Helium - Hardwired (10)

densone

Sean Carey sean@helium.co

Framing The Future

Helium is building physical infrastructure that makes it painless and cheap to get

smart devices online and exchanging data without being tied to complex hardware

components and protocols

Internet of Things

Things on The Internet

History

• Started 10 months ago by 3 software engineers that knew nothing about hardware design.

• Have grown to about 10 employees

• Mostly Engineers at the moment.

Original Idea

• Use off the shelf components to create multi-tenant metropolitan mesh networks. (XBee, Synapse)

• Write a “cloud” application that can trigger external api calls.

• Conquer the world of small data one city at a time.

“Good Luck Creating a Mesh That Big” -Everyone

Evolution• Use existing silicon like 802.15.4

• Create a new protocol that is simple and effective.

• Inspect the information like you’re a firewall.

• Create a layer of expressiveness

• Conquer the world of small data one city at a time.

Hiring EE/Firmware Experts

• Come to the conclusion that off the shelf hardware and software cannot solve every problem. Actually they are mostly created to solve very vertical problems.

• Scour the internet for people that have done similar things. This stuff has been evolving way longer than the term “IoT”.

• Find engineers that are still upset that zigbee is a standard.

• Call them at their homes if you have to.

Let’s Talk Architecture Turkey

router

bridge(s)

router router

Millions of Devices

bridge(s) bridge(s)

DNS Cluster

bridge(s)bridge(s)

It grows Naturally and becomes a global interoperable platform

Helium creates modules that can fit in almost any device.

Helium creates network bridges that can service thousands of

concurrent connections.

Helium creates routing infrastructure for public and private data..

Heliums network deployment model

Primary Bridges• Hosted By and Paid for by

Helium

• On top of buildings and on billboards

• Create the core network

• Not complete coverage

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Secondary Bridges

• Hosted by municipalities and other trusted organizations

• On light poles and office buildings

• Helium creates a reason for these people to want to host

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Tertiary Bridges

• Bridges that come with products and live in homes and offices

• Customers have the ability to share connectivity.

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Send data to helium as messages

• With very little code you can send a message from a Helium modem.

• All of the expressiveness happens at the router.

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Process Helium messages with existing tools.

• Helium has forked node-red and are in the process of making it multi-tenant, secure and reliable.

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Security• Find a competent firm to

review your design.

• Convince that firm their best engineer must review this.

• Don’t worry about writing the code until someone actually looks at said design.

• Don’t implement application security after something goes wrong. Do it now.

“Truthfully, it’s scary as hell.”

–Jerry Irvine, CIO, Prescient Solutions

Things We’ve Learned• Hardware design takes time to get right.

• It’s not like software where you can quickly fix a bug.

• Factor in every cost, down to the USB cable. Because, it gets expensive for a seeded startup.

• Buy the right tools, not the most expensive ones.

• Rent what you cannot afford.

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You Don’t Need 20Mbps For Your Trash Can Sensor

• Most of the folks we talk to want to send small amounts of data and be battery effecient.

• This was not an afterthought in the design of Helium.

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Embrace Small Data

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• Take advantage of data formats that are more compact / faster than JSON or XML.

• Don’t do things like sending UUID’s to authenticate your device for every request. It’s bigger than a normal payload and is not battery efficient.

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What’s Next

• Helium is actively recruiting alpha candidates. We supply a prototype bridge and 10 Helium Arduino shields. You give us feedback. Reach out: hello@helium.co

• Helium will be breaking ground in San Francisco and growing our first metropolitan area network.

• Are you in?

–Steve Jobs

“Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.”