and welcome to episode 359 of the Private Property Podcast. I'm your host, Usaman Thoma. In addition of the Private Property Podcast, if you join us for the first time, welcome to the leading property show in South Africa, catering to all of your property needs. Make sure that you follow us across our social media platforms on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, we're on TikTok, and of course, catch up on all the great episodes that you have already missed out on, whether on Facebook or YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow myself at Usaman Thoma on Twitter as well as on Instagram. And to one of our regular viewers who watch us on Instagram, Facebook and on Twitter, on Facebook, YouTube rather, as well as on Instagram, look at me tripping over these social media platforms. You know how we do it. Every weekday, you and I have an appointment. We're always in conversation with a property expert who helps us navigate our property journey. And this really is the show that you come to, to get expert answers on all of your property needs. And of course, you can also catch a host of other shows that Private Property has across our social media pages. And that is every single weekday at 8 PM. As it is a Monday, you can catch a chat on the home shopping show. I'm tripping over our shows today. It's probably good because it's a blue Monday. I had low share in twice today. So I am having a very blue Monday, but I'm glad that I'm able to be here with you that I'm not being low share. And of course, we are able to be together. So we're going to roll with it. I think many of us probably did experience, you know, double low share today and trying to still get to work and do work as best as we can, even despite the power cuts. Well, as I was saying, you can catch a chat on this evening on the Home Shopper's Show. It comes to your screens every Mondays and Fridays. Every Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can catch on by your knock on the farming park cars, tackling all things agriculture. And on Wednesdays, Eastie Classroom brings you First Time Home Shopper's Show. The First Time Home Buyer's Show, rather, which is always in conversation with people who are on the vault of that First Time Home Buying Journey, but have gone on to grow their property for collures from strength to strength. And talking about growing things from strength to strength, you know that one of the things that we absolutely love doing is changing things up when it comes to competitions. We did promise you that we're going to have another competition where you can set a chance of walking away with 500 grand cash every single day right here on the Farming Park. And this time around, we want to find out from you some of the great lessons that you have learned while watching the podcast. We have posted, you know, the link that we posted, rather, and pinned the post on our Facebook page. And we're looking to also get 20,000 comments on that post. We're setting another big, bold target. So do share with us what you have learned from watching the podcast. I'm going to be in the Farming Park Castle, the First Time Home Buyer's Show, and we'll be announcing the winner live right here on the show. And as usual, we'll have to be watching this live in order to claim the prize. It's that easy to walk away with 500 grand right here on the private property podcast. And if nobody claims the money, as usual, we're going to have a roll over to the following day and that money is going straight into the money bag. Well, this evening's conversation is one that I am quite excited about.  Last week, when we're looking at the RDP resale market, I think one of the things that became clear is that there, you know, there are certain challenges that people unfortunately encounter when it comes to, you know, RDP houses, whether it's issues of title of needs, issues of selling the type, you know, the property, sometimes even the family homes and trying to get a sense of who's who's the title deed, who's whose name rather than the title deed is in. And that's exactly what we're going to be looking at this evening. We're looking at the former residential property market transactions. First, we're going to get a good oversight of, you know, what the stage of the market is and then really look at some of the touch points that I had promised last week that we're going to look at. So in the event where you know that, you know, a family member even yourselves have either it's an RDP house or a family home and you're not struggling with, you know, the paperwork and how to best navigate it. That's exactly what we're going to be dealing with this evening. So do share some of those insights with us down here below, what you hear from me. Also, how was your weekend? I mean, I, we already said you started on a remote. I started with already six AM, had no chatting, no chatting again in the afternoon. But when I found out from you at home, how you are doing and certainly how you're navigating this double loan shedding, because I'm struggling with it. I mean, as you can see, I'm like tripped already so many times just doing this show. But let me introduce my guest. The guest this evening is Ilana Melser, who's a founder and the engagement manager at 71.4 Consulting. Ilana, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's only a pleasure, Ilana. I think let's get into it. I mean, first, before we even look at, you know, the types of cases that, you know, get dealt with in the Transaction Support Center that we spoke about, let's have a sense of the formal residential property market transactions in South Africa, just at a high level, what they look like. I think one of some of the figures that were shaped last week really did surprise me. I didn't realize that the RTP market in particular looked the way that it looked. But perhaps can you just give us a sense of what that market, you know, at a high level looks like. Yeah, if we look at the total residential properties that are registered in these registries, that's about 6.6 million properties. And what you'll see happening every year is that all those properties around 2.5% so will be reselling or transact. Sometimes sincerely, a person-to-person sale, some of those might be a transfer out of a deceased estate, but those are the full transactions. So you've got around 160,000 or so transactions, property market transactions, resell transactions that are happening every year. You've also got new books coming into the market. So in South Africa in 2019, there was about 56,000 units of new properties that came into the market. So you can see the markets growing every year. A lot of those new properties are actually government properties, although we never know how many. But a lot of them are built and not registered. So that's always a challenge. But if we just look historically at the trends what government is saying in terms of their RDP development at about, call it on average 100,000 units a year, we're not picking anything up like that in the Deeds office in terms of new registrations that would be closer to, say, 20 or 30,000 a year just depending on the year. So these are some of the challenges. We even the formal market, what should be formal is often not afflicted in the data because of the backlog on title deeds. And unfortunately with 2020 and COVID and all of that kind of stuff, we've had a lot of delays happening in the Deeds office, in the Masters office. So we think that some of the transactions that we'll be seeing coming through from 2020 might be a little bit depressed. And maybe we'll see some catching up in 2021 and opening 2022 as we get back to some sort of sense of normalness where offices are closed for extended periods of time. We should see those numbers. And you know, I actually want us to spend a good chunk of the show looking through some of the and unpacking some of these challenges and what the potential solutions are. Because we already got some of those questions last week. And I know that it's one of those issues that often people struggle with, right? And before we kind of look at individually the different types of, I'll say, problems, perhaps take us through firstly the categories of matters that you would typically deal with before we zone in on a few of them. Because I know that viewers at home want to get a good sense of how they can, whether they're facing that individually or there's a family matter. And oftentimes it's a family matter and trying to find ways of resolving it. Because the issues of title deeds is such a big one in so many different instances. And it's unfortunate that we are not getting solutions, I'll say, from a mainstream perspective. And that's why, you know, this show in particular is so important. Yeah, I think you're really hitting the nail on the head. It's not unfortunate in mainstream, but it affects so many millions of households and so on. I think maybe a good way of thinking about it is first you distinguish between those properties that have been registered and whether there is a title deed and those properties that have never been registered and there's no title deed. So maybe let's start with those ones first, the ones that have never been registered. So, and these are typically already P houses that can build some of them many, many years ago. But because sort of government prioritized building the house and they wanted to do it quickly, they didn't sort of do all the necessary sort of planning and land legal sort of requirements. And so now it comes to registering the deeds office and they can't and there's an enormous delay and they have to go back and register the servitudes and do whatever they need to do. And what's happened is that in the meantime, the original beneficiaries who were allocated to that house might have moved on or they might have sold or they might have died. And now you've got this enormous problem of trying to figure out whose name to put on that title deed because you can't just put the original beneficiary on it because they might not be they might many cases that are alive. So there has to be this very detailed investigation and when they are claims on a property that are not sort of substantiated they have to be investigated. So it's a very, very time consuming and very lengthy process. I think that's one category of challenge and not to underestimate the task. It is a very, very onerous task, a very laborious task, but we have to do it. So we have to pay attention to who should earn the property before you transfer the property. So that's one category. Then in the category of cases where they originally was a title deed and maybe the title deed was issued 30 years ago or 25 years ago to the legitimate owner and what we