Episode 12

Flexible LoRaWAN Deployments - Manoj Telrandhe

Manoj Telrandhe from TerraQ discusses how they're using LoRaWAN across the Middle East to help businesses as they expand. LoRaWAN offers unique benefits for restaurants or businesses that are growing; put up one gateway and you basically can't outgrow the coverage.

Key Points

TerraQ's IoT solutions cater to diverse industries, including restaurants and smart cities, leveraging LoRaWAN for long-range, low-power communication.

The company's cloud-based application enables clients to monitor their dashboard statistics remotely, promoting scalability and flexibility.

LoRaWAN technology allows for customization, supporting various sensor deployments and use cases, from small restaurants to large smart cities.

Businesses Mentioned

TerraQ: Provides IoT solutions using LoRaWAN technology for industries like restaurants and smart cities.

Memorable Quotes

* "I fell in love with LoRaWAN, it removes all barriers with no wired connections."

* "Scalability is superb, you can use any kind of sensors and go to any level."

* "It's the future, LoRaWAN technology integrates a lot of protocols and removes geographical barriers."

LINKS

LinkedIn - Manoj

TerraQ

  • 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 Medio Scientific's,

The Business of Law is

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the CEO and co-founder of Terra Q

technologies.

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With a deep background

in energy management and sustainability.

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Minow has spent

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nearly two decades helping businesses

cut costs and improve operations.

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And today, he's applying that expertise

through Laura West.

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From reducing utility bills in restaurant

chains to enabling rapid deployments

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in facilities where traditional wiring

would be impossible.

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Minow sees LoRaWAN

as a key to transforming

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older energy hungry buildings

into smart, efficient spaces.

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He brings a combination of field tested

energy, knowledge and a passion

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for simple, scalable

IoT solutions to this conversation.

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We'll explore how he's building

private LoRaWAN networks for clients

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across the Middle East, why adaptability

is crucial in changing environments,

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and how focusing on clear

ROI unlocks broader IoT adoption.

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Let's dig in.

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Meadows, welcome to the show.

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Thank you.

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Thanks so much for coming on.

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I know Turkey is a startup,

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so this particular business

is a little bit new,

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but your background with LoRaWAN

is not super new.

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Can you walk me through

kind of who you are and how you got here?

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Okay, so you know my name, my knowledge.

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So since last 18 years,

I am into energy management field.

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I was doing energy audits a lot

right from the commercial building.

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Still power plants,

textile mills, everything.

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So I am into energy management

and sustainability training

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since my whole career.

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And then in my last job,

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we were trying to do some automation

for restaurants.

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So we tried a couple of wild technologies,

and then I got accidentally introduced

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with Lora Van,

and I actually fall in love with it.

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So we did a lot of,

you know, like research and understanding

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that what kind of sensors are available,

what kind of data can be sent.

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And now, almost like 60 plus

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stores are connected with more advanced

technology to a cloud application

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where we are remotely monitoring

and controlling these tools like HPC,

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specifically HPC, which creates a lot of,

you know, stress on the utility bills.

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What declined to spend?

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So that's how I got introduced to it.

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And now I started my own business,

and now I am trying to explore more

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and more about Lora when I see it,

that it is the future, because you know,

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it removes all the barriers

kind of thing, like no wired connections.

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A lot of protocols can be integrated

and scalability is superb.

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Like, you can use any kind of sensors

and you can go to any level.

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Yeah, I know you've talked a bunch

about just how big of a jump

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it is to go

from being relying on cables to wireless.

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It seems pretty obvious, but

I should probably ask the question anyway.

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Is there anything in there

that you see is just this massive

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unlocking of potential

when you can drop the cables?

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A lot of potential.

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Now, let's say I mean, you hear the space

utilization changes a lot.

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So for example, you are seeing a building

in a particular way.

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Today might be tomorrow.

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The people will change the use of that.

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Somebody will be do a partition into it.

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Somebody

might be changing the seating plan.

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Somebody might be changing

the complete machineries over it.

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Now, what you will do with that,

if you have wired connection.

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So being wireless becomes

like it makes it so much easy

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that you just need to change the sensor

from one location to another location.

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Your entire ecosystem.

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And connection remains.

The connectivity remains the same.

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You need not to change that.

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So it makes a lot of sense.

