In 2013, Finnish firm Haltian designed and launched an asset-tracking device meant to help companies monitor the locations and conditions of important cargo in transit. This year, the same company has transformed that asset-tracking device into a building block that any business could use to test out an Internet of Things application—without having to start building edge devices from scratch.
This week, Haltian surpassed its $99,000 Kickstarter goal to bring this small, sensor-packed device, known as Thingsee One, to market. At press time, the company has raised more than $100,000—with five days left in the campaign.
Haltian is a kind of contract prototyping house. The company was founded by a number of former Nokia hardware and software developers, and now offers its services to businesses looking to develop new products—for example, it helped one entrepreneur create an energy-saving cell phone charger.
Once the asset-tracking project was complete, says Haltian co-founder Ville Ylläsjärvi, “We realized the same sensors and connectivity [utilized in the device] are used widely in IoT solutions.” So to fund the development required to transform the asset tracker—which the company dubbed the Thingsee—from an asset-tracking device into a widely deployable tool that anyone (ranging from a child with a bright idea to a Fortune 500 company with a problem to solve) could use to perform a proof of concept, it created a Kickstarter campaign.
Most potential uses described in the campaign focus on unusual consumer-facing applications, such as a farmer who mounts a Thingsee to the door of his mailbox and programs an alert to be triggered on his cellphone if the gyroscope embedded in the Thingsee senses that the mailbox has been opened and the mail has been delivered. For another fun demonstration, Haltian gave a Thingsee to a skydiver, and then shot a video showing how the device tracked the jumper’s altitude and speed. But Ylläsjärvi says that what interested Haltian in launching the Kickstarter campaign was the business potential for using the Thingsee to do things such as tracking the locations and conditions of rental equipment or vehicles.
The Thingsee One, the specific device being developed via Kickstarter, contains three different wireless communication radios—2G quadband GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi—as well as seven different sensors for tracking everything from humidity to pitch, speed and light. It also comes with an OLED display and a rechargable battery that can last for up to a year on a single charge, and it can accommodate a subscriber identity module (SIM) card.
The Thingsee One is being developed to provide end users with three choices of how to use it. Haltian is creating both iOS and Android applications that will allow users to deploy a Thingsee One for a simple application, such as placing the device inside a shipment to track temperature or humidity levels. A second option would be to employ the Thingsee platform software development kit (SDK), which Haltian is also developing, that will enable an end user to program a bespoke web or mobile application using common programming protocols, such as Ruby on Rails or PHP. Lastly, end users can utilize the SDK to gain full control over the Thingsee hardware, using the C, C++ or Assembly programming language.
The earliest backers were able to secure a single Thingsee One device for a pledge of $149 or $199, but one must currently pledge at least $249, for a single unit with an estimated delivery date of April 2015. For a $499 pledge, backers receive the “Beta Special,” which allows early access to the Thingsee SDK and a prototype Thingsee One, to be shipped next month. Once the final version of the device is complete, Haltian intends to replace it with a certified model.
At the $999 level, backers get a five-pack of Thingsee One devices. A ten-pack, meanwhile, will be shipped to backers who pledge $1,990.
Ylläsjärvi says he considers the Thingsee One pledge levels a very low cost of entry for corporate-development teams looking to test IoT applications. Before making a major investment, he explains, they can “first learn how to best use the Internet of Things… and better plan their future operations.”