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What Hasn't Been Done
Episode 28 • 15th July 2025 • The Business of LoRaWAN • MeteoScientific
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Bob Blanchard, Senior Manager of Business Development at Klika Tech, talks about how creative vision and technical execution come together in successful LoRaWAN deployments. With a background that blends artistic insight and engineering precision, Bob shares how seeing what doesn’t yet exist is a critical skill in both invention and solution design.

In this episode, Bob explains Klika Tech’s role as more than just a system integrator—they are an enhanced solution provider, capable of co-creating with clients from concept through deployment. Backed by a premiere partnership with AWS and a deep bench of senior-level engineers, Klika Tech is known for delivering complex IoT and LoRaWAN projects in real-world environments like resorts, multifamily housing, and healthcare.

We explore use cases that haven’t been fully realized—like golf course management with LoRaWAN—and how Bob helps clients uncover untapped opportunities. He also breaks down why higher-frequency wireless technologies often create more headaches than LoRaWAN, and how this “it just works” quality makes LoRaWAN a strong fit for sprawling properties and low-bandwidth, long-range sensor applications.

Bob discusses the importance of partnerships and a developed ecosystem in LoRaWAN success, including how Klika Tech’s partner network drives sales and expands reach. He shares a behind-the-scenes look at project development, emphasizing Klika’s ability to work closely with customers to iterate, adapt, and build lasting value into every solution.

Topics covered:

  • Why LoRaWAN avoids interference issues common in Wi-Fi-heavy environments
  • The value of co-creation with experienced engineering teams
  • LoRaWAN use cases that haven’t been deployed—yet
  • Challenges of other wireless protocols and what LoRaWAN does differently
  • Building a referral network through trusted partners

Links:

Bob Blanchard

Klika Tech

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Transcripts

Speaker:

Today's guest on

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MeteoScientifc's

The Business of LoRaWAN is Bob Blanchard,

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senior manager of business

development at Klika Tech.

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Bob brings a rare combination

of creativity and technical expertise

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to the IoT world.

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With decades of experience

designing and deploying wireless solutions

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at Klika Tech, he focuses on end to end

LoRaWAN deployments from initial ideation

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through to cloud integration,

with clients ranging from smart resorts

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and multi-family housing developments

to medical monitoring startups.

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In this episode, Bob shares

what actually makes LoRaWAN a slam dunk

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fit for certain environments, how Klika

Tech identifies high ROI use cases,

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and what common mistakes companies

make when evaluating IoT protocols.

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He walks us through real world

deployments, like monitoring pill packs

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to reduce opioid overdoses, and explains

how LoRaWAN avoids the interference issues

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that plague other wireless tech

like Zigbee and Bluetooth.

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This episode is sponsored by the Helium

Foundation's IoT Working Group.

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Helium offers global LoRaWAN coverage that

you can use exclusively for roam onto.

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If you'd like to see if Helium

coverage exists near you,

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check out the links in the show notes

to get started using Helium today.

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You can sign up for a console account

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with MeteoScientific

at console.meteoscientific.com.

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Now let's dig into the conversation

with Bob Blanchard.

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Bob, welcome to the show.

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Thanks for coming on, man.

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All right. Hey,

it's a pleasure to be here.

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Thank you for having me.

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I'm super pumped.

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I thought we'd start at the place that

you wouldn't expect anyone in IoT to be.

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Which is?

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You're a self-described

inventor and artist.

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So walk me through

how someone like that comes to tech.

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Comes to IoT and LoRaWAN.

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Oh, you know, it's it's funny.

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You know, it's a creative mind thing.

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I'm one of those weird people

that has both sides of the brain

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functioning at that,

you know, equal level, so to speak.

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I've been a photographer

my whole life, you know, literally

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since I was a young teenager

and published very early

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and have always been behind the camera

creating, and that carried forward.

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You know, I had a passion for technology.

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So even when I was just a youngster

in high school

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and I've been around a long time

here, you know, pre-internet, everything,

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but I always had a passion

for technology as well.

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So the two converge in a in a big way.

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So when you talk about an inventor,

an artist, call it a Renaissance

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man thing or whatever,

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but it's it's about having vision

to see things before they actually exist.

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So whenever I take a picture

or create a photograph or whatever,

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I'm always composing it in my mind

and then creating it in a camera.

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And whenever you invent something,

what's the first thing that happens?

