Helium uses wireless sensors to monitor temperature, motion, sound, pressure, moisture and more, which can be used to learn and capture insights from the existing physical things in the environment and create business value based on those insights.
The device can be used to monitor movement of goods in the company and keep a tab on the status of operating machinery.
Rob Chandhok, President and Chief Operating Officer of Helium, said:
“There is immense potential in giving physical things the power of perception to provide businesses with the tools they need to make highly informed decisions. Helium’s platform is an end-to-end solution that moves at the speed of software so your insights grow along with your business.”
The company claims that most deployments will see more than a year of battery life from two standard AA batteries, as the Helium platform optimizes how often sensors send and receive data for the best battery life possible.
Helium’s optimized sensors can be unboxed and deployed within minutes, and include multiple sensing inputs, secure wireless network and local computing power, all in a single, compact form factor. For example, one Helium sensor can measure temperature and door status in a single unit and be enabled on a refrigerator with just the pull of a battery tab.
To start with, Helium is currently partnering with hospitals and healthcare organizations and the food, beverage and grocery industry to offer smart refrigeration systems. The device enables reduced risk and improved safety, particularly for hospitals, including inventory monitoring of refrigerated items such as blood bags and vaccines, to prevent loss of samples and to ensure compliance. Finally, Helium can reduce parts, maintenance and operating costs by predicting machine failures or outages before they occur.
Every sensor reading is stored in Helium’s cloud infrastructure, allowing for historical and real-time access for any business need. Sensors use an optimized wireless network that operates at both 2.4GHz and 900MHz bands dynamically to avoid congestion with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth traffic.
Helium raised a $13.4 million in a Series A round in September last year with Khosla Ventures and FirstMark Capital. Earlier, in April it had raised $2.85 million in Seed round with FirstMark Capital and Slow Ventures as the lead investors.
Helium was founded by Napster-creator Shawn Fanning and Amir Haleem, who used to work in the video game industry. Fanning currently serves as Chairman, while Haleem runs the company as CEO. For the record, Fanning is also the Co-founder of Path and Airtime.
