Minnesota-based electronics distributor Digi-Key Electronics has partnered with Seeed Studio and Machinechat to launch a private LoRaWan-in-a-box.

Headquartered in California, Machinechat is a supplier of IoT data management products that reduce the cost and time spent developing and deploying IoT projects. Leveraging software-defined networking, it helps IoT architects, developers and networking OEMs quickly add data collection, processing of streaming data, data monitoring and policy-based data management to their products. Machinechat is the developer of the Jedi One and Jedi Pro software.

The ready-to-use offerings combine Chinese firm Seeed Studio’s industrial-grade LoRaWan IoT sensors and gateways with Jedi Pro Seeed Studio Edition software, allowing for rapid IoT deployments and enhanced security features that give users control over device data, saving time and reducing technical complexity and costs.

“Digi-Key is proud to be the exclusive global source for these turnkey, industry-first LoRaWans,” said Robbie Paul, director of IoT business at Digi-Key. “Wireless connectivity technologies like LoRaWan are leading the way for mass adoption of IoT, and we are excited to inspire developers and systems integrators around the world with many new possibilities available to them.”

The first LoRaWan-in-a-box offering is focused on rapid deployment of smart agriculture and precision farming projects.

Seeed Studio, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, has been serving the global developer community since 2008 by providing open technology and agile manufacturing services, with the mission to make hardware more accessible and lower the threshold for hardware innovation.

“For more than 13 years, Seeed Studio has been at the forefront of introducing innovative IoT enablement,” said Eric Pan, CEO of Seeed Studio. “By bundling our award-winning SenseCap LoRaWan hardware with Machinechat’s innovative and easy-to-use software, Digi-Key customers worldwide will be able to build and deploy robust, private LoRa IoT deployments in days versus weeks.”

Designed for commercial IoT applications, including smart agriculture, precision farming and smart city use cases, SenseCap’s industrial-grade LoRaWan sensors, data logger and gateway are designed for rapid installation and deployment. Features include support for LoRaWan protocol class A, transmission up to 10km line of sight, and support for multiple ISM bands EU868, US915, AU915 and AS923.

There is also support for Ethernet backhaul with cellular as an option. It provides industrial grade protection with an IP66 enclosure, suitable for outdoor applications and able to operate in temperatures from -40 to +70˚C, or up to 85˚C for SenseCap sensors. Sensor battery life of is more than three years.

Machinechat’s Jedi Pro Seeed Studio Edition is claimed to be the industry’s most affordable IoT data monitoring and visualisation software.

“Machinechat is thrilled to be part of this partnership with Digi-Key Electronics, a worldwide leader in offering the best of breed and innovative technologies for IoT, and Seeed Studio, a global leader in IoT enablement hardware,” said Sanjeev Datla, CEO of Machinechat. “Our combined private LoRaWan-in-a-box enables systems integrators and enterprise IT teams to rapidly transform their ideas into transformational IoT digital projects.”

Designed for commercial IoT deployments, Jedi Pro Seeed Studio Edition can ingest data from SenseCap LoRa sensors using the integrated Seeed Studio data collector. It can ingest data from virtually any device or sensor using integrated HTTP API server, TCP server and MQTT broker.

Dashboards can be configured to visualise real time and historical data with line, area, tile, radial and data grid charts. Data can be monitored using an integrated rules engine to trigger email notifications, SMS or execute external scripts. It can also monitor whether devices and machines are online.

Users can apply their custom business logic to IoT data through data collector and action plug-ins. A virtual data sensor allows developers and integrators to simulate project deployment scenarios.

Low code puts the focus on configuring, not coding. A single application binary runs as a service with integrated database and managed local data storage.

There is a modern browser-based user interface with SSL support and role-based user management. It supports up to 200 devices or sensors, and is available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone platforms.

Digi-Key Electronics, headquartered in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, is a distributor of electronic components and automation products worldwide. It provides more than 12.6 million components from over 2000 name-brand manufacturers.