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You're imagining it in your mind, and

then you're figuring out how to create it.

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You know,

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you can see if you have a mind like this,

you can literally see

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the end product in extreme detail before

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the first step has ever been done

to execute on that product.

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And you have no idea what the road between

the inspiration

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and the end path is going to be like

is usually very zigzag.

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Yeah, rarely ever straight, but

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you just have that ability

to see what is going to be at the end.

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And it's just that creative mind that does

that.

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You can paint the picture

and see it clearly before it ever exists.

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Well, it's a it's a nice way

to skip ahead to my last question

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and we'll come back to the rest of them.

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But it begs the question, what do you see

now that doesn't exist yet?

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Specifically in LoRaWAN

but could be in the wider world of IoT

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that is like, okay,

this is very clearly coming.

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I'm not sure how we're going to get there,

but this is what's going to happen.

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I actually see a lot of things.

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I see a lot of use cases

that that haven't been explored yet.

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In fact, in some cases, we've even written

some articles for LinkedIn

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for things that nobody has done yet

with LoRaWAN.

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That can happen.

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You know, one of the cases that I put out

there, just arbitrarily, not

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to my knowledge, doesn't even exist, was,

you know, golf course management,

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you know, using LoRaWAN

for golf course management

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to do everything

from judging distance to holes to,

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you know, managing the entire greens

keeping process and ensuring

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that you're not putting holes

in the same place that they were before,

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or monitoring the soil

for nutrient contents

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for moisture to better conserve water

and make the course just healthier.

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And it's a total arbitrary case,

but it's very doable with LoRaWAN,

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and it's the perfect solution for it,

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because again, you're dealing

with a very vast area where long range

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communication is necessary because you're

certainly not going to bury wires.

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To do all of this,

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you need to have radio communications

that can reach those distances

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and yet monitor those sensors and devices

that you put out there.

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And at the same time,

it can actually enhance the

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the user experience as well by saying,

here's the exact distance to the hole.

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We've got a sensor in the flagstick or

something, and we know exactly where it is

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on the green.

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And here's from your cart.

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Here's exactly where it is.

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So there's and you could do that

through a mobile app or whatever.

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So there's lots of opportunity there

that people just don't think about.

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And and I think

that's where that comes in.

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I mean, even within building management

and property management,

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there are so many unexplored

and untapped capabilities within long

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range, low bandwidth protocols

like LoRaWAN

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that can make the infrastructure

so much easier to manage

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without a lot of infrastructure headache,

of having to deal with

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lots of gateways and lots of wire

pulling and, you know, switch ports

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and all the things that you have to do

to deal with traditional IoT management.

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LoRaWAN gives you capabilities

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for those types of use cases

where it's such a shoe in fit.

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And one of the things that I always talk

to customers about when it comes to

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LoRaWAN is especially when you're

dealing with things like multifamily homes

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or resorts in hotel environments

and things like that,

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you don't understand

a lot of times the way that wireless

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technologies interact and interfere

with one another.

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And when you're dealing with IoT devices

that are being used heavily in a customer

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Wi-Fi environment,

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you're all working

in the same frequency range,

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whether you're using Zigbee

or whether you're using

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Bluetooth or whatever,

and those create problems.

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It interferes with guests ability

to use Wi-Fi

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and interferes with your ability

to monitor your devices.

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When you put LoRaWAN in play,

it works at frequency ranges

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well outside of that 2.4GHz spectrum,

and gives you the ability

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not to have to worry about that you're not

dealing with impacting your guests.

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You're not dealing with having to worry

about whether you're going

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to get a sensor reading, because there's

so many people using Wi-Fi or whatever.

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And you're not able to be

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on top of channel management

and all the things you have to watch.

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So it's those types of things

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that I don't think a lot of people

really calculate in when they're looking

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at their wireless solutions

for those types of environments.

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And that's where I see

a lot of untapped capability,

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not to mention the fact

that, you know, again,

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in even inside of a building,

you don't need very many gateways at all.

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You know, maybe a couple,

maybe one per property.

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It just depends on the construction.

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But it's nothing

like if you're putting in the higher

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bandwidth, shorter distance protocols,

you've got to have them everywhere.

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And so it cuts way down on the expense

and the maintenance.

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Okay.

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So I can I can see just from that

how you might pitch a potential customer

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for, for Klika Tech

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because you obviously obviously can talk

about what LoRaWAN can do.

