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. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Hey Nik!
    So we final­ly got out heli­um anten­na up. We are using the HNTen­na you sug­gest­ed. How long does it take to notice a dif­fer­ence. It has­n’t been 24 hours yet and I would describe myself as a patient per­son, but in this case I’m hav­ing anx­i­ety lol. We had 4 wit­ness­es before when we had it installed at the win­dow sill. We still have 4 wit­ness­es but lost 2 of the old wit­ness­es to the south of us and gained 2 more. So we are still at 4 wit­ness­es. I am think­ing of going with a high­er deci­bel anten­na of this doeant work out for us. If so I am won­der­ing if we could sell this one. You inter­est­ed? Lol. How impor­tant is loca­tion NSEW rel­a­tive to your hotspots installing above roof? Just curi­ous. Should I give this anten­na more time and see what hap­pens? It was a pain out­ing up there, but I don’t mind talk­ing it down if I have to. Thanks again!

  2. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Gary, give it more time. I’d give it a week. Your wit­ness list only builds when you bea­con, which only hap­pens once or twice every 24 hours. You want enough data points to make good deci­sions, and one or two bea­cons is less than opti­mal. Stick with it. 🙂

  3. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Your posts on this stuff are real­ly easy to under­stand. I’m tak­ing your advice (from our email con­ver­sa­tion and from hours of read­ing this week­end) to buy the HNTen­na and am plan­ning on pur­chas­ing a some­what-short cable (prob­a­bly around 30 inch­es) from USA Coax. Just using your advice and mov­ing my anten­na out­side, I’m notic­ing a slight increase in rewards (~$2-$4 dai­ly). With the new 3 dBi anten­na and cable com­ing, I can only imag­ine those num­bers will go up again.

    Thanks for all the help you do for this community!!

  4. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Thanks Nik! You’re right on, I have 8 wit­ness­es now so I’m pret­ty hap­py with that so far! Thank you so much for your help­ing appre­ci­ate it. You def­i­nite­ly know your stuff man!

  5. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Hey Nik! Now I have to just set up my oth­er min­ers and I’m good to go. I already have a good loca­tion for them. Thanks again!

  6. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Super, glad it’s work­ing for ya Gary. Rock on!

  7. Jack Schnepel Avatar
    Jack Schnepel

    Gary, your com­ment was exact­ly what I was look­ing for. I just set my 8dbi anten­na up 23.5ft. I am so anx­ious to get my min­er to actu­al­ly be min­ing. I’m glad I was­n’t the only anx­ious one

  8. Igotextra Avatar
    Igotextra

    So this is prob­a­bly a stu­pid ques­tion but I don’t wan­na buy the wrong thing lol. My indoor HNTen­na just came today. Do I need to buy a N‑male to RP-SMA cable for this? And could I pos­si­ble get a link for ref­er­ence to which one I need? Thanks in advance!

  9. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    No prob. You don’t need an N‑male for it. Take a look at the anten­na con­nec­tion, then com­pare it to the images on this page. Make sure you also know the con­nec­tion on your hotspot, then order a cable accord­ing­ly. USACoax does good work.

  10. Rya Avatar
    Rya

    Hey Nik — I tried check­ing out the rec­om­mend­ed anten­nas from Hnten­na but the links only land on the home­page. Is the 3 dbi anten­na what you are rec­om­mend­ing, or is it anoth­er prod­uct not cur­rent­ly available?

  11. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Ryan, the 3 dBi anten­na is what I rec­om­mend. Rock on!

  12. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    Nik, as every­one had already stat­ed, it’s great learn­ing from you. 

    I bought that HNTen­na, the 3db cone one. I plan on secure­ly fas­ten­ing it atop a cypress tree, like a star. It will be about 60ft above the ground. The only prob­lem is, my box will have to be at the bot­tom of the tree, about 50′ below. I saw your posts about “don’t wor­ry about the anten­na”, and “keep is as close as you can”. I just will have to use about 50′ of cable (LMR400,600,900 🙂 ). My ques­tion is, with the db drop of the cable length, and the anten­na only being a 3db one, will I be able to squeeze enough DB out of that anten­na to do good? Or, do I pur­chase 5–6db anten­na, and have the final val­ue around 3db. Thanks.

