Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

A Rough Guide To Helium Hotspot Placement

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by

Nik
in ,

This is writ­ten for folks curi­ous about opti­miz­ing a Heli­um Hotspot placement. 

Most start with their anten­na, which is (almost com­plete­ly) the wrong approach for max­i­miz­ing earn­ings. The only way you could make a less effi­cient improve­ment at the start is to focus on what cables to buy. 

There are four fun­da­men­tal aspects of an opti­mal Heli­um hotspot place­ment; anten­nas and cables are at the bot­tom of the list for importance.

Before we get there (relax, it’s only a few para­graphs away), let’s get a few impor­tant points out of the way:

First, while I think every­one read­ing this should buy at least one hotspot and place it as opti­mal­ly as you can, over the long run you’ll earn far more by fig­ur­ing out a way to actu­al­ly use the net­work and not just pro­vide coverage.

Sec­ond, if you fol­low and read through every link in this arti­cle you’ll be ready to make excel­lent deci­sions about the best pos­si­ble hotspot place­ment. The whole thing (Heli­um, anten­nas, opti­mum hotspot place­ment) will take about an hour to digest and understand. 

Third, if you don’t want or have the time to fig­ure out Heli­um on your own, for a long time I offered both cours­es and consulting. 

ASSUMPTIONS

  1. You know that Heli­um is a net­work of Hotspots that trans­mit and receive radio sig­nals, then pass those sig­nals onto the inter­net. In gen­er­al, the more sig­nals a giv­en hotspot receives, the more HNT it earns. Hotspots record all trans­ac­tions on a blockchain and reward own­ers for pro­vid­ing cov­er­age with HNT, a cryp­tocur­ren­cy token.
  2. You have, or have ordered, or are think­ing about order­ing, a Heli­um hotspot.
  3. You haven’t read every last post and thread on the inter­net about max­i­miz­ing a hotspot placement. 🙂

There are only a few things that real­ly mat­ter when it comes to your hotspot place­ment. Some of them will change over time, some of them are fun­da­men­tal. All are dri­ven by just one goal over the long term: 

ADD VALUE TO THE NETWORK

FUNDAMENTALS FOR OPTIMUM PLACEMENT

In order of importance: 

  • HOTSPOT DENSITY
  • ANTENNA “VIEW”
  • APPROPRIATE ANTENNA
  • MINIMIZED & HIGH QUALITY CONNECTION LENGTH/CABLES

HOTSPOT DENSITY: Opti­mum den­si­ty is deter­mined using Uber’s H3 map. At the low end, hotspots won’t earn from oth­er hotspots less than 300 meters away. At the high end, hotspots can “wit­ness” oth­er hotspots 50 km out.

Back to the Uber map. The map uses (most­ly) hexa­gons to form grids of dif­fer­ent sizes. Each size is called a “res­o­lu­tion” or “res” for short. Each hex size has an appro­pri­ate den­si­ty for its resolution.

Here is a dat­ed inter­ac­tive map (it stopped being updat­ed in late fall of 2020) of den­si­ty and hotspot place­ments. It’s col­or cod­ed and fair­ly intu­itive. Green means good den­si­ty, red indi­cates too dense. Here’s a quick screenshot:

At each “res” there is an opti­mal num­ber of hotspots per hexa­gon. That num­ber can change. It is deter­mined by a base rate of hotspots per hex plus the num­ber of hotspots in sur­round­ing hex­es. Go ahead, read that sen­tence again a few times. The details are in HIP 17, look for “Pro­posed Chain Variables.”

Yes, it’s a bit com­pli­cat­ed. It was made this way in order to pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly account for den­si­ty dif­fer­ences between cities, sub­urbs, and rur­al areas.

Here’s a screen­shot map of San Fran­cis­co (pulled from the HIP 17 Visu­al­iz­er) to give anoth­er perspective.

Screenshot of San Francisco using the HIP17 visualizer.

