Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

What’s The Best Antenna For Your Helium Hotspot?

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by

Nik
in

Here is a step by step method for under­stand­ing how to choose the best anten­na for your hotspot place­ment. Each place­ment demands a well matched anten­na in order to pro­vide val­ue to the Heli­um Net­work and con­se­quent­ly earn the most HNT pos­si­ble for that loca­tion. Do NOT, by the way, try to get the giant anten­na in the pic­ture below. While it looks huge and cool and rad, it is the wrong anten­na to use for these deploy­ments. I spent a fair amount of blood and trea­sure to learn that les­son. You don’t need to. 

First: Hotspot place­ment opti­miza­tion is FAR more impor­tant than what anten­na you use, more on that here.

High Mountain antenna placement for Helium in the backcountry of San Diego

Sec­ond, for those of you who just want AN ANSWER: Sim­ple: Pick from the McGill selec­tion. They’ll all work well. 

Put it out­doors at least 10′ above all the build­ings around you. Run 40′ or less of LMR400 cable to it from your hotspot. If you have to go more than 40′, use LMR600 if you’re feel­ing extrav­a­gant. That’ll prob­a­bly get you 80% of the results you could get with far more effort and expertise. 

Wait, you want to actu­al­ly learn and match your anten­na to your sit­u­a­tion so you get the max­i­mum rewards possible?

Ok, let’s start with broad strokes: The anten­na you choose for your hotspot place­ment should match your topog­ra­phy, your ele­va­tion, and your lines of sight.

Let’s start with topog­ra­phy. Topog­ra­phy refers to the build­ings, earth, and water that sur­round, chan­nel, and block your radio sig­nals (prop­a­ga­tion.) The top­ic of radio prop­a­ga­tion involves a tremen­dous­ly deep dive all the way down to the fun­da­men­tals of physics, but we’ll keep it pret­ty simple.

BLUF (Bot­tom Line Up Front) — The flat­ter your topog­ra­phy AND the more trees/vegetation you have block­ing your Line of Sight to oth­er hotspots, the high­er gain anten­na you can use, up to 9 dbi.

Remem­ber, topog­ra­phy isn’t just hills and moun­tains, it includes build­ings, trees, and oth­er obstacles. 

Ok, let’s get dirty! In gen­er­al, earth in the form of moun­tains or hills will block radio sig­nals. Even though a hotspot may seem very close to you, if there’s a hill between the two of you, you prob­a­bly won’t wit­ness each other.

You may check out your loca­tion on the Heli­um Explor­er Cov­er­age map and think you’re per­fect­ly posi­tioned in regards to near­by hotspots, like this:

Remem­ber to check Google Earth!

See how that spot is tucked into a bunch of hills? Unless you put up an anten­na that’ll stick over the top of the hills, you’re restrict­ed to wit­ness­ing only oth­er hotspots in your imme­di­ate area, and in this case, that area is small!

One of the best tools to use when assess­ing a new site is Heli­umVi­sion. Remem­ber, loca­tion is FAR more impor­tant than anten­nas. If you’d like to learn more about Heli­umVi­sion (I use it in every one of my con­sults) I’ve built a Mas­ter Class on it, over here.

Ok, so that’s earth. Earth = No Radio Waves Get­ting Through.

What about build­ings? How much will build­ings block or reduce the pow­er of radio propagation? 

Accord­ing to a study done in 2012 on a wide swath of build­ing mate­ri­als and focus­ing on the GSM 900 MHz band, a rein­forced con­crete wall that is 20cm / ~8″ thick will atten­u­ate the sig­nal by 27 dB. An inte­ri­or plas­ter wall will reduce pow­er by any­where from .8 to 3 dB.

What does that mean? Dis­claimer: RF geeks, I’ma get loose with terms here. Relax.

This reduc­tion in pow­er is called “atten­u­a­tion.” In gen­er­al with radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions, you don’t want any atten­u­a­tion. Atten­u­a­tion can hap­pen with earth, build­ings, forests, and even win­dow coat­ings. How much pow­er will you lose? Let’s run some numbers.

Amer­i­can based hotspots start off by push­ing out 27 dBm. Euro­pean and oth­er areas start WAY low­er, at 14. Add the gain (dBi) from your anten­na and sub­tract the loss­es from any con­nec­tions to fig­ure out your Effec­tive Isotrop­ic Radi­at­ed Pow­er (EIRP).

