Amazon Opens Its Low-Bandwidth, Long-Range Sidewalk Network To Developers

An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2019, Amazon announced Sidewalk, its low-bandwidth, long-range wireless network that uses the 900 MHz spectrum to connect Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It does this by creating a mesh network between Amazon's own Echo and Ring devices and sharing a small part of their owner's bandwidth. Ideally, this means Sidewalk will be able to connect devices that sit beyond the reach of a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi signal. Until now, though, only a select number of developers were able to build applications for the network. But that's changing today. The company is now shipping software and hardware development kits, as well as an easy-to-use test kit to test the available Sidewalk connectivity in your neighborhood.

Using the new test kit, developers will be able to check their local signal strength on a map to get a better sense of whether their devices will be able to connect to the network before they start working on a product. Amazon sent me one of these Ring-branded devices to try. Getting started with it involves little more than powering it up (it does have a battery for mobile usage) and logging into Amazon's web-based Sidewalk coverage service. From there, you can quickly see all of the raw data from the GPS-enabled test kit and get access to Amazon's U.S.-wide coverage map. To ensure user privacy, the coverage maps only show coverage within a 900m-by-900m square area. You will be able to see the exact location of your own device, but not other devices that report into the coverage map.

If I was a developer

[rsilvergun]

I wouldn't touch this with a 10 ft pole. This is exactly the kind of thing where you make your device/software and then if it's successful the big company squeezes you out of the market with their own product.

I suppose if you're just gunning for a buyout, but beyond that being dependent on a mega corporation's network is a bad idea. Every Twitter dev just found that out the hard way when the CEO shut down their businesses overnight.

Re:If I was a developer

[AmiMoJo]

The good news is that for long range comms it uses LoRa, so if you design your product to use LoRa it won't be tied to Amazon at all. It will be able to use any LoRa network, including ones that your customers set up for themselves.

Basically LoRaWAN gateways, like Amazon's, are responsible for routing packets between IoT devices and cloud servers (or local servers if you run your own). Presumably the data goes to Amazon's cloud, but if you switch networks it just means you contract with someone else to get that same data. Kind of like the cellular network, you basically pay to use their WAN to route your data.

LoRa is decent, if overly complicated.

Re:

[HiThere]

I notice the summary didn't even mention the license terms. They may make your assertion invalid. If you can do it without depending on Amazon, that's a much better choice. The license MAY allow you to do that via your LoRa alternative, but watch the terms carefully. And even if they look reasonable, remember the fight OpenJDK got into with Oracle (and they has major corporate backing).

Re:If I was a developer

[AmiMoJo]

No, Amazon is using LoRa. All you have to do is program in different network credentials to use a different LoRa network.

Some phone networks are building them, for example. You can run your own on a Raspberry Pi or similar.

Re:

[HiThere]

That's a technical argument. But OpenJDK got struck with a legal argument. The two don't always mesh logically. (E.g. copyright isn't supposed to cover functional requirements, but the court needs to agree with you what that means...and that can be expensive, even if you win.)

Re:

[The-Ixian]

Not only that, but there is something really distasteful about a company using infrastructure that you pay for (power and network) to subsidize their product.

Re:

[Local ID10T]

I wouldn't touch this with a 10 ft pole.

In the words of Ms Daniels: " True. He used a 3 inch one. "

I hope you read that Ring Terms of Service.

[Fly Swatter]

Now they want to use your internet connection for free. Oh and your electricity. For THEIR network.

Re:

[Registered Coward v2]

Fortunately you can disable it via the Alexa app; although Amazon appears to enable it by default. If it becomes a thing, you could screw with it by enabling / disabling it so it appears to work sporadically to passerby’s using it; of course then Amazon may change the TOS to always on.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> you could screw with it by enabling / disabling

I tried to power my Alexa device with an Alexa-controlled wifi outlet, but for some reason 'Alexa turn off Alexa' worked but 'Alexa turn on Alexa' never did.

