How to Deploy Internet of Things (IoT) Solutions on the Helium LoRaWAN® Network

Introduction to city and neighborhood LoRaWAN asset tracking using the Helium Network

In this module, we will demonstrate how to use a low-cost LoRaWAN GPS-enabled asset tracker, the Helium network, and TagoIO to deploy an easy-to-use personal asset tracker that is fully customizable. The demonstration solution is perfect for personal use or could be scaled to commercial applications.

Prerequisites to completing the module are:

• Review modules 1 and 2 of the Helium Network System Integration Series.
• Successfully complete the console.helium.com and TagoIO account setup and integration detailed in module 2.
• Purchase a Browan LoRaWAN GPS object locator device.
  • Browan Object Locator Data Sheet
  • Download Reference Manual
• Make sure the object locator is fully charged before proceeding.
• Do not try to activate the device until after it has been added to console.helium.com.

Charging port is under protective cover

Being able to easily keep track of important people and items has both economic efficiency advantages and emotional peace-of-mind value.

Virtually all businesses benefit from being able to monitor in real time the location of products or personnel. Being able to determine where products are in a distributed supply chain across different sites owned by different ecosystem participants allows companies to maximize both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. This implies the ability to seamlessly track items at manufacturing plants, in warehouses, and in transit (ships, trucks, trains) to customer-owned sites. Equally important for service businesses is real-time tracking of personnel working across remote locations and customer sites.

Similar real-time tracking intelligence has equal value to people's personal lives. Being able to get notifications when children get safely to school or being able to confirm a trusted pet’s location helps people navigate increasingly complex logistics in their personal lives.

Unfortunately, another common value for business and individuals is finding lost or stolen belongings. Billions of dollars’ worth of personal belongings (bikes, e-bikes, backpacks), cargo, construction equipment, and motor vehicles are never found or recovered. The use of asset tracking systems greatly improves recovery rates.

Although there are already numerous technology options available to enable asset tracking, all of them have some constraints in terms of device cost, battery life, simplicity to deploy, and network access cost. Ideally, trackers would have the following attributes:

• Have ubiquitous access to a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) so the tracker’s messages can be received while the device is at home, at work, at school, at the warehouse, in transit, or even in the woods at the local park. Network technology that enables the longest transmission ranges at the lowest power levels, like LoRaWAN, will have the advantage.
• Be physically small, tough, and unobtrusive. This implies low power, as the battery size dictates how small the device can be.
• Have a very long field life; for some use cases this needs to be over three years with frequent message transmissions. Again, the energy required to transmit on the network is critical to meeting long field-life requirements.
• Provide a precise enough location to meet requirements. Again there is a wide range of locationing precision needed for different types of applications. The scope of this module is focused on typical outdoor GPS precision (~10m) or site presence asset tracking, which is appropriate for deliveries, vehicles, people, equipment, or ebikes across a city or rural area. There are many higher-precision indoor locationing technologies (LoRa 2.4Ghz, UWB, BLE beaconing) that are beyond the scope of this module.

Further, there are many different types of wide-area asset tracking devices optimized for different applications. There are four general types of asset tracking devices:

• Wired vehicle trackers. These are trackers that are installed on motor vehicles and large equipment and are wired to the battery and sometimes the vehicles’ diagnostics ports (ODB2, for example). Since these trackers are powered by the vehicles, they frequently send both location and vehicle information and are mainly used for commercial vehicle fleet monitoring. Although these trackers may also be used for theft detection and recovery, given their wired installation, they are easier to disable than battery-powered theft trackers. Historically, these types of trackers used cellular networks.

• Battery-powered asset and theft trackers. There are a broad range of relatively small, environmentally tough (IP-6x rated) trackers available. These devices are intended to be mounted on (or hidden in) physical items and have no user interface. In general, the size of the device is proportional to the size of the batteries. For any battery-powered wireless device, the device’s field life between recharges or battery replacement is determined by the combination of the number of daily transmissions, the energy consumption of each transmission, and the size of the battery. Therefore, there are very small devices optimized to send only one message per day, and larger devices that can send more frequent updates. Cellular versions of these devices will be larger and limited in field life due to the relatively high energy requirements to frequently transmit on a cellular network. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) versions can be much smaller and offer longer field life, but can only transmit short distances to nearby private BLE gateways or mobile phones.

• Multipurpose personal electronics (mobile phones, laptops with cellular modems, and cellular-connected smart watches). Almost every mobile phone offers asset tracking as a built-in feature. These devices typically have large batteries and are recharged often, which allows them to provide frequent location updates. For some people’s tracking scenarios, personal electronics fully address requirements. However, there are limitations, including:
  • Businesses are not able to use employees' personal phones for business tracking use. Issuing company phones to employees just for tracking is very expensive.
  • The person being tracked must always be in possession of their phone. This may not be viable for employees, children, elderly, or during certain daily activities.
  • The phone must be constantly recharged; most phones only have a few days of battery life.
  
  
• Personal asset trackers. These are small, low-cost, battery-powered consumer electronic devices useful for tracking items such as backpacks, bikes, personal vehicles, tools, equipment, local deliveries, pets, and so forth. A number of large mobile phone and consumer electronics companies offer BLE-only versions of these types of trackers. BLE-only trackers are limited to short-range BLE radio connections to nearby phones running special apps to relay the BLE messages from the trackers. Physically larger trackers with integrated cellular modems are also available at higher price points and require the added cost of cellular network subscription. Devices connecting to the cellular networks require more energy to send frequent messages than BLE or LoRaWAN devices and therefore need larger batteries. The Browan Object Locator used in this module fits into this category and uses LoRaWAN.