Advantech and Actility partner on LoRaWan deployment

  • June 15, 2022
  • Steve Rogerson

Taiwanese firm Advantech and French company Actility have launched a joint product that lets users deploy and manage private LoRaWans on their premises.

It combines a rugged Advantech industrial PC with embedded Actility software, bringing a secure industrial-grade service with extended compatibility with gateways, cloud platforms and devices.

This integration aims at meeting the needs of the fast-growing industrial automation market, by allowing businesses to leverage the power of LoRaWan long-range unlicensed wireless technology to deploy many IoT use cases in a simplified, quicker and more cost-effective way that eliminates wiring, thus accelerating the realisation of Industry 4.0.

The ESRP-ACT-UNO2484 edge-ready package consists of Advantech’s Uno-2000 series of industrial embedded automation computers with a preinstalled version of Actility ThingPark Enterprise LoRaWan server for set-up on user premises. The fully on-premises installation ensures service continuity that does not depend on internet access and makes it easier to comply with stringent end-to-end security policies of industrial sites.

The offering can interconnect with other on-premises private LoRaWans, ThingPark Enterprise SaaS cloud networks or public LPWANs through standard LoRaWan peering and roaming. The software is pre-installed under an upgradable three-month trial licence.

ThingPark Enterprise is a LoRaWan IoT management platform that helps users build and operate the LoRaWan infrastructure by managing LoRaWan gateways and devices, and monitoring network operations. ThingPark Enterprise also streamlines the communication to business logic and application servers, implementing a large number of connectors and taking care of semantic conversions.

ThingPark Enterprise is designed for enterprises, scaling from single gateway sites to large multi-gateway campuses. It is flexible and can seamlessly interconnect multiple on-premises and SaaS sites, from multiple countries, in any combination. It also exists in high-availability (HA) clusters to support the requirements of industrial use cases.

The package allows users to: 

  • Build a multi-gateway, geo-redundant, high-availability LoRaWan with a user-friendly interface and monitor it in real time;
  • Extend cloud intelligence and analytics to edge devices, with end-to-end infrastructure security trusted by major telecommunication operators;
  • Enjoy carrier-grade support and maintenance including round-the-clock monitoring of smart IoT platforms; and
  • Benefit from a seamless inter-operability among smart things, respecting and aligning with the market’s norms.

ThingPark Enterprise is compatible with all popular LoRaWan base stations, including Browan, Cisco, Kerlink, MultiTech, Ufispace, Tektelic, Gemtek, Rad SecFlow and Option’s CloudGate. Moreover, it supports all LoRaWan versions and classes including multicast, and all regional profiles. It also includes a large managed library of drivers to facilitate application payload decoding for third-party application integration. This library is regularly updated as the LoRaWan ecosystem expands, but users can also adapt drivers or add their own.

ThingPark Enterprise exposes data through various mechanisms including HTTP or MQTT for connection to popular clouds or applications. It comes preconfigured with a series of bidirectional connectors to popular IoT cloud services including AWS IoT and Microsoft Azure IoT Hub and IoT Central, which have been tested for stability and capacity, and take care of all required configuration as well as ontology translation. The connectors allow easy, fast and cost-efficient integration, accelerating go-to-market and project delivery.

As the industrial IoT has many already deployed legacy communication technologies such as Modbus or Hart, ThingPark Enterprise comes with integrated interfaces and protocol adaptation services to ease integration with Modbus end nodes and applications, MBus or RS485 systems, and digital, analogue and pulse IOs, thus allowing easy upgrade of already-deployed systems.

“Although countless facilities are equipped with advanced hardware, the lack of remote monitoring mechanisms makes them susceptible to minor disturbances, lowering efficiency or even halting operations,” said Ching-Po Lin, associate vice president at Advantech. “Therefore we collaborate with Actility to help customers accelerate the development of industrial applications and build a smart manufacturing environment.”

Olivier Hersent, CEO at Actility, added: Stability is key for IoT as maintenance costs quickly add up when managing thousands of devices. It is even more important for industrial IoT. Our partnership with Advantech combines field-proven industrial computing with the leading carrier-grade LoRaWan infrastructure and edge processing, adapted to seamlessly integrate with both industrial protocols and leading IoT platforms.

Actility subsidiary Abeeway has partnered Murata to design and make the LBEU5ZZ1WL geolocation LPWAN module for increased battery life, with sensitivity and flexibility to build customised low-cost IoT tracking devices. Suitable for indoor and outdoor environments, applications include asset recovery, traceability, inventory management and theft prevention.