LoRaWAN Sensors and Gateways: Monitor Anything, Anywhere, for Years on One Battery

CCTV answers one question: what happened? But most site problems announce themselves long before there's anything to see — the chiller creeping up two degrees, the leak under the floor, the gate that opened when nobody should have been there. That's sensor territory, and for large, spread-out or off-grid sites, LoRaWAN has quietly become the way it's done. Last updated: July 2026. What LoRaWAN actually is LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) is a radio protocol built for one job: carrying tiny packets of sensor data over very long distances on almost no power. Where Wi-Fi reaches a few dozen metres and eats batteries in days, a LoRaWAN sensor can report from 2–5 km away in built-up areas and 10 km or more across open country, and run for years on a single battery — five to ten years is routine for sensors reporting every few minutes. The trade-off is bandwidth: LoRaWAN carries readings, not video. A temperature value, a door state, a water-level figure. For that job it is close to unbeatable, which is why it runs everywhere from smart cities to dairy farms. The two halves: sensors and a gateway A LoRaWAN network needs exactly two kinds of hardware, and the shape is simple: many cheap sensors, one gateway. The gateway is the hub — it listens for every sensor on the site and forwards their readings to a server or cloud dashboard over Ethernet, Wi-Fi or a 4G SIM. One gateway like the Milesight UG65 semi-industrial gateway will serve hundreds of sensors across a whole farm, factory or holiday park; browse the full LoRaWAN gateway range for indoor and outdoor options. A 4G-backhauled gateway needs no broadband at all — the same no-landline logic as our 4G cameras. The sensors are the fingertips, and the Milesight sensor range covers most jobs on a UK site: Temperature and humidity — the EM300-TH for cold stores, grain stores, greenhouses and anywhere stock spoils quietly. Leak detection — the EM300-SLD puts a tell-tale under boilers, tanks and server-room floors and shouts the moment water arrives. Doors, gates and hatches — the EM300-MCS magnetic contact reports every open and close, with a timestamp — a black-box recorder for the chemical store. Indoor air quality — the AM104 and AM107 bundle temperature, humidity, motion and light (the AM107 adds CO2 and TVOC) for offices, classrooms and welfare cabins. Levels and pressure — ultrasonic distance for tanks, silos and bins, submersible water level for boreholes and troughs, pipe pressure for spotting leaks in the main. Soil — the EM500-SMT soil moisture sensor tells growers when to irrigate rather than guessing. One practical note: LoRaWAN uses different radio bands by region (Europe runs on 868 MHz), so gateway and sensors must match — tell us where the kit is going and we'll supply the right regional variants. What this looks like on a real site A livestock and arable farm: one gateway on the barn with a 4G SIM. Temperature and humidity in the grain store, soil moisture in the field, water level in the troughs, contact sensors on the fuel store and chemical shed. Every reading lands in one dashboard, and the farmer gets a push alert when the grain store climbs or the fuel store opens at night — across hundreds of acres, with no cabling and no broadband. A factory or warehouse: leak sensors under every pressurised line, ambience sensors on the shop floor, contact sensors on fire doors, level sensors on waste tanks. The gateway sits in the comms room on Ethernet. Compliance readings that someone used to collect on a clipboard now log themselves, continuously. A holiday or caravan park: water levels, gate monitoring on the far entrance, temperature in the pool plant room — a kilometre apart, one gateway, no trenching. LoRaWAN or 4G? Usually both We're often asked whether to choose LoRaWAN sensors or standalone 4G devices, and the honest answer is that they solve different shapes of problem — we covered the tracking version of this question in 4G vs LoRaWAN for construction asset tracking. The short version: one or two devices, or devices that roam off-site → 4G. Many fixed points on one site → LoRaWAN, because after the gateway each extra sensor costs little to buy and nothing to run. The two also combine naturally: 4G cameras watching the yard, LoRaWAN sensors watching everything the cameras can't see, one 4G connection carrying the lot. Where to start Start with the pain, not the technology: what on your site would you want a message about at 2am? That list is your sensor list, and it's usually shorter and cheaper than people expect — a gateway plus a handful of sensors, live in an afternoon. Browse the LoRaWAN sensor range, pair it with a gateway, or tell our UK team what you need to know about your site and we'll spec the network for you. Free UK delivery on orders over £75; trade pricing for installers and integrators.