Accelerating A Connected World The New RAK Way

During the last few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has become the power behind the 4th Industrial Revolution, allowing worldwide organizations to make smarter decisions to drive productivity increases, decrease costs, and transform business models. Technological innovation does not stop. It keeps progressing faster than ever. With it, RAKwireless is continuing towards creating a connected world, enabling easy deployment of IoT devices to deal with the different day-to-day problems faced by the various industries, all done by following the RAK Way.

Here at RAK, we invest in people as they are both our greatest asset and the center of our vision for the future. We have set up a multinational team, dedicating 70% of the team to improve the products and the other 30% to improve the service and improve the overall user experience.

Our gaze is focused solely on the people and the features. The thing that brings them together is connectivity. That is why connectivity is our mission, and with the help of IoT, we make it easy.

With thousands of clients worldwide, RAKwireless sets up a flexible operating model suitable for the diversified world. We implemented the BLUE (Build for Long-Tail Unified ERP) system to manage our whole operation and the RADR (RAK Assembly for Diversify Requirement) system to manage our assembly and quality control. All that to help customers buy anything we offer, from a single sample to an entire production batch, in a fast and convenient way. Regardless of your project's focus, at RAK's store, you can find modules, development boards, concentrators, and certified commercial products ready to be deployed – all of them, including a complete integration guide next to all technical specifications and set up to quickly get started.  

Considering our clients' needs and valuing and encouraging their feedback allows us to go forward and offer better products and services while staying true to our vision. Our clients are talking, and we are listening.

With our clients' needs in mind, we are making a huge step forward with the things we have to offer this year. RAKwireless started three years ago with a simple LoRa based concentrator module (RAK831). Gradually the products evolved and improved with the launching of RAK7249 and RAK7258 commercial gateways to help businesses and customers who wanted more of their devices in the face of Graphic Web UI and a certification. Now, RAKwireless is the leader in the gateway market. We manage it by responding to our customers' requirements.

Introducing WisDM

More and more customers are looking for remote management options to configure and handle large-scale IoT projects. Our response is WisDM. RAKwireless' Device Management platform that broadens the horizon for bigger and easier deployments. Imagine this: You have many gateways in a rural area, which is receiving data about different variables for different types of crops. Due to changes in the system, you must update each of the gateways deployed in hard-to-reach locations. Doing it in person is an option—however, an option that represents a significant workload and large time consumption. Thanks to WisDM, you can make a global update of the whole fleet simultaneously, and even better, remotely. The control over the management of your gateways is at the tip of your fingers, anytime, anyplace.

Managing over the air with WisDM

WisGateOS At A Glance

Tying the WisDM and the new generation of gateways together is another innovation inspired by our customers – WisGateOS. We always strive to better our products, and our gateways are becoming more and more sophisticated. RAKwireless has always made the best hardware and now, a software to go with it! WisGateOS includes features that will extend the LoRaWAN functionality and add management and customization functions to our current and future WisGate Edge gateways. Even though IoT is diversified, and it is impossible to fit the same hardware in different scenarios, having a seamless user experience is a benefit introduced by a unified Operating System is always a plus. WisGateOS offers improved stability based on the work of dedicated teams of QA engineers and continued field tests all over the world. WisGateOS and WisDM work seamlessly together, making the other possible, working in synergy to provide the best configuration and management experience possible.

The future of RAK’s gateways is WisGateOS

WisGate Edge

To keep the Innovations going, we continue improving our commercial gateways, both indoor and outdoor, introducing RAK7268 WisGate Edge Lite 2 and RAK7289 WisGate Edge Pro.

RAK7268/C is especially suitable for small and medium-sized deployment scenarios in industry applications, saving the additional cost for server and R&D investment, and has the advantages of high execution efficiency.

Everything makes it possible, thanks to the innovative approach applied while designing this gateway. It features new and improved mechanics and design for the enclosure and the electronics. While creating the section, our experts changed quite a bit in comparison to its predecessor. The visually pleasing rounded form is not the only difference. An optimized wall attachment mechanism and customizable LED are a part of the improvements as well.