That means a 6 dBi anten­na will give you 33 dBm of EIRP with a US hotspot. 27dBm + 6dBi = 33dBm in the direc­tion of anten­na gain. Now you’ve got to cal­cu­late cable and con­nec­tion loss.

As a rough rule of thumb, each con­nec­tion (hotspot to anten­na cable, anten­na cable to anten­na, or going through an enclo­sure wall using a con­nec­tor) will drop your EIRP by .5 dB. Cable loss­es vary by cable, which is why most peo­ple use a “low loss” cable like LMR400. If you want to run your EIRP num­bers, here’s how.

Ok, ok, ok, why does it mat­ter whether or not you know your EIRP? 

Let’s take a short detour into dBm and pow­er. dBm is based on a log­a­rith­mic scale. For every increase of 3 dBm, there is twice as much pow­er out­put. Every increase of 10 dBm has a ten­fold increase in pow­er. The dif­fer­ence between a 3 dBi anten­na (what most hotspots ship with) and an after­mar­ket 9 dBi anten­na is a fac­tor of 4! 

Of course, that 4x pow­er comes at a cost; the beam is focused; more laser and less light­bulb. That means that unless you aim your anten­na very care­ful­ly, you can blast all that pow­er into places that have no hotspots.

Here is a great exam­ple demon­strat­ing atten­u­a­tion and topog­ra­phy. This hotspot is placed on the north side inside a build­ing. It’s up high with a high­er gain anten­na, and in gen­er­al, inac­cu­rate­ly aimed over most of the near­by hotspots.

Most of the wit­ness­es it’s get­ting are fur­ther north. Some of the sig­nals bounce off to the side, prov­ing that “RF is weird.” 

To the south, the sig­nals are blocked or atten­u­at­ed by inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or walls, but appar­ent­ly there is a small win­dow or open­ing where those weak­ened sig­nals are escap­ing, then going pret­ty far over the water. Pret­ty neat, right? I mean, not for the hotspot own­er, but it’s a neat demon­stra­tion of the concept.

That image is also a great exam­ple of why you should nev­er put a hotspot anten­na inside; you are los­ing a ton of pow­er before the radio waves ever get out­side the building.

Water allows radio sig­nals to trav­el much fur­ther than nor­mal; look at any hotspot next to a body of water and you’ll see it will con­nect with oth­er hotspots at much fur­ther ranges across the water than it will across land. 

Let’s not get too into the weeds here. As I said at the begin­ning, the gen­er­al rule for topog­ra­phy is this: The flat­ter your topog­ra­phy, the high­er gain anten­na you can use, up to 9 dBi for 95% of place­ments. Beyond 9 the pat­tern gen­er­al­ly gets too pre­cise to pro­vide the Wide cov­er­age (the W in WUPU) that we want.

Remem­ber, topog­ra­phy includes not just hills, moun­tains, and water, but all the build­ings, bridges, and oth­er struc­tures that might block your radio sig­nal. Cities in gen­er­al do not have a flat topog­ra­phy, even if they’re built on flat land. All those spiky build­ings stick­ing out will gob­ble up your radio signals.

That brings us to ELEVATION. If you want to bend your mind a lit­tle bit, think about this: The high­er your ele­va­tion, the flat­ter the rel­a­tive topog­ra­phy is, and the LOWER dbi anten­na you can use. Wait, what?

Remem­ber, a high dbi anten­na focus­es the sig­nal of your anten­na. In an omni anten­na (we’ll get to direc­tion­al or sec­tor anten­nas in a minute), that shape becomes a flat­ter and flat­ter plane. If that plane is super flat, it’ll fly right over the tops of all those hotspots you want to hit. Let’s go through 3 examples.

Now, those aren’t how it *actu­al­ly* works. The gain pat­terns are nowhere near as dif­fer­ent, and a high gain anten­na will STILL hit the ground with­in 1,000′ of even a 100′ build­ing. Still, you can see why in *most* cas­es, you want a low or medi­um gain anten­na up high.

You can also run that idea back­wards; if you’re in a real­ly flat area where you don’t have a lot of obsta­cles, a high gain anten­na might be your best bet. Still, most peo­ple don’t live in the desert, and the flat­test state in Amer­i­ca has a ton of trees on it. If that’s your sce­nario, get a high gain (6–9 dBi) anten­na up over the tops of those trees for max­i­mum coverage. 

That brings us in a round­about way to Lines of Sight. Remem­ber that $39 paper I quot­ed ear­li­er regard­ing how much RF ener­gy a giv­en build­ing mate­r­i­al would absorb? The gen­er­al take­away for us Heli­um Hotspot own­ers is this: Our anten­nas won’t blast through much more than 2 build­ings.