Notice the green hotspots don’t have oth­er hotspot as close to them as the orange and red ones. Red is the worst; they’re basi­cal­ly on top of each oth­er and pro­vid­ing dupli­cate (or trip­li­cate or worse) cov­er­age, which isn’t use­ful to the network.

If you want to know if your loca­tion will be good, you’ll need to study HIP17.

If you read HIP17 until you under­stand it, you’ll be in the 1% of Heli­um Hotspot own­ers who don’t real­ly have ques­tions about opti­mum density. 

It looks com­pli­cat­ed at first, but it’s actu­al­ly straight­for­ward. If you’ve ever read about Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, you’ll have an under­stand­ing of hotspot den­si­ty: Not too dense, not dense enough, but just right.

If you need to visu­al­ize things, use Heli­umVi­sion or Hotspot­ty. Use the options for hex over­lays in Heli­umVi­sion or just zoom in and out on your Hotspot with Hotspot­ty. If you need help with Heli­umVi­sion, con­sid­er tak­ing my Heli­umVi­sion Mas­ter Class.

If you don’t have the time or just want to skip that part, you can hire me and I’ll help you pick the best option for your area and circumstance. 

BOTTOM LINE: You need to have opti­mum den­si­ty for max­i­mum earnings.

ANTENNA VIEW: Before you go order­ing the lat­est and great­est super-hot anten­na (more on that lat­er), make sure your anten­na has a view. A “view” has three impor­tant aspects.

  • Out­side. Walls and even win­dows will block radio waves.
  • High above oth­er obstacles.
  • Clear view to as much as possible.

The view of your anten­na is far more impor­tant than upgrad­ing your anten­na. A high­er ele­va­tion “stock” anten­na (the one that comes with your hotspot) will out­per­form a super fan­cy anten­na that’s low down EVERY TIME. You can see the line of sight of your anten­na to spe­cif­ic spots using RF Line of Sight or Helium.Vision.

Get as high as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble. How high? From the Amer­i­can Radio Relay League’s doc­u­ment on anten­na placement:

“To a dis­tant receiv­ing sta­tion, a trans­mit­ting anten­na at 120 feet will pro­vide the effect of approx­i­mate­ly 8 to 10 times more trans­mit­ting pow­er than the same anten­na at 35 feet.”

You may be think­ing, “I’ll nev­er get my anten­na 120′ high.” That’s OK, do the best you can, but know that until you get it high, you’ll be miss­ing out on earnings. 

A good rule of thumb to start approach­ing 90% of opti­mum earn­ings is at least 20′ above your roof and sur­round­ing roofs.

Here’s an exam­ple of a good ele­va­tion placement:

Correct elevation placement on rooftop

That anten­na is on top of a 23′ pole on top of a 15′ high roof in sub­ur­ban San Diego.

Anec­do­tal reports show that even a *1 meter* ele­va­tion dif­fer­ence can notice­ably affect earnings.

Get as clear a view of as much “civ­i­liza­tion” as pos­si­ble. Remem­ber, the net­work is only as valu­able as the USEFUL area it can cov­er. A hotspot on top of a moun­tain with clear views of noth­ing but nature for 30 miles is not cov­er­ing (to the net­work, any­way) USEFUL territory.

A hotspot on a sub­ur­ban roof sur­round­ed by a few mil­lion peo­ple and lots of data oppor­tu­ni­ties will pro­vide far more use­ful coverage.

Cor­rect ele­va­tion is vital for max­i­mum cov­er­age. LoRa is more or less a line-of-sight radio tech­nol­o­gy. While the radio waves will go through a few things (a wall or two, a win­dow, or a leafy tree), for the most part you want to be able to have a direct line of sight to both your cov­er­age area AND oth­er hotspots. 

APPROPRIATE ANTENNA: The anten­na is what most peo­ple focus on, think­ing that if they just have the “best” anten­na they’ll make the most HNT.

The anten­na shipped with any pur­chased hotspot is already pret­ty good. How­ev­er, as many Heli­ites are both tin­ker­ers and dri­ven by earn­ings, many will “upgrade” their anten­na in order to reach more hotspots.