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Can you walk me through maybe how you're

finding or targeting those customers?

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If it's not, if it's not secret sauce,

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and then if there's kind

of a standard customer flow, we say, hey,

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we found this person.

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Here's how we kind of process them

through from a business perspective,

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what we're doing.

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Yeah.

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In many cases, in some cases they come

to us obviously through our site.

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In many cases

we might contact them in a trade show

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where we we're pretty active

in the trade show scene, where

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we're out there looking for the people

who are looking for the solutions.

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And as well as we have incredible partners

that we work with.

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And a lot of times our partners

this where we're very diverse.

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We're not just, you know, a company that

specializes in LoRaWAN or anything else.

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We work in all levels of technology.

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We're really an enhanced solution provider

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all the way from the cloud,

all the way back to the device.

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And literally everything

in between mobile app development,

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web app development, cloud infrastructure,

all of that.

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So many times our partners are referring

their clients to us

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who are building something, and they need

that long range protocol environment.

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So we'll get a lot of leads

from them as well.

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As, you know, we're out there obviously

active more actively marketing as well.

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We've got a great marketing team

and they're doing a great job.

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But again, going out and finding people

and as a result we've had yeah.

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So multi multi-headed I guess

is basically the best way to put it.

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We don't have one

simple approach. It's many.

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And is there a

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like the most common problem if someone

kind of pulls you aside at a trade show

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they're like oh, what do you do

when you start talking to them?

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You're like, oh, I can totally help you.

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Is there something that you're looking for

other than like,

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oh, they need some kind of long

range solution?

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Or are there

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specific things that you guys are like,

oh my God, we've

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we've rolled out these smart buildings

so many times,

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I can have this rolled out

faster than anyone else

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just because we've done it

a thousand times kind of thing.

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Yeah, I would say, well, you know,

environment has a lot to do with it.

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For example,

I'm here in the heart of Orlando.

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I'm literally three miles down the road

from Disney World.

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So there are a lot of mega resorts around

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us, and they're big properties

in many cases.

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They're multi building.

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Some of them have 5 or 6 golf

courses on them, etc. etc.

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etc..

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Well,

how do you manage an environment like that

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without pulling infrastructure

all over the place?

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I mean, some of these properties are 2

or 300 acres

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and LoRaWAN is a perfect solution

for that, for interconnecting

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your entire campus

and being able to manage it.

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And so some of it is just slam dunk

type stuff.

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Right?

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And even when you're talking about

intra building, as I alluded to before,

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where you really just trying

to cut down on infrastructure cost

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and all you have are devices

that are speaking very,

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very small amounts of data that,

at a relatively infrequent rate of time.

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You know, I always tell people

I probably wouldn't recommend LoRaWAN

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for a missile warning system,

it arrived ten minutes ago.

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But I would

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certainly recommend it for,

you know, wanting to know if there was a,

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you know, a leak somewhere

or something like that where you can

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still respond

within a reasonable amount of time

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without it being a life threatening event,

kind of a deal.

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And are there customers

that you hear about

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that are kind of commonly thought

of as being LoRaWAN customers,

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where you think,

I just there's not enough money in that.

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And for me,

agriculture comes to mind in some sense

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where it's like how you like,

you really got to have the right

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type of farmer who’s saying or rancher

saying, yep, this is what I want to do,

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and I can very clearly see the cost

savings, etc..

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Are there customers out there like, oh,

that's not really what we are looking for,

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you know, not really.

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I never try to pigeonhole

anybody like that.

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I always try to look at it from,

what's your problem?

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And we're going to give you a solution.

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Maybe it's LoRaWAN maybe it isn't,

but we're going to evaluate it.

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And in many cases, for example, gosh,

we've done things.

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Everything.

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One of the coolest ones that we've done

was a pillpack monitoring system

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that where it's blister packs of medicine

that insert into a simple cradle,

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and there's a company whose name is

Counted, we helped them develop this?

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It basically lets the

the monitoring facilities know

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that this person

is taking their medication,

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or they forgot to take their medication,

or they took too much of their medication.

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So every time they pop a pill,

it trips a sensor in the pack

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and sends a LoRaWAN message back and says,

super cool.

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Yeah.

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So that's kind of one of the cooler ones

that we've done.

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But again, you needed something

that you don't know if they're out

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sitting in a restaurant

or if they're at home or where they are.

