Does Helium’s new Light Hotspots impact your IoT projects
This year is already very dynamic and even historic for the Helium Network. There have been quite the big news recently including Helium’s massive investment of $200 million which led to the renaming of Helium to Nova Labs and the creation of the Helium Foundation.
There are also other big news: Starting on May 3rd, 2022 all Helium hotspots are converted to the new Light Hotspot standard. Yes, all of them and it doesn’t matter how old they are. The process is going to be automated and will bring significant changes to the way hotspots work in the Helium network.
Naturally, owners of IoT devices could be worried what that means for their projects. Don’t worry, the changes are done specifically to make your life easier and to improve the overall and long term quality of the Helium Network.
What are the Helium Light Hotspots?
Up until now Hotspots were doing a lot of work for the Helium Network. They even stored an entire copy of the Helium Blockchain and that was updated constantly. As you can imagine, the Blockchain only gets larger and thus this increases the amount of hardware resources needed to store and process it. It also means a constant rise of the traffic the hotspots generate.
This is not good for the long term, especially since Helium is enjoying a steady and fast raise in both Helium hotspots and usage. This is why the new Light Hotspot software update was agreed upon among the Helium Network community.
Upon updating, Helium Light Hotspots will no long store or process the Helium Blockchain. This will significantly reduce the data they use. As a result, relayed statuses for hotspots will be removed and there will be no syncing issues. Light Hotspots will still send beacons and witness them, but there will no longer be issuing and perform challenges.
So, will Light Hotspots negatively impact my IoT systems?
No. In fact, they will get better. And there are several reasons for that. One of the main ones is that there will be less strain on Hotspots.
Processing the Helium Blockchain is a serious task. One that will continuously require more and more hardware resources. Since Light Hotspots don’t have that obligation, their overall workload will be reduced. This means they can handle even more IoT sensors, connections and improve the overall quality of the service. IoT projects are bound to continue to increase over the years and such devices and sensors will grow by the billions.
Helium is therefore futureproofing for this. The Light Hotspots will be able to offer increased capacity and better performance. No need to worry about congesting the network and increase latency. Your IoT devices will enjoy a steady, reliable service.
Also, manufacturers will be able to offer a greater variety of hotspots. Thanks to the Light Hotspot software, hotspots with less computing power are possible. This means smaller and cheaper devices making the network even more accessible and affordable to more people. And it makes it even easier to address potential blind spots and improve the signal in dense areas, underground, etc.
This whole process is perfect for future proofing your IoT projects. As we know, many LoRaWAN (thus, Helium) IoT sensors have 5 year and even 10 year lifespan on a single battery. So, it’s good to know that the Network will also be in a perfect condition during the entire time and it will continue to get better.
This is all great news as Helium approaches 1 million hotspots. As of May 4th, 2022, there are over 785 000 hotspots all over the world. They are in 170 countries and in more than 57 000 cities along with a constantly increasing coverage in rural areas. The Helium Network is here to stay and it will continue to be a great way to connect your IoT projects.