Is The Helium Bobcat Miner Any Good?

A few months ago, Ann at Bob­cat reached out to see if I’d like a hotspot for review. She’d read the Rough Guide To Hotspot Opti­miza­tion arti­cle and liked it. She thought it might be use­ful to get a Bob­cat hotspot into my hands ahead of the wave of nor­mal pro­duc­tion. I thought so too. I don’t think she expect­ed me to do any­thing oth­er than plug it in and earn HNT and talk about it, but…that’s not what I did.

If you just want to skip to the “Is the Bob­cat OK?”, yes, go here. You’ll miss out on the most impor­tant part of this post, but I get it; you’re impatient.

Now, I’m not a super tech­ni­cal guy. Sure, I’ve built a DIY hotspot and I can read as well as any­one on the plan­et and fig­ure things out enough to build the first giant badass off grid anten­na that cov­ers an entire coun­ty, but to dive in and dis­sect a hotspot at a mas­ter lev­el? Not my game. So, the day after the Bob­cat arrived at my door, I sent it on to some­one who *could* do that. 

@Jerm on Dis­cord has spent more than a few years as a hard­ware guy, crack­ing open dif­fer­ent pieces of hard­ware and break­ing them down to a lev­el that is frankly incom­pre­hen­si­ble to most of us. He’s a com­pe­tent licensed ham radio oper­a­tor as well, so RF is not new for him. Like me, he’s a mod­er­a­tor on the Heli­um Dis­cord (and since this arti­cle was writ­ten has been hired by Helium!) 

We con­nect­ed dur­ing the above men­tioned giant badass off grid anten­na instal­la­tion when I need­ed help dial­ing down the trans­mit and receive pow­er of the anten­na I’d placed. As we worked togeth­er and I saw his capa­bil­i­ties, it became clear that he was the per­fect fit for a Bob­cat crack.

I sent the Bob­cat to Jerm. 

My request was that he use his exper­tise to under­stand how it worked, to find any weak­ness­es and strengths, and to share that jour­ney with oth­er mods on Dis­cord so that we would all have “ground truth” when it came to the Bobcat.

He agreed, I sent it up to him and he start­ed to crack it. His goal was to get so far inside the thing that he could map out its brain in 4k def­i­n­i­tion (my words, not his. He’d prob­a­bly be more technical.) 

He streamed parts of his hack­ing on Twitch so the rest of us mods could fol­low along, but most of it was done solo, with the full focus of 20+ years in com­put­er secu­ri­ty aimed square­ly at the Bob­cat heli­um miner. 

I watched the Twitch, and I’d talk with him most days about it, but almost none of it was com­pre­hen­si­ble to me.

While he spent the next few weeks div­ing deep­er and deep­er into the Bob­cat, I spent more time research­ing Bob­cat and Easylinkin. Easylinkin is the man­u­fac­tur­er that helps Bob­cat make the devices. How are they con­nect­ed? What are their goals? Why are they a good option for meet­ing the (cur­rent­ly insa­tiable) demand for Heli­um Hotspots?

This part goes into how the grand Heli­um exper­i­ment is a case study for how the world is changing. 

Let’s start with Easylinkin, the enor­mous Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny mak­ing the Bob­cats. Here’s how they describe themselves:

“Easylinkin is a lead­ing LoRaWAN Gate­way man­u­fac­tur­er and invests heav­i­ly in its own R&D capa­bil­i­ties. In addi­tion to design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing LoRaWAN gate­ways and mod­ules, Easylinkin owns more than 200 LPWAN relat­ed patents and has so far raised $85 mil­lion in total fund­ing. Easylinkin’s gate­ways and solu­tions have been deployed across 100+ cities in Chi­na and abroad. It has deployed Lora net­works for Aliba­ba in Hangzhou City, 510,000 LoRa water meters in Chi­na, and 55,000 LoRa elec­tric­i­ty meters for Indone­sia and Mongolia.”

It’s a pret­ty safe bet from that descrip­tion that Easylinkin will be able to pro­duce Bob­cat min­ers at scale. They’ve been work­ing with Semtech, the com­pa­ny hold­ing the patent for the tech­nol­o­gy we’re all using, since 2018. For those of you in the man­u­fac­tur­ing world, Bob­cat uti­lizes the ELi 49,000 sq meter work­shop space includ­ing 11 SMT lines and 73 auto robot testers. What does that mean for the rest of us? Bob­cat ain’t mak­ing these in their garage, this is a full-on com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing facility.

