DIMO and Moken Map US and Europe, Powered by Helium Network

Introduction

Last month, DIMO, Helium, and Moken joined forces to create the Moken Mapping Challenge for car owners. Drivers who had the DIMO Macaron device installed would carry on with their day-to-day driving habits and while driving their device would connect to the nearest Helium Hotspot. With over 362,766 active Hotspots across the globe, this challenge saw just how many Hotspots could be pinged over a 6 week period. DIMO Macaron connected drivers in Europe, US, and Canada were all qualified to participate.

Helium IOT Network’s coverage combined with DIMO community’s 100,000+ connected drivers, is a great example of two crypto ecosystems coming together to prove that telecommunications and vehicle telemetry can be cheaper if community sourced.

Hotspots mapped during Moken X DIMO Challenge. Although Dubai, Chile, and Australia are not technically supported by DIMO, users are expanding regardless. Explore the map here.

Background

Helium is pioneering decentralized wireless infrastructure through their LoRaWAN and cellular networks powered by user-operated Hotspots. Helium’s LoRaWAN network connects IoT sensors for applications requiring low-bandwidth wireless connectivity, low-cost data transfer, long-range coverage, or extended battery life. Helium’s decentralized model allows deployers to operate network infrastructure, share their coverage, and earn rewards for the valuable coverage they provide. By leveraging existing access points and backhaul, this model reduces overhead costs when compared to traditional telecommunications operations and enables a cost-effective and robust network for users.

DIMO is a connected car network that puts drivers back in control of their car data while allowing users to access that valuable data and earn weekly rewards. With nearly 1 billion miles driven by the collective network, DIMO is building the future of mobility by creating a marketplace of service providers. These include insurance, on-demand repairs, AI chatbots specific to your car, and more. Users get rewarded for sharing their data with service providers while enjoying innovative apps built for cars only available on DIMO.

Moken, a third-party data tooling platform, aggregated device data from DIMO APIs with Helium IoT data to publicly display a contest leaderboard and rewards. With DIMO's developer-friendly tools, Moken is a great example of the breadth of games that developers can build on top of the evolving DIMO platform.

Democratizing Consumer Data

Today, car manufacturers make millions by selling user data to third parties. For example, as reported by WWLP 22 News, General Motors is facing a class action lawsuit for “sharing sensitive driver data without consent including speed, braking, and acceleration” in order to increase insurance premiums. More generally, it has become common for large industries to profit off of user data generated on a day-to-day basis without reducing the cost of services to users or cutting them into a piece of the pie. Decentralized networks like Helium or DIMO give consumers the power to choose who accesses their data while giving them a portion of the profits associated with access to their data or networks.

The costs associated with telemetry has historically posed a financial challenge to startups resulting in infeasibility to incorporate real-time vehicle data. This challenge has resulted in companies forsaking the innovative apps that could come with it. DIMO’s platform paired with the low cost LoRaWAN network introduces new ways to drive innovation in mobility.

GM faces a class action law-suit headline. You can read more here.

The Power of Crowdsourcing Data Collection

During a six week mapping challenge, 6,000 DIMO drivers participated in mapping 60% of Helium’s network of over 350,000 Hotspots. This challenge highlights how two community driven platforms can come together to crowdsource valuable data. This data can be used for network validation, coverage evaluation for IoT projects, and improved customer experience in leveraging decentralized wireless infrastructure. In this case, the collaboration has enabled strategic low-cost vehicle data streaming with DIMO devices while also collecting insights to improve reliability and accuracy of Helium Explorer maps on Moken.

This mapping challenge demonstrates Helium’s value as a low cost network for use cases like vehicle innovation. LTE has been the primary solution for telemetry, otherwise known as the transmission of data from a vehicle to a database. Within this challenge, telemetry was critical to validating that a user pinged a Helium Hotspot and in updating that Hotspot count leaderboard in real time. Using LTE devices for the duration of this challenge would have cost $2.43 per device. With Helium’s LoRaWAN network the cost is $0.05 per device. Using Helium's IOT Network saved DIMO 98% per car compared to traditional networks.

Helium IOT Network Coverage

By mapping Hotspots, DIMO drivers collected data that gave insight into the population coverage of Helium’s network within specific regions. DIMO and Moken analyzed the data to identify the top 3 areas with the highest population coverage.

In Las Vegas--Henderson, NV (98.8%), Los Angeles--Long Beach--Anaheim, CA (98.0%), and Hanford, CA (97.8%), the Helium IOT Network covers the entire population. If you’re deploying sensors in these areas, there’s no need to invest in your own infrastructure. You can use the Helium Network to get your devices online instantly and start collecting real-time data. The coverage is there—start building today!

These findings are an example of the value that comes from two decentralized networks joining forces to validate each other and provide new insights on each other’s network strength.

Las Vegas - Henderson, NV Coverage Map with a rounded up percentage. View the complete coverage map here.

The Value of Data Sharing

Incentivizing DIMO drivers to share data for network mapping proved that valuable information can be quickly and effectively collected at a low cost.

Improved Coverage Maps

Out of 115,685 helium hotspots that have connected to a Macaron, 448 have one or more GPS records from the Macaron that is 50+ kilometers from the reported Hotspot location. By collaborating, both networks serve as mutual validators. Helium hotspots validate active and connected drivers, while also identifying those who repeatedly reconnect and disconnect merely to gain rewards. In turn, DIMO can notify these individuals, encouraging them to support the network or take appropriate action as necessary in order to preserve the efficacy of the network at large. DIMO macaron sensors leverage the Helium LoRaWAN Network to maintain connectivity and transmit real-time data, enabling both the verification of Hotspot locations and real time monitoring of your cal. This collaboration enhances the deployment and management of sensors in the field, ensuring that the active locations are consistently accurate and reliable.

In this challenge, DIMO Macaron served as an essential tool for validating Helium Network integrity, confirms geospatial data remains precise and dependable. As decentralized infrastructure networks continue to evolve, the importance of accurate location validation will grow, further solidifying the trust and utility these networks offer to their users.

It is a common challenge among all network operators to provide accurate coverage maps. Where network propagation and estimations are flawed, real-time data collection is incredibly capital intensive, labor intensive, and slow. According to an FCC Report covered by Government Technology, mobile service providers often incorrectly depict coverage maps, overstating coverage 40% of the time. T-Mobile cited the opportunity to improve procedures for collection of coverage data, as the industry understands the need to build maps that better align with real-world customer experiences.

On-Demand Data

This proven ability to quickly map targeted areas with real-time data introduces the opportunity for third-party entities to leverage the DIMO and Helium Network’s crowd-sourced infrastructure and data in defined areas. This could be applied to mapping of other coverage areas for IoT projects, mapping alternative networks, conducting driver or behavior analysis for city planning, and much more.

What’s Next?

LoRaWAN is the least expensive network on the market for getting real-time location and driving signals from vehicles. Car applications that were once not worthwhile or possible due to the high cost barrier of LTE are now possible. Specifically this opens up the door for cheaper fleet and driving tracking whether that be for taxi services detecting and incentivising the safe habits of their drivers or car rental dealerships receiving real-time alerts of vehicle misuse.

These applications can be built today on DIMO. DIMO at its core is an infrastructure network that has 100k vehicles connected and a library of APIs to tap into vehicle data at the lowest cost on the market with the help of partners like Helium. For the first time ever, DIMO is making it possible for anyone to build apps for cars whether they be fleet apps or games similar to the Moken Mapping Challenge. If you want to experience the future of mobility, download and connect your car to DIMO. If you want to build the future, checkout our self-serve Developer Console.