
Amazon Sidewalk is a new long-range wireless network - garysahota93
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/amazon-sidewalk-is-a-new-long-range-wireless-network-for-your-stuff/
======
amingilani
LoRaWAN fits exactly this use-case and depending on the region, can operate on
any of the ISM bands. This article is very bare on technical details, but I'm
so confused. LoRa's made so much effort in this space by literally mapping out
every single ISM band they can (sub-GHz) and reaching out to regulators where
they couldn't find a compatible match. Amazon can't possible think 900 MHz
device is "free" globally.

[0]: [https://lora-alliance.org/about-lorawan](https://lora-
alliance.org/about-lorawan)

~~~
ausjke
LoRa is a great technology, with longer range and 1/10 of battery usage
comparing to its major competitor, NB-IoT. NB-IoT is backed up mobile
operators, as far as I know, in China they even outlawed LoRa to pave the way
for NB-IoT because the latter can bring revenue for big guns.

I will be happy to see LoRA got more attention and used more widely. You can
build your own LoRA network across large area with zero monthly fee once it is
up and running, and you pay monthly fee to NB-IoT just like your cellphone
plan, which one you prefer? Not to mention LoRA is technically better.

~~~
baybal2
> NB-IoT is backed up mobile operators, as far as I know, in China they even
> outlawed LoRa to pave the way for NB-IoT because the latter can bring
> revenue for big guns.

First time hearing that, where did you get that?

~~~
ausjke
it's everywhere, NB-IoT is a sub-standard of whatever the mobile operator is
running(3g,4g,LTE,etc), the devices are installed along aside with those
radios on the celluar towers, yes they're fully owned by your cell phone
providers.

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scohesc
Maaaan, why in gods name do companies have to keep re-inventing the wheel.
There's so many protocols and specifications out there already that they just
have to pick one and improve upon it with the goal of making it backwards
compatible with "older" versions of the protocol.

Fuck this "all in one ecosystem" mentality. :\

~~~
bigiain
Are you sure they haven't "just picked one"? Amazon, and AWS in particular,
have a long history of not reinventing anything, just packaging an existing
open/free thing up and selling access to it.

I suspect the quickest way to find out if this is LoraWAN or Zigbee or
Weightless will be to keep an eye on who switches to a Mongo/Redis style
"commons clause" of "SSPL" license... ;-)

~~~
StreamBright
>> just packaging an existing open/free thing up and selling access to it.

Just like Apple packaging up CPUs and memory chips. I think most people in
tech having a hard time to understand that UX is everything. You can take the
Athena example of AWS, even though it is just PrestoDB the difference of UX is
enormous. A data scientist (end user) cannot download presto compile it,
create a EC2 cluster with failover push it there, configure it, performance
tune it and keep updating it but she/he can got to AWS console and pull up the
Athena interface and type in a query. This is why "just packing" is very
important and people are willing to pay for it.

~~~
bigiain
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing. I'd _much_
rather be able to us their api to Ansible-up or point-n-click a MySQL database
in RDS than to only have them offer some proprietary "Amazon Enterprise SQL
Server". It's a good thing.

(I do, though, have some sympathy for the problems companies/projects like
Mongo and Redis have where Amazon makes all the money off their products
without contributing to the development of them. )

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bonyt
So, is this like a competitor to LoRa?

[https://lora-alliance.org/](https://lora-alliance.org/)

~~~
whoisjuan
Could be an implementation over Weightless-N which is open source, sub-GHz and
works on the ranges this is supposed to work.
[http://www.weightless.org/](http://www.weightless.org/)

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tw04
They only mention Bluetooth and wifi... Are we pretending zigbee and zwave
don't exist? This just feels like an excuse to create yet another proprietary
protocol.

~~~
RandallBrown
Isn't this meant to work at distances an order of magnitude farther than
Zigbee and Z Wave?

~~~
tw04
How would that ever happen? They're operating on the same bands and are
limited to the same wattage restrictions as everyone else. It's not like they
purchased some private band that they can do something unique on.

~~~
syedkarim
An order of magnitude is 10 dB, which LoRa can provide through coding gain.
10x the range for the same power should be possible with LoRa.

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oflannabhra
So, this is a sub-GHz mesh. The big issue with sub-GHz, of course, is
bandwidth.

I am very confused by Amazon's radio protocols. Even though most of this has
come through acquisitions, they are:

Eero - Thread (2.4GHz mesh IPv6, 802.15.4) Alexa - Zigbee (2.4GHz & optional
900MHz mesh, 802.15.4) Ring - Z-wave (sub-GHz mesh, proprietary)

~~~
zeroxfe
> The big issue with sub-GHz, of course, is bandwidth.

Doesn't seem like a big issue for the IoT common case (switches, controls,
alarms.)

