HOT IOT IN EDINBURGH

Guest post by Fred de Haro on October 31, 2016

Having spent an amazing 2 days in Edinburgh with back to back speeches/presentations, its easy to understand how I have yet to come off this incredible buzz. Firstly, Edinburgh University. A few words which would best describe such a forward thinking University? Simple: Pioneers and visionaries! It did not take much to convince us to join their recent Hackathon using the newly released triple bearer network LoPy modules. 

It was a pleasure to see some 50 students hacking away in MicroPython code to program the modules and start transmitting data using such new LPWAN LoRa. In approximately two hours, the students were connecting to the Lora gateway and even managed to get light sensors sending back status information. Brilliant and well done to such a talented bunch of people.

The next few hours would see us present Pycom to the Teaching team and students. It was great to have the opportunity to introduce our highly disruptive IoT multi-network boards that Daniel and the team have been busy building since the start of the year. It is never hard to explain why these modules are changing the way in which development teams are re-designing their IoT applications. Whilst the words of some ‘old hat’ CTOs (mainly competitors) still resonate in my ears telling me that multi-network boards simply ‘add cost’, it is refreshing to see that the market shares our view, that there can be no value set on resiliency, flexibility and future proofing an application. These points are not lost on such highly bright (and unbiased) developers of the future.

The evening saw us attend an incredible IoT Scotland meet-up organised by another individual passionate about technology… just like us! Simon Montford has now been organising the Internet of Things Scotland Meet-up since 2015 and boasts some 724 members. A great bunch of tech savvy people keen to hear about new upcoming technologies and share their own experiences. It is therefore easy to understand how we ended up speaking past the scheduled times… and eating Pizza at midnight! What a perfect evening!

Finally, a great big thank you to our Pycom Ambassador Simon Chapple. Tech passionate and super knowledgeable individual whom was our 3rd Kickstarter Backer to help get the LoPy off the ground! I could not think of a better IoT rebel to have on our side!

So next time you are in Edinburgh make sure you check out their amazing IoT community… oh and the whiskey is also good I am told… sadly we ran out of time so I guess I will have to return soon! 

Fred de Haro is the co-founder and CEO of Pycom. He has 27 years experience building tech start-ups, and pre-IPO companies including NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas (sold for $4B to TomTom).