In a veritable sea of sensors, and with so many exciting and useful applications, it can be tough to know where to start. We like to make things easy for budding developers to get their hands dirty by providing exciting building-block-style hardware components along with digestible Github repositories of codes and walkthroughs. (No, really! For some inspiration, check out Disk91's Soil Moisture Sensor Project!)
The RAK Helium Developer Kit is a sandbox for a countless array of useful and existing sensors, as well as all the tools you need to prototype your own designs. If this already has your brain whirring, we’re happy to help you get started. Get your own here!
Don’t be intimidated, we’ve made it easy and exciting! Even kids are building with our developer kits.
RAK Kits Educate Students on IoT
With our Helium Dev kit, you can follow our walkthroughs for building your own Helium mapper used to prove the existing coverage provided by the Helium network, which is an invaluable service to the community! The kit contains parts that can be used to activate mechanical functions, harness valuable environmental data, and connect via Bluetooth and LoRa.
You can easily built an indoor weather station, a noise detection node, an ambient light detection node, or a more complex current/voltage probe to monitor an appliance. Just take a look at the variety of sensors that come bundled, and the best part is it is modular so you can play with it like a Lego set.
Just tear down one project, recycle the components and build another, reuse your components, be cost efficient and at the same time server a huge range of application scenarios!!!
What’s in the Box?
Inside the RAK Helium developer kit:
- WisBlock Base
- 2pcs RAK5005-O | WisBlock Base Board
- WisBlock Core
- 2pcs RAK4631 | WisBlock LPWAN Module
- WisBlock Sensor
- 1pc RAK1901 | WisBlock Temperature and Humidity Sensor
- 1pc RAK1902 | WisBlock Barometer Pressure Sensor
- 1pc RAK1903 | WisBlock Ambient Light Sensor
- 1pc RAK1904 | WisBlock 3-axis Acceleration Sensor
- 1pc RAK1906 | WisBlock Environmental Sensor
- 1pc RAK1910 | WisBlock GNSS Location Module
- 1pc RAK18000 | WisBlock PDM Stereo Microphone Module
- WisBlock Interface
- 1pc RAK1920 | WisBlock Sensor Adapter Module
- 1pc RAK5801 | WisBlock 4-20mA Interface Module
- 1pc RAK5802 | WisBlock RS485 Interface Module
- 1pc RAK5804 | WisBlock Interface Extension Module
- 1pc RAK5811 | WisBlock 0-5V Interface Module
- WisBlock Wireless
- 1pc RAK2305 | WisBlock WiFi Interface Module
- 2pcs LoRa® Antenna
- 2pcs BLE Antenna
- GPS Antenna
- Manual Screwdriver
Inside the box you’ll receive 2 WisBlock RAK-5005-O, which can be the base for 2 stand alone projects, as this highly programmable board houses the RAK4631 and can support a wide variety of preassembled bootloaders. Take inventory of the items you’ve received, noting the fine screws, additional antennas, and sensors. The WisBlock modules allow you to snap components together with a push and a click, creating connections which can then be reinforced with the fine screws and manual screwdriver.
You can build custom nodes for a variety of use cases
Sensor development constitutes an exciting tract on the future of the Helium network. Participating in data transfer, hotspot owners are able to add utility to the use case of Helium, while taking advantage of the insight provided by the array of sensors available today. On the WisBlock Github Repo you can find countless projects being developed by the community with simple instructions to help users make the most out of their sensor arrays. Get creative with your own use cases, there are many possible configurations providing ample flexibility for experimentation and prototyping.
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