Heltec Indoor Hotspot Status Timeline

Heltec’s internal meeting decided to participate in the HIP19 audit to become a third-party hardware manufacturer of Helium.

Discuss hardware selection. By comparing PX30 (Insufficient performance) and Raspberry Pi 4B(tight supply), we decided to choose the RK3328 CPU based on the A53 core, with 2GB DDR4 RAM and 32GB eMMC ROM.

Completed the functional verification on the RK3328 development board and recompiled a Linux Debian system suitable for us. And complete the structural design and make the first rendering at the same day.

Submit HIP19 application. And Submit Heltec’s company information for the KYC process.

https://github.com/helium/HIP/pull/195

Completed the design of the first-generation prototype circuit board and sent it to the PCB manufacturer for processing.

Received the first-generation PCB samples, the hardware development team of Heltec produced the first-generation prototype circuit on the same day. All parameters are operating normally.

Received the first-generation PCB samples, the hardware development team of Heltec produced the first-generation prototype circuit on the same day. All parameters are operating normally. Special optimize the radio frequency performance of the LoRa baseband part, mainly to optimize the output of higher harmonics.

Through a period of hard work, Heltec’s R&D team has carried out a lot of optimization, upgrades and bug debugging of the operating system, made it running well on the first prototype hardware.

The system debugging mainly for the following aspects:

• I2C bus driver;
• SPI bus driver;
• Docker installation;
• Performance optimization of Docker running in a quad-core A53 CPU environment;
• SDIO driver for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules;
• File system optimization;
• Optimization of human-computer interaction and other additional functions.

The first prototype was assembled.

Got the packing box, stuffing, and other accessories.

Sent out a sample for hardware audit to DeWi. The tracking information has shown the parcel was received on 17th June.

The second-generation circuit is delivered to PCB manufacturers for production, used for the final structure design, and used as a template for mold design.

Begin to prepare components for mass production, and stop providing PCBA services to external parties.

The first ready-to-sale sample was produced.

Because of the light reason, the color of the real product is darker and looks very beautiful. For more hardware information and high-quality images, please refer to the Product Features Page (under construction).

Submit “Test Onboarding with Test Maker Account”.

Because of the hardware changes, which are inconsistent with the final sell version, we are required to send two new sets of hardware for audit.

Compared with the first-generation prototype, the official version has made the following changes

Two samples of the final sales version were sent to DeWi, and the tracking information showed that it was received on July 23.

Submit Pull Request to Hotspot App.

https://github.com/helium/hotspot-app/pull/827

Today is a big day for voting, but unfortunately, we are not among them, because our new samples were received last Friday.

The good news is we were told that they would arrange a special meeting for review as soon as possible.

We are debugging the assembly process for mass production, and plan to start production after the hardware audit is accomplished, and will start selling and shipping when the Heltec HIP19 application status becomes approved.

The hardware test process is partially completed!

• Enclosure — “The way it looks, very nice.” Passed
• ECC test — Passed
• Radio test — Passed

Blockchain test scheduled for next week.

Blockchain test passed, hardware review passed!!!

Waiting for MOC vote on August 23ed.

We just received an email from DeWi, we have passed the HIP19 audit!!! Thanks to everyone for their help and support in this process, and thanks to all the staff of Heltec Automation for their hard work. In the future, There still have three steps of work:
1. Obtain a maker account;
2. Access to the Helium blockchain;
3. Complete the compilation of the Helium APP.

After the above three steps are completed, we can start shipping.

The first panic buying with small batches will get started at 23:00 Beijing Time (UTC+8) on 27th August.

https://heltec.org/project/ht-m2808/

“Maker Account Created” and “Add Hotspot to Blockchain” had been completed!

Now the last step is APP compilation! We need to wait for Helium to accept the PR submitted by us and release the update.

Obtained FCC ID certification.

DeWi confirms that the FCC certification is valid and we can start selling the area covered by FCC.