Amazon just announced it has opened its Sidewalk long-range network to developer testing, and provided a map showing the low-bandwidth coverage area within reach of 90% of the US population.
An early tester for The Verge found the connectivity “surprisingly strong” even in the wilds of a national forest in South Carolina. The Amazon map shows the heaviest concentrations east of Kansas City, Missouri, with a wide gap across most of the plains and Rockies until reaching the West Coast population centers.
Test kits are free to developers by registering online and will arrive in the mail. The test kit is simple, just a charging cable and a test device that could fit inside a matchbox to ping the Sidewalk network for coverage.
While the test kit is indeed simple, the promise of Sidewalk is vast, at least on its face. Devices connected to Sidewalk are granted a secure and persistent but low-cost connection to the cloud, which in Amazon’s case is AWS. The cloud connection is part of what grants the simple devices their power, and is enabled with AWS IoT Core, giving developers access to more than 200 AWS services to scalable solutions. Use of AWS cloud is not required by Sidewalk customers, however, developers do need to use AWS Cloud.
Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs and Nordic Semiconductor each offer hardware developer kits and SDKs to allow designers to try out applications. Quectel also offers a connectivity module.
What’s Sidewalk good for? “Many types of connected devices have been limited by the range of Wi-Fi and the cost of cellular technology, which has hindered the ability to connect devices like environmental sensors, leak detectors and smart locks,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices & Services, in a statement. “Sidewalk is designed to provide a secure, low-cost way to invent and connect a while range of devices. We can’t wait to see what developers build.”
Amazon announced Sidewalk four years ago as a low power, WAN (LPWAN), not to replace cellular data but to be used instead of LTE or 5G on gadgets that don’t need much data. It is currently used with Ring cameras to send motion notices when they are offline, for example. Level smart locks can also connect to the internet. CareBand has a wearable health tracker that takes advantage of Sidewalk.
Sidewalk uses three wireless radio technologies: Bluetooth Low Energy for short distances, LoRa for long range and frequency shift keying in 900MHz. The frequencies bridge to the internet using any nearby Sidewalk gateway such as Echo Show 10, Echo, Echo Dot speakers and wired Ring spotlight and flood cameras. There are also commercial grade bridges.
“Sidewalk sips a small amount of bandwidth from the internet these devices are connected to so it can send its low data messages…It’s kind of genius and also literally something only Amazon could do at this scale,” wrote Jennifer Pattison Tuohy in The Verge.
Tuohy noted that when Amazon first launched Sidewalk on its devices, it turned on automatically, prompting a backlash. Amazon then allowed users to disable participation in the network device.
Amazon on Tuesday also announced three companies are introducing new Sidewalk-ready devices later in 2023, including two that offer promise for industrial IoT. Netvox will have a Multi-Sense S315 Series device with multiple sensors for air conditioning, water leaks and state monitoring. OnAsset will have Sentinel 200 to aid logistics pros with insight on shipments from delivery origin to destination to help customers validate a shipment is undamaged. Primax will have Woody, a smart door lock that includes remote door lock and unlock. New Cosmos also announced Denova Detect, a battery-powered natural gas alarm.
For smart homes, Sidewalk competes with Z-Wave with a long-range chips for more than 300 feet of connectivity, while Thread provides a low-power mesh network to reach into a garden or garage. Sidewalk, however, provides mobility and already works alongside Google Matter in in Amazon Echo smart speakers.
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