New Toy (the reMarkable2) and a discussion about LoRaWAN and IoT

As a birthday present for myself earlier in the year I purchased a “reMarkable 2” e-ink tablet and it’s been awesome. More details about the device below (for those that are interested) but I recently had the chance to use it in a 1-1 meeting covering the PAE IoT Workshop and it worked really well as a paper notebook substitute. Afterwards I was able to go over the details, tidy them up, and rearrange them into a more sensible layout (rather than the original messy stream of consciousness).

Drawing on the reMarkable2

The tablet allows hand written text and drawings to be systematically edited, rearranged and replaced. There is the option on having layers (which I didn”t really use) and showing an underlying templete (lots to choose from) which is a useful guide for keeping everything nicely lined up, and which can be removed afterwards (replaced with the blank one).

The final result can emailed as PDF, PNG, or SVG formatted files, and the result is below.

About IoT Data Logging using LoRaWAN

The following is an example of the path which might be taken by a packet of date, created on a LoRaWAN IoT device, as it makes it’s way from the sensor to be displayed on a web-based dashboard on the Internet.

About the reMarkable2

There is quite a lot to talk about with the reMarkable2 but where is a vary brief summary – it’s a Linux based ARM system, which has Wifi access and drives a e-Ink display with stylus for drawing and input. The display and pen software is closed source, but everything else appears to be Free and Open Source Software. It is possible to SSH into the device from both Wifi and USB-C, with a password that is displayed from the settings menu. If you wanted to you could use that the change any of the software on the device but beware – there be dragons.

reMarkable (the company) currently send out software updates regularly (almost monthly), as these also include new features and tweeks.

There are also third party projects (the reHackable project) which make the tablet even more useful, and support the use of the reMarkable in many more ways than the manufacturer may have intended, including replacing the entire operating system. I have not considered doing this just yet.