That means if you’re INSIDE the build­ing, you’ve burned most of the ener­gy of the anten­na just get­ting out­side the walls. If it hits just one more “thing”, whether it’s a build­ing, a tree, or a bill­board, that’s prob­a­bly the end of the line.

This “Lines of Sight” idea has an impor­tant impli­ca­tion in under­stand­ing how some of the top earn­ing hotspot/antenna com­bos are doing so well. The hotspot Docile Bone Pony* (when this was writ­ten, one of the high­est earn­ers in the world) is on top of a 16 sto­ry build­ing in a major city with a medium/high gain anten­na (8 dbi from eBay on 60′ of LMR400.) It has Lines of Sight to a lot of oth­er hotspots, BUT those oth­er hotspots don’t have great lines of sight to oth­er hotspots around ’em.

That means that DBP is see­ing a lot of hotspots that AREN’T see­ing a lot of hotspots. I’m going to anthro­po­mor­phize this a bit, but their only option is to com­mu­ni­cate with DBP. So they do. And DBP earns like crazy. It’s an exam­ple of the incred­i­ble earn­ing poten­tial that exists when pro­vid­ing asym­met­ric val­ue to the network.

While we’re on Lines of Sight, let’s talk about the range of a stan­dard hotspot. Accord­ing to some excel­lent work done by the inim­itable @para1 on Dis­cord, most hotspots do most of their wit­ness­ing with­in a 10km range. Now, an in depth dis­cus­sion of the impli­ca­tions and restric­tions of this table is beyond the scope of this arti­cle, but your gen­er­al take­away should be “Opti­mize your anten­na for hot­pots with­in 10 km” aka most peo­ple don’t need a high gain antenna.

@para1’s table, post­ed in Discord

I’ll dou­ble tap this range thing with an exam­ple of a hotspot I run, which has a 3 dBi HNTen­na on top of a 20′ pole on top of a ~30′ build­ing. It *rou­tine­ly* gets wit­ness­es over 200km away. While it seems that a high gain anten­na will get you bet­ter range, it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter. It’s Line of Sight that is the secret here.

Final­ly, Lines of Sight can be blocked by forests. Depend­ing on who you lis­ten to, LoRa does­n’t go through much more than 60 meters of dense for­est. I’m sor­ry rur­al Flori­da, you’ve just got a tough row to hoe on that one. Dense for­est in between you and oth­er anten­nas is about the only time a high­er gain (up to 9 dBi) makes sense, and even then it may not make a giant dif­fer­ence. Forests are RF sinks.

There is one more thing to think about with Lines of Sight. The 900 MHz fre­quen­cy needs some run­way, ide­al­ly 50′/15m to fan out enough to dif­fract around obsta­cles. Read that again and you’ll have an advan­tage over every­one who does­n’t get that concept.

The con­cept of Fres­nel zones and dif­frac­tion in radio wave com­mu­ni­ca­tion is one of the fun­da­men­tal dri­vers of the “RF is weird” refrain you’ll hear when­ev­er you see a pat­tern that does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly make sense. Basi­cal­ly, the fur­ther out your radio waves go, the more they can spread out along their radi­a­tion pat­tern, the less like­ly that all of the waves get blocked, and the more like­ly that at least some of ’em will get to anoth­er hotspot. 

At some dis­tance they’re so spread out that you’re basi­cal­ly not going to make a con­nec­tion, so the effec­tive “win­dow” shrinks back down. Like this:

Check out RadioMo­bile to get deep on Fres­nel zones.

If you set up your anten­na so that you’ve got lots of clear space around it before it hits obsta­cles, those radios waves have enough spread to start “bend­ing around” those obsta­cles. This is yet anoth­er rea­son not to set up inside. 

Here’s anoth­er “I def­i­nite­ly did­n’t go to art school” draw­ing to demon­strate the idea of run­way and diffraction.

If you give those radio waves some room to spread out, they can get around obsta­cles. Let ’em breathe!

Ok, we’ve got one more thing to con­sid­er before wrap­ping up. Many of you will have been scour­ing ham radio sites to fig­ure out how to improve the range of your anten­na. Keep in mind that the goal of many ham radio oper­a­tors is incred­i­ble range, but that can come at the cost of broad cov­er­age. Doing exact­ly what a ham oper­a­tor does may give you the results they want, not what you want.

