Friday Product Post: Noble Helium
Today we release a big product line of Helium products, including the Atom Prototyping Module, Element Access Point, Adapter Boards and a couple of kits!
Hello, Hello, Hello, everyone, and welcome to another great Friday Product Post! Today is a big day because we are announcing our new partnership with Helium! With this announcement we have plenty of great new products available, including the Atom Prototyping Module, the Element Access Point, two adapter boards and a couple of kits that combine pretty much everything you need to get started! Without further ado, let's jump in and take a closer look.
Get to the cloud with your Helium-powered device!
Let's start with these two similar products! The Helium Ethernet Starter Kits include everything you need to easily give your embedded devices secure, long-range connectivity. These kits were built specifically for Arduino/mbed or Raspberry Pi development boards to get them set up and ready for wireless and IoT applications!
Since Helium is a complete toolkit for building IoT applications that can connect to public clouds, a pre-built, secure connection from Atom modules interacts with what are called Helium Channels. Channels are a convenience layer between sensors and your organization’s cloud of choice that can connect to public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud IoT Core or a private offering. Channels can also be used to send device data to applications and services via generic protocols like HTTP and MQTT.
The Helium Atom Prototyping Module is a low-power, dual-band wireless module perfect for developers. The pin layout is compatible with many existing embedded devices. Atom devices connect to the nearest Element Access Point using Helium's wireless technology, which allows those boards to communicate long distances with little interference and requiring no device-level configuration.
Each Atom operates in the 2.4GHz and 915MHz bands in North America and 2.4GHz and 868MHz bands in Europe.
The Helium Element Ethernet Access Point is the bridge between Atom modules and your preferred cloud platform. Atom devices connect to the nearest Element out of the box using Helium's wireless system, which allows devices to communicate long distances with little interference and requiring no device-level configuration. Each Element can support thousands of unique Atom devices. This means you may only need one Element to cover an entire office building, two for a manufacturing facility or three for a multi-acre establishment.
Helium adapters make it simple to physically connect the Atom Prototyping Module to popular embedded devices. The Helium Arduino/mbed Adapter is an easy-to-use shield equipped with two SMA connectors, an Atom socket and a few broken-out pins --- all in an Arduino R3 layout.
Also included with each shield is one 2.4GHz and one Sub-GHz antenna for optimal range and functionality.
The Helium Atom to Raspberry Pi Adapter is an easy-to-use HAT-like board equipped with a NRF24LO1 port, Atom socket and RGB-status LED.
Also included with each board is an onboard socket for a NRF24LO1 or NRF24L01+ 2.4GHz wireless transceiver module in case you wanted to swap out one of the mini antennas included on the Atom Prototyping Module.
And that's it for this week, folks! We really hope you make some amazing projects with the Helium product line! As always, we can't wait to see what you make with these products! Shoot us a tweet @sparkfun, or let us know on Instagram or Facebook. We’d love to see what projects you’ve made!
Thanks for stopping by. We'll see you next week with even more fantastic new products!
What is this product considering "long range"?
In high noise situations, several city blocks. With line of sight, several miles.
LOL! "I Triple E" :) It's easier to say!
Small issue - in the SparkFun product pages for the "Helium Atom Prototyping Module", WRL-14549, "Schematic (Atom)" link brings up the same page as the "Datasheet (Atom)" link. By and by I was able to wind through the links to a schematic on cdn.shopify.com but the information is kind of sparse.
The question in my mind is whether the "Helium" might be a good alternative to the Arduino MKR1000, ideally a breakout board for the Helium chip with a smaller form factor than the MKR.
I am a little confused on what you are asking. Do you want a new breakout board with the Atom module embedded in it or a different shield to fit the MKR form factor?