As expected, a lot of attention goes into launching a new fleet of devices into the field, but from there, the hours, weeks, months, and years of device management that follow are what determine success. Ensuring each team in an organization has access to the right tools and information makes a difference in day to day operations and when issues arise.

From the start, Hologram has focused on helping teams of all sizes manage successful cellular deployments at scale and is honored to have been part of some of the fastest growing products used by millions each day.

One of these efforts was the recent launch of our Preflight capability. Preflight decreases the time and coordination required between operations and manufacturing teams deploying new cellular IoT devices. Since its launch two months ago, Preflight has been used to onboard hundreds of thousands of devices in numerous deployments spanning the globe. …

When we founded our company, Hologram set forth with the belief that the world needs a more intuitive way to access the Internet using open protocols. Our vision continues on today, and holds true for humans as well as machines; that’s why we’ve spent the last fives years innovating in the access, data, and API layers of networks, making it easier, seamless, and more efficient to connect through various cellular networks around the world.

Today, we announce the release of an open-source and open-protocol project, called Magic, to share our experiences and begin an open conversation around access control standardization because secure, intuitive, and seamless Internet access is not just a problem for cellular networks, but for all networks. …

Starting last week on July 6th, anyone in America importing Chinese electronic components (including wireless devices and components) may experience a 25% price increase. The jump in cost comes from a new U.S. import tariff covering some common electronic parts.

The tariff is a result of the White House’s position on international trade. Particularly its opinion that trade balances between countries need to be closer to even. In 2017 the trade deficit between China and the US was -$375 billion.

With Hologram having the largest global coverage of any M2M IoT cellular provider, we were curious to see how the tariff would effect GSM/GPRS/LTE cellular modules and devices. …

The summer of 2018 is upon us, and our formerly house-bound products are moving outside. This means IoT projects previously constrained to WiFi may require a cellular connection. To help with deciding what cellular board is right for your project we’ve compiled the following list. These are the best cellular IoT development boards and shields available in 2018. Most of these boards include support for the new LTE-M and NB-IoT standard, but with lack of ubiquitous NB-IoT coverage, we still see manufacturers releasing new boards that support 2G/3G.

It’s refreshing to see how capable these new cellular boards are. Most include industrial modems, advanced firmware, power management, full certification, and lower prices. As such, the top cellular boards listed below can meet demands both large and small. Readers building small volume (hobby) projects, as well as those who hope to move to production could use the same technology. …

~Originally posted on Hologram’s blog~

On October 5th, during the annual Open Hardware Summit, Hologram will open source the new Dash v1.2 through the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA). We’re also committing to open-source all Hologram development hardware moving forward, becoming an OSHWA Affiliate Corporate Member. As a fan of all things open-sourced, we’re stoked to make this announcement and support OSHWA’s mission.

Dash v1.2? Yes, it’s almost here! We’ll share more details about the new Dash v1.2, with various improvements, in an upcoming blog post. Combined with Dash’s v0.9.X system firmware, which was open-sourced on May 24th this year, the Dash will be a fully open-sourced dual chip MCU-based cellular development board. …

How and Why Hologram.io Srsly Loves Internal Hack Days

Developer Relations/Evangelism/Advocacy (DevRel) is a person or team dedicated to building a developer community around your product or service. It is an exciting role which bridges many departments (Engineering, Marketing, Strategic Partnering and even Sales). Most of the code helper libraries, tutorials, event talks, meetups, hackathons and technical partnerships come from these folks.

So yeah, I think DevRel rocks. I love developing and those who knew me from the MeteorJS world know I also love playing a part in developer communities, always am stoked for public speaking, dabble in marketing and enjoy the mental stimulus from negotiating partnerships.

A few months back when a DevRel opportunity came available I jumped on it and joined the awesome team at Hologram.io building cellular communication for IoT. What follows is a portion of my journey joining this team. …

Heed my warning: This article was written years and years ago when Meteor was a wee lil’ lad. Way before Apollo GraphQL was even a twinkle in Sashko’s eyes. Take what follows as nothing more than an entertaining glimpse into the past. 😉👍

I am sure you see/hear it frequently…

What should I learn, Meteor or Angular?

We all know that is the wrong question, so below you will find my answer ☺

To sum it up: Angular can be added to any stack. Meteor is a stack (albeit a Super-Stack). Like an Orange compared to an Orange Tree.

My opinion on Meteor

Meteor actually modifies NodeJS and becomes your server. It supplies everything you need to run a web/mobile app. You add frameworks on-top of Meteor’s platform. Meteor comes with a bunch of built-in frameworks. One of the “built-ins” is a View framework called Blaze which is a better comparison to Angular. Meteor’s “built-ins” can be replaced. If you want to replace Blaze with Angular then you can! Simply…