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And another thing is

that when people trying

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to change the, you know, space

utilization, they are also adding it to it

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might be 100 square

meter area will become 200 square meter.

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So what you do

you will be adding again the cables.

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That is one thing.

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And second let's talk about BMS.

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So BMS are mostly happening

when the project are getting,

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you know, conceptualize

on when they are in the designing phase.

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What you do with the retrofits,

those thousands of numbers of buildings

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are actually causing the global warming

because of their high and,

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you know, energy consumption,

how you will automate them.

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So you need to find out a technology

which is a kind of plug and play.

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And fortunately,

Lora Band is giving us the power

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to convert them from non-smart buildings

to smart

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buildings, or let's say from Non-smart

Industries to smart industries.

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It can go to any level.

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That's, I think, the,

you know, core strength of how

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it is like empowering us

to do what we were not able to do.

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I hadn't thought about how fast

you can deploy or redeploy,

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especially with, as you say,

the space utilization piece.

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That's interesting.

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I always thought of LoRaWAN as being like

these really long term deployments.

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And so the idea that you're dealing

with customers who

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I mean, if you're in the restaurant

business, they go in and out of business,

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maybe not all the time,

but it's it's a tough business.

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And so the ability to go in

and not have to cable anything

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up, you just say, okay,

you know, you're done.

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I'll move my gateway in sensors

or you're getting bigger.

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Great.

I'll just add a couple more sensors.

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That's that's pretty cool.

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What's the average size

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or kind of average customer

that you're going after with Terra?

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Q what does that look like?

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So the average size of the customer

does not depend like that.

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But we look for the

we will say chain kind of businesses.

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So for example

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it is one of the kind of client

we might not be interested that much.

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But let's say it's a chain of problem.

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For example,

there are a thousand restaurants,

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there are a thousand clinics

or there are thousand hotels.

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We have repeatability of the same problem

again and again.

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Okay.

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So the scaling becomes very easy and

it can the deployment becomes too fast.

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And you talked about actually the network

I think in your part of the world

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you are using the community network

in which the gateway is added outdoor.

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And it's a community kind of network.

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In our case, the gateways are actually

creating only the private network.

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Oh, really? Yeah.

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So it is getting utilized

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for that particular client

only till now we have not reached to the,

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you know, position where we are

using LoRaWAN as a community service.

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Interesting.

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So if you look at community services,

the two big ones are TTN and helium.

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You certainly have the coverage there

and you should be able to roam onto them.

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So that might be of additional

use to you.

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I think this is another interesting piece.

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Doing all these podcasts is

everybody knows about their own

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little corner of LoRaWAN,

and they're really good in their corner.

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But there's I think, as you said

before we got on, there's not enough.

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And talking back and forth

and really sharing knowledge,

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which is why this thing exists.

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Super cool. Okay.

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Can you walk me through

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maybe a customer deployment

that you've done, that

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you really move the needle for them,

or you really made a change for them,

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or before they found you

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and worked with you,

they were struggling with something

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and now they're using LoRaWAN to connect

sensors that really help their business.

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So restaurant case,

I have already mentioned to you

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there is one more case in which now

this is a work in progress.

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There is a client.

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They are a food manufacturing.

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So they cook the food, the bank, the food,

and they provide it

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to flights and all that,

and then to the other clients.

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And this includes a big facility

in which the food is made.

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They need non-contact type things.

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They need a lot of hygienic

things over there.

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You cannot lay out the cables

and the environment is always moist.

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Humidity is locked.

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Temperature is high.

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Now in such kind of case.

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And all these cases are, you know, like

covered with stainless steel and all that.

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So cabling

and these things becomes a lot difficult.

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So now we are working on, providing them

a solution in which we will be keeping.

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Now they want the temperature

and monitoring system for their entire

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facility because it's actually

a compliance thing for them being food.

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So the LoRaWAN sensors are so easy

to deploy, a small size of sensor,

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you just either magnetically or,

you know, place on the ball

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or you screw it over there,

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and then you place the data set,

you know, gateways, and you get the data.

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So that's how they were actually quite

amazed to see that, okay,

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such kind of things can also be deployed.

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And when we tell them that okay, the

entire installation can happen in a week,

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they were actually amazed because yeah,

how it can happen in such a short time.

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So they were actually like,

that means a lot.

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And being no cables, you know, like

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no other installations,

it makes them very easy.

