This document provides an overview of Sigfox and how to communicate using Sigfox networks. It begins with an agenda and introductions. It then discusses Sigfox basics like the company, protocol, and advantages. Key concepts are explained like energy efficiency, outdoor/indoor coverage, security, and payload sizes. Demo examples are shown for sending a basic message and using an RFID reader. The cloud platform and callbacks are overviewed. Finally, instructions are provided for contributing projects and a workshop is held where attendees can send their first message using an Akeru board.

1. #9 LISBOA - 2016.02.11

2. Schedule
Intro
Slides - All about Sigfox
Demos .. hopefully
Workshop - Your turn to work
Enjoy !

3. About us
Anthony Charbonnier
Startup Relations Manager
Nicolas Lesconnec
Developer & Maker Evangelist
Pedro Costa
Narrownet Ecosystem Developer

5. Sigfox basics

6. About Sigfox
French company, funded in 2009
Operating in +12 countries as of Feb 2016
170 staff, 80 a year ago

7. About Sigfox
Sigfox is not selling chips
Sigfox is not building connected solutions
Sigfox has invented a radio protocol
Sigfox operates a global network

8. Why Sigfox ?
Already plenty of communication protocols around !
Gateway-based solutions not suited for independent things
A protocol designed for the IoT, not an existing one tweaked to
address it

9. New possibilities
Direct connection to the Internet
Years of lifetime on a battery
No configuration
As simple as possible : Detect - Send - Receive

10. New possibilities
Existing solutions: Cheaper connection & extended battery life
Enables totally new IoT applications
Backup connectivity for higher bandwidth devices

11. How to communicate
Detect something to send (that’s the hard part)
Power on the communication module
Send
Message is picked up by the network
Data is received on your server

12. Proof ?

13. How hard ?
Send an AT command
AT$SF=CAFECAFE
You receive an HTTP Request on your application server
Method, Content-Type & Body are customisable

14. Core concepts

15. Energy efficiency
The Sigfox protocol has been designed to maximise energy
efficiency
Connectivity solution shouldn’t impact product lifecycle
Only use energy when needed, and use as little as possible

16. Energy efficiency
Tx: ~20-35 mA during a few seconds (25mW ; 14dB)
Key factor: idle consumption
99.x% of the time, a connected thing is not actively connected
Idle consumption: a few µA

17. Out of the box
No configuration, no pairing, no signalisation
The network is serving the devices, not the other way round
Base stations are monitoring the radio spectrum, and detect
the messages sent by the devices
A message can be picked up by several base stations ;
validation & reduplication are handled by the network

18. Very Long Range
Best case scenario
+100km between transmitter & receiver (base station)
Real life
A few kms in urban environment, depending on immediate
surroundings
Tens of kms in the countryside, depending on topography &
land typology

19. Outdoor & Indoor
Walls don’t stop radio waves
… But there’s some attenuation, no magic here
Indoor coverage maps are available to customers, with an
applied attenuation of 20dB
Sub GHz frequencies have good indoor properties

20. Two-way communication
Devices can receive updates sent from your application server
Each communication is instigated by the device
A device will ask for an update
No passive Rx mode. (Energy efficiency, remember ?)

21. Small messages
Useful payload: 12 bytes
Up to 140 times each day
100 bits/s

22. 12 bytes
No multimedia obviously
Forget about XML, JSON, full text, ..
Back to the old days: binary & optimisation
12 bytes = 96 bits = 2^96 available values

23. Payload examples
GPS coordinates (lat x lng) : 6 bytes
Temperature: 2 bytes
State reporting : 1 byte
Heartbeat, update request : 0 byte
And … who needs full bytes when 5 bits are enough ?

24. Payload examples
I need to send the following
Value A - a number
Value B - a 0-32 value
Value C - a state out of 4 possibilities

25. Payload examples
A : 17568 —> 0100010010100000
B : 17 —> 010001
C : 3 —> 10
Frame: 01000100 10100000 01000110
Frame: 0x44 0xA0 0x46
AT$SF=44A046

26. 140 times a day
Not a technology limit, even at 100 bits/s
Compliant with the regulation
ETSI (ETSI 300-220): 1% duty cycle

27. Security
Each message is signed with a key unique to the device
Messages can be encrypted or scrambled
No keys exchanged over the network, no handshake
Security is an ever ongoing effort

28. Message signature
With each message, a hash is calculated & sent; using:
Device ID
Secret key, unique to the device. Never transmitted OTA
Payload
Internal increment

29. Radio properties
Great tolerance to interferors
Jamming resistant
Interception is hard: UNB & frequency diversity

30. Jammers

31. Interférons

32. Ultra Narrow Band

33. Background
Ultra Narrow Band isn’t brand new : used for submarines
communications during WW2
Hard part: detect messages, with no sync (time & frequency)

