Home Assistant and IOT are for me one and the same. For all of my IOT data, I obviously need a platform for monitoring, collecting and automating. Home Assistant is for me my single point of truth for all of my sensors data.
Helium Network is a decentralized, blockchain-based solution for the Internet of Things (IoT) that relies on LoRaWAN and CBRS technology. The Helium Network enables IoT devices to connect to each other in a cost-effective and energy-efficient manner, while offering incentives in the form of cryptocurrency (IOT Tokens), for those who participate in the network as miners. With this, Helium became for me the backend for IOT, while Home Assistant is the frontend for IOT.
Connecting both worlds can be quite a challenge. There was a HA custom integration for Helium before, which is unfortunately deprecated. With the recent migration of Helium to Solana Blockchain, things changed quite a lot, and Helium scales even better, introduced better governance, making it the best choice for LoRaWAN and IOT connectivity.
I have been working on a custom integration from scratch to integrate all aspects of Helium into Home Assistant. The Home Assistant Helium Integration allows monitoring your involvements in Helium and your Helium IOT devices.
All is configured using the benefits of Home Assistant’s config-flow. The Home Assistant Helium Integration is also available in HACS default repository. Just look for “Helium Integration”. Here’s the github repository of this project:
Hello koying,
indeed hypes and buzzwords should be handled with care. We need to overcome the hype in order to see the real value and application of a technology.
The involvement in Helium consists of several aspects, which address different personas. One of the personas is indeed crypto-enthusiasts, who are into cryptocurrency and decentralized technology and who want monitor these aspects of Helium. But besides that, we also have for example gateway operators and IOT device developers. I love developing IOT devices, run my own gateway and personally also use Helium’s IOT network for my devices. I want to be able to monitor all my involvement in Helium. I made this integration first of all for my own, and decided to share it with others, who had the same challenges.
Regarding your question:
That doesn’t connect you to the “network” in any way?
You already see the performance of your gateways. The data for these are available on blockchain and off-chain, and thus was relatively easy to implement. End-user IOT device integration for Chirpstack is work in progress as you can see in the roadmap. I am in discussion with Network Server providers in order to get this part of the integration done as well.
I hope this clarifies your questions. In case I can help you further, please be welcome to address your questions.
I read an interesting article. Here is what I understood:
Helium is both a Lorawan/5G network and a cryptocurrency, HNT, used above the Solana blockchain.
I assume that network is private to Helium users
Those 2 activities are basically independent, you can spec… err trade HNT w/o being involved in the network.
You earn HNTs by deploying hotspots on the network. If I get it right, you earn them mostly when your hotspot is used. Apparently, you can get some just by providing coverage, but the detail are unclear.
The workings behind helium is very interesting and your understanding is mostly correct. But it is not private to Helium users. You can buy credits “Data Credits” via Credit Card and then use the network for any of your IOT use cases, without further being involved in Helium. Price and Coverage are in my opinion superior. There is a transparent calculator for network usage here: Helium for Business (scroll to bottom)
But I am not here to advertise the network, that’s for everyone to decide on their own. I just want share the integration, make it more visible and collect feedback.
The end-user IoT functionality of the Helium Network is, without a doubt, the big part of Helium that I’d love to see in HA. I’m both a Helium network contributor via a miner on my roof, and a user through 2 GPS enabled Trackpac devices.
The enticing aspect of Helium is that it’s crypto that actually does something. It goes well beyond “digital monies” and the idiocy that is most of the NFT space. Both of those things are part of it, but in a useful way. Each mining device that contributes to building out the network is stored on the Solana blockchain as an NFT connected to the device owner’s wallet alongside any of the several tokens that are part of the project. Tokens can be swapped in specific directions. For example, wallet users can swap the IoT token that is mined for the HNT token. HNT can be swapped to DC, but DC cannot be swapped back to anything else. DC is the token burned by the network for data packet transfers. Fuel for the IoT connections so to speak.
For me, I am very attracted to the idea that the miner running on my roof can generate credits I can then use to turn around and pay for using the network myself for GPS tags.
I’d assume this would start with wanting to get devices and entities to exist in HA from what the Helium Network is relaying as data points. Surely, that part is where the reference to Chirpstack comes into play. Setting up Chirpstack is, I believe, where a user inputs there Helium network wallet details to point at their account with DC intended for burning.
Hey, quick question is there a possibility to add heartbeats to the integration. It will help monitor your hotspots, and make sure stuff is running. I think you just need to take the address, and then add an sensor the device with the heartbeat?
I think it would help a ton with using this automation.
