At this time of "Physical Distancing", let's not become socially distant! Join us at the nor(DEV):SocialClub, every Friday at 17:30. BYOB, bring your fine self. We may play some games. We may invent some cocktails. And we'll definitely put the world to rights.

Norfolk Developers - nor(DEV):

Virtual Social Club

Online event

## We're about to see our Universe in a whole new light! The James Webb telescope, due to launch in 2021, has 18 foldable hexagonal segments that make up the 6.5m primary mirror. The instruments will be looking at the infrared light from distant and ancient objects along with peering through nebulae (dust clouds) to observe the formation of stars and planets. Spectrometers will measure the atmosphere on exoplanets to increase our understanding of these mysterious worlds orbiting distant stars. The Norwich Astronomical Society are going to become the Norfolk representatives for the "AstroBoost" project, which aims to increase public awareness of Webb, its objectives and the technologies involved. The UK played a major role in development of the telescope. We'll discuss: - What is Astroboost? - A short introduction to the science driving the Webb. - The design, construction and launch of the largest space telescope yet built. Check out the Webb Site to read more about the project - <a href="https://jwst.org.uk/" class="linkified">https://jwst.org.uk/</a> ## About Roger Roger Preece is Chairman of the Norwich Astronomical Society (NAS), NAS Seething observatory group visits coordinator, Former research institute head of computing and food composition database researcher. His interests: night sky observing, planetary sciences, spacecraft missions. ## Agenda 18:45 ~~Doors~~ Zoom Call Open 19:00 nor(DEV): Introduction - Begin streaming to YouTube Live. 19:05 Speaker Slot 19:50 Q&amp;A 20:00 Close... Stop Stream 20:05 Bonus Round (Networking, "Private Q&amp;A") 20:30~ Close ## Joining nor(DEV):Live Our new virtual events are even more accessible, you can join from the comfort of your own home, office, or even the pub! RSVP to the meetup event to get your Zoom link and join us for the best experience, or, subscribe to our YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/NorfolkDevelopers/" class="embedded">https://www.youtube.com/c/NorfolkDevelopers/</a> where we'll be live-streaming almost all our events. You can get involved by simply giving us a hola on the Zoom call or dropping us a message in Zoom Chat. If you're following along on YouTube you can drop your message in YouTube's Live Chat or join the community on Discord <a href="http://discord.gg/WQwrYrS" class="linkified">http://discord.gg/WQwrYrS</a> and one of our Hosts will relay your question into the Zoom room.

The Webb Telescope

### Norfolk County Council’s (NCC) Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is in the news and Norfolk Developers recently had a chat with Kate de Vries,an NCC Economic Development officer and Kurt Frary, Deputy Director of the Information Management and Technology (IMT) dept, CTO and Chair Socitm (East) to learn more.

## The background.

Kate is a passionate advocate of this technology and she explained the network’s beginnings.

> “The project started from a local community venture in 2018. Norfolk has a thriving tech community and this is evidenced from the annual Tech Nation reports. Together with Paul Foster from Microsoft, a team approached the council and this started the ball rolling with a gateway to be placed on County Hall.”

Once the local community put the idea to Kurt in the IMT department he became an enthusiast and saw that the Internet of Things, (IoT) had masses of potential for Norfolk and he could also see how far behind Europe we were and needed to catch up by using this cost effective technology. This was when NCC decided to work in partnership with Suffolk Council and gained financial backing from the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership. £440,400 was the sum awarded in 2019.

![](/static/images/pages/posts/2020-11-25-the-best-connected-county-in-the-uk/new-anglia-lep-innovation-network.jpeg)

## What is LoRaWAN?

Launched in Norfolk in September 2020, the Norfolk and Suffolk Innovation network is the largest free to use LoRaWAN in the UK. This ambitious project aims to connect LoRaWAN with 220 gateways, 110 in Norfolk and 110 in Suffolk.