Anten­nas do 2 things: They trans­mit (tx) and they receive (rx). Most folks get wrapped up in how well an anten­na trans­mits, but in the long term that doesn’t mat­ter that much, as the val­ue of Heli­um is in how well an anten­na can RECEIVE.

Remem­ber, the Heli­um net­work offers val­ue by being able to receive trans­mis­sion FROM sen­sors TO hotspots, then push that infor­ma­tion onto the blockchain via an inter­net connection.

While there is and has been a place for being able to trans­mit pow­er­ful­ly, that val­ue will dimin­ish rapid­ly over the com­ing year.

What the heck is “dBi”? It refers to the focus and shap­ing of the ener­gy an anten­na trans­mits and receives.

Here’s a quick dbi gain visualizer:

I can hear you now: “Ok dude, but what anten­na should I buy?” 

You can read this in-depth arti­cle on how to match your place­ment with an anten­na, but you’ve basi­cal­ly got 3 options. 

First, and rec­om­mend­ed: Don’t buy any­thing, just use the anten­na your hotspot came with. Get your den­si­ty and view squared away first.

Sec­ond, if you’ve got a great place­ment with the right ele­va­tion, buy either an HNTen­na or any­thing in the 3–6 dBi range from McGill.

Third, if you feel like you need some­thing high­er gain and you under­stand the trade offs of a high­er gain anten­na, get a high­er gain anten­na from McGill.

“But, but, what about the [insert fan­cy anten­na] I read about on the Dis­cord chat? Should­n’t I get the most pow­er­ful anten­na pos­si­ble? I want more money!”

Big antenna with a long view on a mountain.

No. Re-read the above piece on hav­ing a “too pow­er­ful” antenna. 

The one pic­tured above is a high gain sec­tor (direc­tion­al) anten­na on top of a moun­tain. Despite hav­ing an enor­mous “view”, it does worse than many place­ments that are much clos­er to oth­er hotspots. I replaced it with a 3 dBi omni, no dif­fer­ence in earn­ings. Den­si­ty mat­ters more than antenna.

Even “hot” anten­nas that are tuned to fit with­in Heli­um guide­lines (decreased trans­mit and receive pow­er) won’t rad­i­cal­ly out­per­form oth­er antennas.

One Hotspot own­er I know ran a Near­son 9 vs a Rak 8 dBi in ear­ly 2021 and kept track of earn­ings between the two. The RAK beat the pants off the Nearson.

MINIMIZED CONNECTIONS: Ok, now we’re com­ing to stuff that does­n’t real­ly mat­ter but you’ll ask about and geek out on any­way. How should you con­nect your hotspot to your antenna?

This is RF 101 (Radio Fre­quen­cy): You want a thick, clean, short (ide­al­ly 5′ or less) cable that goes from your hotspot to your anten­na. I rec­om­mend and use LMR400 from USACoax.

If you’re run­ning a cel­lu­lar back­haul you’ll prob­a­bly be fine with anoth­er LMR vari­ant for the cell anten­nas (each set­up is unique) but you will want to place those cell anten­nas exter­nal to the enclosure.

Get your hotspot up high near your anten­na to keep cable runs to the anten­na short. Run pow­er and eth­er­net to the high hotspot, then have a short anten­na cable to the anten­na. Do not (if you want max earn­ings) place your hotspot in your attic then run 20′ of thin crap­py coax cable to your anten­na. That will cre­ate more radio pow­er loss than you want. 

If you MUST have long cable runs, spend the mon­ey on good cable. If you do that, you may (but prob­a­bly won’t) get the same results as Docile Bone Pony, which uses 60′ of LMR 400 and is on top of a 16 sto­ry build­ing in the mid­dle of a large city. 

So. That’s most of what you need to know about a opti­mum hotspot placement. 

ADDENDA

What else should you know about when it comes to Heli­um hotspot earnings?

