Helium Outdoor Hotspot

At the tail-end of Summer 2019, we worked on a turnkey contract project for Helium Systems - which consisted of building five off-grid, outdoor enclosures to house their Helium hotspots. The outdoor hotspots would be temporarily deployed in a rural, mountainous setting to showcase the Helium network for a potential enterprise customer. Each outdoor hotspot is powered by dual LiPo battery packs, dual solar panels, and a rugged Cradlepoint modem - providing a 4G LTE cellular backhaul. The outdoor hotspot kits also include a high-gain external antenna and telescoping tripod mast. The basic premise is you can deploy these outdoor hotspots anywhere, without any grid dependencies - and quickly "pop-up" a Helium network. The project had an extremely quick turnaround, essentially 6 weeks from start to finish. With such a small window of time, we had to immediately get to work - designing the layout, placing orders, testing, optimizing - all the while keeping a close-eye on part lead-times and shipping dates. We knew everything had to proceed in a seamless fashion in order to pull off the project and deliver on-time! The concept design for the outdoor hotspot is loosely based on the Relay Station that we created for goTenna Mesh, but the power system and entire enclosure had to be significantly scaled up. We had to iterate on the design about halfway through the project, as Helium asked us to change from using their pre-commercial hotspot design to a prototype "Blackspot" unit, which essentially acts a LoRa repeater and does not operate on the blockchain. It was a fun experience working with the Helium team in San Francisco and collaborating with them onsite at the customer's office and event location. You can read more about the project here (see the Trail Rides section)
Feel free to reach out with any questions regarding the outdoor hotspot build!  -TW