see is that with the passage of time that title hasn't been maintained. So for various reasons in some cases the original registered owner might have passed away and is never resolved the estate. They never reported the estates, they never transferred the assets out of the estate to the names of the new owners or whatever the case is and that might have happened years ago. You might have an informal transaction. So people might have bought and sold properties without going to a conveyance. Because the conveyancing system is not accessible and it's pretty expensive and there are local informal systems that seem to work well. They seem to work well because obviously they can't work well and the formal system work well. You've got to have one system. You can't have competing systems and so that's a major problem. You've got an informal transaction that also might have happened years ago. You need to find the proof. You need to make sure that whoever the successors are in terms of title to that property agree that there was a sale and then you need to formalize it. So that can take many, many months particularly if the original owner is deceased and you've got to trace the heirs and all the permutations and problems that can happen with that. We've also got other problems. We're just a cause of like no one was paying attention so there might be errors on a title. And this is not uncommon that people come to us and the ID number is wrong or the name is stolen. And you have to do the work to go and rectify that error. We've got a whole lot of clients where the property was registered in the old apartheid system and the ID numbers are not today's ID number. That's not their fault. But now the way things currently work, they would have to pay a conveyancer to go and correct that error. And so I think it's all those kind of challenges that we're seeing. We've seen cases, a lot of cases where properties were registered. It's a married couple, but only the husband's name is on the title. There was a customary marriage. It was never reported to us. The customary marriage was never registered. And now to kind of undo this and to make sure that the surviving spouse gets access to that property, it can take many, many months of working through things, finding the evidence. And in some of the cases that we're working with, there isn't a precedent. So it's kind of like officials are dealing with this for the first time. And they're as clueless as to how to deal with this. It's like, okay, we've got this client, a very poor person. It was a customary marriage. It was never registered. What do we do now? And it's like, we don't go to home affairs. It's like, well, home affairs come and help us. What do we do? So this is just the nature of the work that a lot of the processes haven't been worked through. And so the clients come with a problem, and it can take a long time to resolve it. But I have to say that we are committed to resolving it. And I think more and more we're finding that officials that we're working with are committed to resolving this. And I think we're getting more and more interest at more senior levels within government who understand how important it is to resolve this challenge and to really assist people to access the assets that they own in a formal legal way. And you know, you know, Ilana, firstly, I think it's very encouraging to know that there's definitely a commitment to resolving this because this is one of those things.  It's one of those things that keeps me awake at night that oftentimes when it comes to housing poor South Africans, we don't prioritize some of these things. And the repercussions are so far reaching beyond, you know, the original owner, for instance, the inability sometimes even for the children or the grandchildren to be able to trade with that particular property, right? Because when we understand that this is actually an asset that by the time, you know, the kids or the grandchildren have access to it, they're able to do XYZ with it and use it in certain ways, the barriers that we've created for poor people to be able to have, we'll call it formal ownership.   And they weren't aware what they're signing. And only after the fact, we realized that actually, this is what you were signing. And they're now people who want to move into the house. So when we look at this particular topic, it really is one of those things that we need to set up and want to address, because so many people are affected. You know, when we heard the statistic last week about just how big the RDP market is, you realize that it's not a segment that you should be ignoring just by virtue of, you know, people didn't buy that particular property in ways that many people buy it. We still need to be able to service, you know, those people as much as possible and ensure that the paperwork is in place because as you say, there's so many structural systems that have unfortunately led to, you know, the paperwork not being what it should be. When we come back for the break, I want us to go for a quick break and see who the lucky winner for our new competition is. As of course, you share what you have learned on the show. Right. And we're going to find out who that lucky winner is of the 500 grand cash prize. I'm going to come back to Ilana. I want us to maybe tackle one or two, you know, scenarios and what people at home can do because I think they're really big thing and you hit the nail on the head. People don't know and won't even be able to afford to use a conveyance in so many instances. I think it's one thing to know that an attorney must be involved, but the reality of so many people who find themselves in that situation is they simply do not have the means to pay for one. And often they get sent from pillar to post and there's never a clear direction in terms of this is actually what needs to happen. And so really want to get a good sense for viewers at home who find themselves in similar situations about some of the active steps that they can make instead of having to go to a police station and home affairs and, you know, having a lot of back and forth and obviously incurring transport costs and all kinds of other costs. And so we're definitely going to be looking at a few scenarios and what you can do at home if you find yourselves in that particular scenario, but let's see who the lucky winner for that first installment of our new competition is going to be. And I can see we kick starting this evening with two winners. So we're going to have two people walking away with that cash prize. And I see we've got Usaiman and Parker as well as Michelle Hressel. So Michelle Hressel, Usaiman and Parker, do you drop us a text down here below to claim that 500 grand in cash? You're both going to get dibs on that should you drop us a message. It is that simple to walk away with cash right here on the private property podcast with myself, Usaiman Domo, Tomalo. This evening I'm in conversation with Ilana Melser who is the founder and engagement manager at 7.4 Consulting. And we're looking at the formal residential property market transactions and really getting a sense of what we can do in the event where we're facing challenges with let's say the family home or RDP home and wanting to move it to the formal sector. And we say formal because we really mean having the paperwork and the paperwork reflecting the owners that it should reflect. So you're not going to have issues with even names not being spelled properly because by the time one day when you want to start it then you'll have issues. We're not having any effect. And we really want to get a sense of what can we do in the event where we find ourselves in some of these situations. And I really see some of the love that we're getting on our Facebook page from our viewers at home. We've got here who was saying who was saying new competitions, new hashtags. It's nice to be here. I agree. Megan from Sculpey saying private property good. It has been a perfect Monday. How are you fam? I'm so excited for my favorite part of the evening Monday nights with private property. Also watching same private property all good family. And of course we've got some of the regulars who are also tuned in. Justin Bartman watching there. We've got. I want to start with the first scenario. And it's one that you've already touched on. And it's one that's actually happened so many instances. I've seen it so many countless times. And many of us have even, you know, we know somebody who's found themselves in the situation where you have a family home. And let's use Soweto because I think Soweto is a very big township. And the reality is, you know, our parents and grandparents and sometimes even great grandparents lived there. And the title deed was in the name of the grandparents or the initial beneficiary. And there is a title deed. And it is in, you know, sort of their name. And but they have, as you've pointed out earlier, they've passed away. And they passed away many years ago. And, you know, their children also supposed the children also passed away. And we're now left with grandchildren. And they don't know how we then resolve this, right? Because the grandfather would have had, let's say, three, four, five children. And now all his children are late. And you guys are now the grandchildren. And it becomes a question of firstly, whose name is meant to go on to the title deed? If let's say the grandchildren, their 10 grandchildren, how do we navigate that one? Because that's a very big one when we look at particularly, you know, homes and townships, where really our grandparents, you know, got those homes. And at some point, I know there were different government initiatives with title deeds. And as you say, you know, people then pass away, we aren't able to resolve it. And here we are now realizing that here things that are happening. And the unfortunate thing in some of these scenarios is that sometimes the one grandchild may want to try and sell the property. And then, you know, all kinds of things happen. So in the event where that's a, the scenario that people at home have where, you know, grandparent passed away and the parents have also now passed away and you are the grandchild, how do they go about resolving that particular matter? I mean, where does one even start? