John Lindsay presented a light overview of the Things Network and Helium Network based on the following topology:

There was a Things Uno connected with a breadboard with a photoresistor and LEDs and a Things Node (modified SparkFun board with several incorporated sensors). Originally, the plan was to rely on existing Things Network and Helium Network gateways. Fortunately, our benefactors at Object Spectrum provided a Things Network gateway and a Helium Network gateway.

The presentation continued with an overview of a complete application/system architecture using the Invisileash dog collar as the working example, where the dog collar includes a radio and GPS (“device”). When the dog is lost, the dog collar transmits GPS information over the Things Network (“gateway”) and a companion mobile app (“application”) uses the GPS data to display the dog’s location.

Facilitating the application layer, The Things Network and Helium Network include some basic integrations like HTTP integration and MQTT. The Thing Network includes a storage integration and AWS IoT integration (Helium plans to release this integration).

Before attendees started working with the boards, an application created by John based on the “Dog Collar” example was shown as a walkthrough for the stack, from device to application. The breadboard was the “electronic dog collar with the radio and GPS,” which would transmit the sensor data over the gateway. The Things Network converted the sensor data in JSON packets for the storage integration and published the dog collar data over MQTT. The sample Android app screen pictured below allowed the dog owner to activate the GPS (published over MQTT), receive position data (subscribed over MQTT,  along with storage integration), and display it on a map to assist finding the lost dog.

I believe that everyone who attempted was able to connect the prototyping board to their computer and send sensor payloads to their account and trigger the LEDs from their account over The Things Network.