34. Sigfox use
The network currently monitors a 200KHz part of the spectrum
Each message is ~100Hz wide

35. UNB Analogy

36. Spectrum (quiet)

37. Undesired signals (aka real life)

38. Sigfox messages

39. Frequencies
Sigfox uses unlicensed Sub GHz frequencies
Europe : 868MHz
USA: 902MHz

40. Frequencies
Unlicensed doesn’t mean « do what you want »
Sigfox complies with regulations
ETSI 300-200 : 1% duty cycle
FCC part 15 : duration of emission

42. Coverage

43. Global network
Sigfox is offering a global network, not a solution to build
private networks
Roaming is included is the standard service
Devices will work the same all over the network

44. Current coverage
Nationwide coverage
France
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain

45. Current coverage
Local coverage
Bogota
Brussels
Dublin
London
Milan
Munich
Prague
Rio
Rome
San Francisco
Santiago

46. Countries under rollout
Belgium
Czech Republic
Denmark
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Luxemburg
Mauritius
United Kingdom
United States

47. United States
In production now
San Francisco & part of the bay area
In production with a couple of months
10 of the larger metropolis (NY, LA, Chicago, Dallas, ..)

48. Coverage b

51. Demo #1
BASIC HELLO WORLD MESSAGE

52. Use cases
EXAMPLES OF SOLUTIONS ALREADY IN PRODUCTION

53. What does IoT means ?
Sexy stuff : connected gadgets
Boring
& useful
IoT

54. Perfect Sigfox use cases
Independant solutions
no user, no power socket, no local network
Shy devices
Doesn’t speak much, but only useful data

55. Metering & utilities

56. Smart City

57. Logistics
Track any good or equipment (Sigfox + GPS)
Aftertheft solutions

58. If this then that
Press a button
Sends an empty message
Triggers configurable action
« Mom I’m home »
« Send a taxi to Startup Lisboa »
« Deliver me my usual pizza menu »

59. « Silver Economy »
Lots of use cases :
Heath monitoring, fall detection, ..
Tracking the community-subsidized services
Used by french public councils
Did the carer really came for 2 hours each day ?
Or he is trying to abuse the vulnerability of the person ?

60. Predictive maintenance
Monitor an equipment (industrial, railroads, public lighting, ..)
Be alerted when it’s about to fail
Schedule maintenance efficiently

61. Agriculture
Soil & crops monitoring
Temperature, acidity, humidity, …
Optimize yields
Cattle tracking
Health monitoring

62. Sigfox foundation
Offer free network coverage for non-profit applications
Antarctica
coverage around the Princess Elisabeth station
Track the scientists from the belgian expedition
Rhinos tracking & protection
Wildfires detection

63. DIY Projects
Connected wine cellar (we’re a french company after all)
Pets tracking
Kitchen garden monitoring

64. You ?
Electronics are getting easier & cheaper
Very easy to get started using platforms like Arduino
Lot of funny things to make
… And lots of $$ too

65. Hardware solutions

66. Hardware
SIGFOX is not a hardware vendor
Ecosystem of established partners : Atim, Atmel, OnSemi,
SiLabs, TI, …
More to come soon

67. Solutions
Modules
Easy to get started
Adeunis, Atim, Telit,
Telecom Design
Quite expensive for
industrialisation (10-25$)
SoC
Cheaper (5$ and
less)
Atmel, OnSemi
Skills needed
Ref.Designs available
Transceivers
SiLabs, Texas
Instruments
Cheaper solution
Skills++ needed

68. Antenna
Not optional :)
Best way to ruin a great device is to mess the antenna
integration
Balance between design & performance
We’re here to help you get in touch with specialists if needed

69. Prototyping
Arduino & Raspberry Pi kits available from various websites
Check out http://makers.sigfox.com for the full details

70. Demo#2
RFID READER

71. Cloud

72. Get your data
View messages : Sigfox web platform
Get messages : REST API (pull)
Receive new messages : HTTP Callbacks (push)

73. Callbacks
Set your URL, Content-Type & request body
Each message received from your devices will be forwarded
there
Same for downlink : messages to your devices sent through
You can set more than one callback, to push to different
applications or services

74. 3rd party platforms
You can easily push your data to a 3rd party platform : AWS,
Azure, Telefonica, TheThings.io, OVH, …

75. Callback setup

76. Downlink messages
A downlink message can be
Semi automatic : sent directly by the network
Customised : sent by your own application server

77. Semi automatic callback
Simply set up the message to send, it can be:
an hardcoded frame (CAFEDEADBEEFBAD0)
pre defined variables : timestamp, rssi

78. Downlink callbacks
Same mechanism as for the UPLINK callback
You set up a URL for the BIDIR callback (only one)
Reply with the 8-byte downlink frame
Respect this JSON format :
{
'{{deviceId}}': {
'downlinkData':{{data}}
}
}

79. Workshop
YOUR TURN TO WORK

80. Contribute

81. Contribute
Don’t forget to publish your experiments
Code Samples, HW design, fails … will be useful to other
people
We all start by copy/pasting ;)
Your own website, github, hackster.io, instructables … your call!