We take the innovations even further by adding a second mPCIe Card slot that allows easy swaps for the 4G mPCIe Card depending on the region. It can be used for adding additional functionality in the form of another mPCIe Card (for example, a second LoRa Concentrator). Also, debugging is now more accessible with the added USB port, no need for a console cable when debugging. You only need a standard USB Type-C to Type-A cable (like the one for most smartphones), and you are good to go. Another addition to this gateway is the WisConnector extension. With it, the customer can add functionality to their gateway without the need for redesign. The list of functionalities goes on, and you will do good to go through it when designing your next indoor solution.

As for small, medium-sized, and large outdoor deployment scenarios in industry applications, Smart Cities, and Smart Farming, adding RAK7289 to the options you can choose from when purchasing a gateway is considered. It also comes with a new and improved enclosure design with a plastic front cover that allows all antennas (except the LoRa one) to be embedded, thus saving on cost without compromising the outdoor performance.

The enclosure also features an opening for changing the SIM or SD cards without the need to open the box and LEDs that indicate the device's status. Again, debugging is a breeze with the USB port and adding extensions is possible via WisConnector. Thanks to the new baseband processor from Semtech - SX1303, the gateway offers better RF performance. With the added multiple power supply options, RAK7289 becomes an excellent pick for any use case scenario.

Launching WisBlock

Last year, RAKwireless had the honor of introducing WisBlock, an innovative and market-competitive modular IoT platform for hardware development that is helping students, teachers, makers, developers, and companies, to quickly validate project ideas for the different IoT verticals to produce and make them a reality in weeks.

The WisBlock helps individuals and companies move forward with agile hardware development in the most efficient way using high-quality products. Regardless of the solution's vertical or requirements, the limitations of processing, sensors, actuators, external inputs, output management, or connectivity options are entirely up to the developer.

During the WisBlock announcement last year, RAKwireless launched 21 modules of the WisBlock family. Today, it is honored to introduce new modules to the ecosystem and the development 2021 roadmap. Now developers can expand even more processing, sizing, sensing, control, and interaction capabilities.  

By the end of the year, the WisBlock ecosystem will be powered with 96 modules that address specific problems for the different industries. Nevertheless, the most brilliant characteristic about the WisBlock is that it is an open-source project besides being a product. Therefore, the only limitation in the creation of IoT projects is in your imagination.

WisBlock Advantages

• Project powered by a pioneer leading company
• Growing worldwide user community
• Open-source, broad range of blocks
• Low-cost components
• Easy to scale
• Extensive and detailed documentation of actual use cases examples for intelligent agriculture, manufacturing, smart cities, and more

RAKwireless Launches New Modular Product Series - WisBlock

The Power of WisDuo

This technology is a product category powering thousands of LoRa projects around the globe. The WisDuo combines various MCUs and LoRa transceivers in a single small form module to simplify the design process of new IoT products either on the hardware or software layer.

Last year, STMicroelectronics revealed the world's first LoRa system-on-chip (SoC), the STM32WLE5. We get very excited when new things are released. It enables us to innovate with products to make a significant difference for our community of RAKStars by making IoT easy.

RAKwireless’ stamp modules power thousands of IoT applications for different industries – thanks to its flexibility in MCUs and LoRa transceivers. Nevertheless, RAK never wants to be behind. That is why today, we are eager to also introduce the STM32WL to the WisDuo Family, as common at RAK, at an affordable price and with easy format form to allow rapid prototyping.  

The RAK3172, a module powered by the STM32WL, can be found in a stamp module version for just $4 per unit, and it will be found in the following months as the processing unit of the Evaluation Board (EVB) based on the WisBlock ecosystem to allow easy use and integration advantages during the development process.

Nowadays, RAKwireless provides all the hardware needed to deploy LoRa based IoT solutions from end to end. That is why customers using RAK's gateways prefer to choose products from the WisDuo or WisBlock family to enhance integration features, and the smooth support experienced.

Why Choose LoRa® Module RAK4270 for your Long-Range and Low-Power IoT Application

Conclusion

In the past year, RAKwireless has been relying on industry experts across the globe to grow a multinational team dedicated to service and user experience improvement to provide reliable and professional support during any IoT journey. Whether you are a hobbyist exploring IoT technologies, a company, or an IoT developer looking to commercialize a product, we have you covered throughout your entire IoT journey. Our company is continuously expanding the horizons and reducing the gaps worldwide, enabling easy access to affordable and high-quality IoT technology.

Be part of our journey through a smart connected world.