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Filament To Power The Internet of Things With a 20-year Battery, A 10-Mile Range And Bitcoin

The Internet of Things soon to be available as a system-wide upgrade, complete with smart contracts, peer-to-peer networking, the blockchain, and a ten-mile range for even the smallest of hardware additions.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is far more than just the ability to control your home thermostat from your iPad, but so far the hardware and networking required to roll it out hasn’t been ready.

Eric Jennings, Co-founder and CEO of IoT tech startup Filament, is answering the hard questions like “How do you make all of the old ‘dumb’ equipment at an office, farm, or factory, smart… in one fell swoop?”

Filament networks use a revolutionary low-power, long-range networking technology, and smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain, all through a tiny networking node called a “Tap.”

Each Tap has a micro-USB port to plug into your existing sensors or platforms, with a battery shelf life of 20 years and a radio that works up to an estimated 10 miles. The battery life and range capabilities are of course dependent on frequency and volume of use, as well as the size of the network. An embeddable version of the Tap, called the Patch, will also be available for adding directly to circuit boards during the manufacturing process.

“Filament’s big advantage for deployments like smart cities really lies in ease-of-deployment and time-to-deployment. Ease means that it’s simple to get Taps running. If you can set up a Dropbox account, you can set up a Filament network. It’s also very easy to integrate with existing systems.”
— – Eric Jennings, Filament Co-founder and CEO

Filament was previously known as Pinoccio, and provided open-source hardware resembling an Arduino kit to build handy mesh network projects. Jennings and co-founder Jeremie Miller then figured out how to produce this fledgling technology in a smaller, more useful form factor while adding security and even more functionality.

No longer just for hobbyists, the new devices were designed for enterprise-level networks. The company has raised over US$6m in funding since an initial Indiegogo campaign in 2013.

To achieve the stated maximum range, the device uses a frequency normally set aside for electromagnetic radiation produced by industrial, scientific and medical equipment. This is normally not a radio band where communications take place, and using it in the US requires FCC clearance. “The particular radio transceiver we use is very low-power, low-bandwidth, and long-range. This was chosen specifically to address the needs of industrial use-cases,” Jennings explained.

“We get anywhere from 64kb/sec at the high end, down to something like 600b/sec at the low end. The radio stack uses adaptive bit-rate, so it will adjust continually based on range and power needed within a certain time-window. So you won’t be streaming video over it, but to get *any* connectivity up to 9 miles between devices is something most of our customers have never had the opportunity to explore.”
— – Jennings

There is no way for them to sell their product in the US before they receive FCC certification, but Evaluation Kits, including 5 Taps and a gateway device, will be available towards the end of the year. “This will let you experiment and pilot your project in an afternoon. We are ramping up production to fulfill our waiting list of customer demand over 2016,” explained Jennings.

Using the Telehash protocol, for interoperability between different networks and networking platforms, Filament’s tiny devices mesh with one another so the range continues to extend as you add devices to the network.

Telehash also allows for complete interoperability, so data gathered over these devices can be sent over a Wifi network and used on the internet. Filament’s hardware also includes a Javascript encryption layer called JOSE, an optional layer for the BitTorrent network, and Pennybank, a support layer for Bitcoin micropayments through smart contracts.

By using bitcoin micropayments connected devices able to trade value with each other, so one device can buy supplies or services from another. Jennings also believes that Blockchain technology gives very small devices the opportunity to have something no device has ever had before, it’s own verifiable, immutable identity. “We have county record offices, banks, and notary services today to help people with verifying their own identities. But those systems won’t scale with the proliferation of billions of connected devices,” he states.

“The good news is that there is nothing magical about the Bitcoin blockchain that requires Filament to use it. In fact, we expect Filament to work with other decentralized systems as they come online and are vetted.”
— – Jennings

Decentralization is a theme that the Filament team touches on time and time again throughout their website and videos. It is clear that this is one of the primary goals for Filament, “Fundamentally, we believe strongly that a decentralized IoT is more valuable to everyone than a centralized one is… We aren’t anti-cloud, we simply see the cloud as a peer in a massive peer-to-peer network,” explains Jennings.

“A cloud connection should never be required for a device to operate at full functionality. This includes the ability for a device to discover other devices locally or remotely, to establish a secure connection with said device, to decide if its trustable or not, and also to provide a payment channel between devices if so desired. If and when a cloud component makes sense in that future, the cloud should participate just like another device.”
— – Jennings

Price will be a huge selling point for Filament. One might expect adding brains and communications to everyday devices to be expensive, but during a recent interview with Fortune magazine, Jennings said that each sensor costs about $25 to make, and the cost will drop based on volume. Enterprise customers will likely pay between $10 and $12 per Tap, and even less for the embeddable version, Patch. Meanwhile, the software will be free and open-source.

The pilot program for Filament devices, under way now, is in the field of agriculture. Filament believes the product can provide solutions to farmers looking for faster and more user-friendly ways to modernize their farms. This includes letting them monitor the environment using all sorts of customized sensors, which talk directly to the farmers mobile devices.

“Farmers can benefit from Filament’s technology in two key ways. First, the ability to monitor and measure operational infrastructure usage — water flow, chemical usage, farm equipment efficiencies — without having to purchase a large infrastructure upfront. Second, plugging Filament products into the diagnostic port of farm vehicles and machinery to track efficiency within a farm.”
— – Jennings

In an interview with AgFunderNews, Jennings explained that the farmers are also using Filament for non-traditional agricultural uses, such as Controlled Environment Agriculture, and ocean-based agriculture.

“We are working closely with one city to roll out a city-wide network within the next couple months. We’re very excited about this one because we have a massive partner in this project that we can’t wait to announce. But as these things go, we have to keep hush about it for now. Suffice it to say, though, we are very interested in communities having their own networks, and all the benefits that come from that.”
— – Jennings

Be sure to check out the video below from the O’Reilly Radar Summit in January, with much more detail about this project and some great reason for why the IoT needs to be decentralized.


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