How much HNT you get per witness/beacon trans­ac­tion will change as the net­work devel­ops more ful­ly. With a lim­it­ed amount of HNT made avail­able (2.5 mil­lion per month until August 2023, when it drops to 1.25 million/month) to reward trans­ac­tions AND many more hotspots com­ing online in the next few months, earn­ings will steadi­ly dilute.

Yeah, but how much can I earn? Check here for a very rough esti­mate. This can change sig­nif­i­cant­ly, so it’s just a start­ing point.

No mat­ter what, with the growth of the net­work your HNT earn­ings will CONTINUE TO DROP.

This MAY be off­set by an increase in HNT price. It may not. 

How can I earn even more? The long play with Heli­um is to fig­ure out how to actu­al­ly use the ser­vice. What kind of data can you col­lect, what kind of sen­sors should you use, how can you offer that as a service? 

If you want help with that or with opti­miz­ing your hotspot place­ments, I’m avail­able for hire.

How much pow­er and data do hotspots use? Hotspots use about as much pow­er as an inter­net router, and as much data as heavy Net­flix user who watch­es 2 or 3 movies most nights (100–150 GB/month). This will con­tin­ue to increase until Light Hotspots come online some­time in ear­ly 2022. 

If you live in the First World and have a broad­band inter­net con­nec­tion, hav­ing a Heli­um Hotspot will be basi­cal­ly unno­tice­able to you from an ener­gy cost/data use perspective.

I’m ready to buy a hotspot, where should I order? I’d rec­om­mend order­ing a hotspot from Par­ley­Labs.

Is there a dif­fer­ence in hotspots/miners/radios? Not real­ly. It’s not like you can get a more pow­er­ful min­er that’ll earn you more. The biggest dif­fer­ence is when they’ll arrive, which is a func­tion of how fast they can be manufactured.

Is it real­ly worth it to put up a Heli­um hotspot? I sure think so. Will it be for you? If you have an opti­mal place­ment and fol­low all the advice above, prob­a­bly. This isn’t invest­ment advice. You could lose all the mon­ey you put in. 

How much can I make? If you do a good job, between .5 — 1 HNT/day as of March of 2022. More on that here. Or just go to Site­bot and start pok­ing around to see what the cur­rent max­i­mums are. 

How do I turn HNT into cash? Open up an account on Binance.

Is this a safe invest­ment? No. This is cryp­tocur­ren­cy com­pet­ing with giant tel­cos (Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pa­nies). It may be a boomer (like when Uber com­pet­ed with cabs or Airbnb com­pet­ed with hotels) or it may be a flop (like every oth­er start­up com­pa­ny that tried to take on the big dogs.)

You should not re-finance your house to put up hotspots. You should be able to lose all the mon­ey you put into hotspots with­out putting your­self, your fam­i­ly, or any­one you know at finan­cial risk. Sheesh. 

Should I just hire you to do all the work for me? Maybe. If you don’t like to read or geek out, or you just want to try Heli­um with­out spend­ing a few months research­ing it, I’ll walk you through the process of set­ting up the best pos­si­ble place­ment for your sit­u­a­tion. You can take my cours­es (look on the top of the page under Cours­es) or go here to get started.

RESOURCES

Software

  • Heli­um Vision — Paid ser­vice w/free tri­al for assess­ing loca­tions. Def­i­nite­ly try this out!
  • Hotspot­ty — Excel­lent way to visu­al­ize den­si­ty issues AND to man­age your fleet
  • HotspotRF — use code gristleking for 20% off your first month.

Mapping

Hardware

Media & Learning Resources

Comments

294 responses to “A Rough Guide To Helium Hotspot Placement”

  1. Cam Avatar
    Cam

    Look­ing to get in touch about hir­ing you for a heli­um min­er project im work­ing on. please shoot me an email.

  2. Thuong Nguyen Avatar
    Thuong Nguyen

    Thank you for this resource. I live in Lake Forest. 

    I am inter­est­ed in your ser­vices. May I please get a quote?

  3. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Cam, done. 🙂 You can also fill out my form here.