YOU want to hit as many high scale hotspots as pos­si­ble. You’ll usu­al­ly do that by using a low gain anten­na up high, with clear lines of sight all around.

Remem­ber, you’ll earn the most by deliv­er­ing the most valu­able & prov­able cov­er­age to the net­work. The con­cept is sim­ple. The exe­cu­tion can be com­pli­cat­ed. If you want help with get­ting the max­i­mum val­ue out of your place­ments or strat­e­gy, I’m avail­able for hire.

For those of you who skipped all that and just want to know what anten­na to get, here are 4 gen­er­al­ly good options for the 3 most com­mon scenarios.

  1. In a build­ing in the city? Get an out­door HNTen­na or a McGill in the 3–6 dBi range, put it out­side up as high as you can.
  2. In a build­ing where you just can’t get up high? Use the stock anten­na that came with your hotspot. Also, find a bet­ter place­ment loca­tion. You did read about that, right?
  3. In a sub­ur­ban house? Get either the HNTen­na or a McGill in the 3–6 dBi range and put it on a pole out­side and up high.
  4. On a moun­tain where you can’t pos­si­ble trans­mit behind you (because the moun­tain will block your sig­nal) and you have an enor­mous view of civ­i­liza­tion and your near­est hotspot is more than 5 miles away? Try a 8–9 dBi patch anten­na, like these.

I’ll round this out with what to def­i­nite­ly NOT do. Don’t just look at the gain of an anten­na and think high­er is bet­ter. Don’t both­er with Yagi anten­nas. Final­ly, don’t wor­ry too much about your anten­na. In the big pic­ture of earn­ings, it is FAR more impor­tant to have good place­ment and ele­va­tion. The fan­ci­est, coolest, most high tech anten­na in the world won’t get you much if you’re in a crap­py loca­tion down low.

Best of luck with your place­ment and earn­ings, I’m stoked to be a part of this amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty! If you’re look­ing for work in the Heli­um ecosys­tem, check out  Heli­um Jobs. You can post and find jobs there, help sup­port the ecosys­tem by mak­ing it eas­i­er to con­nect pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and let the world know that YOU exist and want to help con­tribute with­in the Net­work. Rock on!

Resources and Further Reading

A deep­er dive into under­stand­ing how RF works.

Cal­cu­lat­ing RF Pow­er Val­ues (explains why a 6 dBi anten­na dou­bles your power)

900 MHz: The Wire­less Work­horse. (Prob­a­bly why Heli­um chose LoRa)

List of Helium Hotspots & Their Antennas

Before you read this and assume that you must have a high gain anten­na in order to get great earn­ings, please keep in mind that these hotspot own­ers are gen­er­al­ly tin­ker­ers and often have some exper­tise in RF the­o­ry. The results are a lit­tle skewed because of that.

UPDATE: Heli­umVi­sion now reports this for all hotspot own­ers who have entered this on Heli­um app. I’ve closed sub­mis­sions on this page. 

Docile Bone Pony — Ele­va­tion: 16 sto­ries, Area: Greater Boston, MA. Anten­na: 8 dbi omni from eBay, Cables: 60′ of LMR400

Sweet Sage Pike — Ele­va­tion: 43′ above ground, Area: San Diego, CA. Anten­na: Near­son 9, Cables: 5′ of LMR400

Chilly Blood Mon­goose — Ele­va­tion: 41′ above ground, Area: San Diego, CA. Anten­na: Laird FG9026 (6 dbi), Cables: 5′ of LMR400

Lucky Men­thol Wasp — Ele­va­tion: 60′ above ground, Area: San Diego, CA. Anten­na: RAK 5.8 dbi, Cables: 11′ LMR400

Nice Lip­stick Chim­panzee — Ele­va­tion: 25′ above ground, Area: San Fran­cis­co, CA. Anten­na: RFMAX | ROSA-900-SNF, Cables: 5′ LMR240

Inter­est­ing Pearl Star­ling — Ele­va­tion: 35′ above ground, Area: North Shore, MA. Anten­na: RAK 5.8 dbi, Cables: RAK pig­tail inter­face con­vert­er bun­dled with antenna

Jumpy Iron Fer­ret — Ele­va­tion: 34th sto­ry, Area: Chica­go, IL. Anten­na: Stock, Cables: N/A. Indoor setup.