And it’s not simply the network itself that’s important, the sensors that are connected to LoRaWAN play a crucial part in improving connectivity throughout Norfolk. These are the ‘things’ that comprise the IoT. The sensors collect data in a variety of situations, that data is fed into LoRaWAN where it can be monitored, assessed, managed and reported.

Working in partnership with Capita, the company has supplied Norfolk with 130 gateways in order to speed up the council's IoT. And, in February 2020, Capita received a £6 million contract to upgrade Norfolk’s fragmented network to full fibre connectivity.

When asked about the project, Kurt Frary said, “it’s going to be better than we ever thought.” There are two main facets to the project, the first of which is getting the innovation project out and about across Norfolk and Suffolk and we already have 50 gateways across Norfolk alone”.

“Ultimately this project will allow us to use IoT devices/sensors wherever you go in the counties.”

“The second part of the project is expanding the use of the network. It’s not just for the county council’s use, it’s for the public to use, for businesses, and start-ups if people want to innovate.”

## "Practical applications"

Kurt went on to explain that one very vital use of the technology can be applied to the perennial problem of gritting the roads and making sure the actual grit can be deployed on time and where necessary.

As he said, “Before the introduction of the network, NCC normally had sensors/weather stations around the county, they cost around £30,000- they tell you the temperature and give out a whole plethora of scientific information.”

“However, the sensors that we’re now using as a result of the IoT innovation network cost about £120. So where previously we had five or six of the expensive sensors around the county, we can put five in a single area costing us £hundreds rather than £thousands.”

## Local tech involvement


Local tech company, Uniotec, deployed a number of bespoke sensors around Great Yarmouth to measure the road surface temperature. The firm’s dev team created a visualisation platform that gives realtime analysis of road temperatures together with an API that feeds both metadata and accurate road temperatures to NCC.

> As a result of this we’ve been able to double the data we’re receiving at a marginal cost. Interestingly the data we’re getting from the cheaper sensors measures up to the previous information from the expensive sensors.

And with over 6,200 miles of road across the county that need monitoring the innovation network can produce savings of £8,000 per grit run as the information received from the sensors will be up to date and provide crucial information for when a road needs gritting.

<div class="iframe"><iframe width="768" height="432" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AiWyeG03t6w" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>

## Innovative uses

Kate is also excited about future possibilities for the project. “We aspire to support our local business communities, and we hope they’ll develop new possibilities that will be created in Norfolk and sold to the world.” NCC developed its own network, despite the existence of many fee charging others, because the council has always intended that the network is free to use.

Another use of the sensors is in the field of social care. The sensors are unobtrusive and can be placed in a vulnerable person’s house to allow a carer to check remotely whether the client or relative has got up in the morning. By building up a record of usual activities a carer will easily be able to see if something unusual is happening.

## Endless possibilities

By talking to both Kurt and Kate it’s easy to see that the possibilities for this project are immense. Local agricultural machinery supplier, Ben Burgess, uses the field weather station sensors to monitor the effect of weather conditions on crops. The data is fed into the network and gives a farmer an accurate and contemporaneous record helping the agricultural industry create risk models for potential diseases. This practice has already cut down the use of chemical sprays and fungicides.

<div class="iframe"><iframe width="768" height="432" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P8GEkm_jMo0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>

## Doing differently

Kurt highlighted how, by using a LoRaWAN on other projects can save money. Uniotec has also worked with NCC at Gressenhall museum. As the museum is outside it’s difficult to monitor exhibit popularity, how long does the public stay at the museum, and numerous related questions. NCC installed a LoRaWAN GPS tracker to be used by the staff and the general public in a bid to answer these questions.

Talking about the network Kurt stressed, “the joy about this project is that the sensors are cheap - very cheap and easy to use.” He added that “the network is about small packets of data, you can’t use the network to make calls, even though it’s radio, or browse the internet. You can collect a lot of data from small centres that send different pieces of information.”

The limitless potential of LoRaWAN using the IoT marks a new era of innovation across Norfolk. And, this fits in well with NCC’s ambition to improve its services through the use of technology.

