you have no connection

to the outside world.

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These mountains are extremely tall

with these very deep valleys.

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So getting any sort of LTE cell phone

connection just not going to happen.

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Not going to happen.

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And you're kind of further

outside of a city or a more metropolitan

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place, and it's just not worth putting up

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like a cell phone tower for,

you know, in this area.

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So that's sort of where LoRaWAN comes in.

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It really bridges

the gap between where one network ends

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and it allows you to sort of

create your network.

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Yeah, I always think of as like

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re-bubbling coverage,

which is a funny way of thinking, like,

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so you’ve got a cell tower,

and you can connect to that,

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and then you can create

a new bubble of coverage

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that's LoRaWAN coverage

when you know it's LoRaWAN coverage.

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It's not LTE,

but it allows you to do a bunch of stuff,

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especially if you're doing work

on backhaul or cell backhaul.

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Oh yeah.

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Okay.

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Walk me through, like what

the Japanese LoRaWAN system is like here.

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Here we are in the US.

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I know there's a huge presence in Europe.

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I just came back from Barcelona.

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It's like Europe, the US super into it.

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I didn't see much.

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I may not have seen anything from Japan

but one company, Murata,

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but what's it like living

there and doing LoRaWAN?

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So LoRaWAN I'd say

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is still smaller in Japan,

but it does seem to be growing.

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A lot of the networks here are private,

less than in like Europe.

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Like if you go on to TTN mapper

and you look at Europe,

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it's just you can't see Europe. It's

just all gateways.

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While Japan, there are some

and it is growing like the number

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of new gateways since last year, it's

sort of night and day.

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But still I feel like a lot of people

haven't heard about it.

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There's a need for it.

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And when I start to tell people about it,

they're like, this is amazing.

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This is exactly what,

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you know, what we've been wanting,

but we just haven't heard about it.

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So I think that there's

a lot of opportunity.

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It's just getting people

to learn it and hear about it.

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That's kind of the trick.

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Are there

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kind of entry points that you'll use

when you're talking to someone about, hey,

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this is what LoRaWAN can do,

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where it always works,

whether it's like energy

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metering or soil moisture

sensing or something like that.

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Are there

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specific sensors or applications

or like this is almost always a home run?

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Yeah.

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So I mean, it's I think LoRaWAN here is

probably pretty similar to other places.

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Cold chain.

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Okay.

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Cold chain is really good

because a lot of people we've talked with

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have tried like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi

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sensors in inside of, like, these large

industrial refrigeration units.

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It's just they're not going to work.

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Exactly, exactly.

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And we've seen some like kind of crazy

things

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that people have tried to do to,

to get the connection via Wi-Fi.

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Like, there was this one point

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where people had like a Wi-Fi router,

like inside of this box

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that was outside with this

like Ethernet cable and power cable

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running a not optimal,

but LoRaWAN just gets that signal easy.

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Yeah.

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I mean, there's a reason

that every Starbucks in America

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has a LoRaWAN gateway because it makes

their cold chain monitoring super easy.

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Right right right.

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Pretty cool.

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Okay.

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So kind of skipping over the whole

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or packaging up the whole story

is that you're a nerd from Boston.

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You've been writing stuff for,

like the fintech stuff

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like writing all these bank

forms, figuring out software.

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

I've worked at just a bunch of banks.

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And then you come to Japan, you're like,

oh, this IoT thing is pretty cool.

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I can help out, and I've got these skills

and I can figure out the rest

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on the LoRaWAN side.

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And then at some point,

Saito City is like, hey,

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and I don't know if they came to.

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I'd actually like to know how you

you got this slot.

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They're like, hey, we like you to help

run DX digital transformation for us

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in some way.

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And whatever that position is like.

Walk me through how that happened.

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Did you just

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you met someone in a coffee shop

and you're like, oh, cool, you're a nerd.

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You could help us out.

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Or was it more like you went looking like,

how can I help my local city out?

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How did that go down?

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So basically,

when I first started out here

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inside toe,

one of the things that actually helped

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just a ton was the city

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offered support for small businesses,

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grants, things like that,

and we were talking with them.

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My wife was working on that portion of it.

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It's me and my wife doing this,

and she does mostly like the more business

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side of things while I'm doing more

of the electronics, coding, tech stuff.

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Yeah, the nerd stuff.

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Yeah, I love it.

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Yeah, yeah, the stuff I find fun.

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But as she was talking with the city,

they're like, we can see that

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this is super useful and we can find

a lot of use cases for this.

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Anything from farming to cold chain

to another big one, especially in

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Japan, is disaster monitoring

because there are a lot of,

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you know, kind of scary things

that happen in Japan,

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anything from earthquakes

to typhoons to tsunamis,

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even though we're a little safer

from the tsunami part.

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Also, another big thing that I don't know

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if like, is big of a deal

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where I'm not sure you're located

in San Diego, California,

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it might actually be a it's

kind of the same for you, but here

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one of the big deals is animals,

and it's a really big deal.

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So we've got boars here and these boars

cause all sorts of trouble.

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They destroy just tons of crops.

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They can attack people.

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Same thing with bears. It's amazing.