  4. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Thuong, sure, fill out the Heli­um Con­sult­ing form here. 

  5. A Rough Guide to Hotspot Placements by Nik – Parley Labs

    […] post was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten here by Nik. With his per­mis­sion we are repost­ing here because the infor­ma­tion is just too good! You can reach […]

  6. Buster Avatar
    Buster

    Great job here NIK! Quick question.…with regard to the Helium.Place.…Of the 3 loca­tions I had planned, 2 have 1 min­er in the hexa­gon, and 1 had non (2 just bare­ly out­side it) Is it bet­ter to have them inside the hexa­gon or outside?

  7. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Do you mean the oth­er hotspots are in the red hexa­gon? Def­i­nite­ly don’t place ’em there. :). If you mean that you’re see­ing oth­er min­ers in the larg­er hexa­gon grid (out­lines, no col­or) that Helium.Place gen­er­ates when you click any loca­tion, you’re prob­a­bly fine. 

    Just as a rule of thumb, in almost every case under say, 5 km dis­tances, it’s bet­ter to have hotspots fur­ther apart rather than close togeth­er. Remem­ber that the over­all goal is to add val­ue to the net­work, and that trans­lates as pro­vid­ing broad­er, unique coverage.

  8. Nana Avatar
    Nana

    Great piece. I just placed an order for an indoor min­er and stum­bled on your write up. When I checked my address, I would be the only one in the red hexa­gon but it still says it’s too close to wit­ness, even though oth­ers are at least 5kms away. Does this mean I should­n’t place the min­er in my house?

  9. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Nana,
    Hmm, I’m not clear on what you mean. When you click on any loca­tion in Helium.place, it’ll always put your spot in the cen­ter of a red hexa­gon. The hexa­gon is meant to show you if you’re too close to any oth­er hotspots. If you see any oth­er hotspots with­in that red hexa­gon, you won’t be able to wit­ness them, nor they you. Sounds like you’ll be fine; if the clos­est min­ers are at least 5 km away you’re going to want to make sure to get your anten­na up high. Best of luck with it!

  10. Sanyi Avatar
    Sanyi

    Hel­lo!
    Do you think it will be good that way?
    3 pieces will be placed in the vil­lage where I live.
    Dis­tance from each other:
    1.2km — 1.3km — 1km
    Thank you for your response!

  11. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Sanyi,
    If those are in a rough tri­an­gle and have clear line of sight to each oth­er, that’ll prob­a­bly work well.
    Let me know how it goes, sounds pret­ty good. 4 would be better… 🙂

  12. Sanyi Avatar
    Sanyi

    Thanks for the quick reply!
    I’ll write how it goes.
    One more question!:)
    Do you think there is a difference:
    Out­door Hotspot vs. Indoor Hotspot?
    thx

  13. Marko Avatar
    Marko

    You say “you’ll earn far more by fig­ur­ing out a way to actu­al­ly use the net­work and not just pro­vide cov­er­age”… can you pro­vide some exam­ples of what you mean by this? Are you sug­gest­ing users start up some busi­ness based on using IoT devices? That’s quite the step from plug­ging in a hotspot and let­ting it sit there.

  14. Buster Avatar
    Buster

    Ok, so rule #1 — nev­er put a router in a hexa­gon with anoth­er router.…good stuff, thank you for this info.

  15. Buster Avatar
    Buster

    Hello.…..also, should a loca­tion allow you to put the device in their spot, but are uneasy about con­nect­ing it to their net­work because they are para­noid about secu­ri­ty, would an alter­na­tive be a cell sig­nal hotspot to con­nect the min­er to?

  16. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Buster, total­ly depen­dent on what res­o­lu­tion of hex. At res­o­lu­tion 8 you can have up to 4 HS with­out penal­ty. This is one of the most con­fus­ing issues for most HS place­ments, but a thor­ough read­ing of HIP 17 will clear it up.

