Tag Archives: IoT

Helium console, is it a $6600 business ?

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Some time ago, a twitter thread made the community react about the amount of $6600 of communications consumption on the Helium network. This thread was full of approximations in order to present negatively the growth of the Helium network. But it is also an opportunity to take stock of the development of the use of the network. We will see in this article who operates the Helium decentralized network, what are the current data volumes and what are the associated financial metrics.

In short, we cannot talk about Nova Labs’ revenue with respect to direct communication costs because these costs are associated with different third parties offering the packet routing service. We cannot rely on this cost to estimate an associated business volume because there are many indirect costs as I have already specified in my blog post analyzing the running costs of a Helium router/console. Finally, regarding a long period where gamers found a way to earn a few dollars on the back of Nova Labs, involving many ancillary costs, distorted the data for June. You will understand all this in the rest of the article.

Disclaimer: I’m the owner of the public helium console helium-iot.eu (oui 6) – no need to makes comment like “he have written this because he own … blablabla”

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What is the IIoT transformation ?

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The digital transformation of companies officially started in 2012, the year of birth of this term which reflects more the awareness by the company of its delay in its technological adaptation than a real awareness of its difficulties in modernizing its processes. .

Apart from this digital transformation, in society started 20 years earlier when Internet technologies were born and giants were already being built, Google, Amazon, Paypal… There is no need to detail the competitive advantages that the native use of these technologies in the construction of the processes of these current giants have brought, the financial results are before our eyes.

This is what it is all about, increased productive performance, accelerated development, domination of the markets despite a past so recent that the leaders of the large companies in our historic economy have, only rarely, managed to adapt. The most far-sighted will have succeeded in adapting as suppliers, integrating a digital relationship with these giants into their process. Industries have become customers of these essential technology providers, at exorbitant prices and on a recurring basis, so that today any product contains its share of cost for the digital giants.

It is not a question here of making a trial of these companies which have only the merit of having been visionaries, precursors and better than all to invent our digital world, taking considerable risks at their start. On the other hand, it is a question of learning lessons and looking to the future and the opportunities that are available to us.

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SenseCAP M2, the Helium data-only hotspot, (close to be) ready-to-go

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Sensecap M2 – data only

Until now, all the Helium data-only hotspot I have been tested where DiY devices. They are not really complicated to manage but they are not ready-to-go, so you need to manually on-role them with a wallet and some complex CLI operation for the non-experts. This SenseCAP M2 is the first one I’m testing, ready-to-go or close to be ready-to-go (that does not means it is the only one existing).

As it is a Data-Only hotspot, it means it does not participate to the Proof of Coverage, as a consequence, there is no related rewards for this device. This device only earn the DC (Data Credit) for transferring the communications, so $1 for 100.000 packets. Before getting question, this have no return on invest in a crypto point of view. This has been made to help supporting professional applications on the Helium network.

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Astrocast, another route to the space IoT

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In some of my previous post, I did talk on Kineis IoT satellite solution. The competition is that area is large and one of the other player is Astrocast. I really thanks them for getting me in the program to explore this technology (and I apology to have been a bit long to start using it).

Astrocast is a Swiss company launching nanosatellites to currently provide Europe, Asia, Africa coverage for IoT. It uses L-Band (1-2 GHz) radio. The transmission period will be 15 minutes once the constellation will be fully deployed. The current constellation is 10 satellites for a target of 100 satellites by 2025.

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Is Sigfox finished?

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Since yesterday, the microcosm of the IoT has been in turmoil, Sigfox, the Toulouse company, pioneer of the Internet of Objects, the one which had carried out remarkable fundraising for France: 100M then 150M is placed in receivership. But is it really a surprise? Is this the end of this technology?

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Helium solar hotspot (Data-Only) 2021 update

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In a previous blog post about 18 month ago, I designed my first Low Cost LoRaWAN Solar Gateway. This year, I did some updates to create a new version to support Helium Data-Only Hotspot (basically it works for any LoRaWAN networks like TheThingsNetwork).

In this version, I’m using a RAK wisegate Lite gateway, it is a bit more power consuming than the TTIG but can work on any LoRaWAN network. I’ve also changed the outdoor enclosure to get a larger and single battery.

You will also see that I’ve been updated the monitoring dashboard to get something better and free of charge. Two of them are in production. One is already deployed as an upgrade of the 1st one and the second one is in the testing phase. The First version has been on the field for more than a year. It has been offline about 10 days during that year, due to the weather conditions. This is a service level of 98,29% from its start until now. With the larger battery I’m expecting to resolve some of the small service interruption I’ve issued during last winter.

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Helium Kerlink Miner iFemToCell

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Kerlink Helium Miner iFemToCell

Kerlink is a LoRaWan hardware player since the first ages of this technology. This French company has equipped most of the operator’s network and is used to propose high quality industrial products.

The iFemToCell is not a new product. It exists since a couple of years and I already tested the IFemToCell 4 years ago. Recently the company has created a Helium edition we are going to review in this blog post.

This is an interesting device as it is a kind of hybrid between a light miner and a full miner. Even if the Kerlink platform is powerful, it is far away the power of a raspberry Pi and certain operations like consensus group can’t be performed. As this is now delegated to Validator, this difference have no impact on rewards. In another hand, this device is consuming less power and it is possible to power it with sun more easily. This is quite interesting.

Let see what is this device and what is specific during its deployment.

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Migrate any LoRaWAN gateway to helium network as a Data-Only hotspot

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Migrating existing LoRaWAN network to Helium or joining Helium for new deployment is accessing to the world largest LoRaWAN network and enable your devices to be deployed in the large covered zone. By doing this you extends the community network and as a counter part getting benefit on future data transfer and immediately get an access to the low cost ecosystem (data transfer, network server, high redundancy network…)

In a previous post I explained how to configure a RAK Wisgate as a Helium Data-Only hotspot. In a such situation your LoRaWAN gateway becomes a hotspot relaying the Helium traffic and getting some little rewards for the data transfer. The more important is to extend the coverage. This way of doing is good but I’ve got some issues on the field: The data transfer from the hotspot to the blockchain (even if just the state channels) is high and the software, currently in alpha, is not totally stable. When deploying a gateway is isolated area to provide new coverage, honestly, these two issues are blocking points.

The second important consideration is the existing gateways, already deployed on the field: they are currently used for private networks. They have been deployed some years ago and are not in the compatibility list of Helium hardware. Even if they are, deploying a new software on them, remotely can be a problem.

For these different reasons, I’ve been investigating a different approach by creating centrally hosted hotspots connected to different LoRaWAN gateways through the legacy Semtech protocol. This is what we are going to detail on this blog-post.

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