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it can be very, very complicated. I think the place that I would start, and I'd be interested in hearing with other people about different suggestions is did that grandparent have a wall? And did that actually write a legally binding wall to say, this is what I want to have happened to my property? That's the first question. And if there was a will, then you need to follow the instructions according to the law. So which person did the house go to? And you would kind of notionally do that transaction, let's say that person also is the sister, that person have a wall. And then you would follow that. So the simplest cases or the ones that are potentially easiest to resolve are the ones where they are walls in place. We know a lot of people don't, don't have walls and don't have walls. And I would say for everyone at home who's got a property, if you've got a property, have a wall, just make sure you've got a wall because it creates enormous problems for your ears if there isn't a wall. And I will give you examples if you want to talk about those. But so that's the first question. So the first question is, the second question is, what's the value of the property? Is the property in excess of 250,000 rent? 250,000 rent is currently the smallest state special. If the value of the property and you'd look at the municipal valuation, so you look at your monthly rates account and your water account, you see what value the municipality puts on it. If that value is below 250,000 rent, it's a lot simpler and cheaper to transfer the property. If it's above 250,000 rent, then you actually have to go through the formal process of winding up the estate. And every time you do that, it costs you three and a half percent of the estate.  So that gets very expensive. And I would say that really what you should do is get in touch with the transaction support center. Or you could get in touch with Pro Bono if you are, if you earn below the threshold, so it's about 600,000 rent a month, half of the income, you might get assistance from Pro Bono. Or we can just go up to our Facebook page, the transaction support center or TSC Facebook page and just get in touch with us because you've got to investigate the facts of the matter. But if there's no will, what will happen is that the estate will be divided according to the laws of interstate succession. And basically that says depends on the value of the property, but it goes to surviving spouse. If there's no surviving spouse goes to children, if there's no surviving children goes to grandchildren, if there's no grandchildren etc. So there are a lot of rules around how a property is transferred, but a lot of things can get in the way. So for instance, if there was no will and there were children and there are no grandchildren, that can be, and the grandchildren are minors, that can become very difficult because you can't just sign a way to get the right to a minor to the property. So all of these cases get very, very complicated and you do need to have someone to assist you through this. And again, I would say get in touch with the transaction support center. Let us help you guide you through the process. It is going to be laborious. So prepare yourself. It's going to take a lot of time. And then of course, that's just the legal process. There's of course, the process of just agreeing between the ears, what should happen. And often that's actually when things get stuck. And I would say a really first, you know, if you call a rich agreement, find a mediator who can help you to agree around what should happen. And you know, if someone wants to cash out what the process will be. So sit around as a family, discuss what you want to do with the property, and then come to the transaction support center. Let's just see if we can help you get to that outcome. But as I say, prepare yourself for a very, very long process. We can cut some of the costs of the process, but it is going to be long. It's going to take a long time. So that that's just the way that is. You know what we find with a lot of the ODP properties that we're dealing with here in Cape Town? We're working in areas like Kainich or Delft. Those are new areas. So we haven't got too many cases where it's a multi-generational family issue that needs to be resolved. But those are very tricky. And there are a lot of proposals around how to resolve this. We're not sure that any of them are really going to work. You know, the more people have a claim to a property, it just gets more and more complicated. So again, that's why we would say to any property owner, just make sure you have a one. Make sure you discuss with them kids that everyone knows what's going to happen to the property. And the more people have a claim on it, the more complicated it gets. What happens if someone wants to sell, as you say, what happens if the others don't want to buy out their share? Just gets complicated.  And I think, I think you know, you know me. So, so getting touch with pro bono, getting touch with a TSC. And I mean, Ilana, when we then also look at instances, and this is also something that, you know, you highlighted earlier, instances where perhaps the property was, let's say either the parents or the grandparents may have sold it to a another party. And the property was in their name. So they had, we'll say legal right to be able to sell that particular property. And there was never a change of ownership. Even though at the time they did actually have the title deed. I mean, I know of an instance where then, because as you said, oftentimes people will do, you know, a contract or go to police station, even to write the terms of the payment terms, for instance, that, you know, the property, let's say we're going to say it's 200,000 for instance, and you must pay it over in a one year period. And they failed to pay it over that one year period. And they kind of give you the grace and the grace. It's now year three. And the parents or the grandparents are like, actually, nope, we want, we'll say, out of this transaction because you're not paying. And yet the property is still in the other party. They're still living in the property. Now many years have gone on. They're still living in the property. As the parents or the grandparents, you still have the title deed. But now it becomes a question of, okay, who has right over the property? You know, especially, let's say the parents did give back all the money or they didn't give back all the money was whatever was signed, you know, so legally binding that ownership must actually change. It's an era that it hasn't changed. How do we, because we're seeing quite a lot of those kinds of, you know, instances, because when the property was initially, you know, sold, lawyers didn't get involved and, you know, people moved. And I suppose didn't think that it was, you know, important, but, or again, perhaps not even knowing that that's a crucial part of, you know, the transfer process that we must have a conveyance in place in the event where the owners who have the title deed now will say want their property back. And I mean, physically back. How do they go about resolving that? Because I think that's also one way you obviously can't go in and chase somebody out of, you know, the property or do all kinds of sinister things because also know that's not legal. So how do they actually try and go about resolving that matter? Because their argument would be, well, we've got a title deed and it's the correct title deed and it's in our name. It hasn't changed all these years. And the other party, you know, has their side of the argument. How do they go about resolving it? You know, this is a very difficult question to answer. You know, there's the legalities. So what are the rights? And technically speaking, if you've got a title deed and there was no valid sort of sale agreement, so there was no deed of sale that was valid, and there's money outstanding. If you took that matter to court, the court would probably find in your favor and allow you to evict the people living in the property. So that that might be what your legal rights are, of course, to enforce that in a local community where there might be a computing system of kind of informal regulations where people are saying, hey, this family's been living out for years. And they made an initial installment which hasn't been paid back. And you agree to let them stay on and just be reasonable. We're not going to. And if you evict them, we're going to burn that stuff. You know, who knows what they're going to do. But I think that's some of the complications now that arise because there's been this degradation of a record of who owns what an uncontested agreement of who owns what. And so the contestation creates a lot of challenges in local communities. And, you know, again, it's always better to try and reach an agreement. And for the parties to sit around a table and, you know, to be reasonable and just say, OK, this is what happened. This was our initial intention. We're going to pay over X many months. It didn't happen like that. What do we do now? It's not right that you're continuing to live in the property without paying. On the one hand, on the other hand, we do accept that you want to do by the property. What do we do now? So I think, you know, these are the challenges and the courts are always there, but the courts are very expensive. It's going to cost a fair bit of money to get an eviction order. So I think that would probably be the last result. And I think what we're really interested in is finding out about these alternative mechanisms to resolve these disputes and to figure out whether there isn't another way to do it. And a lot of the time it depends on the local community dynamics on leadership, trusted by the parties. Is there anyone they both trust to mediate with them to sit down and work through an agreement? Because that's ultimately what you're going to have to do is just come to an agreement. And sometimes it takes time and it takes time for people to to let that sink in. I know in conflicts that I've been in, I think we've all been involved in conflict.  It's like, this is my right. I'm right. That was just get up.  