For the last several years SigFox has invested in education, building the network, ecosystem and environment for students who want to grow their IoT knowledge and experience. This is a big challenge and ambition for SigFox.

The company is accelerating the opportunities for IoT knowledge and experience for millions of people who are trying their hand at IoT. The result is an IoT education programme for students where SigFox is working with 250 academic institutions in 60 countries.

Every year students can participate in challenges, called Hacking House, designed and provided by SigFox. So far they have launched four Hacking Houses based in Silicon Valley, Taipei, Paris and Chicago. The idea is simple – to connect customers, entrepreneurs and businesses who have particular problems and universities, students and developers to find a solution. Every Hacking House includes 25-30 students.



The Silicon Valley Hacking House hosted a final pitch event on 16th of November 2018, and presented three IoT solutions for real-world problems. Twelve students and developers from different countries joined SigFox to go through three months of intensive IoT training to solve several real world problems. IoT solutions that were presented at the final pitch event were:

• Connected seals – a solution designed for companies who are dealing with export and import activity;

• Lali Wildfire Detection – a solution that alerts firefighters to when and where a fire will start;

• 42 Robolab – a solution designed for retailers to track inventory in a smart and easy way, identifying top-performing projects.

Another Hacking House challenge event took place in Taipei, and was supported by programme partners STMicroelectronics, MightyNet and Taiwan Capital. Selected projects for this challenge were:

• Palm tree infestation detection, PalmSense, that saves red palm trees from damaging;

• Fire extinguisher maintenance, FireExtinguishers;

Smart car maintenance, Urbn AI, a program that sends error reports to car insurers to keep them up to date about the state of the vehicle ;

a insurers vehicle Gas cylinder tracking, Pacho, a device that analyses the gas usage in Malaysia.

Application deadlines for the last two Hacking Houses in Chicago and Paris are now open.

The Paris Hacking House includes 14 participants from six countries, which will solve problems of encoding SMS messages over SigFox, monitoring network equipment, autonomous water metering, logistics control systems, flood monitoring and water pollution prevention systems.

Project pitches and demonstrations will take place on 30th August with the Hacking House closing on 6th September. Partners of this Hacking House are Soracom, STMicroelectronics, Wisebatt, IMT Starter and TelecomParisTech.

The Chicago Hacking House opened on 3rd June with a demo day planned on 23rd August.

In 2021 there are further Hacking Houses planned to launch in China, South and North America, with a global plan to open 50 Hacking Houses in 50 countries. All Hacking House participants receive full support from SigFox.

SigFox supports universities and schools to integrate IoT into their study process, bringing SigFox on campus. The new SigFox programme is designed for schools for children aged 6-12 years old, to get to know IoT technology.

In April 2019 the SigFox Universities Challenge was launched, offering free access to the resources of the SigFox Community. Resources include: videos, webinars, articles, open-source code and other information, displayed in the SigFox Learning Centre.

In the framework of the Educational Program, SigFox is also hosting the Universities Challenge 2019, a global challenge that will empower students in developing projects related to local needs or driving innovation. The contest starts on 24th April 2019. The undergraduate and postgraduate students will take part in the contest, developing IoT projects with SigFox LPWAN solutions. The topics of this challenge are:



• Social impact by SqwidNet addresses social concerns around unemployment, the need for good-health and well-being, clean water, energy and others;

• Biodiversity and positive impact by the SigFox Foundation is dedicated to solutions creation that help protect biodiversity, health, environment and others;

• Smart building is dedicated to infrastructure stability, building systems monitoring, tracking heavy equipment and so on;

• Supply chain and logistics is targeted at easy monitoring of location and goods condition during the shipping process.

SigFox is giving away hundreds of dollars in prises for 60 projects, selected carefully under certain rules. Twenty winners will receive prises of $200, including one development kit with free connectivity, one article on the SigFox blog, and mentoring by the SigFox experts.