Welcome to the The Things Network wiki!

You have reached the OLD wiki. Please consult the NEW wiki for up to date information!

We're a crowd-sourced long-distance wireless network, that's free to use and owned by its community. You can read more about us on thethingsnetwork.org and in our manifest.

WORK IN PROGRESS!

You're reading the official public wiki, but The Things Network is in heavy development: in March 2016 a new staging environment of TTN Back-end 1.0 was announced.

And with that staging environment comes an updated wiki as well.

Quick Index

Frequently Asked Questions

Non-tech:

[[Getting-organized]]
Media attention
Live Usecase examples

Tech:

[[GettingStarted]] <- start here to start using the network
Gateways to buy
Nodes to buy & Connect your node
Applications: overview + API + SDKs
Semtech PDF LoRA FAQ

Architecture

The Things Network uses the LoRa(WAN) technology for wireless connectivity over long distances. Gateways provide connectivity with a range of 2-25km. Nodes (based on Arduino or other MCUs) equipped with a LoRa(WAN) transceiver can send data to and receive data from nearby gateways. The data will be forwarded through a distributed network via the internet to any server you like. We provide a demo server as well. See also [[CurrentNetwork]].

node  <------->  gateway  <-->  /-----\
          __/                  | cloud | <--> your server
node  <--/---->  gateway  <-->  \-----/
            /
node  <----/

For more details on the architecture see [[Architecture]].

Getting Started

To get started connecting to the The Things Network, read [[Getting-organized]] and our technical [[GettingStarted]] manual.

Be sure to check out the Examples pages and take an look on the forum.

If you want to help building the network itself from a non-technical perspective, get in [[contact]]! We're looking for people to step up and take responsibility for expanding the network in a specific area.