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So you have to be able to monitor

that happening

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in a reasonable amount of time

and be able to alert,

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you know, number one,

if they didn't take their medication

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when they were supposed to

or they took too much of it

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and it was really driven

the person who did

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it had a medical background

and saw the opioid problem,

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and he wanted to come up with a solution

to prevent

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opioid overdoses by, you know, people

taking too much of their medicine

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or whatever.

And that was what was kind of the driver.

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It was a really cool project to work on.

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Really nice folks.

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When you do those,

you must learn a ton from every project.

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Are there

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things that you've learned over the years

were like, oh, this would really help.

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Like, let's say

there's someone listening to this

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who just started their LoRaWAN company

or their IoT company and you're like,

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okay, I'm listening to this

because I want to learn from folks.

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You've been there.

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What are some kind of lessons from the,

I think, lesson from the Masters?

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Lessons from

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the trenches were like, well,

don't don't do this or definitely do that.

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Oh my goodness.

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Yeah. There's always lessons

learned in every single project.

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I would say

I've probably learned more lessons

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from the higher frequency band problems

that I have from LoRaWAN.

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To be honest with you.

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I mean, that's a good signal

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in that LoRaWAN

just doesn't have as many problems.

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Right?

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I can tell you about a particular project

that we worked on in my past,

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where we were doing a Zigbee mesh network

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and did all the scientific work

to figure out

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what this particular facility

needed, etc., etc., etc.

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and once it got deployed, nothing worked

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and we couldn't figure out why

nothing worked.

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And of course they're calling us

and they're upset

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because their Zigbee mesh network

was very unreliable, to say the least.

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And when we went back in

and looked at the building,

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they had hung metallic wall art,

all of the walls inside of the building.

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So there were signal blockers everywhere.

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Yeah.

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And of course,

where do you put the infrastructure in?

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None of that was there.

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So you couldn't test it, you know,

and that's, you know, that's obviously

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always the shortcoming of radio

signals of any type

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that, you know,

there are things that they can go through

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very well, and there are other things

they can't go through very well.

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But what you will find

is that with LoRaWAN,

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it can go through things a lot

better than almost anything else can.

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It is pretty special that way. Yeah, yeah.

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It's always an amazing thing where like,

I know you see this thick set of walls,

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but trust me,

your signal can can get in or get out.

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Okay, so it sounds like, Klika

Tech is doing kind of the whole thing.

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Is there anything in there

that you guys out there

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that you think is super special

about what you do or you're like, oh,

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this is the one thing we do probably

better than anyone else in the world.

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I mean, you guys are partners of AWS.

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It's you're not a small venture.

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You're figuring it out.

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Yeah.

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We actually just got

our premier partnership with AWS.

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As a matter of fact,

it's been a big deal for us.

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And so we're really proud of that.

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I think probably our biggest thing

that we bring is our ability

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to co-create with our customers.

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So we just don't listen to them and say,

what do you want us to do?

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And we'll do it.

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We actually sit down

and really engage with them

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and we really help them

develop their idea.

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We give them a lot of our lessons

learned as, as you said, and teach them.

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Yeah, that's probably not the best way

to approach that.

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But this other approach works

a lot better. We've experienced this.

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We've done it. This way

and it works really well.

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It's an ability to sit down with that

customer, really understand their needs.

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We have probably the best R&D team

that I've ever been around.

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I mean, these guys are really,

really good,

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and I know they're going to probably

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watch this podcast

and I'll never hear the end of it,

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but that's okay, I will

I will blow their horn all day long.

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They're really good people. Really.

All of our people are.

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We don't have any junior level

people in this company.

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Everybody that we have on

board is a serious,

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seriously good engineer, or developer.

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And, you know, so it's fun to work around

that, you know, for,

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for people who have ever been

in that place where

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you're kind of that go to person

that's doing it all.

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And I've been in companies

where I was in that role.

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Yeah, man, I came here and I'm

just a face in the crowd.

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It's fun because you can get into

some ideation sessions in this place

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that will absolutely blow your mind,

and the ideas

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and the solutions that come out of it

are just as fun as could be.

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So that is what I would say

is probably our

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our biggest strong

suit is our people are all really smart,

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they're really creative,

and they really are customer obsessed.

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And and it shows, you know,

in all the products that we help produce.

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So that's right.

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It's it's always good to have

a super strong, stable very cool. Bob.