  17. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Marko, yes, that’s the best long term play (as I under­stand it.) The easy mon­ey days of plug­ging in a hotspot and watch­ing it earn a ton just for pro­vid­ing cov­er­age are rapid­ly wan­ing (March 2021). This does­n’t mean we can’t still make mon­ey with Heli­um, but it does mean we’ll have to work a lot hard­er for it.

  18. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Oth­er than one can be put out­side and be weath­er­proof and the oth­er needs to be pro­tect­ed from the ele­ments, no. Equip­ment is gen­er­al­ly the last thing to opti­mize and gives you the least bang for your buck. If you have a stock hotspot in a bomber loca­tion you’ll out­per­form a com­plete­ly tricked out mega-anten­na set­up every time.

  19. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sure, you could use cell back­haul to con­nect your hotspot. Real­is­ti­cal­ly, the point of entry for an attack­er is just as like­ly to be a wifi print­er as your hotspot, and the print­er would prob­a­bly be eas­i­er. You could set up a sep­a­rate WiFi net­work on your router just for your HS.

  20. Isaac Keller Avatar
    Isaac Keller

    Hey Nik, awe­some arti­cle. This has me real­ly pumped up! Quick ques­tion. There are no oth­er hotspots with­in 10 miles of me. How­ev­er, I own 2 prop­er­ties and have 2 fam­i­ly mem­bers, that when you map out our loca­tions rough­ly forms a rec­tan­gle that is 4 miles by 2 miles. Are we sim­ply too far apart? Or if we get our anten­nas up high enough will we be able to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er? Thanks so much for any advice you’re will­ing to offer!

  21. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Get ’em high enough and you’ll be fine. LoRa stands for Long Range; 4 miles is no prob­lem if you’ve got line of sight.

  22. Billy Avatar
    Billy

    Hi Nik, thanks for the arti­cle, i am about to order 5 devices, my city does­n’t have any hotspots, would it be ok to set them up 5–7km away from each oth­er? i have fam­i­ly and friends places that are approx­i­mate­ly 4–7 Km away from each oth­er, and can put the hotspots high­er than any oth­er build­ings, need you advice, thanks in advance

  23. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Bil­ly, that should be fine. Keep me post­ed, psy­ched to see how it turns out!

  24. Billy Avatar
    Billy

    Thanks for the quick replay ‚so i cal­cu­lat­ed the exact dis­tance , its as fol­lows, A—-B is 1.6Km B—C 2.7 km C—-D 7.1 Kmm D—E 5.3 Km E—F 6.5Km the are aliened like a straight line or more like a zig zag
    what are your thoughts, Gratitude .

  25. Billy Avatar
    Billy

    so the exact dis­tance between each points is as fol­lows, from A to B is 1.2km B‑C 2.3 Km C‑D 7 Km D‑E 5,6 Km E‑F 4,5 Km
    would this be fine? thanks in advance

  26. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Bil­ly, those all sound well with­in LoRa capa­bil­i­ties. Nice job mea­sur­ing it out, now you have to make sure you have as clear a line-of-sight as pos­si­ble between the hotspots.

  27. Billy Avatar
    Billy

    Thanks for the replay Nik, i have 2 oth­er ques­tions , the dis­tance varies between 1,5 km to 7 km max between points, some points has 1.5 km between each oth­er and some has 7km and some has 5,5 km
    would it be ok ?
    1- would it be prof­itable in a 3rd world coun­try? where peo­ple use only social media and basic gps apps
    2- can i hide my sig­nal from the heli­um map so no one can know my address ?
    these ques­tions are so impor­tant for me to decide weath­er to do it or not.

    Thanks a lot for the help

  28. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Bil­ly, no prob­lem. 1) It *should* be prof­itable any­where as long as you have enough hotspots and are even­tu­al­ly pass­ing data through them. 2) For now, you can’t hide your loca­tion on the Heli­um map. That may change in the future although no guar­an­tees, and there are minor workarounds for pri­va­cy-mind­ed invi­did­u­als. If you’d like more help I’d be hap­py to set up a con­sult­ing ses­sion with you and walk you through a superb deployment.