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That is one of the applications going on.

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Another thing we are talking to

some clients for smart city kind of thing,

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in which similarly what you have

the community kind of the installations,

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we will be having a gateway installations

for the entire community,

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entire township, and then we will be

deploying different, different sensors

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where we can make,

you know, more usable for the clients.

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So let's say public parking,

public restrooms,

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parking areas,

then, retail shops over there.

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It might also happen

that they can deploy the smart home

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kind of applications

in which gateways are already over there.

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They will deploy some smart home

sensors and two mobile lab.

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They can manage their lighting, HPC

or even plug loads.

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Okay.

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And because you're coming

from the energy management piece,

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all of that is is kind of native to you.

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Like, oh yeah, I totally get energy

and how that's important now.

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Definitely.

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Because see, there are no tangible

and intangible benefits, right?

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Because of ESG and sustainability, people

are looking towards data collection.

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But ultimately business

look for the ROI. Yeah.

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So unless

and until you start from the energy thing,

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there is no other points

which will give you all the way.

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For example, having a public parking

connected to LoRaWAN and making it

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smart are not going to solve their purpose

unless and until they are saving

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something on the cost.

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So we always need

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to bring some kind of factor

in which the cost saving will be there.

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And then once people understand that, yes,

this technology is bringing me

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some kind of financial benefits,

then they themselves

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ask us what else we can do,

what next we can do?

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Can we add something else into it?

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And we have water management, can have

parking management can be have pest

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management kind of thing,

or even let's say asset tracking

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where the technicians are

or where they are,

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you know, utility vehicles are

they can manage that as well.

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Okay.

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And that seems to be a common theme

with a lot of LoRaWAN deployments, is

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you have your leading use case

that you go in with where you're like,

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I know this one works. It's really good.

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Here's the ROI I can show you

out of the gate how good it's going to be.

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And a lot of companies use that same

strategy, knowing that the customers,

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after they see the first solution

will say, oh, what else can you do?

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Yeah, okay.

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So that solutions for you with

the restaurants, what are those look like?

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What are the ones that you know

that they're going to

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you can be able to show ROI whether it's

in safe compliance or something else.

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Now there are two three

kind of things to it.

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So for example, when I did that project,

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there were four aspects to it

which we tried to capture.

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One was energy management,

second was for compliance,

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third was safety, and fourth was there

sustainability reporting kind of the take.

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So now in energy management what happens.

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They have the all the stores have dining

and kitchen areas.

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The Hvac has to run 24 by seven.

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Whether there is customer or no customer

you cannot switch off basis.

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Right.

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Even you mean

you are not walking into the dining.

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They need to run the ACS.

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So we deployed

smart thermostats over there.

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We got it connected to a cloud application

from which you can schedule it.

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And then their electricity

bill went down a lot.

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So they had a lot of savings over there.

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Second aspect was food compliance.

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So in restaurant

you have the chillers and freezers

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in which you are storing the material.

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And for food compliance you need to

maintain the correct temperatures.

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Now we installed the temperature

and humidity sensors over there.

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And then it showed them that whether

their temperatures are correct or not,

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in some cases they will be coming to know

there are under cooling,

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they might be over cooling.

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So it helps us not only to manage

the food compliance kind of thing,

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but also to streamline their maintenance,

because there might be a case

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where the store manager

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don't know that whether my food

is at a correct temperature or not.

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But now having a real time

monitoring of that,

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the maintenance team can understand

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yes, something is going wrong

or something is correct.

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Got it.

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And third part we touched

was the safety part

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because stores are always, you know,

scattered over like a large area.

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They might be in one city.

They might be in another city.

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Now how do you address

the fire safety of these things?

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Because if something happens,

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the store staff will be and the customers

will be in the line of fire.

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So as like management,

how do you tackle such kind of situation?

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So what we did is that we try to connect

the fire alarm panels

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through LoRaWAN

to the centralized monitoring system.

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So if suppose any kind of fire

incident happened over there,

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you will get an immediate alarm.

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So that makes the management

think that okay,

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this is like the safety aspects

in which I can immediately get to know.

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So I can turn off certain things

and my assets,

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my people and even my clients

will do all this safety.

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And then from sustainability perspective,

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all the utility consumption

which is getting captured,

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they can accurately report them

for their sustainability reporting.

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So all these four aspects

were captured in that particular project.