“Ok Nik, so where’s my Bob­cat? If they’re being man­u­fac­tured in this giant facil­i­ty with robots and all sorts of fan­cy equip­ment, where are MINE? And what the heck is going on with their pay­ment process? Mug­gle­pay? Pay­Pal refunds? USDT? C’mon, why isn’t this easy!?”

Great ques­tions, and I had ’em too. So I asked Ann at Bobcat.

Gris­tle King (GK): What are the biggest hur­dles you’re fac­ing right now?
Ann @ Bob­cat (BC): First, 2C (Direct to cus­tomer) mar­ket expe­ri­ence. Like all oth­er IOT man­u­fac­tur­ers, we are ven­tur­ing into a 2C mar­ket for the first time. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, man­u­fac­tur­ers deal with enter­prise lev­el cus­tomers, sys­tem inte­gra­tors, large retail­ers and oth­er 2B cus­tomers. We don’t con­sid­er this a hur­dle but there’s a learn­ing curve involved. 

Sec­ond, the glob­al chip short­age.

GK notes: In case you don’t have time to hit that “glob­al chip short­age” link above, here’s the very short ver­sion: Every­body from Apple to Ford is affect­ed by it. There has been a mas­sive surge in demand in the past year, and indus­try isn’t able to keep up in the short term. Remem­ber how toi­let paper went out of stock at the begin­ning of COVID? This is like that. This isn’t about Heli­um, or Semtech, or Bob­cat. This is a glob­al issue that will take time to solve.

GK: Why is the pay­ment sys­tem so dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate?
BC: In our April news release we men­tioned the strug­gles we’re fac­ing with Pay­pal. We’re work­ing on mov­ing away from Mug­gle­pay and over to Coin­base Com­merce, though that’s not offi­cial yet. 

“Tra­di­tion­al pay­ment aggre­ga­tors [GK note: Pay­Pal and oth­ers] con­sid­er the pre-order sales mod­el adopt­ed by Bob­cat and oth­er ven­dors to be high­ly volatile. Thus, in an attempt to pro­tect them­selves from charge­backs, they will hold onto cus­tomer pay­ments for an extend­ed peri­od even after prod­ucts are shipped.”

GK notes: This is a legit­i­mate issue. When I first start­ed tak­ing pay­ments on Pay­Pal, Pay­Pal would hold the pay­ment for up to 30 days. That chokes off a start­ing busi­ness’ cash flow. If Bob­cat can’t take the mon­ey from sales and pay invoic­es for pro­duc­tion, every­thing slows way down until the pro­duc­tion line can get paid. Mug­gle­pay and pay­ing in USDT are respons­es to a cash­flow chal­lenge, they’re not try­ing to make it dif­fi­cult for you to buy a Bob­cat. Trust me, no busi­ness wants to make it dif­fi­cult to receive pay­ment. This is at the core of what is fas­ci­nat­ing about Heli­um, aligned incen­tives, and just-in-time man­u­fac­tur­ing at scale.

GK: Does Bob­cat have any plans for out­door min­ers?
BC: Right now our focus is on mak­ing the one and only prod­uct we have, the Bob­cat Min­er 300, a sol­id qual­i­ty prod­uct. We do have more prod­ucts on our roadmap but we try not to get too ahead of our­selves and will nev­er over promise any­thing if we are not 100% cer­tain [we can] deliv­er. We want to grow and expand as a com­pa­ny, but we under­stand we need to do it one step at a time.

GK: Where else might we see Bob­cat expand­ing into?
BC: We’re very expe­ri­enced in pro­vid­ing proven, real-life IoT solu­tions that have been deployed on a mass scale (such as meter­ing) and used by real cus­tomers on a dai­ly basis to solve a real prob­lem. Pro­vid­ing sen­sors and IoT solu­tions as well as more hard­ware for the decen­tral­ized net­work is a direc­tion we’re like­ly to explore. Bobcat’s mis­sion is to pro­vide high qual­i­ty hard­ware for decen­tral­ized net­works, and the company’s pres­ence, espe­cial­ly in the US will con­tin­ue to grow in 2021 and beyond.

