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Light Hotspots

Start a Wireless Revolution

People-Powered Networks.

Helium Ecosystem

New hardware and software solutions using and supporting The People’s Network.

Helium Technology

Allows anyone to build out massive, cost-effective wireless infrastructures.

Low Power IoT

HotSpots are the better way to build wireless IoT infrastructure.

Mining via radio technology

Light Hotspots status: March, 2023

What is a Light Hotspot?

Light Hotspots are the evolution of how LoRaWAN gateways will interact with the Helium blockchain. Since the genesis block, the Helium blockchain has run entirely on the physical Hotspot itself. As the blockchain network grows, each Hotspot running a full node undergoes increasing load and are starting to fall out of sync due to the higher compute requirements.

To mitigate this, the Hotspot’s consensus work has been moved off of physical Hotspots and onto Validators as of July 8, 2021. This simplifies the architecture and enables us to grow the Network exponentially while keeping blocktimes and epochs stable.

Weekly statusMarch 2023HQ locationHIP19 Application ReceivedDeWi KYC/BRegulatory Certification Complete
2Smart HarvestCanadaTRUETRUEFCC/ISED PENDING
3SEEED/ SenseCAPChinaTRUETRUECE/FCC PENDING
4Tektelic Light GatewayCanadaTRUETRUECE/FCC pending (Jan. 2022)
5Nebra Light TRUETRUEFCC, CE, UKCA, IC / ISED, MIC, SRRC, WPC, RCM, EAC PENDING
6Dragino Light Hotspot (indoor, outdoor)ChinaTRUETRUECE/FCC/TELEC ALL PENDING
7Polyhex – BoHM ATRUETRUEFALSE
8Polyhex – BoHM B  (alt security)TRUETRUEFALSE
9HeNet B.V. / LongAPNetherlandsTRUETRUECE PENDING
10Browan – MerryIOT Light S1/S2 (Indoor/Light)TaiwanTRUETRUEFALSE
11Bobcat/ EasyLinkin alt security implementation, Light HotspotChinaTRUETRUEFALSE
12Miromico AGSwitzerlandTRUETRUEFALSE
13Systems4UPortugalTRUETRUEFALSE
14HeNet B.V. / LongAP (alt security)NetherlandsTRUETRUEFALSE
15OxTech (indoor)TRUETRUEFALSE
16MidasTRUETRUEFALSE
17omSquare – LightTRUETRUEFALSE
18Kerlink – Light TRUETRUEFALSE
19Pisces – Light (Indoor)TRUETRUEFALSE
20EDA Technology – LightTRUETRUEFALSE
21COTX – Light HotspotTRUETRUEFALSE
22OPTION – Light (Indoor/Outdoor) TRUETRUEFALSE
23RisingHF – RHF2S027 (Light/Indoor)TRUETRUEFALSE
24Chengdu Glacier Cloud Storage Technology – Light TRUEFALSEFALSE
25CALDIGITTRUEFALSEFALSE
26ClodPI LightTRUEFALSEFALSE
27Heltec – HT-M7603 (Light)TRUEFALSEFALSE
    The official GitHub Helium Status Tracker:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pOmrMV_oiF0FtR1NOX_pqykKOBsb_QghiNkTlF644DU/edit#gid=1880339342 Status key
  • Draft: HIP is in process of being written; author is not yet soliciting feedback from the community at large
  • In Discussion: HIP is under active consideration by the community
  • Approved: HIP has been approved by rough consensus, and pending development and testing
  • Deployed: Code to implement HIP has been merged and deployed to the network
  • Closed: HIP abandoned, rendered obsolete by other changes, or otherwise withdrawn by the author

Architecture

Light Hotspots

Light Hotspot Properties

When the Light Hotspot Client is fully developed and in production (which will happen with the completion of Milestone 4 detailed below) they will satisfy the following properties:
  • A Hotspot on the Helium network that, via Validators, can participate in PoC beacons and witnesses, and forwards data packets;
  • Does not store a copy of the Blockchain, eliminating synchronization;
  • Does not create challenges (relies on Validators to create challenges on their behalf);
  • Does not participate in Consensus Groups (relies on Validators for block production);
  • Will no longer depend on libp2p or “gossip”, and instead use gRPC, a new framework to communicate between distributed systems;
  • Will be eligible to earn $HNT (see table below)
In other words, the client will allow the Hotspot to participate as a Full Hotspot, without the extra overhead of maintaining a local copy of the blockchain.