~~~
oflannabhra
I also forgot to mention the other big issue with sub GHz: certification. Each
country has their own frequency, from 800-900 MHz. Unless you buy a pre-
certified package, you’re looking at expenses for certs probably higher that
cost cost of development.

~~~
onion2k
I think Amazon can afford the certification costs.

~~~
oflannabhra
> Amazon says it’ll publish the protocol so that other device makers can also
> integrate it into their devices.

I doubt they will pay cert costs for other companies. Maybe they’ll provide a
pre-certified package though.

~~~
dillonmckay
No, they will bill it like any other AWS service.

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the_watcher
A dog tag is... actually a fantastic use of something like this.

~~~
diego_moita
Meh... I want to see the implementation first.

Without a GPS doesn't provide too much utility. With a GPS would probably need
very frequent charging.

~~~
tzs
If the communication is bidirectional, you could include a GPS that only turns
on when polled. That way, the GPS is only using power when you are actually
looking for a lost dog.

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xenospn
I'm building something similar ([https://gethuan.com/](https://gethuan.com/))
using augmented BLE and long range sensors. Maybe if I get big enough Amazon
will buy me out. Ok, back to work!

~~~
oh_sigh
Looks interesting; installed. I toyed around with gps/locator
collars(findster) but unfortunately the quality was junky and the battery life
was horrible, so I had no faith it would do its job when I needed it.

How close does someone with the app need to get to the tag before it phones
home?(nevermind, FAQ says ~300 ft, which is really good. It seems like if you
can see the animal, you can probably get it's beacon id?)

Do you triangulate positions from multiple users, or show a general track of
the animal over time?

Are you partnering with big driving orgs (ups, Uber, etc) or parks departments
to get more readers on the streets?

What's your revenue model?

~~~
xenospn
Can be several hundred feet in an open field, YMMV in an urban environment. On
the other hand, I don't want to have too big of a radius in town, closer is
better.

There's a reason you don't really see dogs wearing GPS collars - even with
LTE-M, the experience is still not good and I don't think there's product
market fit.

Absolutely - partnering up with Ride shares is on my roadmap, as well as
sticking antennas in Drones and I'm filing a patent for automatically
dispatching rideshares that can triangulate a missing pet even if there's no
other sensors around.

~~~
xenospn
Revenue is subscription based - people pay for higher range or custom tag
designs. Making the product nice to touch and having multiple designs is
extremely important. People really like that!

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johnrobertreed
I'm just going to leave this little guy right here...
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/helium-
network/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/helium-network/)

~~~
SergeAx
That sounded great until "cryptocurrency" bit.

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jedberg
Didn't they originally want to do wifi in the 900mHz range but couldn't
because too many people had cordless phones in that range?

I guess not many people still have cordless phones? Or they have the tech to
avoid it now?

~~~
Sanzig
There's two main reasons to prefer 2.4 GHz to 900 MHz. First, there's more
spectrum available (100 MHz vs 26 MHz). More importantly, though, the 2.4 GHz
license-free ISM band allocation is worldwide, whereas the 900 MHz allocation
is Region 2 (the Americas) only.

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jlgaddis
Even out here in the rural part of the country, the 900 MHz band is already so
crowded and full of interference. I can't imagine what it looks like in more
heavily populated areas!

~~~
ourlordcaffeine
That's actually pretty disappointing to hear. I wanted to try using long range
ISM with seismometers. I guess I can use directional antennas though, as the
units are stationary after all.

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duxup
That poor guy in Huntington Park who can't quite reach the other devices.

~~~
asdff
Pretty shit coverage around USC too

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ChrisArchitect
anyone in Toronto seeing the naming of this and picture of a dog was probably
thrown for a loop because of Sidewalk Labs.....(Alphabet/Google)

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B1FF_PSUVM
_" Amazon argues that Bluetooth and WiFi don’t have enough range, while 5F
takes too much power and is too complex."_

Nice typo.

~~~
mxuribe
Oh right, 5F is the precursor to 5G - the prototype for it.

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kmfrk
Anyone know how this compares to Apple's U1 chip's Ultra Wideband technology?

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wmf
It sounds completely different, like miles vs. meters.

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petra
Could Amazon force companies that this protocol - to sell only in Amazon.com ?
Is this legal?

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baybal2
Can somebody tell why Amazon suddenly went into hardware? It by far doesn't
seem to be their core competence

~~~
nestorherre
Do you remember back then when Amazon only sold books? Yeah, me neither.

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greatjack613
As if we need another centrally controlled wireless network protocol.

Boy is bezos smart

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JohnFen
Just no. I'm not willingly giving Amazon even more access to my data.

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mxuribe
Ooohhh, you mean tags for __real __dogs...I wrongly assumed they meant tags to
keep tabs on cheating husbands (aka "dogs")! ;-)