So that’s the inter­view, or at least the parts that you’ll find use­ful. I spoke more with Ann about the con­nec­tion between Bob­cat and Easylinkin. She made it very clear that they aren’t the same com­pa­ny, and they have dif­fer­ent mis­sions. Bob­cat’s mis­sion is to sell hard­ware for decen­tral­ized net­works. Easylinkin is a more gen­er­al device manufacturer.

With that said, we get to the most inter­est­ing piece of the whole Bob­cat expe­ri­ence (and by exten­sion, every oth­er man­u­fac­tur­er, since all of them I know about are made in China). 

We’ve all heard about glob­al­iza­tion, but this is one of the first times many of us are direct­ly expe­ri­enc­ing it. Bob­cat, and Bob­cat’s con­nec­tion to both Easylinkin and to YOU, a Bob­cat cus­tomer, are an exam­ple of what hap­pens when you get rid of most of the “mid­dle­men” in a man­u­fac­tur­ing process. As a West­ern­er (what an odd con­cept in a round world, right?) your inter­ac­tion will not be as smooth as you’re used to. You are deal­ing with a dif­fer­ent civ­i­liza­tion, and you’re deal­ing with them direct­ly. I think that’s awe­some, but for many of you it’s jarring.

You’re used to Ama­zon deliv­er­ing prod­ucts in 2 days or less with the push of one but­ton. A 12–20 week wait time and a 5 step pay­ment process is freak­ing you out. When your heart starts to pit­ter-pat­ter at this new­ness, remem­ber that an entire busi­ness has been stood up with­in just a few months to meet an insa­tiable glob­al demand for a new, com­pli­cat­ed prod­uct at a scale most of us have no expe­ri­ence with, with mate­ri­als (chips) that are in extreme­ly short sup­ply across many indus­tries. It’s incred­i­ble that it has such a short lead time for all the com­plex­i­ties required. 

The big take­away for me is that we get to live in a time where damn near any­thing you want can be cre­at­ed and deliv­ered to your door, no mat­ter how tech­ni­cal­ly com­plex, in under a few months. That has nev­er been pos­si­ble before in the his­to­ry of human­i­ty, and it’s only going to get bet­ter. Bob­cat is a superb exam­ple of pro­gres­sion on that line, and I’m psy­ched they’re involved with Helium.

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Is the Bobcat OK?

Yes, it’s fine. Order one here if you’re inter­est­ed.

From @Jerm’s notes, with some slight mod­i­fi­ca­tions from Nik:

It’s a very light unit (263 grams for the one I received) that you can eas­i­ly mount any­where, and it’ll per­form just like any oth­er hotspot as far as earnings. 

The LoRa radio appears to be based on the SX1301 radio, which takes more ener­gy than the SX1302 and is slight­ly worse at hear­ing pack­ets, but for any giv­en place­ment out­side of some reeeeeeal­l­ly far out off-grid ones that should­n’t be an issue. 

Bob­cat has done a great job with stuff you’ll nev­er real­ize you needed. 

The pow­er sup­ply sec­tion is great. I can see that a lot of care has been tak­en to make sure that con­sumers won’t acci­den­tal­ly fry the hotspot with the wrong pow­er sup­ply.

The eMMC flash chip should prove a lot more durable than the SD-card stor­age used in the orig­i­nal Heli­um hotspots.

Bob­cat ships a batch every Tues­day, and they are deter­mined to only promise what they can deliv­er. As of this writ­ing (ear­ly June 2021), they have met every promised deliv­ery date.

Their anten­na being 4 dBi is fine. It has a mag­net­ic base, which can form a ground plane and improve the radi­a­tion pat­tern. Any of the stock anten­nas from any man­u­fac­tur­er will send a bea­con as far as you need to go in order to earn HNT. See my post on anten­nas for more on that. 

That wraps the Bob­cat. Buy one if you want a Heli­um hotspot, and expect them to deliv­er when they say they will.

If you want to join a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple seri­ous about Heli­um, I’d love to invite you to check out the Gris­tle Crüe!