RILABS is an official member of AgroHub.BG

We are happy to announce our membership in the leading Bulgarian initiative for smart and digital agriculture. 

AgroHub.BG is an Digital Innovation Hub (DIH), a part of the Pan-European network and effort for digitization.

The goal of the hub is to unite and link all elements of the production cycle to agrarian production, including surveys, zoning, production and control, marketing and sales, digitization processes and the deployment of innovative technologies.

RILABS will help in providing services in various areas, including R&D, testing, validation, project coordination, etc

For more information, please visit link

Rilabs launching its Smart Bike Management System Rentel

    This weekend Rilabs saw its first integrated solution launch - the smart eBike management system Rentel that will allow citizens and guests of the Bulgarian capital Sofia to experience safe, sustainable and green means of transportation and enjoy an eBike ride up the Vitosha mountain and national park. In partnership with the local eBikes manufacturer Eljoy Bikes, Rilabs developed a custom GPRS hardware solution for tracking the rented eBike position and responding in case of emergencies.

    Some of the challenges this 6 month project saw successfully solved were integrating with the eBike's electrical system and controller, developing custom PCB and antenna solution that would fit inside the limited frame space, optimization of power usage and sleep modes, managing the heat dissipation within the frame and enabling advanced features by integrating with the Bafang controller such as turning off the motor and alerting the administrators in case of unauthorised usage (theft or driving the bike outside the predefined limits of the area).

     The project is in cooperation with the Sofia Municipality and under the patronage of the Mayor Yordanka Fandakova, who officiated the opening event and is looking for further cooperation with innovation leaders in the e-mobility space.

    The website of the project is www.rentebike.bg where soon you will be able to reserve, rent and pay for an eBike.

High Level Forum on e-agriculture “2gether 4 Strong Digital Agriculture”

       Last week RILABS PLC attended the High Level Forum on e-agriculture “2gether 4 Strong Digital Agriculture" in Sofia, Bulgaria alongside leading companies in the sector and government officials from the Western Balkan countries, bulgarian vice prime minister Donchev, buglarian agriculture minister Porozhanov, representataves of the Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations and the European Comission.
      Topics of discussions were e-agriculture, its opportunities, challenges and regional complexities, the current state of play, how to boost innovation, enabling more broadband and connectivity infrastructure projects, available programs for financing and presentations of products in the field, incentivization. RILABS will participate in the local Digital Agro Hub organization by the patronage of the Institute for Agrostrategy and Innovations with its smart soil analysis soultion and is pleased to find that is uniquely positioned to deliver modern technological advances to the small and middle businesses and family farms who cannot afford the complex and pricey solutions currently on the market. Also, the NB IoT technology which RILABS pioneers will allow for better connectivity coverage in rural and high mountain areas.
       Key takeaways from the conference was the need of knowledge sharing between institutions and farmers regarding the benefits of e-agriculture and the newest technological developments and a call for socially responsible companies such as RILABS to facilitate the uptake of technology to lead the war against hunger and poverty in a world with ever increasing population.

NB-IoT Seminar in Bonn, Germany

The launch of LTE Cat M1 and NB1 (NB-IoT) are part of the revolutionary steps towards the oncoming digital revolution. After attending the Embedded World exhibition in Nürnberg earlier this month, RILABS visited an exciting NB-IoT seminar, hosted by Deutsche Telekom in its headquarters in Bonn, Germany. We could meet leading experts from the domains networks, cloud connectivity, M2M, measurement engineering and antenna design. We exchanged experience and got knowledge about the status and the challenges of the NB-IoT deployment across Europe.

NB IoT is an excellent solution for stationary devices with bad signal quality (signal gain is 20dB higher than LTE). The aim of having a single compact battery through a device life cycle can be achieved by the proper enengineering of the task specific power profiles (eDRX, PSM) and the antenna design.

In a further post we will describe our evaluation of the Quectel NB IoT BC95 module, which was presented at the seminar in Bonn.