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Why Start IoT?
Norway needs to digitize faster. Norway needs new industries for growth. Telenor believes that the Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the key technologies that will shape the future.
That is why we have launched Telenor Start IoT for developers, students and entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas so that new industries can thrive. With a community of IoT experts, the technology can reach its true potential for growth.
Join us in shaping the future together!
What is Start IoT?
Telenor Start IoT offers an opportunity to develop prototypes of future IoT solutions. We provide fast and easy access to IoT devices, the network and the enablement platform for testing and exploration. Together, we are a self-driven community of developers, students, hobbyists and entrepreneurs in Norway working actively in the field of IoT, sharing our knowledge and experience.
Are you a student interested in IoT development? Are you a hobbyist or an entrepreneur willing to learn more, develop something new and get your ideas into production? Find out more and be a part of our Start IoT community!
The Start IoT initiative is organized as a Telenor Research project.
Let's get started
The Start IoT offering includes all you need to embark the IoT journey
Free of charge
You will get the IoT start-up package free of charge and there will be no usage costs. To be more specific: You can use up to four ‘IoT on 4G’ enabled SIM cards for 12 months, given that you do not exceed a maximum of 50 Mbyte IoT on 4G traffic. Free use of the MIC platform is also part of the deal. After the 12 months, or when the quota is reached, you may be contacted by Telenor Norway for a commercial offering.
As a service in return we want your opinions on basic IoT challenges and how initiatives like Start IoT may help. Your feedbacks will be handled by the Start IoT team from Telenor Research.
3 devices
You can choose between three devkits, all meant for use in Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN). The devkits provided by Pycon and Arduino support both NB-IoT and LTE Cat M1 while the breakout board designed and manufactured by Exploratory Engineering (EE) supports NB-IoT only. The following details may help you decide which devkit to choose.
The Arduino MKR1500 is a great devkit if you are already familiar with the Arduino IDE. It supports NB-IoT and Cat M1 since it uses a UBlox Sara N4 modem. Arduino has developed a library for this module that makes it easy for Arduino programmers to get started. The programming language for this dev kit is the Arduino language which is an overbuild (macros) over the C/C++ language. The Arduino MKR1500 is easy to use since the NB-IoT libraries hide the complexity of controlling the network modem.
The Pycom Fipy is a great devkit if you are familiar with the programming language Python and want a unit that supports different types of IoT related networks (LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, Cat M1, WiFi, Bluetooth, Sigfox). The IDE for the unit is Pymakr additions (plugins) to the regular Atom or Visual Studio Code editors. The Pycom modules require that you control the modem using AT commands and is for this part not as easy to use as the Arduino MKR1500. We expect that open source or Pycom delivered libraries will hide this complexity in future revisions of the firmware.
The EE Ublox Sara N210/211 breakout is a serial port breakout of the modem itself. It does not come with a controller (MCU). This allows you to use an MCU of your choice. It comes with an Arduino library that can be used with Arduino units as the controller. This unit is great if you for example just want to embed NB-IoT in an already existing project or if you want to dig into the nitty gritty details of AT Commands to control the modem and want to learn how to use a serial interface directly to a modem. The unit includes a chip SIM fixed to Telenor NB-IoT network.
2 sensors
The package includes a DHT11 temperature sensor and a humidity sensor on a breakout board easily connected to the main device. A small LED lamp is also included to show power on/off.
2 networks
Start IoT aims at being network connectivity agnostic within the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) segment. Today the Start IoT package includes free use of the NB-IoT and LTE Cat M1 networks. See Telenor IoT on 4G (https://www.telenor.no/bedrift/iot) for more information.
To ensure access to LPWANs in the time span before commercial networks were available, the Start IoT project deployed LoRaWAN in some Norwegian cities. This network can still be used.
1 data management platform
Start IoT users can access the enablement platform MIC (Managed IoT Cloud) which is developed by Telenor Connexion. This platform is built on top of Amazon Web Service IoT capabilities and handles the basic functionality that most LPWAN IoT services need. MIC provides for instance a dashboard editor with click and drag widget functionality.
IoT community & Expert environment
By ordering a Start IoT devkit you become part of the Start IoT community and may benefit from knowledge and ideas shared by other IoT developer. You are also allowed to publish stuff yourself, and perhaps you’ll find a partner for your future work? In some cases the community members will receive dedicated support by Start IoT team.
