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Helium, a San Francisco-based Internet of things (IoT) startup, today announced the introduction of the Helium Sensor Development Kit to enable IoT developers expanded access to the Helium full-stack platform.
The Sensor Development Kit consists of a Helium Smart Sensor, which includes an extensible daughtercard, and Web APIs, both of which enable Helium partners to quickly prototype new smart sensors to monitor and capture insights from the existing physical things in their environment. The Helium Sensor Development Kit will be available next month.
The Helium Sensor Development Kit helps accelerate time to market for IoT developers and enterprise solution providers. With software-defined, field-programmable sensors that tap into the power of the Helium Platform, users can quickly create intelligent solutions for increased efficiency, comfort, safety and operation within enterprise and industrial environments. With a straightforward deployment and management system for sensors, Helium enables users to focus on adding intelligence through a software-led approach, integrating new capabilities that help connected things learn over time and asking sensors to behave in new ways, the company said.
“The possibilities of the Helium platform are endless, particularly with the ability to quickly bring more insights from new smart sensors into any enterprise solution,” Rob Chandhok, president and chief operating officer at Helium, said in a statement. “We’ve already built in the necessary security protocols and network connectivity, and as we continue to enhance the Helium platform, we can’t wait to see the myriad of high-value solutions that IoT developers and enterprises create.”
Helium is currently partnering with hospitals and health care organizations and the food, beverage and grocery industry to offer smart refrigeration systems. Through smart managed systems, any industry can better adhere to compliance and regulation guidelines by monitoring storage conditions to ensure adherence to health and safety standards and avoid spoilage or lost inventory. Helium helps reduce risk and improve safety, particularly for hospitals, by enabling inventory monitoring of refrigerated items, such as blood bags and vaccines, to prevent loss of samples and to ensure compliance. In addition, Helium can reduce parts, maintenance and operating costs by predicting machine failures or outages before they occur.
The Helium Sensor Development Kit helps enterprise developers and solution providers test and demonstrate the high value of smart IoT applications before moving deeper into the hardware and manufacturing process. With the Sensor Development Kit, new sensing modalities can be quickly prototyped and turned into business insight. The first version of the kit supports both digital and analog interfaces.
Along with the Sensor Development Kit, Helium also released an expanded set of Web APIs. These APIs enable developers to integrate nearly all parts of the Helium Platform—from streaming sensor data to edge scripting to network configuration and management—into their production services via modern, REST-based endpoints.
“Kinetic Vision has been developing on the Helium platform for several months, and we’ve been impressed by how easy, efficient and secure the platform is,” Jeremy Jarrett, vice president of Kinetic Vision, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Helium also announced the Helium Mobile App and an upgraded user interface for its platform, which combines smart sensors, network connectivity and a cloud storage and compute engine. The Helium Mobile App—available initially for iOS, with Android support to follow—enables businesses and their employees to access the Helium Platform from their mobile devices.
The Helium platform is currently being deployed in multiple major U.S. trials in the health care and insurance industries.