The best connected rural county in the UK - Norfolk

## We've been exploring a range of new formats with our community, in part this has come with the new virtual requirements but it also comes as part of a drive to make our events more accessible and engaging. We're here announcing one of those new formats today:

Norfolk Developers would like to explore the stacks that drive our fine county. We’d like to explore your process and
how you go from A to B.

In short, we’re looking at how you:

- Analyse business/user requirements & translate those into user stories (or similar)
- Project manage the delivery of those requirements
- Deliver them
- And, Test/QA & gather feedback

The format for this will be a 15min lightning talks and we invite organisations (or makers) to join us and talk us
through their process. We'll invite 2-3 organisations to each event, and will then bring them together at the end as a
panel for Q&A.

These events will (can) also tie directly into a directory we will establish here, where we will list those
organisations and the stack they use.

## Suggested Talking Points

- What tools and/or methods do you use to gather user requirements?
 - Do you have “user groups”?
 - Regular meetings with customers?
 - Accept enhancement requests via GitHub, or with a product like Uservoice?
 - Dogfooding?
- What tools and/or methods do you use to translate user requirements into actions or user stories? And what methods do you use to prioritize these?
 - Regular meetings with account managers, support teams, or tech teams to explore user requirements, and or their own requests?
- What tools and/or methods do you use to manage the delivery?
 - Are you using PM tools (e.g. Jira, Trello etc)?
 - Methodologies like:- Agile, Scrum, Shape Up?
 - What aspects of the methodology do you find work best, and, perhaps what do you think is unique about your own version?
 - Is your team remote? Office based? Are you using standups?
- How are you delivering?
 - What’s your tech stack? (from back to front, or from schematic to consumer hardware)
 - What’s your local dev environment look like?
 - Are you using a UAT or staging environment?
 - VMs, Docker, Kubernetes?
 - Monorepo? Private package repositories?
 - Continuous Integration, Continuous deployment?
 - What’s your strategy for deployments (release branches, tagging, artifacts?)
- How are you testing, gathering QAs, or user feedback
 - This may be answered in part within the first question if relevant.
 - Do you operate unit, feature, e2e, or integration tests?
 - Live Chat for Customers?
 - Metrics (New Relic etc)

## Join Us?

If you're an organisation (or maker) and would like to show us your process and the tools of your trade please get in
touch, we'll get you booked into the next cohort.


 <a href="/static/images/pages/posts/2020-10-04-introducing-whats-the-stack/norfolk-developers-whats-the-stack.pdf" download>
 Download the PDF
 </a>
 
 <a href="mailto:alex@norfolkdevelopers.com">
 Email Alex
 </a>

Introducing "What's the Stack?"


We're glad you're here! We've been working on this for a few weeks just to get the basics in place, but now we want to invite you to come and help us build.

This website is built with [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) & Hosted with [Vercel](https://vercel.com/), but to contribute to the development of the website a basic understanding of [React](https://reactjs.org/) will suffice.

We're also very keen to receive contributions to our Posts, and whilst this may seem a little overwhelming the process is actually quite simple:

![A quick video of adding an article to Norfolk Developers](/static/images/pages/posts/2020-07-01-welcome-to-the-new-norfolk-developers-website/peek-nordev-post-an-article.gif)

We're also happy to take your contributions in whichever format you prefer, [email us](mailto:info@norfolkdevelopers.com) your articles and we'll get it up on the site asap.

If you'd like to get involved and are unsure how to then reach out to us, we'd be happy to help onboard you. Give us a hola on [Discord](https://discord.gg/WQwrYrS), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/NorfolkDev), [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/company/norfolk-developers-ltd-/)!


Going straight to the ♥️ of software development practice and process

Local, national and international speakers and workshops for Norfolk Developers.

Upcoming Events

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📆 Virtual Social Club

📆 Virtual Social Club

📆 Virtual Social Club

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The best connected rural county in the UK - Norfolk

Introducing "What's the Stack?"

Welcome to the new Norfolk Developers website

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February 2020 Conference Edition