It will take time but come to an agreement that's fair and that will work for both parties. So I think that's what would have to happen in these kind of circumstances. But I'd love to hear whether you've got other views or other people have got other views and other experiences. I mean, we're seeing, I had a client today, a case today, of a woman who bought a property. I think it's in Google Air to Incantar. Many years ago, didn't get the title deed transferred from a conveyance. But as kind of an act of goodwill and as evidence of the transaction, the seller actually gave her the original title. So she's sitting with the original title. This often happens. She's got copies of the seller's ID. She's got everything she needs except for a valid sale agreement. So we have to find that seller and we can't find the sale. So she can't get a number. She knows there's a cousin who lives near her but she won't give the number of the seller. So we've got to now find another way to trace the seller because without the seller's signature on a sale agreement, you can't get their transfer through the deed's office. So this is the reality and it affects a lot of people. But you've got to make the best efforts. Eventually, we'll find the seller and I'm sure she's a reasonable person and she'll understand. I think it's also one of those things we'll hope because the seller, unfortunately, we're finding people are also realizing that, well, I, you paid the money. I've now long used the money. There was no valid sale agreement. So there's also no way where you can have sort of legal recourse for me to pay you back your money. And legally, I still own the property. The fact that I gave you this title deed, they can get another copy from the deed's office. It's not like there's only one that sort of exists. And so it's one of those things where we want to assume that we're working with sellers in good faith. And I think more than anything, this is why it's just so important and I'm emphasizing this to the viewers at home that you get that sale agreement in and that you understand the sale agreement and that you get a condenser in. I know how expensive it is and that when you haven't budgeted for it, particularly, it's even a bigger barrier of entry. This is where when you're helping friends and family members, when it comes to property transactions, especially family homes, we all know the struggles that we have when it comes to the, you know, I think now more than ever, it's so important for us to make sure that we have the legal stuff in place. We've seen far too many stories of property being sold behind siblings or grandchildren's bags or one of the siblings or grandkids who's usually the more educated one, making people sign powers of authority. They want to show what they were signing and then a property is now being sold. So now more than ever, in the event where there's a family member that you know of, let's try and get things in place now and anything, even Elana was saying with emphasizes on the show, get that bill in place as well because then it makes some of this so much easier to manage whether it's your children who are going to be managing that it or their grandchildren who are going to be managing it because far too often these kinds of, you know, instances, Elana and it's very sad, we sometimes end up, you know, finding and we always say like, basically it's, I mean, a direct translation is it's eaten, but that's not what we mean. But oftentimes other people end up, you know, getting the house because all of all the conflict even within the family and you know, sometimes they even offer you let's say 200,000 and you know, to some families that seems like a lot, but it's actually being split between five people for instance, and all of that could have been, you know, avoided certain things being in place because we cannot take for granted the importance of shelter and the importance of having the family home and the options that having a title deed to a property gives a family, you know, I think now when we look at the township property market and we're seeing how people are even, you know, putting back rooms and using that as a means to make a bit of extra money for the family, we can't downplay how that as a tool can be something that a family can use. Ilana, we have run out of time, but I just want you to, you know, final tip on your side for people at home who find themselves in conflict situations when it comes to but it's RTP house or certainly the family house and in terms of just the best ways to go about trying to resolve the matter. Yeah, I would say two things. The one is where we've seen in foreign transactions, a lot of times people are honest and will agree they sold the house. I think yes, we get very anxious, don't be anxious, let's get the data, let's get the information before you get anxious and make an effort to formalize there's a long journey ahead, but it's worth it and don't be anxious about it. You know, chances are the person that you bought the house from is not a crook. So I think just to end that one on that more hopeful note. But then I think, you know, the family homes issue, the one thing that really strikes me about properties in Soweto, that's very different from the properties we're dealing with in Kainichah. In Kainichah, the average stand is about 75 square meters. 75 square meters, the house fits on the stand, that's it, it's tiny. What you're dealing with in Soweto is a very large stand and land is at a premium and the opportunity to develop and to go multi-story and to really think of that family asset as an asset that could actually house many, many families if you go up. And I think that to me it's like those kind of opportunities, think creatively around how to build up, instead of fighting over what there is, how do you come together to build more. And I think if the family can resolve around maybe it's transferring the property into the name of a company and everyone's own shares in a company and we agree that the company is there to develop that asset to build a multi-story development have, I don't know, 12 flats on the property and each family member gets one and the other, you know, they six family members and the other six are rented out. Whatever the situation is, you've actually got a sizeable asset that can accommodate a lot of it. So I think it's solutions like that. Of course, there are times when they just is conflict, you know, and people don't agree and those are terrible, terrible times. And I think to just bring in people and the family trust, to just, you know, try and kind of look at something that instead of sort of dividing up a small thing between many people to think about how to grow that and how to make it work for the family members. I mean, that's not anything I can say. And to just say that sometimes, you know, just going to an external party finding a mediator can help everyone think differently about the situation and can help you see a solution. That's what I would say. No, Ilana, we're going to leave it there. And I think it's a really great note. I would urge viewers at home to reach out to the Transaction Support Centre. We have shared their link down here below. Of course, you can also reach out to Pro Bono because you really do want people who will be able to walk the journey with you. As Ilana has pointed out, it can be a very long journey. And you at the very least want to work with people you know, have a good sense of the steps ahead. And people that you know are not trying to also scam you because I think the other reality in so many of these situations is you find people who say they can fix these sort of problems. And more often than not, they don't have the means to do so. And you pay thousands and thousands of rents and it's still not resolved. So we're going to leave it there this evening. Ilana, it was such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you. And that is Ilana Melser, who's the founder and engagement manager at 71.4 Consulting. Wrapping up the Monday edition of the Private Property Podcast with my son, Fuzamantou Mouakumalo. We kickstarted our competition this evening. We didn't get any claims. So those two lucky winners unfortunately didn't claim. So the money is going to be rolling over in the money bag for tomorrow evening. While I have overstayed my welcome, you can look forward to Chad on the Home Shoppers show right now at 8 p.m. I'll be back on your screens tomorrow evening at 7 until then hoping you stay home and stay safe.


Hello, welcome back on my YouTube channel. In today's video we are going to look at filtering point cloud data. Let's check which attributes are available for this point cloud. We can find that in the layer properties. In the layer properties dialog, click on statistics. There you'll find a table with the attribute statistics. It gives us the list of attributes, the minimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation. And for the classification it gives us the statistics on the count, the number of points and the percentage of points in that class. Now we'll use these attributes for filtering points out of the data set. Let's first use the attributes for styling the layer. Go to the layer styling panel and there change RGB to classification. And this will show the points with their classes. And here the table also shows the percentage again. Now I'm going to create a layer with only the building points from the point cloud. In the processing toolbox under point cloud extraction I use filter. I use our last file as the input layer. And there I go to filter and I choose classification equals. And then from values I choose building by double clicking the value. I click test and there it says that it's valid.  After calculating the result it will convert it to the COP C format, the cloud optimized point cloud and then it will show the result. If I hide the classification layer here we can see the resulting building points. I can also filter on height. Let's go back to filter and there I'm going to look for Z larger than 25 meters. So this is a valid expression, click OK and I call this one high. This expression applies to all the points, not only the buildings and will return the ones that are higher than 25 meters. And here we see all the points that are higher than 25 meters. Maybe we are not interested in buildings but in urban green. Let's see if we can use a filter to get the vegetation out of the point cloud. I'm going to use the return number. The return number refers to the number of returns from a single emitted pulse of the LiDAR system. If the return number is larger than one this could be vegetation. Save the file as vegetation and run the filter. After calculation close the dialog and check the result. When I zoom in I see that many trees have been detected but also a lot of side catch mostly the sides of buildings. Let's see if we can refine our filter to reduce the amount of building points that are included in this result. I'm going to use again return number larger than one and classification is not buildings. I test the expression and it works. Click OK and I save the result. I call it vegetation too. Let's run it. Click close and check the result. We see that now less building points have been included so we can still further refine this for example by using elevation criteria or other types of filtering. It's also important to note that many of these point cloud processing algorithms have filter options which you can find under the advanced parameters. That means when you execute such a tool you can also include a filter so the tool is only applied on the filter criteria. In this video you've learned how to apply filters to point clouds.