  29. Billy Avatar
    Billy

    Thanks again, for the replay, the prob­lem is that deal­ing with cryp­tocur­ren­cy is pro­hib­it­ed in my coun­try (which sucks of course) that’s why i was try­ing to fig­ure out if it is pos­si­ble to hide my loca­tion in case some haters or sick peo­ple try to do me harm , i mine Ethereum with 20 gpus and enjoy­ing it and real­ly lov­ing HNT , i did­nt under­stand what you mean by “there are minor workarounds for pri­va­cy-mind­ed invididuals”
    how to set­up a con­sult­ing session ?
    i left my email, give me a way to reach you please
    thank you

  30. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Bil­ly, here’s the con­sult­ing option: https://gristleking.com/life/helium-consulting

  31. How Much HNT Will My Hotspot Earn? | One man's search

    […] This should help you get a rough idea of how much you’ll make. For more on Heli­um Hotspot Opti­miza­tion you can read my guide over here. […]

  32. alf0 Avatar
    alf0

    Hey Nik, I’ve read it twice. Real­ly nice guide. As I under­stand you are not fan of indoors. I’m try­ing to set­up LoRA to my vil­lage with friends where cur­rent­ly there is no hs at all. Range will be max 2 km where some of them will be 400–500 meters to each oth­er. We already bought indoor once. it is flat area and there is no high build­ings around. Do you think it is gonna be prob­lem if we keep them indoor ?

  33. franco habre Avatar
    franco habre

    Hel­lo, I know in gen­er­al that it is advan­ta­geous to have a VPN established.
    Do you rec­om­mend hav­ing one while oper­at­ing the heli­um hotspot at home?

  34. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Fran­co,
    Good ques­tion, I’m not sure of the answer. If you’re already run­ning one you’re prob­a­bly fine to just add your HS onto the net­work, but again, I’m not total­ly sure.

  35. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Thanks Alf0! Depends on what build­ing mate­r­i­al is, where they are (wall or win­dow), how high (sec­ond floor/first floor), how far away they are from each oth­er. I’d spend the extra mon­ey & effort to get ’em out­side and up high.

  36. Ben Avatar
    Ben

    Hi Nik, real­ly appre­ci­ate the time and effort you’ve put into your Heli­um posts. Quick ques­tion — why do you rec­om­mend Par­ley Labs over the oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers? cheers, Ben

  37. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Bryan at Par­ley Labs is the only one of the manufacturers/distributors I’ve phys­i­cal­ly met and talked with. I’ve made mul­ti­ple pur­chas­es from them, both before and after meet­ing Bryan, and have always got­ten fast ser­vice, straight talk on what to expect both on tech & ship­ping dates, and very help­ful advice. The oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers aren’t bad, they’re just less known to me.

  38. alf0 Avatar
    alf0

    Hey Nik,

    Thanks for the reply.
    I’m con­fused about some­thing. You said there is no need to change default anten­na as a first step. But in the pho­tos you put, they use dif­fer­ent anten­na in the top of the pole and con­nect it to the hotspot. If we are using default anten­na, is that mean put the indoor one into ip66 case and locate the case itself at the top of the long pole in the roof?
    Or are we gonna take the default anten­na on the device and put it top of the pole?

  39. Alexandre Herculano Avatar
    Alexandre Herculano

    I Nick first of all real­ly good arti­cle! Con­grats. I live in Por­tu­gal and the heli­um are star­ing now here, I ordered a 5x nebra indoor and I will put them in a small city with 5 dif­fer­ent loca­tions +300m away but no more than 2km what you think about that? The indoor anten­na will work good? I Dont have any­one here with hotspot and I will put 5.

  40. alf0 Avatar
    alf0

    Hey Nik,

    Thanks for the reply.
    I’m con­fused about some­thing. You said there is no need to change default anten­na as a first step. But in the pho­tos you put, they use dif­fer­ent anten­na in the top of the pole and con­nect it to the hotspot. If we are using default anten­na, is that mean put the indoor one into ip66 case and locate the case itself at the top of the long pole in the roof?
    Or are we gonna take the default anten­na on the device and put it top of the pole?