Kind Infrared Lynx — Ele­va­tion: 15′ above ground, Area: Den­ver, CO. Anten­na: Tao­glas 8 dbi. Cables: 15′ LMR400

Lucky Dijon Scal­lop — Ele­va­tion: 33′ above ground. Area: Engle­wood, CO. Anten­na: RAK 8 dbi. Cables: RAK pig­tail cable

Sticky Pear Dol­phin — Ele­va­tion: 311′ above ground (moun­tain). Area: San Fran­cis­co, CA. Anten­na: Oukeione 3 dbi. Cables: Bingfu

Petite Men­thol Leop­ard — Ele­va­tion 25′. Area: Napa, CA. Anten­na: 5.8 RAK. Cables: Bingfu

Best Tan­ger­ine Racoon — Ele­va­tion: Sec­ond Floor Win­dow. Area: Bay­onne, NJ Anten­na: Stock 3 dBi Cables: 1m pigtail

Warm Juniper Pan­ther — Ele­va­tion: 4th floor rooftop. Area: Bay­onne, NJ Anten­na: Near­son 9 dBi. Cables: 4′ LMR400

Scrawny Egg­plant Pan­da — Ele­va­tion: 35′ Area: Lake­wood, OH Anten­na 4 dBi Mul­ti­pole Cables: N/A

Ancient Cider Grasshop­per — Ele­va­tion: 40′ Area: Kansas City, MO Anten­na: RAK Wire­less 8 dBi Cables: 30′ LMR400

Oblong Slate Platy­pus — Ele­va­tion: 400′ Area: New York City, NY Anten­na: Prox­i­cast 10 dBi Cables: LMR400

Ripe Banana Gob­lin — Ele­va­tion: 2nd floor win­dow Area: Van­cou­ver, BC Anten­na: Stock 3 dBi Cables: N/A

Trendy Rain­bow Lizard — Ele­va­tion: 1st floor win­dow Area: Van­cou­ver, BC Anten­na: Stock 3 dBi Cables: N/A

Striped Pewter Osprey — Ele­va­tion: 20′ Area: Los Ange­les, CA Anten­na: RAk 5.8 Cables: LMR400

Comments

492 responses to “What’s The Best Antenna For Your Helium Hotspot?”

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

    […] HUNDRED DOLLARS to spend! I want to make the MOST mon­ey. Ok, ok, relax. Read this arti­cle on how to match your Heli­um hotspot place­ment with your anten­na. Buy any of the anten­nas that Par­ley­Labs sells. That’ll prob­a­bly make you feel better […]

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

  3. How to take your Helium Hotspot off grid | One man's search

    […] from my expe­ri­ence and stick with a more appro­pri­ate anten­na. You’ll prob­a­bly nev­er thank me because you won’t know the ass-pain you’re missing, […]

  4. John Avatar
    John

    Hel­lo there,
    I would like to ask you what anten­na would best suit my future Hotspot. I’m in Toron­to Ontario, 12th floor in a build­ing of 20 floors. What is the best anten­na for a bal­cony with noth­ing in front of me fac­ing an open area. With only with very low houses.

  5. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi John, you might want a direc­tion­al, though an omni would prob­a­bly be cheap­er & eas­i­er and less fid­gety while being (in most cas­es) just as good. Real­ly depends on local topog­ra­phy and den­si­ty. This arti­cle should have point­ed you in the right direc­tion. If you need more help, I’m avail­able for hire.

  6. The Top 5 Mistakes to avoid with your Helium Hotspot | One man's search

    […] go through some vari­a­tion of “What’s the best anten­na, mon­ey is no object?” Please read the post on anten­nas to learn why that’s not a high-earning […]

  7. Leon Avatar
    Leon

    Hel­lo Nik,

    Won­der­ful arti­cle. I’m in Europe so does that mean I need to have a high­er db anten­na to get sim­i­lar results?

    (Euro­pean and oth­er areas start low­er, at 14. Add the gain (dBi) from your anten­na and sub­tract the loss­es from any con­nec­tions to fig­ure out your Effec­tive Isotrop­ic Radi­at­ed Pow­er (EIRP).

    And do you have any rec­om­mend­ed anten­nas like the 1 you’re using but for Euro­pean frequency?

  8. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Leon, thanks. Nope, you’re restrict­ed by Euro law to low­er pow­er set­tings. Don’t sweat it too much, just look for an anten­na appro­pri­ate for your set­up. Usu­al­ly a 5–6 dBi omni is your best bet.