Hey everyone, welcome back to Figure Fantasies. So today we're going to do a review for the first 100 days of the game. But before we do that, please answer this question, is the honeymoon phase over? Is it over for you? I'm sure different people will have a different answer to this because some started later. But again, is the honeymoon phase over for figure fantasy for you? Honeymoon phase is where in everything's good. You feel that the game is 100% positive or 90%. So put it down in the comment section below so that we may hear from you. Okay, so starting off with our pros. Basically this game, the game concept is very unique. I haven't seen this yet with other games. The figure type system and the grid type in terms of placement. More or less, it has been a breath of fresh air. It started last year in November and the game concept, excellent, totally unique. And also the figure design, who can complain about this game. The figure designs are good. You have your 2D, you have your 3D views of the figures that we have. And you have a lot of options to at least enjoy probably viewing most of your figures playing with your favorite figures. So again, figure design. And hopefully guys in the future, actually I've seen Yuki in a figure. Figuring. I've seen items in online stores with Yuki in a box and as a figure. So hopefully we can get more figures or we can get the actual figures for the game and we could buy them. So who wouldn't want that? So again, put your comments down if you want the actual figures so that we could buy them in online stores and we could display them in our houses or our residences. Okay, next is going to be the story is a lot of fun. I enjoy the story, I enjoy the humor, I enjoy the pace of the story. And again, it's kind of interesting especially when they introduce new figures to the game. I really enjoy reading every bit of it. Next is going to be, right now we've had more or less a bit of what do you call this? Additions to our figures and Team Build recently would be Ayane, Rin, you have there, Zantacain. The game is a bit diverse already in terms of team building. A lot of you could mix and match a lot before it was really limited when we started but now in the hundred days or more, it has become more diverse kind of but we're still looking for other figures to fill in some roster spots and probably have, you know, more other dominant figures in the game. Like right now it's only Zarola who is more or less dominant in DPS. I'd like to see another militarist who is also dominant in that area that can rival or even surpass Zarola. So again, I hope to see those in the future. Also as part of our pros, it's usually fun to, you know, to summon banners, new banners, new figures and usually we have enough diamonds to save for future banners. Also in currency. So I've also talked to other players and they say that the pace of the game, the release of the figures is actually okay because we could save before the next banner. So again, one of the things that I like with this game, you could save enough for you to have enough summons for the game before a banner comes out. Okay, definitely want to segue to the next pro. Free to play can be achieved for this game. I tell you guys, a lot of players have been telling me free to play is a reality for this game. It just has to be again done in a way that you don't expect to progress further as soon as possible. So again, if you are free to play and if you're stuck in level 140, 160, 180, then you know, please make sure that you farm what you can farm in preparation to pass a certain stage. But again, patience is the key to this currency is very good. Free to play are enjoying with the currency with the diamonds with summoning. It's not really a problem and they get to get copies of what they want. Some of them even have have gotten Miku to five star even for free to play. So again, it's not really impossible for free to play players to exist and to enjoy this game. Next is gonna go to the otaku zone. Otaku again is tied to how unique the game is with figurines. Definitely you have to display them though. Otaku is one of the things that I enjoy doing. And right now I'm already in my second zone. I could open my second zone already, but I haven't gone to it yet. So again, a lot of customization. This is actually one of the things that I enjoy the game, customizing, displaying and more or less my otaku is very cluttered. But again, I need to raise this one the comfort level. So I need to cram a bunch of things there. But now that part two is open, then I can really make sure that to arrange everything in order for the game. I don't think we are running out of content. So I think we have a lot of content to play. So we have here otaku, you have here your club. Next is content sacred tour, big three final battle, Odyssey, nightmare brawl club. You also have limited time events. So I don't think we lack in the games. But for me, gonna go through the cons later of the content and my comments as well. So for our content, we are not really the game is not really skimping on content. So we have a lot to play and keep us busy for this game. Okay. And last for the pros is the store is also free to play friendly. Not only does it offer items that we need to purchase with real currency, but also in game currency that we can farm and we can exchange in the shop. I like the store design again, free to play friendly. All you need to do is save and level up and again save for the currencies of each of the sections of the store that you want to purchase your items. Okay. So that is it for the pros. I'm gonna go to the cons for this game. A while back when the game started, there have been a lot of codes coming in. Okay. There are a lot of codes when the game started, but as it, you know, December came and January came. There were no longer new codes that came in. I hope you guys would, you know, would put out more codes because a lot of new players are still coming in. And I would love for them to enjoy what we enjoyed when the game was launched. So hopefully more codes to come in the future. Okay. Next is on cons is we are basically six months behind some servers in terms of content and figures. So again, I'd like to trim that down to at least three, hopefully, because people are seeing a lot of figures already that don't belong in the global server. And they want them as well as I. So hopefully we can shorten that period to three months. Can we do that? Probably four or even five. So again, it's a tease, really. Japan, Chinese servers have lots of better figures, and we have to wait for them for a long time. So hopefully we could bridge that gap to a smaller gap, perhaps. Okay. And one of the things that I also would want to change is not this one. This one. So skins are usually the good skins are usually on paywall. That is my gripe because I want other players to enjoy this game as well, to be able to get these. If it's going to be on paywall, hopefully they could reduce the prices because some are actually only after the skins, they're not after these. So if you guys have an option for the skin only, probably better. Because again, at the lower cost, if low spenders want to spend to buy the skin. Because again, some are just after the skin. These are just pluses, although the packs are actually this pack is already good. But definitely if you have a skin only purchase, it would be better. And if you could have some kind of a hard currency to farm and you put these in the store, then it would be better. But again, you could lower the price for only a skin purchase. That would be good. Okay. The next con that I think that is really bugging me is Night 9 and Snow A Figures. Really really hard to get copies of these guys, really really hard. Even the currency, the fully wish is also hard to get. So again, hopefully we could get more fully wishes either that or kind of increase the chance to get these. So again, I hope that because these guys are powerful, but they are hard to level up. The only figure that I have from Night 9 or Snow A that I leveled up is only this guy. So the rest are on a very low level, even Ember is at 3 star. It's really hard to get copies of them. The rest, as you can see, 1 star, 1 star. And guys, please, we need more fully wishes to get these. So hopefully, you could make that adjustment for the game. One other thing under cons is, if you can recall, we usually have a weekly event here for baseball. That game, it's okay, but hopefully we could sparse it out and put out other games in between them. I remember last time the baseball event was in consecutive weeks, so I was kind of bored with that one. So hopefully we could sparse it out, not every week. I don't mind the baseball event, it's good. But again, every week should be different. Hopefully guys, hopefully. And rotating events as well. I'm not really a big fan of rotating events. So to start off, my question is, why is the playground on not open once it closes? For example, it closed today, should be open the next day. Because again, I don't see the point that this is closed until now. This has been closed for a few days or a few weeks already. I'm not sure when this is opening. And also for the limited time event, hopefully, especially this one, I like this event, but this is on limited time. Hopefully they could make this event, the game carnival open consistently. And there is no real schedule when this will open. So again, hopefully the limited time events could be limited. And most of them could have a more consistent time where in players can play. The best content usually doesn't have a schedule. So hopefully it has a schedule on when it will open. And this one, I really like this one, the wish list. Because I usually get ultra shards here and diamonds here. This belongs to the pros. I actually forgot to discuss it earlier. And the last one for the cons is definitely some figures here need a rework. Badly, I tell you. So once that I'm I'm not sure why they're here is this girl. Ophelia definitely did a rework. Who else? Rico also needs a rework. So Rico here needs a rework. Vasily needs a rework. Who else? Vasily, there are a lot of figures here who need a rework. So hopefully the game as we move forward could do some reworks with non usable figures so that we may be able to use them and enjoy them. Ophelia, again, I don't know why. Sometimes just ask why they're there. So hopefully a rework in the future is possible.  