Spain's Balearic Islands will soon be covered with 500 thousand sensors. The regional government's ambition is to turn the archipelago in eastern Spain into a globally recognized IoT project laboratory.
 

Balearic Islands will become a laboratory of the Internet of Things project

Benjamin í Villoslda, the director of technology development of the Balearic government, believes that sensor infrastructure provides an opportunity to develop services to improve the lives of residents.

He is promoting the new use of the island's existing digital terrestrial television infrastructure and expanding it to 50 IoT antennas covering the entire territory, each supporting at least 10000 sensors.
 

Working principle of IoT sensor

He said: "These towers are already there, sometimes in steep remote areas, and must be maintained, so we think we can make them cost-effective and sustainable by installing antennas that work with the IoT module."

Villoslda explained that there are many ideas on the table, but the city council and other local governments need to develop them.

"We provide connectivity of remote, low-power wireless platforms through LoRa technology, and make the sensors visible by connecting to Sentilo, an open source platform for sensors and actuators developed by Barcelona City Council. The project decides how to use this," he added.
 

A possible solution would involve the use of sensors by regional social services to help the elderly. If they get lost and track them in the street, if they accidentally leave a pot to burn dry, an alarm would be triggered.

Tourism organizations are also keen to use tools to help tourists who are lost in outdoor activities, or to determine whether the beach is overcrowded and provide alternatives for swimmers.

According to Villoslda, there is an infinite possibility, because it is not expensive to expand the range of the sensor to between 10 km and 15 km (6 miles and 9 miles), and the power consumption is very small.