Build For Your School - Jan-Ole Giebel

Jan-Ole Giebel, founder of J-O. Technik, talks about his rapid journey from early IoT tinkering to building practical LoRaWAN systems for schools and organizations. Beginning with ESP32 sensor experiments in middle school, he quickly ran into the limitations of school Wi-Fi and discovered LoRa—first as simple peer-to-peer radio, then as a full LoRaWAN stack. He shares how supportive teachers and family helped him pursue hardware and programming deeply at a young age, eventually leading him to build CO2-monitoring devices during the pandemic and lead older students in real deployments.-How early experiments with ESP32s, simple sensors, and Dragino kits introduced him to LoRa and later LoRaWAN’s structured architecture-The technical challenges he faced with overlapping packets, one-channel gateways, and why LoRaWAN became essential for scaling beyond a few nodes-The skills he had to develop to make IoT work in the real world, including Linux administration, Python development, virtualization, databases, and managing network servers like ChirpStack-Why conferences, YouTube, and self-guided learning played a critical role in understanding radio systems, backend servers, and security-What he sees beginners struggle with most in LoRaWAN and where complexity still creates friction-His current focus on making IoT practical for everyday users through an application server that hides complexity like payload decoders, device onboarding, EUIs, and downlinks-How he is integrating LoRaWAN with real-world workflows such as school timetables, automated heating, smart thermostats, and energy reporting-The type of clients who benefit most from his work, especially schools and organizations aiming to reduce energy costs and carbon footprint without compromising comfort or operational quality-His perspective on AI tools in development, why he treats them carefully, and where they help versus hinder reliability and securityJan-Ole on LinkedInJ-O Technik