Again, put in the comment section below. What do you think are the pros and cons? Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Please put them down. I want to hear from you and let's discuss. OK, so looking forward to the next 100 days for the event, 200 days, and hopefully we can enjoy this game for as long as we can keep the player base interested. Again, the key there is actually the codes, especially if you want to track new players, codes are really important. So anyway, guys, thank you very much for staying this far.  And I'll see you next one. Take care, guys. Stay safe. This is the Warden and I'm out of here.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards ripping 22 Panini National Treasures Baseball hobby four box full case break number 22 random team style. Here's a look again at your random results. As always you can find these on the website under the results tab as well as the link that's currently in chat. So good luck here guys. Let's do some NC baseball. Stuff's been actually pretty fire.  Stuff's been pretty awesome. Hold the wonder one of one laundry tag out of it. That was a pretty massive card and then you know there's always good like a lot of fun stuff like cut autos that are in here too of like some legends. It's just a cool product overall man. They did a good job with it this year. They did a very good job. Niners touchdown. Hey what up BC. All right we've got Taylor Tramel to no Taylor Tramel that's how you say that one. 299 for the Mariners jersey. That's one here we've got D Gordon three out of 25 biographer materials. Game worn on that one back when he was a Marlin. The old Marlin's jersey is very cool. That's for the Nationals D Gordon though. We've got Ronald Acuna Jr. 16 out of 49. Game worn for the Braves. That's Braves. Okay we've got that's gonna be Matt Veerling 51 out of 99 for the Phillies. That'd be H2O. Got a DJ hers 49 out of 99 on card auto for the Cups. Oh yeah touchdown. Nice one here for the Red Sox. That's gonna be 90 out of 99 Roppy Devers. This next one's nasty. You can mag this next one. I never said we weren't getting NT baseball. Got a lot of it. Got one out of eight. Stephen Kwan on the RPA. Boom. Going to the Guardians. Congrats on that. Who's got the Guardians. That's nasty. Edward P. Congrats man. Awesome awesome awesome. Nice hit the Kwan baby. Cool one here. We've got 33 out of 49. David Wills for the Inks. Perfect game legend. Put the bottom first. We've got 91 out of 99. It's Taylor Walls Colossal National Treasures Auto for the Rays. Next card of box one 10 of 25 is gonna be a Frank Thomas. Wow. For the White Sox.  Legendary material signatures. Congrats on that. Nice big hurt. That's awesome. Game used bats on that as well. I want Soto Auto. Not that I know of. Not that I'm sure of Nate. Got 18 of 25. Christian Pichet for the A's. Player one on that. That's Braves patch but A's first. Got Luis Sabarino. Cool one there for to 99 for the Inks. That's sick.  That's awesome. Four of 15 field gear. Cleveland. My satchel page. Got a nice one. That's actually a nasty patch on that. Adrian Morjean. Five of 10. Crazy patch in the silhouette window there. Very nice with a little acetate. Got five of 10 there. Got going to the A's. That's gonna be adult in Jeffries. 59 of 99. Got a field pass. 12 of 49. Juan Gonzalez going to the Rangers. I love these field passes dude. They had these in football too. They're so nasty. Oh those are like yeah. Yeah. Next one up. We got 18 of 99. That's RPA. Ryan Belade. I'll just get rid of them. Usually just get rid of the boxes and stuff. Nice one there. Nice Belade. We got Dale Murphy. That's gonna be going to the Braves. 22 of 25. Encard Bat Auto. And 10 of 10. Legendary materials is Miguel Cabrera for the Tigers. Nice one there. Tigers. Was there a book in every box? Not necessarily. Okay. I don't know if I can hear it here though. Or an average. 850. We're live on YouTube and Twitch. Late in sports cards on YouTube and Twitch as well. That's where the main camera and everything is. Stop Tim. Sorry. What did you say? It's like this one's gonna have one for sure. Let's just bury you for time. They're cool but I don't think they do. A couple of thick patches in here. It's gonna be a good box man. Whatever's in here is gonna be nasty. Yeah this is a case break Nate. All right. We'll start off with this big poppy. Retired Jersey numbers 17 of 34 for the Red Sox. There's Colin McEw. 31 of 49 for the Braves. We have them up at like 560 or 590 a buck. Something like that. Case break. It's like $80 a spot for a random team. There's Carlos Correa 11 out of 49. Game worn or game used back for the Twins. Next up we've got a 25 out of 99. Albert Pujols. Stars and Stripes Jersey Patch. Next up we've got a Josh Smith for the Rangers. Apprentice Inc. 8 of 25 followed by a Trent Grisham. 46 of 64. Going to the Padres. Jersey Silhouette Water. Nice one here behind it. We've got 95 of 99. It's gonna be James Wood. Definitive Inc. for the Padres. Cool one there. Big time prospect. Nice one here. We got 15 of 25. It's gonna be a Eli Morgan on the RPA. Stars and Stripes. Nice one here. You can mag this next one. We've got going to the Red Sox. Notable nicknames. David Ortiz. Inscribed big poppy. Nice one there. Congrats on that. Red Sox. Two of 25. I think I pulled one and two of 25 of this card. You might be able to sneak it into 240. I think Sean was able to get them into those. You can mag this one right here. Yeah. Then we got 72 out of 99. Greg Deekman on the booklet auto. For the Cubs. Alligator Arms. Noodle Arm. DK Mackat. For what's it called, Matt? Nah, I think it's just straight to 360. Honestly, J. That was a big time bandwagon in the early mid-2000s. Two to 20 times I should say. It was the classic Seahawks. All right. Andres Jimenez. 84 out of 99. Going to the Guardians. Jersey card. Followed by a Cow Raleigh. That is 58 of 99. For the Mariners. No, this is a case break. Got Mike Piazza. 12 of 25. That game used. Yes, it is. Game worn for the Mets. Hall of Fame materials. Followed by a Tony Gonsolin. For the Dodgers. Nice one there. That is numbered 48 of 74. Nice one there for the Dodgers. This one's actually pretty sick. 40 out of 49. It's going to be Jason Hayward. Let's go into the Cubs. Nice one there, Cubs. Jay Hay. Next up we've got a Luis Gonzalez. 38 out of 49. That is for the Giants right there. That is Giants. Different Luis Gonzalez. Nice one here. It's going to be two of 10. Luke Williams. A Jumbo RPA. This one's got nasty. This one's nasty. Nice RPA. Grats, Philadelphia. Going to Frank Y. How about 25 of 25? Shohei Otani. Boom. Let's go, baby. Showtime. There it is. Congrats, Frank. Massive hit for you, buddy. Massive, massive hit. Yeah, I would say just wait till after the break. I can try to help out. 9 of 10 is going to be Jose Ciri for the Astros. And Legendary Jumbo Materials is going to be Luke Appling. That is game one. That'll do it for the break, guys. Feel a quick recap here. Jerseys. We've got Mike Piazza. Cal Raleigh. That is Andre Jimenez. Albert Pujols. Carlos Correa. Colin McHugh. Satchel Page. Luis Severino. Christian Pichai. Ronald Acunha. D. Gordon. And Taylor Tramiel. Carlos is going to be Jose Ciri. Tony Gonsolin. Luis Gonzalez. Jason Hayward. James Wood. Trent Grisham. Josh Schmidt. Dale Murphy. Ryan Valade. Juan Gonzalez. Dalton Jeffries. A. J. and Morjean. Taylor Walls. David Wells. Rafi Devers. DJ Hers. And Matt Veerling. Booklet of Luke Appling to 20. We've got Greg Dieckmann to 99. Miguel Cabrera to 10. And Frank Thomas to 25. And then Maggard we had Big Poppy, 2 of 25 for the Red Sox. Inscribed Big Poppy. We had Shohei Otani, 25 of 25 for the Angels. And this nasty Stephen Kwan, 1 of 8 on the RPI. Yeah, I'll throw these in too. We also had these two. We're just going to sleep on top of them after Luke Williams, RPI. And Eli Morgan, RPI. That will do it for the break, guys. Thanks again for the fill. Next up we've got Triple Thread.


