Helium network / LoRaWAN for telemetry?

[Matthew Patrick]

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking of a way to get some more data down than WSPR and APRS allow, but beyond line-of-sight connections (RTTY and the LoRa work done by Dave Akerman). 

It seems that there is a fairly well-populated LoRaWAN network called helium, which runs a version of LoRaWAN. The coverage map is here: https://explorer.helium.com/coverage

They do charge some kind of fee for using it, but it works out to be pretty cheap (dollars / MB). 

Do you think this is something we could use for balloon tracking? Maybe someone flying a LoRa radio could use this as an "optional" or occasional downlink when it is available. 

VE6AZX

[Medad rufus]

Interesting network, that I have not been following.

The distribution of ground stations is quite similar to The Things Network(https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/map) - Good coverage in Europe and America and Japan, but virtually no coverage else where. This is a limitation that The Things Network also has. It would be days before hearing from a balloon, until it enters a region of coverage.

Medad M7RUF

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[John Laidler]

It isn't just the number of nodes which matters, it is how many have a good external antenna and cover all the channels. Of course you only want one to communicate with from a balloon and from my limited experience of one LoRaWAN picoballoon you can expect ranges of 300 to 350km from around 9,000m altitude but on a global scale that isn't very far.

John

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[Steve]

What are the data limits with Helium?  LoRaWAN has network and regulatory  limits on airtime.  How much data can actually be transferred a day (assuming coverage is available)?

    Steve G8KHW

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[Oliver de Peyer]

Some may recall that I mentioned Helium a couple of years ago and got a bit teased at the time ;-)
The idea is that you buy a Helium hotspot and then act as a hotspot for anybody else’s Helium IoT devices in the vicinity.
Meanwhile, your hotspot mines for a specific Helium cryptocurrency - NOT a hard-to-mine-for currency.
The idea is that you leaving your hotspot on all the time earns you Helium currency, and then you can spend the currency on your own data transmitted from your own Helium IoT device somewhere else.
So you earn your own data by providing the hotspot.

BW

Ol

M0LVR