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Unfortunately, I would not build a business that relied on the Helium network because there's no way to tell if they're going to be around in a year or two. The main alternative - The Things Network - is quite popular in Europe but has less penetration in North America, unfortunately.

i actually build a device which is using both TTN and Helium exactly for that reason. https://notific.at/en

Do you know of a tutorial for getting a small LoRa device up on the Helium network?

You can start with the basic console documentation: https://docs.helium.com/use-the-network/console

Helium is interesting because its literally everywhere in the US and western europe, everywhere people exist that is (not super remote mountainous regions).

I'd bet 99% of people reading this comment section have great coverage.