  9. John Watkins Avatar
    John Watkins

    Your arti­cle was very help­ful as it was­n’t too tech­ni­cal for the aver­age hotspot own­er. I have been exper­i­ment­ing with my set­up a lit­tle. One thing your arti­cle did­n’t address is the effect the antigam­ing mea­sures have on inval­i­dat­ing wit­ness­es because your sig­nal is too strong. Inside stock anten­na, I can wit­ness 3 hotspots and my clos­est is invalid at 360m. I put a 5.8dbi on my roof so it is now 35′ above ground. Now, all of the hotspots I wit­nessed before are invalid most of the time with high SNR. I picked up some addi­tion­al so it is pret­ty much a wash as far as rewards. It has been sug­gest­ed that I put up a 3dbi to lessen invalids clos­er to me. An alter­na­tive would be put up an 8dbi to pick up more fur­ther hotspots and write off the clos­er ones. I have a bunch more on order and want to max­i­mize things like every­one else. The 1 I have now is Blur­ry Virid­i­an Gold­fish. I have a 3dbi and 8dbi on order. Thanks!

  10. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Right on. Sounds like the stock up high will be a bet­ter option, espe­cial­ly if you have a ton of hotspots close enough to hit with that “gen­er­al” 3dBi pat­tern (say, 8–10 km). You’re spot on re. anti-gam­ing which is in gen­er­al why I wrote the arti­cle; too many peo­ple think “high­er dBi = bet­ter anten­na” and it’s just not the case, for mul­ti­ple rea­sons. One thing to think about is that your HS is pro­cess­ing zero data trans­fer. Anec­do­tal­ly that results in low­er earn­ings. Pro tip: Add a Heli­um sen­sor near­by to track some­thing you might be inter­est­ed in, which will start push­ing data through and make your HS nom­i­nal­ly more use­ful. Remem­ber, an HS is most valu­able when it’s pro­vid­ing cov­er­age that meets all 4 of the fol­low­ing: 1) Wide 2) Use­ful 3) Prov­able 4) Unique. #wupu

  11. Jimmy Avatar
    Jimmy

    any rec­om­men­da­tion for anten­na around Man­hat­tan or NYC in gen­er­al? if i use the anten­na that came with it, would it still be prof­itable or is it some­thing i should spend extra bucks for anten­na? thanks

  12. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Jim­my,
    The short ver­sion is that Man­hat­tan isn’t a great place to put in a hotspot, it’s already well cov­ered. The only rea­son would be if you have access to the top (roof top) of one of the high­est build­ings and can exe­cute a Canyons & Crags strat­e­gy. If that’s the case, you’d still want to stay under 8 dBi.

  13. Action Jackson Avatar
    Action Jackson

    Hi Nik
    Thanks for explain­ing in detail. I’m new into all this and wait­ing on my ship­ment of 2 nebra, I saw all these peo­ple post­ing videos of super­charg­ing, and thought of dig­ging up some more info. Im in Rich­mond BC Can. Right next to the riv­er, on the oth­er side is Van. And van side is on a high stretch­ing out in high­er ele­va­tion. Which dbi will u rec­om­mend? 5.8? 6?7?8

  14. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Action Jack­son :). The 5.8 is fine for most install­ments. Super­charg­ing sounds like fizzy mar­ket­ing, there’s not real­ly any­thing you can do on the hard­ware side that’ll make a difference.

  15. Stephen Refsnes Avatar
    Stephen Refsnes

    Love this Arti­cle, its amaz­ing, THANK YOU! I was just won­der­ing how long anten­na-cable can i have from my hotspot to my 5.8 dBi anten­na, with­out los­ing its signal/power or what i should call it. Thanks!

  16. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Thank you Stephen. Up to 60′ of LMR400 has been test­ed and works well, scroll down to the bot­tom of the arti­cle for exam­ple setups.

  17. Stephen Refsnes Avatar
    Stephen Refsnes

    Can i ask one more ques­tion? I found a 33 foot RP-SMA cable here in Nor­way, Its a RG316, low sig­nal loss, 50 ?.
    Will this cable not work as good as your LMR400, or is it almost the same cable? 🙂 Thanks!

  18. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sure. LMR400 will be a bet­ter choice, with atten­u­a­tion (loss) of 3.9 dB/100 feet. RG316 isn’t the right cable to use, loss will be 27.2 dB/100′. These guys say they ship Heli­um spe­cif­ic cables through­out Europe.

