The 15-meter Holmdel horn antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, was built in 1959 for pioneering work in communication satellites for the NASA ECHO I. (source: NASA on Wikimedia Commons) In this episode of the Hardware Podcast, we talk with Rob Chandhok, president of Helium, a startup with a platform for connecting sensors and control elements over the Internet. We talk about the process of taking a prototype to production, and the blend of hardware and software that allows smart edge devices to last an eternity on a single battery.
Links:
- Lua, the programming language used by Helium. “The greatest thing about Lua is that it is designed to be embedded in other systems,” says Chandhok.
- The Cortex-M4 microcontroller.
This week’s click spirals:
- David Cranor: In Europe, sparkling wine can only be called Champagne if it’s from the Champagne region of France—but the restriction doesn’t apply in the United States because the U.S. never ratified the Treaty of Versailles.
- Jon Bruner: How the San Francisco’s retired military installations tell the story of a fast-paced arms race from the late 19th century through the Cold War.
- Rob Chandhok: A passed-down family recipe for hot milk cake.
This episode is sponsored by nTopology. See our statement of editorial independence.