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Pigs and bears. That's so right. Okay.

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And I wouldn't

have thought there'd be like,

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those are pretty big animals.

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Japan

doesn't seem like a big animal place,

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but sounds like those are both problems

for you.

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Yeah, these are large animals.

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People try to do control

with these things, but it's really tough.

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Like electric fences.

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These boars will just walk through it.

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They don't that they're just taking

pictures like yeah, yeah, they don't care.

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They don't care.

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So creating computer vision devices

that also can send data via LoRaWAN,

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something that you can put out

in the woods,

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put in the middle of sort of nowhere

and detect where these things are moving,

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or if they have a trap or something

that was really big for the city.

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Oh, right.

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And I just saw a super cool device,

I think, called MountainAire

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it was a tiny little box,

had a camera in it,

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did the processing on board

at a battery for three years,

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and you could just stick it on a tree

and basically tell it what to look

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for, like, hey,

when you see a bear, send me a message.

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Sounds like you're building

the same kind of thing.

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Very similar, very similar. Exactly.

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Then they figure out what to do

when they see a bear.

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They're like, I'll call an airstrike.

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Or however the the Japanese ecosystem

cancels that.

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Yeah, yeah. No, actually,

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something that's kind of surprising

is there's a lot of hunters here.

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I mean, I'm, kind of surprising.

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People think, you know, Japan.

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No guns.

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Yeah.

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No, there are a lot of hunters here.

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And despite the number of hunters.

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Yeah, the hunting pressure

doesn't keep the population down.

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Okay, interesting.

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But I can see that being a use case

that we wouldn't think of, like

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we don't have a boar or bear problem

here in San Diego, but certainly in Texas.

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I know there's a bunch of wild pig hunting

and they're way into that.

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Okay, that's pretty cool.

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And then what happened with this?

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Or what was this lightning rod project?

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I, I saw a piece on it.

The thing was in Japanese.

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So ChatGPT helped me as much as it

could, but, I didn't get the whole thing.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So that is something we tested out.

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Well, we didn't get too, too far with it.

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Okay?

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Basically what we were doing was

we were monitoring strikes,

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the number of strikes that happen and if,

if there are any like damage.

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If so, we had an accelerometer.

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If the thing was bent, not vertical,

we could alert you to that.

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And then you could go

and do repairs and got it.

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So the lightning rods on the building,

it gets hit by lightning.

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Normally you wouldn't know about it.

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You just know about

if it's a I guess, a giant problem.

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Right. Exactly.

But other than that it could be damaged.

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And so you're putting this sensor on there

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and saying, hey, this thing is now tilted,

whatever 30 degrees.

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You should go check it. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah.

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And I mean, the kind of

one of the neat things with that is like,

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you know, the higher up

you are with a lot of these things,

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the less obstacles you have in your way.

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So being on top of the building,

you're already sort of above

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all of the obstacles.

So it makes it a lot easier.

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It's great. It's great for coverage.

Yeah, yeah.

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But unfortunately we didn't get to too far

with that right there.

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Yeah.

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And I think that's what you hear a ton in

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LoRaWAN

is if there's all these pilot projects

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and people

are constantly looking for like,

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what's the thing that is going to be,

especially as a business, what's the thing

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that's going to open up the door for you

to get to the rest of the building?

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Because what I hear over and over again

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is a business will start with,

sounds like your thing is cold chain.

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You'll start a cold chain, like, hey,

let me get a LoRaWAN gateway on there, or,

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you know, somewhere on prem

or get you some kind of coverage.

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Here's this cold chain monitoring.

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And then once the client sees that,

they're like,

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oh, what else can you monitor?

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And you're like, well,

what are your problems?

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We can we can probably solve those.

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So with that, is there anything else

that you're looking to do

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in the upcoming months or years there.

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Like what are you guys looking forward

to at CropWatch?

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You're thinking, okay,

this is our next, next big push.

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What does that look like?

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Yeah.

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So at the moment

what we're looking to do is just expand

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where our current three things right now

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we've got temperature

sensing is really nice in Japan.

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They're now requiring temperature

monitoring

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because the summers here are incredibly

hot incredibly humid actually.

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Cities are now required to report

when the days become

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so hot that it becomes a heat stroke risk.

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And that's actually

another major danger here in Japan.

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So we're hoping that we can set up devices

that measure heat index.

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Do you think you'll measure

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like do a whole weather station piece

and see where else you can sell that data,

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or will you just put up a like an LHT

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65, a temperature

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and humidity monitor and say like that's

that's good enough or unknown?

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So right now

we're working on finishing development

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of our own hardware and oh cool.

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Well yeah.

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So that's sort of one of the big things

we had gone back and forth

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between using our hardware

and some pre-made hardware devices.

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One thing we found was some of the

pre-made or made from other companies.

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They didn't remain alive

for as long as we had hoped.

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Oh, really? Okay.

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Yeah.

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So things

some of the places that we are doing

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or deploying

devices are really, really tough.

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Yeah. So

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I think

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our devices are at this point

probably the toughest

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because what we do is we are not just

selling our devices to people.

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We're selling, and then we support them

for the ongoing service.