Re:

[DewDude]

At least when Fonera wanted to build a network of public wifi APs they gave you the hardware.

Helium vs Sidewalk

[PseudoThink]

Helium [helium.com] is a (mostly) open source alternative that started building its network in 2019, currently with about half a million active nodes. I wonder where each will be in five years.

Re:

[OverlordQ]

Half a million nodes, but how many actual users

Re:

[wed128]

Helium looks really cool, but the blockchain pyramid scheme stuff scares me away...

Popular RF band

[flyingfsck]

The advantage of 900 MHz is that it propagates very well through trees, foliage and buildings. The antennas are also relatively small and with a simple Yagi, you can get very long range.

LoRa?

[necro81]

Sidewalk sounds an awful lot like LoRa [wikipedia.org], which has been around for years. Even though LoRa is not a completely open protocol, it is readily available from a number of different chipsets. You can buy complete kits from SparkFun [sparkfun.com].

Well, turns out Sidewalk is LoRa, once you are outside of BLE range. Sure, they've added some bells and whistles to it in software, but nothing that couldn't have been rolled out through the LoRaWAN ITU-T Y.4480 standard.

So, other than branding, what is the benefit here for letting amazon hitch a ride on my WiFi, then funnel all that traffic through their servers?

Re:

[keltor]

I imagine the biggest advantage is the number of Echos and Ring devices sold that support this. Of course even reading their information, I STILL have no idea if they only support US915 or if they also support EU868 or AS923 (of which there are variations). Saying 900 Mhz is basically crap on it's own, you need to know which plan because sometimes they DO include EU868 (which are technically 800 Mhz bands) or CN470 (which are 400 Mhz for downs and 500 Mhz for ups). None of this is covered of course by an

Re:

[Finallyjoined!!!]

It's Zigbee I think, an ieee standard. I have an Eero (ISP provided - natch) that hives off bandwidth for Zigbee to connect IoT stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

In other words ...

[Errol backfiring]

Low-Bandwidth, Long-Range Sidewalk Network

In other words, Sneakernet.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

>> Low-Bandwidth, Long-Range Sidewalk Network
> In other words, Sneakernet.

Never underestimate the 'bandwidth' of a briefcase full of 20TB hard drives.

Latency is a bitch, though.

Here comes the AirTag's competition

[timholman]

Everyone who worried about the AirTag being used by stalkers to invade peoples' privacy just got themselves a bigger headache. Of course, the headache got worse for thieves, too.

Look for Sidewalk-enabled trackers to appear on the market in the very near future. And unlike the AirTag, there will be no helpful iPhone notifications of their presence.

The genie can never go back into the bottle, no matter how badly some people may want it to. Society will have to learn to adapt to these types of tracking devices.

Re:

[The-Ixian]

So.... why wouldn't it be possible to have a notification sent to the owners of both the tag as well as the device that saw the tag?

You wouldn't have to disclose any information about the owner of the tag to the owner of the device that saw the tag, nor the other way around, just that such a detection happened.

We made this

[spiritplumber]

http://f3.to/cellsol/ [f3.to] enjoy

Totally safe!

[BishopBerkeley]

No chance that hackers will use this to take control of millions of computers. No way.

I hope they go bankrupt from a class action suite

[Daddynunya]

Excuse my rant, please. These internet giants have gotten so used to freely using and abusing the data that citizens have to pay for that they forget that it isn't their data to use. Most people don't have access to truly "unlimited" data yet these companies flood you with ads either as pop-ups or built into their sites, burden you with constant updates to their "proprietary" software, that is mostly to allow them to access even more of the last bits of private information you have left. Among many other ab

Can't keep your TV off the internet

[radarskiy]

A lot of people here like to smugly announce how they bought a smart TV but never put it on their network so they can take advantage of the cheap price without it phoning home.

It no longer needs YOUR network, because it can find other netowrks to use.

Control Signals

[HybridPersonality]

I've been looking for a low bandwidth way to control devices out in the world.