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That's super cool.

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And that's also a nice picture

as you walk into a restaurant

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or a building and say, hey,

these are the four things we can do.

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They can then imagine what their savings

are going to be, or had a good idea

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of what their savings are going to be,

how it's going to be useful,

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and that makes it a little bit

easier to go in.

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Is most of the business in Dubai?

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I know that cooling there was must be

insanely important and expensive.

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Expensive, I cannot say because government

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have a lot of control over the tariffs

and all that. Yep.

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You see, in this part of the world,

a lot of things in the energy

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management doesn't happen

only because the plates were too low.

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Got it. Okay.

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Now the tariff awareness is there.

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There is.

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After the cop happened over here, people

are lot more committed to sustainability.

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Now companies are getting listed.

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They are becoming public limited.

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So it has been mandatory for them

to become,

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you know, sustainable

to publish the ESG reports.

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So trends are changing a little bit,

but it does not mean

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that the client will be always

from that sector only.

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And we are actually trying

to cover the entire Middle East.

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And not only that, we have seen

that such kind of things like,

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for example, I took your example

that you are using community networks.

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I am not using the community network

might be in your area.

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There will be any client

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who might be looking for a private network

to do such kind of things.

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So we are open for the entire world.

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And because we are serving

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to our clients

who a cloud based application

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that removes a lot of barriers

which are related to the countries

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or continents, we can go to any level

and then they can have their own hardware,

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or they can take hardware from us, connect

to our application

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and find out a lot more

about the algorithms, dashboards,

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the different, different reporting

kind of things, what we have, how

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it can assist them to serve their purpose,

to solve their problems.

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And then when you go into these places,

are you putting in a kind of

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physical tablet so that everybody can see

all the dashboard statistics?

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Or is this something

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that they log into on any computer

and they can see via software

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what it looks like?

If I had logging in, what it looks like.

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So this totally depends on the client's

requirements.

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Okay. Okay.

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So for example, now the at present

the use is like that.

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The software is on a cloud.

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The login from a computer

to see what kind of data they have.

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But let's take an example

that the client wants to showcase

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how sustainable they are.

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And they want to market these things

for getting more and more clients.

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Right? Okay.

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So definitely in that case,

they might keep a smart screen over there

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just to show that, okay, these are the,

you know, carbon emissions.

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What we have saved over the last one year

or this is how our food

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and temperature compliance,

we are monitoring and controlling for you.

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So it will change

will depend on the customer.

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Okay. Yeah, definitely.

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And then what is the average

kind of number of sensors per deployment?

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I know when I was talking with Bansi

a couple shows ago,

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he was saying kind of minimum

100 per client.

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Is there something that you see

when you walk into a restaurant

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and they always need at least four

or at least:

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what's the kind of number that you're,

you're seeing on deployments?

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It's again,

depends on the client requirements.

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So for example, right now

what we are seeing in the store,

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these are mostly like 10 to 20 sensors.

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Not more than that.

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But these are like the four only aspects.

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What we touched.

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What if suppose the clients are looking

for food connecting the kitchen equipment.

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Then what happens in this case.

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So the entire all the kitchen equipments

are getting connected.

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The number of sensors increase.

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But yes restaurants

are not that big in size.

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So this case will be different.

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But if suppose

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we are talking about a smart city,

maybe there will be thousands of sensors.

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But a good thing is that in both the cases

you are going to use only one gateway

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because you can connect 2000 sensors

to one gateway, right?

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So unless

and until the distance is not that bad,

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I think that the strength of LoRaWAN one

and gateway can handle so many sensors.

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Yeah. All right.

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It is a pretty impressive technology okay

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Manish thanks so much for making the time

today.

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Really appreciate you coming on

and telling us a little bit

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about Turku and super cool to learn about.

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I think the coolest thing

was learning like,

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oh yeah, the business use cases change

so much per space that LoRaWAN

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makes it really easy

to grow or shrink with it.

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That's really cool. Thank you,

thank you, thank you very much, Nick.

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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.

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It's about everyone in LoRaWAN

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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

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you know or point to my way, or help

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 Met Sideshow,

you can find me.

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That's 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,

share it in your corner of the world.

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:

Again, that's that's my 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 this show is worth supporting

for the long term.

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:

If you want to try LoRaWAN for yourself,

sign up for a 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 in 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!