  19. RynoShark Avatar
    RynoShark

    If you are on the shore of a big lake with few hotspots on your side, but many num­bers 5–10 miles away in line of site, would a high-gain anten­na make more sense? It seems like a high gain, 50–100′ off the sur­face of the water would make sense. Then per­haps find a loca­tion near­by (900 ft+ away) to install a sep­a­rate short gain min­er to cap­i­tal­ize on pro­vid­ing bet­ter local net­work ser­vice in the long term.

  20. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Maybe, though it would­n’t have to be super high gain. 5.8 dBi should be fine. LoRa goes a long way. 🙂

  21. Dylan Avatar
    Dylan

    Hi, I live in the Nether­lands and is very flat over here, there are a lot of build­ing tho, Can I use a 8dbi omni anten­na if i place at the window?
    I want to use this anten­na: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B017RMFY2W/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A23O0K3F9INFH2&psc=1
    (trans­late it from Ger­man to English)
    Do you think it is any good? I want to place one at a win­dow on the 3th floor and one some­where else on the 5th floor

    Thank You for your answer, Dylan

  22. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Dylan, you *can* use that anten­na, but if you put your efforts into get­ting the anten­na out­side you’ll be able to pro­vide much bet­ter cov­er­age than focus­ing on what anten­na to buy.

  23. Ri?ards Eglitis Avatar
    Ri?ards Eglitis

    Just want­ed to say big thanks for the invest­ment in this artickle!

  24. Linus Avatar
    Linus

    Hi,
    I ordered a Bob­cat min­er 300. Do you have any rec­om­men­da­tions for anten­nas for this miner?
    LG

  25. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Will total­ly depend on your deploy­ment. *Most* of the time you’ll be fine with a stock anten­na, and it’s usu­al­ly pret­ty easy/cheap to swap out antennas.

  26. Mano Avatar
    Mano

    Hi Nik,
    Thank you for shar­ing your expertise.
    I live in rur­al area with the ocean just a 30 sec­ond dri­ve from me. I am on a hill which allows me to get a panoram­ic ocean­view. There are 3 hotspots 3.7 miles from me. I don’t think there is any major obstruc­tion between my house and the hotspots. Should I start with the stock anten­na or get the 5.8 dbi? Also, what is a good 5.8 dbi cable for Bobcat.

    I am wait­ing for my min­ers to arrive but will def­i­nite­ly hire you for more advise. Cheers

  27. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Mano,
    With a panoram­ic view and HS with­in 5 miles the stock anten­na will be fine to start with. If you want to fid­dle with it you can pick­up a 5.8 dBi or low­er, but there’s no huge need. Biggest step will be mak­ing sure your HS is outside.

  28. Adrian Avatar
    Adrian

    Hel­lo liv­ing in a house in toron­to ontario, what anten­na should i get? only one floor + base­ment and my set­up would be basement.

  29. Paul Avatar
    Paul

    Great arti­cle, thanks! I’m locat­ed on a hill (80m), about 4km from the near­by town. All the hotspots I’m like­ly to con­nect to will be in the town, rough­ly with­in a 60 degree arc, between 4–10km distant.
    Is my best bet an 8dbi omni­di­rec­tion­al anten­na, or is there some­thing direc­tion­al that might work bet­ter? Thanks.

  30. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Paul, your best bet with that dis­tance and ele­va­tion is a low­er gain anten­na. At 8 dBi you’re more like­ly to break the RSSI/SNR bound­aries Heli­um has set, result­ing in invalid wit­ness­es and low­er earn­ings. You could do a direc­tion­al anten­na, but the omnis will work well and are usu­al­ly eas­i­er to install.

  31. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Adri­an, start by read­ing this arti­cle.

  32. john dunne Avatar
    john dunne

    Great arti­cle, Thank you for your help! Can you low­er your high dbi anten­na to per­form like a low­er abi anten­na? For exam­ple if you bought a 10dbi anten­na but want­ed a 8dbi sig­nal instead will using the “cable loss for­mu­la” help bring your anten­na down to per­form like a nor­mal 8dbi anten­na?? So a 12dbi anten­na with 32 ft of rg58 will per­form like 7ish dbi antenna?
    Thank you!!
    John

  33. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    It’ll have the same radi­a­tion pat­tern, just won’t go as far. I’m not sure why you’d want that.

  34. Post Avatar
    Post

    This is a great resource. Thanks for shar­ing. I recent­ly got an installed an anten­na based on this infor­ma­tion. Aside from (hope­ful­ly) see­ing high­er rewards, how can I know that my set­up is bet­ter than the stock set­up? Is there some­where on Explor­er I should be looking?