Hello, welcome to the presentation on Lora and Lora Van and Zuffer. My name is Manu and Sadasivam. I work as a colon engineer at the Qualcomm learning team of Linaur. So I contribute to various open source projects such as Linux, kernel, UBOO, Zuffer, MRA, library, et cetera. And I do maintain few steps here and there. So today, I'm going to talk about Lora and Lora Van and Zuffer. And this presentation is not about deep dive into Lora and Lora Van technologies. But instead, I'll be focusing on the addition of the Lora and Lora Van wireless technologies into the Zuffer autos. And I'll give a quick introduction on what is Zuffer, Lora and Lora Van. And I'll share some thoughts on why Zuffer needs Lora and Lora Van technologies. And then I'll talk a little bit about the history of adding this support into Zuffer with various pull requests. And then I'm going to talk about the community which is growing around this effort. And then of course, the future plans. All right, let's get started. So, okay, what is Zuffer? So Zuffer is this scalable, small footprint real-time operating system for the resource constrained systems with devices like microcontrollers. And it is highly configurable in the sense that we can shift on most of the features. But in these days, Zuffer is extending its scope, which means that for instance, there is a 64-bit architecture support in Zuffer, like it can run on the Cortex-A53 processor from Aham. So there are talks going on around making Zuffer as the future hypervisor and boot order for the next. So clearly, Zuffer is not constrained onto the MCUs, but its scope is getting extended. And of course, Zuffer supports multiple architectures. Not only Aham, it supports x86 from the beginning. And then more recently, it started supporting RISC-5 and then extensor. And one of the nice features about Zuffer is that it offers rich functionality. For instance, in networking, it offers BLE. Zuffer has its own BLE networking stack. And then it supports Wi-Fi, open trade. And the other peripherals like USB, display, modem, it's already that in Zuffer. So it's a cluster of functionalities, I would say. And Zuffer is truly open source in the sense that it offers the most permissible license, which is Apache 2.0. Of course, it's often loud by everyone in the community. So let's look into LoRa. So LoRa is an acronym of long range. So it is an LP wireless technology based on the chip spectrum modulation technique. So it was invented by Cycleo, a French company. And then it was later acquired by Centek. And then Centek started selling the LoRa videos based on this modulation technique. So LoRa operates in a license-free, sub-gurus frequency band, which varies with locations. For instance, it operates in the 865 Mahals in India, and then 868 Mahals in Europe, et cetera. And not only frequency, the data rate and also the spreading factor also varies with locations. And we have restrictions based on the countries. And Zuffer is a perfect candidate for low data rate and then long range applications like the smart city and then industrial applications, where we don't need to send high amount of data in a short period of time, but we do need to cover long range distances. And the data rate is actually low. And what is LoRaVan? So LoRaVan is the MAC layer. It sits on top of the LoRa. So in terms of the OSI model, we can say that LoRaVan is the MAC layer and LoRa is the PHI layer. So LoRa protocol is closed in the sense it is proprietary to Centek. On the other hand, LoRaVan specification is open to the public and then there is also a reference implementation available in the data repository so that everyone can just use in their end product straight away. And LoRaVan works in a star-based topology. So the end nodes transmit data to the centralized gateway over here and then the gateway will relay the messages to the network server. So I have simplified the network server part because usually there are three components here. One is the network server and there is join server and there is application server. But in a typical system, these three can be contained in a single piece of server. That's why it's just over simplified. And the communication between the end node and gateway happens through the LoRa technology and then the communication between gateway and the network server in cloud happens through the TCP IP mechanism. And then I should note that the LoRaVan is actually a software implementation not the hardware one as like LoRa. I haven't seen any, or I should say that there isn't any hardware implementation of LoRaVan. It's all running as a software stack in a dedicated MCU and then which in turn communicates with the LoRa, because you are using the communication protocol like SPI. And the LoRaVan specification is governed by LoRaAllens, which is a nonprofit association of more than 500 companies invested in the LoRa technology. So it takes care of the specification and make sure it gets evolved to meet the future needs. Okay, so here comes the question. Why Zephyr needs LoRa and LoRaVan? So far, Zephyr is mostly used as the autos for IoT applications. But in order to make Zephyr as an autos for industrial-grade applications, there are certain parameters needs to be considered. And first on is multitasking. And Zephyr is already excellent in that because it has the support for preemptible and then the cooperative threads. So it can handle multitasking really well like this guy. And then it has the support for MISTRAC guidelines. I mean, Zephyr is not fully MISTRAC compliant, but the process already started. And then there were several pull requests merged in order to make Zephyr the MISTRAC compliant. And I hope that in the future we can see that Zephyr is fully MISTRAC compliant. And that's one of the requirements in order to meet the industrial-grade certification. And for security, Zephyr is already pretty good in terms of security when you compare with the other open source autos available in the market. So Zephyr has its own security technical steering committee which governs the security processes. And then there is a security guideline available for the companies and the individuals who are willing to make secure applications using Zephyr. And of course, there are support aids available for cryptographic algorithms using the external trusted repositories like Ember DLS. But what is really missing today is the communication medium which is used for transferring the data for the industrial applications. As I said before, Zephyr is primarily focused on IoT applications. So it has support for networking protocols such as BLE Wi-Fi which operates in the 2.4-bit range. But unfortunately, that frequency range can be used for industrial applications as it is overly polluted because all of our consumer devices are already operating in the same frequency range and it may cause interference. So what we really need is a communication protocol which can operate in a less polluted space and that's where Lora comes into picture. Since Lora operates in the sub-gearage frequency range, it is less polluted interference and it can cover long-range distances. And in the industries, we don't need N number of 100 sensors sitting in the single industry and then talking to each other using a machine network. We don't need that kind of setup. What we really need is a device per compartment which sends low data often for NR or so and then it should be able to cover the entire building or the entire industry and the same requirement often satisfies for the smart city applications also. And this makes Lora an ideal candidate for making Zephyr as the industrial-grade autos. That's the whole motivation for adding Lora and Lora when supporting Zephyr. Okay, so here comes the history. As like most of the features in Zephyr, the Lora support was started by opening a GitHub issue in the Zephyr repository by a community user and after some time, Kate Stewart from Linux Foundation opened a feature request in order to make Lora in the official plans for Zephyr. And a couple of months later, Dingtao, a community member, opened the first RFC pull request into the Zephyr repository for making the Lora support into Zephyr. But that is on catch. That pull request was incomplete in the sense that it had no API and board support and the author made it clear that he didn't want the pull request to be merged into mainline but he just wanted to share what he was working on so that others can also benefit from that. So in that PR, he just reused the Lora man reference repository by Sentech which is called Lora Mac node and then he added support for a couple of Lora radios like SX1272 and then SX1276. So in that PR, there were discussions going on around the basic API design how the Lora man code should exist in Zephyr, etc. But unfortunately, the PR was closed by the author since he made it clear that he had no intentions on merging it to Zephyr. But clearly, it made as a starting point for the Lora support in Zephyr. So I took it forward and then I submitted a RFC pull request after some time addressing all the review comments given in the initial PR. So in that PR, I proposed a basic API and then the code design for Lora and I should note that I haven't added the Lora man support in that PR because I wanted to start small and then build it big. If I add Lora man support then I thought that it would make the process more complex so the best way to get something into Zephyr is to make it small so that other people can also review the code easily and get it merged. And for the PR, I used 96 Boards Vistrio as the target platform. That is one golden tool in Zephyr is that we need to have a target platform for any feature we are adding to Zephyr in order to make sure that it is validated properly, it's working properly and others can also test it. So that's why I used 96 Boards Vistrio which is IoT based for 96 Boards designed by Rack Wireless and then it had the Lora radio embedded on it. So I added Boards support for it in the pull request and then I also I also wrote the