Partnership Spotlight: KS Technologies + OMRON Electronic Components

Weather Sensor Solutions

OMRON Electronic Components are partnering up with KS Technologies (KST) to develop an add-on module for the weather sensor to bring data collected by the product into the LoRa space and onto any LoRa network. This will allow for increased range with its low data output and be, overall, a lower cost way to transfer data over long distances while avoiding cellular network charges and expensive setup. KST can assist customers with sensor mounting, setup, and Cloud-based tools, providing a single source to obtain a full complete setup kit for easy installation.

Interview Q&A:

Q1. Can you share the story of how the partnership with OMRON Electronic Components began and what initially brought our companies together?

A1. KST’s relationship with OMRON began in March 2024 in the most classic way possible—a staff member of OMRON Electronic Components reached out to KST using the generic contact information form on our website, and the rest is history! We struck up a relationship, and just about one year later, the two teams had collaborated beautifully on a product that will hopefully be released in the fall of 2025.

Q2. What specific challenge or opportunity inspired your desire to work with OMRON on developing the Weather Station - LoRa module?

A2. KST has many years of domain knowledge in low-power, wide-area network communication, ranging from NFC to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, and cellular. We are passionate about connecting sensors to the cloud and then making sense of the data to benefit lives and businesses. When OMRON showed us the key specifications of their Weather Station, we were incredibly excited and interested in what they were doing. Between OMRON’s deep expertise in sensing and KST’s deep expertise in connecting things to the cloud, all we saw was an ideal match. Microclimate Weather Stations have been an emerging topic in recent years (and even with past KST customers), so we immediately saw the benefit of using LoRaWAN to connect a Weather Station to the cloud.

Q3. Were there any memorable challenges or pivotal moments during the development of the Weather Station - LoRa module that stand out to you?

A3. Very early in the design cycle, we used another product of ours named “Impulse” to very rapidly prototype sending data from the Weather Station via LoRa. This allowed us to quickly move to a custom hardware design. Once that and the firmware were completed, it was vital that our OMRON colleagues had a chance to test our solution and really put it through its paces. OMRON’s team in Japan was tasked with this job, so OMRON and KST had to develop a strategy for getting OMRON’s team in Japan to work with KST’s team in Colorado to turn on and test new hardware and firmware. This is always a challenge for any two companies! We built and tested a solution at KST that included a LoRaWAN Network Server running on a local gateway that communicated to our cloud platform over MQTT. Our hope was that the OMRON team could simply turn it on when it arrived in Japan, but we ran into challenges there. The OMRON team did an exceptional job working with us face-to-face halfway around the world to resolve these issues quickly. It was a big moment when we all overcame those challenges and saw data being uplinked from the OMRON Japan team’s Weather Station to our server. It’s always so exciting to see so many layers talking to each other correctly and efficiently. For me, that was probably the most memorable part of the project!

Q4. Looking to the future, what excites you most about the ongoing partnership between our companies or the potential evolution of the Weather Station product line?

A4. OMRON’s technical capabilities, product offerings, and philosophical approach to designing robust, useful products align so nicely with KST’s own product development process. KST’s founders spent many years at Hewlett-Packard’s Test and Measurement Division here in Colorado Springs, and this resulted in a robust KST product lifecycle and set of engineering disciplines that I feel are a perfect complement to OMRON. We are looking forward to working with OMRON more in the future, hopefully to bring our hardware, firmware, application, and cloud engineering to the table for other OMRON product families beyond the Weather Station. There is a rich set of application features just beginning to be created for the Weather Station, some that are common to the platform and some that are likely semi-customized for particular customer or market needs. We look forward to creating and expanding both the standard offering as well as helping our customers adapt the Weather Station to their particular needs.

Q5. As an engineer, what has impressed you most about working with OMRON Electronic Components on this project?

A5. I am completely blown away by OMRON’s professionalism coupled with their detailed and disciplined approach to engineering. It’s rare that we can usher a product to market that “checks all of the boxes” at launch while maintaining budget and timeline. OMRON’s amazing team allowed us to accomplish all three with our KST5421-US915, and we cannot wait to see what the market does with this solution.

This collaboration with KST is more than a business relationship — it’s a step toward building solutions that matter. By utilizing advanced sensor technology, we’re helping fight the effects of climate change, optimize material usage, and move closer to a more resilient society.

For more information, please contact us or visit KS Technologies website.