Helium Dev Updates

August 13, 2018

We’re excited to show what we’ve been up to this past week and it’s all about gateway testing and network deployment planning.

6-mile range achieved with pre-alpha gateways

Walking around San Francisco with a prototype module in hand and an early pre-alpha version of our gateway in our office, we wanted to test how far we could receive packets.

To our delight, our outdoor/ruggedized version of the gateway was able to send packets to both bridges in San Francisco. Where did we end up?

Robin Williams Tunnel, about 6 miles from the gateway, north of the Golden Gate Bridge

Bay Bridge, about 2 miles from the gateway, through SOMA (South of Market)

While the Bay Bridge range may not seem as impressive as the Robin Williams Tunnel, keep in mind in that direction there are tons of concrete skyscrapers and incredibly dense streets that interfere with packet transmission. The fact that captured data indoors, away from windows is pretty incredible.