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I guess I should ask you about that.

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Is that kind of this, because this is the

business of LoRaWAN, is

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how does the business work?

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Do you go and find a client?

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You say, hey,

we’ll charge you for the hardware,

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and then we'll charge

an ongoing service fee.

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Is there anything else?

That's a pretty standard business model.

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Is there anything else

that you're doing that

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you think is innovative

or useful for other people?

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Sure.

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So one of the

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I think sort of a more difficult thing

with LoRaWAN at the moment is right now

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you need to have an LNS

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and then you need to have

some sort of database to store that data.

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The things, networking and activities,

a bunch of them allow you to store data

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for some amount of time.

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But a lot of the people we're working with

just want to store data.

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Not for some amount of time,

but they just want forever.

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Yeah.

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So what we are giving them

the ability to do is

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store their data

as long as they have our service.

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Nice.

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Is there anything fancy you that you just

running kind of InfluxDB like?

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What is it? What does that look like?

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It's all Postgres.

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So yeah, everything's on top of Postgres.

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Well, so we're using timescale.

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That gives us the ability

to sort and search through data.

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Yeah, that's what it's for.

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On top of that, we give people the ability

to just in real time connect to our API

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that way. There.

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If they don't want data in our database,

they can just grab it

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and push it back into theirs

and pull it out.

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And we also give them a user interface,

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which is nice,

but a lot of users want like a report.

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So you know, something that they print out

once a week.

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We also automatically send that over all.

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That's pretty pretty standard.

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The bigger thing is what we're making

sure is our devices are really solid

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and work in sort of tougher places

than other devices.

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Okay, so just thinking about

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as like a ruggedized device company

that also offer service, exactly.

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One thing that we have coming up

very soon,

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and it's what we've been sort of hardening

the device further against,

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is we've got a refrigeration unit

that is somewhat special.

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It's for freezing things quickly,

and the temperatures

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quite often drop below -40,

which is really difficult.

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Super cold ones. Yeah, it's super cold.

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And a lot of LoRaWAN

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modules have trouble handling temperatures

below -40.

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If you go around

look at LoRaWAN modules, it's almost

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always -40 to 85 that your range.

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So we've been working on making our device

so that it's going to continue to work

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for extended periods.

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In some electronics you hit -40.

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You can drop down below that

for a little while and it will be okay.

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But for extended periods it can be rough.

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So yeah okay.

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So you need something for a flash

chiller. Exactly.

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Maybe I'll dig around and help you with

that.

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God knows I talk to enough people and,

and LoRaWAN.

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Okay. Ripping.

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Dude. Well, this is super cool

to see what's going on with CropWatch.

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What's the best way for people to find you

who are just listening

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and can't be bothered to read the show

notes?

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Where should they find CropWatch?

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Yeah, they can go to our website.

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It's CropWatch.io.

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Okay.

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Super easy

and I'll make sure that's in the show

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notes along with anything we talked about.

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Kevin, thanks so much for making the time.

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I know you’re a founder

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and super busy doing all this stuff

and starting and running a company,

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so I really appreciate you

making the time to come on it.

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Thank you very much for having me.

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That's it for

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this episode of The Business of LoRaWAN.

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I built this for you,

the one person in about 100,000

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who actually has an interest in how

this tiny little slice of the world works.

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Of course, this isn't just about you

and me, it's about everyone in law.

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When and how we can work together

to make an exceptional thing.

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LoRaWAN is a dispersed community

with little pockets of knowledge

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all around the world,

and most of them don't

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:

talk to each other as much as I'd like.

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So the first and best thing

we can do to make this show better

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:

is to get more guests

on who I don't even know exist.

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I want to talk to strangers. Strangers?

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Who are your friends.

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Please

introduce me to the most rad LoRaWAN air

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:

you know, or point to my way, or reach out

and give me a name when it comes

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:

to running down LoRaWAN guests,

I can track a falcon on a cloudy day.

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If you can remember metsci.show,

you can find me.

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That's M-E-T-S-C-I

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:

dot S-H-O-W, metsci.show.

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:

Okay, so sharing knowledge

by getting great guests on is the first,

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:

and by far the most important thing

we can do to make this better.

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:

The next best thing for the show to do

is the usual stuff.

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:

Subscribe to the show. Give it a review.

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Share it in your corner of the world

again, that's metsci.show.

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:

Finally, if you want to support the show

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:

financially, you can do that

over at support.metsci.show.

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:

You'll see options there

for one time donations.

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:

If you really like this show,

as well as an ongoing subscription option.

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:

If you think the show is worth supporting

for the long term.

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:

If you want to try LoRaWAN for yourself,

sign up for MeteoScientific account

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:

at console.meteoscientific.com and

get your first 400 data credits for free.

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:

That's enough to run a sensor for

about a year if you're firing every hour.

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The show is supported by a grant

from the Helium Foundation

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:

and produced by Gristle King, Inc..

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I'm Nik Hawks.

I'll see you on the next show.

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for The Business of LoRaWAN
The Business of LoRaWAN
Learn From the Pros

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About your host

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Nik Hawks

Incurably curious, to stormy nights and the wine-dark sea!