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Thanks ton for making the time.

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I know

all of the folks in IoT are super busy.

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There's always a million other things

you can do.

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I appreciate you coming on

and kind of talking us

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through a little bit of what you do,

thanks man.

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Alright Hey,

I appreciate it, man. Thank you.

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That's it for

this episode of The Business of LoRaWAN.

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I built This for you.

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So whether you're a business owner,

a lawyer, one professional or a hobbyist,

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the intent is to give you great

LoRaWAN information.

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And of course,

the best information doesn't come from me.

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It comes from the conversations

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we have with the people building

and deploying this tech in the real world.

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:

And that's where you come in.

342

:

LoRaWAN is a global

patchwork of talent and ideas.

343

:

And ironically,

for a globally connected network,

344

:

most of the brilliant folks working on it

aren’t connected yet.

345

:

Help me change that.

346

:

Introduce me

to someone awesome in your network,

347

:

someone doing meaningful work in LoRaWAN

work.

348

:

Just shoot me a name.

349

:

I'll take it from there

350

:

and get them on the show

so we can share their work with the world.

351

:

You can always find me at metsci.show

352

:

That's M-E-T-S-C-I dot

353

:

S-H-O-W, metsci.show.

354

:

If you want to support the show

in other ways, you can subscribe,

355

:

leave a review,

share it with your corner of the world.

356

:

All those are super helpful.

357

:

If you'd like to support financially,

you can go to support.metsci.show

358

:

for both one time and recurring options.

359

:

We're also open to sponsors.

360

:

If your company serves

the LoRaWAN community

361

:

and you want to reach this dedicated

audience, let's talk.

362

:

If you want to try LoRaWAN for yourself,

create a MeteoScientific account

363

:

at console.meteoscientific.com

and get your first 400 DC for free,

364

:

which is enough to run a device

sending hourly for about a year.

365

:

This show is supported

366

:

by a grant from the Helium Foundation

and produced by Gristle King, Inc..

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:

I'm Nik Hawks.

I'll see you on the next show.

Links

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube

More Episodes
28. What Hasn't Been Done
00:18:31
27. Build To The Standard - Eric Lenington - ObjectSpectrum
00:22:39
26. Practical & Economical: LoRaWAN with Henry Huang
00:19:37
25. Network Analysis for LoRaWAN - Dimitris Mamalis at Kudzu
00:19:09
24. The Swiss Way - Liliane Paradise with Miromico
00:21:38
23. Meshtastic - The Beginning of a Vertical
00:19:06
22. The Value Add Business - Rokland with Jason Opdyke
00:19:13
21. Filling The Connectivity Gaps - Satellite LoRaWAN with Telemaco Melia
00:19:53
20. LoRaWAN in Japan - Kevin Cantrell & CropWatch
00:18:35
19. Pinpoint Pain Points - Julien Bertolini
00:18:13
18. Water Meter Monitoring & End To End Solutions - Michail Angelov
00:27:35
17. Business 101 In The World of LoRaWAN - Andy Humphrey
00:28:41
16. Building The World's Best LoRaWAN Field Test Device - Slaven - GLAMOS
00:31:18
15. Getting More Data Out Of The Machines - Miroslav Macko
00:21:50
14. LoRa, Drones, and Offline Tracking - Tomi Piriyev
00:14:59
13. How To Accelerate LoRaWAN - Alper Yegin
00:30:24
12. Flexible LoRaWAN Deployments - Manoj Telrandhe
00:19:18
11. LoRaWAN in the Countryside: Building Smart Communities from the Ground Up - Robert Bogs
00:23:19
10. Public and Private Sectors with Scott Andrews
00:18:57
9. Early Adopter: Paul Pinault
00:18:42
8. Teaching The Way: Carl Rowan
00:22:19
6. Catch It Before It Spreads: The Future of Wildfire Detection with LoRaWAN
00:19:28
7. Primer: LoRa vs LoRaWAN & How To Use It
00:04:30
5. From Handfuls to Hundreds - Bansi Talks Scale
00:17:29
4. Primer: Follow the Signal Path
00:06:30
3. Rish Chauhan and The Perfect Customer
00:16:04
2. Dean Marsh - Using LoRaWAN to Fight Cold & Crime in the UK
00:21:27
1. trailer A Rainy Day & The Business of LoRaWAN
00:07:39