  35. AM Avatar
    AM

    Hey Nik, thanks, this is a very use­ful arti­cle. I am based in Lon­don UK and have access to the roof of our apart­ment block, which is 20m high. I intend to posi­tion the hotspot on the chim­ney with a pow­ered cable run­ning to the router. Main­ly to get addi­tion­al height I was going to get a 5.8dBi anten­na, does this sound about right, or should I stick with 3dBi anten­na? Thanks in advance

  36. misk Avatar
    misk

    I will use three devices 1 kilo apart, but the devices will be inside homes. Do you think things will be good with the attached anten­na 4dbi bobcat

  37. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Not real­ly, that’s one of the things with anten­nas; you don’t *real­ly* know if it worked until you watch the earn­ings for a while. Usu­al­ly 7 day is the min­i­mum, although if you have rad­i­cal dif­fer­ences that last at least 4 days that’s a pret­ty strong indi­ca­tion as well. Great work on get­ting an anten­na up!

  38. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Depends on how much high­er you’ll be than HS around you. If you’re way high­er and want to real­ly reach out, the 5.8 might be a bet­ter bet, but I’d prob­a­bly go with stock just to get that “globe” radi­a­tion pat­tern in the city.

  39. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Prob­a­bly. Depends on what the actu­al Line of Sight is. Almost always bet­ter to get ’em outside.

  40. Aaron Gooch Avatar
    Aaron Gooch

    Hi NIK, which anten­na would you rec­om­mend for a hotspot locat­ed in a sub­ur­ban envi­ron­ment with many many tall pine trees sur­round­ing all of the hous­es. I’m only going to be able to ele­vate the anten­na to about 20–30 feet which is well below the tree line. The only thing I can find in stock at a decent price is an 8 dbi Rak anten­na. Will this help pen­e­trate the for­est around me? I also ordered a 5.8 direct from Rak but no telling when it will arrive. Thanks!

  41. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    The RAK 8 should be OK. Anten­nas are rel­a­tive­ly cheap com­pared to earn­ings, so it’s usu­al­ly OK to buy one and if it does­n’t work you can switch it out. Keep me post­ed on how it goes, I’m curi­ous about real-world for­est pen­e­tra­tion at these freqs.

  42. Aaron Gooch Avatar
    Aaron Gooch

    Sounds good. I’ll be back in a cou­ple of weeks with an update.

  43. AG Avatar
    AG

    Nik, will you look at Pet Brunette Ele­phant and tell me how you think this hotspot own­er is doing this? This hot spot is about 1.5 miles due south of my soon to be loca­tion. Thanks

  44. lucy osinski Avatar
    lucy osinski

    Amaz­ing arti­cle and infor­ma­tion wow thank you! I live in San­ta Mon­i­ca pret­ty high up far from hills in a sub­ur­ban area. Can’t decide between a 5.8 or 8dbi , any advice?

  45. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Looks like a direc­tion­al anten­na to me. I’d go with an omni if I were you, unless you’re backed up to a hill with no over the back.

  46. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Lucy, go with the 5.8. :). That’s usu­al­ly the best answer, though it can depend on how far away you are and what is in the way and what’s behind you.

  47. Todd Wise Avatar
    Todd Wise

    Nik, this is the best info I’ve found! Thank you! I pur­chased a BOBCAT MINER 300, my ter­rain is rel­a­tive­ly flat with the near­est hotspots about 7km away. Not sure if I should get a 5.8 or 8dbi omni?

  48. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Todd, glad you’re find­ing it use­ful. Either one should work pret­ty well, I’d go with the 5.8 just to avoid any poten­tial clip­ping from being out­side the RSSI/SNR para­me­ters Heli­um has. Tech­ni­cal­ly I’d prob­a­bly buy both and test ’em, but that’s just me. 🙂

  49. Oreoninja Avatar
    Oreoninja

    Hey Nik. Appre­ci­ate the use­ful info. I’ve added 2 of my hotspots to the list form to help the com­mu­ni­ty. If the House WiFi isn’t strong enough to get to the hotspot, do you think it’d be bet­ter to get a repeater/extender and hope to tack­let it or get a portable wifi usb hotspot? A portable wifi hotspot would cost ~$60 to buy and ~$50/month to run (Cana­di­an data providers are expensive)

  50. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Inter­est­ing, I’m not sure about the exten­der. In gen­er­al I avoid WiFi con­nec­tions to hotspots at (most) costs. If you try it please let me know how it goes!

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