82. We’re hiring !
Maker In Residence
(internship)
Build useful and/or funny
prototypes
Test new hardware
Publish & document them
Field Evangelist Europe
Run workshops
Talk at conferences
Support the community

83. Useful resources
Github
http://github.com/sigfox/makers-tour-resources
http://github.com.nicolsc
Add your own !

84. First steps
USING AN AKERU BOARD

85. Register
http://backend.sigfox.com/activate
Enter:
Personal infos
Device ID (sticker on the board)
PAC (check the list)

86. Board setup
Plug the antenna first
Plug to your laptop using a micro USB cable

87. Is the board recognized ?
Mac / Linux
$ ls /dev/tty.*
Windows
Open Powershell
> [System.IO.Ports.SerialPort]::getportnames()

88. HELLO WORLD

89. Hello World Sketch
Open the Arduino IDE
Select the board
Board type : Arduino Uno
Try one of the File > Examples samples

90. Hello World Sketch
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
#define RX_PIN 4
#define TX_PIN 5
SoftwareSerial sigfox(RX_PIN,TX_PIN);
void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);
sigfox.begin(9600);
sigfox.write("AT$SF=48 45 4c 4c 4f 20 57 4f 52 4c 44r");
}
void loop(){
while (sigfox.available()){
Serial.print(sigfox.read());
}
}

91. Message received ?
http://backend.sigfox.com
Navigate to the devices menu in the top bar
Click on the ID of your device
Enter the messages menu from the left navigation column

92. First callback

93. Callback setup
Device Type menu
Enter the Callbacks menu
Select new default callback

94. Callback setup

95. Callback setup
TYPE : DATA UPLINK
Choose a CHANNEL : URL | EMAIL
Email is good for a quick try
If you choose URL, you can then set the method, content-
type, and format the body as you wish

96. Callback status
In the Devices > Messages panel, you have a indicator of the callback
status (an arrow)
Black : in progress
Green : Callback OK
Red : Callback KO
Click the arrow to display details.
KO means at least one of the callbacks failed

97. Downlink

98. How does it work ?
Send a message, with a downlink flag
Once message is sent, the module gets back to sleep
After 20s, it will wake up automatically, in Rx mode
It will wait 20s for a downlink message
Afterwards it will get back to sleep

99. Downlink setup
To setup an automatic callback :
Device Type > Info > Edit
In the Downlink data settings, set the following :
Downlink Mode : DIRECT
Set the following value : 123400000BADCAFE

100. How to request a downlink
Same AT command, with additional parameters
AT$SF=[hex byte]*, 2, 1

101. Handle the response
When entering Rx mode, the module will display
+RX BEGIN
Received frame (if any) will be displayed as:
+RX= [byte] [byte] [byte] [byte] [byte] [byte] [byte] [byte]
End of Rx mode
+RX END

102. Downlink callback
In Device Type > Info > Edit
change Downlink mode to CALLBACK
Create a new default callback, with TYPE : DATA | BIDIR
Then set up your URL

103. Sample input output
AT$SF=55 50 4C 49 4E 4B, 2, 1
OK
+RX BEGIN
+RX=44 4F 57 4E 4C 49 4E 4B
+RX END

104. Sample code
Arduino
https://github.com/sigfox/makers-tour-resources/tree/
master/Akeru/downlink
Server side
https://github.com/nicolsc/sigfox-downlink
PR welcome in different languages

105. Go further
USING AN AKERU BOARD

106. Other AT commands
AT&V : Detailed info about the module
AT$SF=[hex byte]* : Send a frame
ATS300=[int] Schedule the emission of a keep-alive frame every [int] hours
AT&W : Save settings
ATI26 :Module temperature in °C
ATI27 : Module idle power supply voltage

107. Other AT commands
Arduino sample code + link to full references of the TD1208
module
https://github.com/sigfox/makers-tour-resources/tree/master/Akeru/mirror

108. Use the module only
The module has a Cortex M3 than you can reprogram
Checkout the TD Next website for instructions
http://rfmodules.td-next.com/sdk/