Shop E Store The smart home is constantly evolving, with a seemingly endless wave of communication technologies that appear, promising to better connect our devices and automate our lives.
The tastes of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are obviously the best known and, without a doubt, they are packed in a lot of technology that is already at home; And then there are the specialized protocols in intelligent house such as Zigbee or Z-Wave, or even devices enabled for the subject through Thread.
A technology that perhaps has not heard, however, is Lora (taken from ‘long range’), which is a physical communication technique by patented radio.
Lora is a fairly important player in the commercial space of IoT, where it is widely used in a variety of applications and devices such as smart meters, asset monitoring, energy monitoring, intelligent cities planning and much more.
But we are seeing that more Lora devices appear that face the consumer, that is, intelligent domestic devices that normal people can buy and use in their own homes.
How does Lora work?
The track is in the name. Lora’s long -range magic is found in its unique technique of spectrum modulation, which is said to have a 100 -time range compared to Bluetooth.
This technology allows signs to travel huge distances, even through walls and other obstacles that would generally hinder wireless communication.
Imagine connecting devices throughout your property, from the basement to the attic, and even in the patio, all without worrying about the intensity of the signal.
This extended range is a key advantage over other intelligent home technologies such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, which often struggle to reach devices located far from a central center.
But Lora’s long range is not her only superpower. It is also incredibly efficient.
LORA fueled devices can often work with batteries for years, significantly reducing the discomfort of frequent replacements. This low power consumption is crucial for devices such as sensors, which are often implemented in locations difficult to reach, where changing batteries can be a pain in the rear.
What is Lorawan?
Lora is underlying radio frequency technology that allows long -range and low power communication. It is the basis on which a network is built.
The patented physical layer technology is owned by Semtech, based in Camarillo, who acquired it from its inventors, the French company Cycleo, in 2013.
The Lora Alliance, on the other hand, is a non -profit organization that supervises Lorawan; The communication protocol that defines how devices use the Lora radio to communicate.
Lorawan establishes the rules on how the devices are connected to the network, how the data is formatted and transmitted, while keeping things safe.
Then, LORA provides the long -range communication capacity, and Lorawan adds the structure and organization necessary to create a functional network.
Lora Alliance includes some quite large names such as Amazon, Cisco, Comcast, Microsoft, Semtech, Stmicroelectronics and The Things Industries.
Why does all this matter to the smart home?
Implications for the smart home are quite obvious. We all want devices that communicate better, in larger areas, without the need for centers and repeaters everywhere, right?
Yosmart, Shelly and Eddy already have a lot of products for sale: think of leak detectors, smart water valves, garage doors, light switches and more, all packing LORA technology; And the Connected Things store has a lot of link doors and Lora devices to try it.
Yes, you will need another center / gateway to use them, but it is likely that brands can add radios Lora to the smart houses centers of multiple grades in the same way as Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, Wi-Fi and more live together. inside a box.
One of those brands, Tracknet, actually showed such a box, in CES 2018.
His intelligent monitoring platform at home, Tabs, never took off, but the gateway, which also doubled as a double functional band Wi-Fi router 801.11ac, showed what was possible.
How Lora could be used in the smart home
However, Lora is not a magical bullet and its use cases will be quite a niche … hence it is forging a market in IoT’s commercial space instead of the smart house of the consumer, at this time.
Lora has a data speed is relatively low, which makes it inappropriate for applications that require transmitting large amounts of data, such as video transmission, music cast iron and the like.
But its long range, its low energy consumption and profitability make it an attractive option to connect a wide range of devices, especially on the security / safety monitoring side.
The tastes of Zigbee and Z-Wave have dominated this space for decades, and even more. The members of the Alliance try to free it from the shackles of their position -centered positioning.
An area where Lora seems to be gaining some land is the market of the Césped Robot cutter. The excellent mammotion Luba 2 AWD uses Lora to keep the robot and the base station matched in large gardens, and CES 2025 was flooded with the brands that introduced machines with a similar configuration.
Frequent questions from Lora
Yes, currently most LORA devices require a Lorawan gateway to connect to its domestic network and the Internet. Think about it as a bridge between its Lora devices and its existing Wi-Fi or Ethernet network. While integrated centers with Lora capacity are possible and have been demonstrated, they are not yet widely available in the consumer market.
No, Lora does not intend to replace Wi-Fi. They serve different purposes. Wi-Fi is ideal for high bandwidth applications such as video transmission, while Lora stands out in a long-range and low power communication for devices that transmit small amounts of data, such as sensors.
Yes, Lorawan includes incorporated security features, which include end -to -end encryption, to protect your data. The Lora alliance continually works to improve the security of the Lorawan protocol.
