Gristle Crüe Community Call 5/5/22 w/Nick from LSS

Nick Hough from Lake Street Soft­ware came on this week’s Gris­tle Crüe call to talk about the IoT busi­ness he’s build­ing on Heli­um, from how he finds cus­tomers to how prod­ucts are quick­ly improved. The IoT space is still new and chal­leng­ing, so hear­ing from the “front lines” like this can be super helpful!

Here’s the video and time hacks.

0:01:53 — Why did you start Lake Street ?
Suc­cess of Heli­umVi­sion, want­ed to cre­ate a Cor­po­ra­tion or Umbrel­la so that I can branch out into oth­er projects.

0:07:38 — Run­ning a Busi­ness for Sen­sors
Going out to farms and ask­ing them what are the prob­lems you have that sen­sors may be able to help with
We usu­al­ly bring a cou­ple sen­sors to show off what they do.

0:15:02 — The Great Unplug
Because there is over sat­u­ra­tion in cities, 1000s and 1000s of hotspots when only a cou­ple hun­dred can do the job, peo­ple are threat­en­ing to turn off their min­ers.
That’s ok. If min­ers go offline that means more mon­ey for oth­er peo­ple and the net­work will grow where it needs to.
A equal­iberi­um will hap­pen.
There is a risk small towns will go away. But, I don’t believe that will hap­pen. Cities will get less sat­u­rat­ed the less they earn.

0:20:30 — How do you Mon­e­tize Sen­sors and Soft­ware ?
No idea. If you know how, I’m all ears.

0:25:11 — Where does the data go ?
Trail Count stores the uplinks and then ren­ders the data into a sim­ple hourly, dai­ly, month­ly bar chart
Data has val­ue, how can this be used in the future ?
Count­ing Peo­ple evolves into Where Peo­ple are going evolves into

0:29:10 — Jere­my Track­ing Steer
Work­ing on a fam­i­ly farm.
Run­ning into some issues with Pow­er. Doing a bunch of 3rd Par­ty DIY Track­ers.
Heli­um Con­sole, Tag­go, Data Cakes
Work­ing with Solar Pow­ered Steer Track­ers
Try­ing to show Proof of Work or Proof of Loca­tion for Steer
Geofenc­ing Graz­ing Areas, Track­ing what Farm they came from.

0:33:58 — Super Basics of Sen­sors
https://docs.helium.com/use-the-network/devices/ready-to-use/
Dragi­no and Seeed are some of the eas­i­est.
Most work fine, But some Onboard­ing prob­lems, Bat­tery problems

0:38:29 — Data for Rent
Instead of say­ing you are sell­ing Data, which sounds bad, say Rent data.
Peo­ple aren’t get­ting full access. They pay for what they need, and are limited.

0:41:06 — Soft­ware Engi­neers
Lots of peo­ple who got into Heli­um are Soft­ware Engi­neers
It’s hard to cre­ate some­thing on your own.
Com­pa­nies are being cre­at­ed and are look­ing for Soft­ware Engi­neers.
https://app.heliumjobs.io/

0:44:35 — RM’s Python Project
Tool to show you how your Hotspot is per­form­ing ver­sus the Glob­al Aver­age.
https://gristleking.com/how-much-better-is-your-hotspot/

0:47:25 — Old Farmer Mix­ing Fer­til­iz­er
Farmer wakes up at 4am and pret­ty much spends his entire day going back in forth turn­ing on and off water pres­sure.
Maybe to ear­ly in the Net­work stages for some­thing super critical

0:51:15 — Using Data
Are there more moun­tain bike col­li­sions when it’s busy or when it’s less busy and peo­ple are going faster ?
The answer to the data could be used on how you build the trails.

0:53:20 — How are you start­ing those con­ver­sa­tions to find out the needs of these farmers/clients where lora could be a solu­tion?
Basi­cal­ly just small chit chat. Find­ing out what peo­ple do and what their prob­lems are.
Show off some sen­sors. Be pre­pared to talk about oth­er sensors.

0:55:04 — Com­ing Up this week Remote.it
Using a Man­go or Splitz and the Remote.it Soft­ware so that you can remote access your Heli­um Min­er Dashboard.