Turns out I have a long-range, low-bandwidth, low-power IoT network all around me, ready and waiting for my smart devices to kick in. Today, Amazon revealed the extent to which its Sidewalk IoT network penetrates the average American neighborhood.
the first of the company Sidewalk coverage map claims that over 90 percent of the US population can access the now-public network (it’s limited to the US only). using a Sidewalk Developer Test Kit Provided by Amazon, I drove around my town to confirm this data, and after three days of traveling more than 40 miles, I found that connectivity was surprisingly strong in my corner of South Carolina, even in the wilderness of a national forest.
Amazon has published this data along with the Sidewalk’s official opening to developers. First announced in 2019, amazon sidewalk it’s a new low-power wide area network (LPWAN) that Amazon believes will help enable the next wave of connected devices. It’s not designed to replace cellular data for high-bandwidth devices, but rather to be used instead of expensive LTE or 5G connectivity on devices that don’t need as much data and where paying $10 or more a month for data is excessive.
Currently, Sidewalk exists primarily to help Ring cameras send motion notifications even when offline and allow Level’s smart locks to connect to the Internet without the need for battery-draining Wi-Fi radios. Amazon has also developed some early partnerships, including with CareBand, which developed a wearable health tracker. Now, Amazon wants others to build devices that use the free network.
All you need to do is order a test kit, a small gray Ring-branded wireless device, assess if the connectivity in the area you want to deploy your product is sufficient, and you can start building. Nordic, Silicon Labs and other silicon companies have SDK and HDK available now, and AWS IoT Core for Sidewalk provides a one stop shop for connecting devices. While only the AWS cloud service can directly receive data transmitted through Amazon Sidewalk, Limp says that developers are not required to use the AWS cloud service for data from their devices.
“I want someone to build me a long-range connected meat thermometer.” – Dave Coje
What kind of consumer IoT devices could benefit from Sidewalk? Think dog trackers, package trackers, soil moisture sensors, weather stations, leak sensors, mailbox sensors, pill bottles, solar panel controllers, garage door controllers, and anything else that isn’t always lives somewhere Wi-Fi is a given.
“I want someone to build me a long-range connected meat thermometer,” Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, tells me. “So many things have failed me. You know, you’re in South Carolina; Overcooked pork loin is not what you want.
As someone who has actually attempted to smoke pork in a connected kitchen in my backyard, I can empathize with the frustrations of trying to hang on to a Wi-Fi stick while enjoying the great outdoors. There are plenty of smart home use cases where a network like this makes sense. But the biggest benefit will probably come from the dynamic coverage that Sidewalk can offer.
As you can see on my map, I drove while connected to Sidewalk, which illustrates how devices on the go, such as dog trackers and package sniffers, could be monitored via Sidewalk, helping to bridge the gap between the smart home and the Internet. smart city. However, Amazon tells me there’s no update on the Ring Fetch dog tracker announced when Sidewalk first debuted.
What is Amazon Sidewalk?
The Sidewalk network is designed as a long-range shared community network. It works with three existing wireless radio technologies: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distances, LoRa for long range, and frequency shift keying using 900 MHz. These frequencies can connect to the Internet using any nearby Sidewalk Gateway, which currently includes Echo Show 10, Echo, Echo Dot smart speakers and cameras with wired Ring spotlights and projectors, as well as a small number of commercial-grade jumpers. Sidewalk takes a small amount of Internet bandwidth to which these devices are connected so that it can send its low data messages. Yeah, is using your internet connection — hence the word “community”.
It’s kind of genius and also literally something only Amazon could do on this scale. What other company has thousands of connected devices in people’s homes? When Amazon first released Sidewalk on its devices, it turned on automatically, which wasn’t a good move. The backlash was fierce, and Amazon quickly implemented the ability to disable network participation. Now when you buy a new device capable of being a sidewalk bridge, you can opt in.
It’s kind of genius and also literally something only Amazon could do.
“Adoption among Ring and Echos users has been very high,” says Limp. “Because Ring has real value that it adds right away. You can get a motion alert without having to have Wi-Fi on all the time.” If your Ring camera loses Wi-Fi connectivity, you can still send it alerts using Sidewalk, by connecting to a nearby bridge that’s still online. I have tested this personally, and it works.
Sidewalk was originally developed as a solution to Ring’s video doorbell connectivity issues. Since the company’s smart doorbells are placed outside homes, often with brick or plaster between them and a Wi-Fi router, Amazon found that no matter how good an antenna they put up, they would still miss alerts. “We invented a protocol internally [to solve this]and then a couple of years ago we announced our intention to outsource that and call it Sidewalk,” says Limp.
Just last year when Sidewalk went live, Limp says there were more than a billion instances where Sidewalk was able to send a notification to Ring customers who would have been lost without it. “We were able to send those notifications over this low-bandwidth backhaul network, and the client still got a notification that something happened, so they could check when things came back online,” he says. Amazon says Sidewalk won’t snoop on data on your devices; you can read more about Sidewalk Privacy and Security Complaints Here (pdf).
The sidewalk could bridge the gap between the smart home and the smart city
Some companies have already been working with Amazon on developing Sidewalk-enabled products. Today, New Cosmos announced Denova Detectionto battery powered natural gas alarm; Primax is launching Woody, a smart door lock; and Netvox has a new multi-sensor that combines air conditioning monitoring, water leak detection, and condition monitoring. These products would not require users to have an Amazon Sidewalk bridge in their home; they could take advantage of Sidewalk connectivity from any nearby bridge.
As for where the Sidewalk fits into the new and changing smart home landscape, it’s a welcome addition, but it’s not the only option. Z-Wave has a long range chip that can extend connectivity to over 300 feet, and Thread is an energy-efficient mesh network that could extend beyond the walls of your home into the garden or garage with enough devices. But none of these offer the mobility of Sidewalk. As for Matter, Limp says Sidewalk is complementary to the new smart home standard; Sidewalk and Matter already coexist on Amazon’s Echo smart speakers. “As a data link and transport layer, Sidewalk competes more with protocols like Wi-Fi than it does with Matter,” he explains. “I could, in theory, transfer something from Matter Standard to Sidewalk if I wanted to.” Now, things are getting very interesting.
Update, Friday March 31 at 8:15 pm: An earlier version of this article noted that Dave Limp said that you don’t need to use AWS cloud services to access Sidewalk. After publication, Amazon reached out to specify that only the AWS cloud service can directly receive the data transmitted through Amazon Sidewalk, but developers can move the AWS device data to a different cloud service.