SX1276 driver from scratch. So I hadn't reused the existing Lora man reference implementation by SEM type. The reason was like I wanted to host the native Lora drivers in Zephyr and only depend on the SEM type repo for Lora man stack. But unfortunately that idea was turned on by the community and then the PR was snagged. So the suggestion was given to me to reuse the existing Lora man repository because it had support for various Lora drivers. So the reason was not to reinvent the wheel again in Zephyr and it offers more code maintenance also and I agree with that. So I went back to the drawing board and then I reworked my PR and then I came up with the next version of the PR and this time I reused the reference repository by SEM tech but still I haven't added Lora man support and I still stick to the point of start small and then build it big but I added the SEM tech Lora man repository as a Zephyr module. So the way it works is in order to make Zephyr depend on any other external repositories like this one we need to make it as a Zephyr module. We need to clone the upstream repository into the Zephyr organization and then the guy who owns this repository need to make sure that whatever the change which happens in the upstream is getting in sync with the clone repository in Zephyr. So this is the proper way of adding a module in Zephyr. So this time I got positive reviews from the community so I just printed the board specific parts from the pull request and then I merged it separately. So roughly after three months of time going through the reviews the PR got merged. So it was a moment for celebration but I didn't stop and then I straight away started working on the Lora value presentation. All right. So right now that is a basic API in Zephyr which provides the Lora point-to-point support between two end nodes. So we have the config API which does the configuration of the Lora radio based on the modem config structure. So this structure will have all the parameters required for the stack to configure the device and then we have the API for send. So it takes a buffer and then a buffer length so it will just transmit the buffer to the end device and then we have separate API for receiving the data from the end node also. So I have also added on sample application in the pull request which requires two Lora nodes. One will be sending the data and another one will be receiving the data just to exercise the basic functionalities of the API. All right. So this is the radio configuration structure which is used for configuring the modem. So we have the frequency parameter. It defines the frequency range in which the device is operating and then we have parameters for configuring the bandwidth, data rate, coding rate, preamble length and then the TX power. So that is on final parameter which is called TX and it is used to configure the modem for transmission or receive. So right now that is on limitation in the LoraVent code for configuring the modem each time for sending and receiving. If we want to send continuously we can configure one time and then start sending the data but if we want to switch to receive then we need to reconfigure the device and then start receiving the data. I hope that this limitation will be addressed in future days. All right. So here comes the next PR for adding the LoraVent support in Zephyr. So this time I had some experience of handling the pull request and then I used the comments which were given for the Lora pull request and then I tried to avoid as much as the mistakes I did in the first PR in this LoraVent PR. So this time I placed the code LoraVent code into the subsystem directory and then the API and the intro directory. So in the LoraVent PR I reused the existing Lora drivers which were already present in the Zephyr repository not through a direct way like calling the config and sending the API but indirectly through the Semtech repo which has the callbacks into the Zephyr Lora API. So for this PR there was no modification required in the Lora Mac node repo but I just need to enable a few drivers like the cryptographic ones for adding the LoraVent but other than that it was very straightforward. But I should stress the fact that designing the API for LoraVent is somewhat hard compared to LoraVent. The reason is because of the synchronous and asynchronous nature of the LoraVent specification. For instance LoraVent send or the uplink is a synchronous operation but LoraVent receive or the downlink is an asynchronous operation. And we also have the blocking and non-blocking states like the send cam block for N number top time, etc. So this makes somewhat tricky for the API design. So again I wanted to make things simpler so I just went with only uplink nor the downlink. And then there's one more challenge for storing the keys and states in the N node. Since the keys are stored in the network server and also in the N node we need some kind of secure mechanism to store the keys safely in the N node so that it won't get tampered but for the initial PR I didn't consider that. And the initial PR supported both OTAA and the ABP join methods. So OTAA is a dynamic way of joining the LoraVent server. And ABP is a static way of joining the LoraVent server. And I had only added support for class A device class and there was still support needed for class B and class C. And the region static is static which means that before running the application we need to make the LoraVent stack know what kind of region it is operating the device is getting operated which means it can be India or it can be Europe etc. And of course there is no support for downlink as of now and after posting the PR the reviewer has gone for 8 months of time mostly because of me working in a spare time on this project and also the delays in getting the reviewers finding this PR and hopefully after 8 months of time this PR got worse just couple of weeks before. Yeah it took a lot of time. So here is the basic API for providing the uplink support in the LoraVent. So we have the join API which is used to join the network server using the LoraVent join config and as like Lora it has the parameters contained the whole structure and we need to call this API with the join method whether we are joining using OTA or APP and then it will return 0 if the network join is successful or the native errant code if failure and then we need to start the LoraVent stack in order to send or receive the data but right now we just have the send API which is used for sending the data to the network server. So again we are passing the buffer and then we are passing the buffer then and then there are flags which determines the type of behavior of the message whether it can be confirmed or it can be unconfirmed. Confirmed means we should be waiting for getting the confirmed message from the network server. If unconfirmed means it will just return all right. So these are the parameters used for joining the network and then sending or receiving the data in the LoraVent so we have two structures for OTA and then ABP and both are declared as union because you will be using one at the point of time and then we will have the join UI network key APP key so for OTA the session keys are derived using this APP key but in the case of ABP the session keys are stored statically in the device itself so every time when the session keys get changed in the network it needs to get changed in the device also if you are using ABP so the keys needs to be stored statically in the device we can't actually modify the keys dynamically that's not it's supported and then all these joining parameters are based on the LoraVent version one point on specification and there are plans on going in order to store these keys in a secure element of the device just to make the keys don't get tampered using an external factor all right so while looking on the LoraVent support developers from various part of the region reached out to me willing to collaborate in this effort so for that purpose I created a Slack channel which is called Zephyr LoraVent and then I invited all the members who are willing to collaborate and then I mentioned this Slack channel in the LoraVent PR itself so that people who are all willing to try out the PR will notice this Slack channel and then join so that's what's the whole idea and then as like I expected more members started join in this Slack channel and then they started contributing to the existing LoraVent and then LoraCode so they submitted several PRs and then they started improving the Lora support so as like any true open source project this started getting traction all right so we are in we came to an end of the presentation and then let's see the future plans on the todo list so we need to add the class B and then the class C device classes and then we need to add the secure element support for storing the keys and states this is pretty important because if you want to deploy the Zephyr LoraVent in any product we need to have the secure element in place for storing the keys so this will take the top priority for us to work on and then we need to add the support also and then that is an interesting feature which needs to be added so a lot of the LoraVent vendors they have a customized firmware running on their module which exposes 80 commands that are communicated using the UART protocol but what we really have as of now in Zephyr is we will talk to the Lora radio directly using the spy protocol from the target MCU running Zephyr but we need to support the 80 command set feature also because there are times where we cannot customize the end device firmware and then we have to relay on the 80 command set for achieving the LoraVent networking so that support needs to be added as well and then of course we need to add more Lora modems also right so that is it for this presentation I hope everyone really enjoyed and then I am expecting everyone who are willing to try out this feature to actively collaborate, join the Slack channel and then contribute to this project thanks a lot