5I/ Self Sovereign IoT Helium, Picos, DIDComm
Self Sovereign IoT Helium, Picos, DIDComm
Session Convener: Phil Windley
Notes-taker(s): Sean Bohan
Tags / links to resources / technology discussed, related to this session:
Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:
Insteon - went out of business, won’t keep lights on, employees removed from their LinkedIn
Retina manufacturer went out of business
How do we get out of that
Current model - manufacture, device, data about you
Compulsive of things
Alt model
You - data about you - manufacturer
Detail
Phil’s cabin
Pump in pump house 100 yds away
20-25 below in the winter
Would love to know temp in pump house
Something happens to electric heater - bad things
Antenna
Options for temp sensors
- Device from Scott Lemon (WOVYN) - wifi - power hungry, limited range, run hub, etc.
- Sensorpush - bluetooth, out of Boston, simple, year on battery, great api, great app BUT limited range
- LoRaWAN - long range wan - lot of companies making hubs, lots of sensors, GPS and accelerometers - if you look at the space, still early days, lots of room for improvement
Expensive? Some - more exp than Wifi modules but if you need 5 not a prob, deploy a million is a problem
LoRaWAN - interesting LoRaWAN system called Helium
Helium - blockchain and token, proof of coverage, also built into the hotspot, triangulation and time for radio signals to prove a hotspot is in a place, you get paid in tokens for hotspot service
Good example of a blockchain use case, not making up an ecosystem
700k deployed
Phil made $30 in a month
Adrian - Example of decentralized finance - kickstarter - use prepayment as avoiding SEC regs for selling stock - Only viable example of decentralized finance in the wild
Interesting global network
Didn’t do any good at the cabin because it is in the middle of nowhere
Adrian - LoRaWAN is a MESH whereas Bluetooth and wifi need backbone
Lot of coverage in Bay Area - yes
LoRaWAN - 10km range
You don’t have to worry about infra about backhauling data out of the sensor
Connects and senses stuff
Global thing
Privacy model ? Proximity detection?
Unknown re: privacy model
Connection itself is 2 hotspots
Payloads not encrypted
Adrian: anyone studied apple tag protocol? Privacy issues? - tool for cyberstalking - curious how Helium will address that?
Helium console
Device keys - registered with network - helium running consoles vs others running consoles
In helium console - essentially UI to Helium Router (what device is connecting to)
Devices send data 3x an hour (reduces battery life if more frequent)
HTTP and MQTT integrations
Popular platforms
URL
Logging
Payload - 11 bytes - standard LoRaWAN packet is less than 23 bytes
Base 64 encoding
Take payload, take it apart
Adrian - for 11 bytes 3x an hour, how much?
You pay $0.00001 - for one year $2.42 per sensor - if you look at the bandwidth, more expensive than phone, but you don’t need a SIM card for each sensor, a per use basis, tradeoff, not using LoRaWAN to transmit ZOOM sessions even if the network could support it - economics make sense
Payment
Heartbeat is JSON structure
Has lat/long of the proof of coverage
ID for the hotspot
Could do triangulation on it
Downlink and uplink same price
Adrian - how fast can you connect? Drive-by?
It doesn’t transmit when driving
Doesn’t transmit while motion - GPS better than that? Don’t know
Q: protocol/handshake? Don’t know
Control Channel
LoRaWAN - and Helium
Helium is a specific implementation of LoRaWAN
Willing to send a couple of bytes really far you can
Most LoRaWAN will look for response, or doesn’t come back will knock down spreading factor and send again
Trying to keep it open
Blindly transmits
Extra implementation to send data down - considers like an unprocessed packet
Helium Economy
Dual token model - data credits or Helium Network Tokens
Mint and burn equilibrium
Hotspots earn tokens from 2 sources, proof of coverage and data transfer
Mint and burn
Helium used to buy data credits is burned
Using more data credits than you are minting? Price fluctuates
Data credits linked to dollar
Always .00001 of a dollar
Large network of sensors - buying data credits as used,
Adrian - wants to do this decentralized finance model - is smart contract open source and accessible?
Several papers on mint-burn equilibrium model
Dual tokens - sam smith
Helium blockchain
Paid by hotspot for proving coverage and by data transfer
Helium recently announced hotspots with 5g and announced deal with Dish Network will have helium 5g nodes in them - higher data transfer rates
PICOS
LoRaWAN Device->Helium Network -> Helium Router -> Webhook -> PICO
Data flowing
Adrian - what does Phil think, app platform model on top of picos - a generalization of Eth smart contracts, receipt tokens as if they are gas, not worrying about infrastructure
Phil - hold that thought
Doesn’t think Helium wants to be in the business of running router program - thinks they limit you to how many devices you build on their console - both open source -
This model: Phil runs Helium network, connect to PICO cloud, use manifold to create PICO too tell it what it is, exchange keys, uses router to register so auto connected to Helium
PICO engine building PICOs
6 sensors out there, 6 independent sensors - if they are thought of as PICOS can connect to do interesting things
This particular network - a temp network example (dist systems class)
Point it - programmable, do interesting things with them,
Phil has planned but hasn’t gotten to
- Find students to use DIDCOmms as the primary messaging channel for PICOS than HTTP - end goal would like to build a mesh of engines (PICOS dont care what engine) - goal - picos moving between engines
- Connected together
- Maybe use tokens to pay for computation
- Consent addressable network
SamC - Things Network,
Phil - a business, LoRaWAN and especially HELIUM allows to just deploy sensors without having to worry how to connect, business that opens a lot of IOT use cases, before were too heavy - imaging deploying it, with enough hotspots, nice thing is not just relying on having enough hotspots - now covered
Adrian - you have to have competition for 5g - will never have self-sovereign 5g - once you lose ability o control router and use faraday cages to control house, lost firewall and packet analysis - ultrawideband meshes cannot have an economic model means that equiv of ham radio on top of telephone network - developed a resilience component
Sam - building house, putting in zwave switches, this LoRaWAN is closest thing he has. Buy LoRaWAN and Helium falls apart can redeploy to The ThingsNetwork (TTN)