  41. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Depends on your set up and con­straints. Your two basic options are to run a long eth­er­net cable to an out­door hotspot, then have a short anten­na cable run to the anten­na, OR have a short eth­er­net run to an indoor hotspot and then a long anten­na cable run to the the out­door antenna. 

    If you put your hotspot out­side, there’s extra work and expense that goes into weath­er­proof­ing it, but your anten­na cable will be short­er. If you put it inside you don’t have to weath­er­proof it, but your anten­na cable will be longer. The pho­tos are of hotspots opti­mized spe­cif­ic to their loca­tion. I’ve always felt it’s worth it to go through the extra effort of weath­er­proof­ing every­thing and hav­ing a short anten­na cable run, but oth­er hotspot own­ers have made it clear through their earn­ings that a short anten­na cable isn’t essen­tial. Again, remem­ber the order of impor­tance for earn­ings: Placement/location, ele­va­tion, anten­na, cables. 

    If you’re near (let’s say with­in 2 miles of) a bunch of oth­er hotspots, the stock anten­na will prob­a­bly be fine if you get the ele­va­tion up high and have good lines of sight. If you’re fur­ther out you’ll want to real­ly start look­ing at dif­fer­ent anten­nas and their radi­a­tion pat­terns in order to find the one that works for you.

  42. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hard to give you a def­i­nite “Yes that’ll work” or “No that won’t”, BUT if you’re putting ’em in a small city with loca­tions between 300m — 2 km apart AND they all have clear line of sight to each oth­er, you should be fine from a place­ment per­spec­tive. See the Cypress exam­ple at the bot­tom of the “How much will my hotspot earn” article. 

    As far as indoor vs out­door anten­na, it’s always bet­ter to get your anten­na out­side the build­ing. If you need spe­cif­ic help with this deploy­ment, check out my Con­sult­ing page.

  43. alf0 Avatar
    alf0

    Hel­lo,

    It’s nebra indoor plas­tic 2dbi tiny antenna.
    I haven’t seen any exam­ple in youtube or google using it as a out­door anten­na. Is it gonna be fine to put it top of the pole?
    Thanks

  44. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sor­ry, I mis­un­der­stood. Check with Nebra to make sure. In this case you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter served with an out­door rat­ed antenna.

  45. Helium, Explained (ELI5) | One man's search

    […] Will a Heli­um Hotspot be able to pen­e­trate low?e glass? Yes, but the sig­nal will be damp­ened. It’s always best to get your anten­na out­side and up high. More on that here. […]

  46. Illhireyou Avatar
    Illhireyou

    I just spent way too much on a sec­ond min­er after tremen­dous suc­cess with a shared min­er with my friend. I should have a decent spot but am lit­er­al­ly min­ing 100x less than my first spot even though I seem to have a bet­ter loca­tion. How much does it cost to hire you??

  47. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Con­sult­ing ser­vices found here.

  48. Anton Avatar
    Anton

    Hey man! Thank you for this update its much need­ed! Why do you think that min­ing will become hard­er and dil­lut­ed? Isn the rea­son for bet­ter rewards wider data trans­fer? So the big­ger the net­work the wider the data trans­fer, the wider the data trans­fer the big­ger the rewards? Did I miss some­thing? Thank you for your answer in advance!

  49. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Rewards will dilute in large part due to the mas­sive growth of the net­work. Over time we may see the data start to pay off, but it won’t be any­thing like the first, oh, 12 months of rewards for HS on Helium.

  50. Anton Prekpalaj Avatar
    Anton Prekpalaj

    So becouse of the expo­nen­tial grow of the net­work the rawards will be less­er becouse of what? Data will be scarced or what? Can you elab­o­rate a bit, becouse i thought “the big­ger the net­work the big­ger the rewards”?

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