  13. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Alex, it’s a good ques­tion and I’m not sure of the answer. How are you bring­ing pow­er & eth­er­net to the enclo­sure at the base of the tree? Can you use PoE to get that enclo­sure up much high­er, there­by decreas­ing the anten­na cable run? Please keep us post­ed on this as I’m pret­ty darn inter­est­ed in the answer. One thing to keep in mind is that the OG min­ers do real­ly well with just 28.2 dBi, so as long as you can end up with that or more, you’re like­ly to be fine. If you’re not sure on calcs, check out this page on Cable Loss & EIRP.

  14. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    I will be being pow­er and eth to the base. I can­not climb the tree to get it any clos­er to the anten­na. I might need help with the math.

  15. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    I just can­not climb that tree, its too full, and no branch­es to climb. Ill bring pow­er and inter­net to it. I guess I could go POE, but that is not nec­es­sary. I might need help with the math.

  16. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    How are you get­ting the anten­na up it?

  17. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    So, lol, an inter­est­ing idea I had was to take five 10 foot con­duit plas­tic pipes, put them all togeth­er, and start at the base of the tree and just go through all the tree branch­es until it popped up over the top. Worked flaw­less­ly. I’d post a pic­ture if I could. Next, I will use LMR600, and thread it through the tube, tie some 550 cord to the end. Hook the anten­na up, pull the 550 though and secure the cable to the ensure the anten­na stays put. So far, so good.

  18. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    I sent you a pic­ture on dis­cord, Helium-Antennas

  19. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Got it, post­ed here for ref­er­ence. Now I see why it’d be hard to climb that tree. 🙂 Alex antenna at top of dense tree

  20. Frank Oskar Avatar
    Frank Oskar

    Hi Nik,
    I have pur­chased and installed HNTenna.
    I have two min­ers and they are 1.4 km apart.
    Here is my sit­u­a­tion and could you please let me know your thoughts on below?

    08/12–08/18:
    Min­er A — Bobcat
    Cable: LMR 400, 20′ long
    Loca­tion: On the roof
    Anten­na: 6 dbi

    Min­er B — Bobcat
    Cable: in stock, 4dbi
    Loca­tion: Inside the house, 2nd floor
    Anten­na: 4 dbi

    Min­er A and B could wit­ness each oth­er and bea­cons did not have any issue, also had min­ing rewards.

    08/18–08/19:
    Min­er A — Bobcat
    Cable: LMR 400, 20′ long
    Loca­tion: On the roof
    Anten­na: 6 dbi

    Min­er B — Bobcat
    Cable: LMR 400, 15′ long
    Loca­tion: Inside the the attic
    Anten­na: HNTenna

    Issue:
    Min­er A sent bea­con and min­er B wit­nessed it, but bea­cons are invalid: “witness_rssi_below_lower_bound”
    Min­er B sent bea­con and min­er A wit­nessed it, but bea­cons are invalid: “witness_rssi_below_lower_bound”

    Anoth­er thing to add (08/18–08/19):
    Min­er B’s bea­con was wit­nessed three times by min­er which was 16km away with­out any issue.

  21. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Frank,
    Check over on this post regard­ing Wit­ness­es & RSSI issues, it’ll help explain what’s hap­pen­ing with your 2 hotspots. Love the detail!

  22. Eoin McLoughlin Avatar
    Eoin McLoughlin

    I have a loca­tion up 60 metres in a church in Dublin. Dublin being a rel­a­tive­ly flat City and the fact that there are only two oth­er hotspots with­in a 1 km radius I think I should go for an a TBI but what would you think? Rf sims say 174 poten­tial wit­ness­es with 8.0 and 170 with 3.0.

  23. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    If you’re up high you should usu­al­ly get a low­er gain anten­na, more like 3 than 8. What’s a TBI?

  24. David Avatar
    David

    This is super help­ful by the way, thanks for mak­ing it easy to digest on a sub­ject I am clue­less about. Sounds like your rec­om­men­da­tion for me would be to stick with the stock anten­na, let me know if that is right! My min­er would be indoors (can’t get it out­side sad­ly) on the 14th floor of a high­ly pop­u­lat­ed city (Oak­land, CA). Orig­i­nal­ly I was lean­ing towards a 5.8 dbi anten­na, but now I have con­cerns since their are so many tall build­ings in the area.

  25. How These Accessories Can Impact Your Helium Network Coverage – Parley Labs

    […]  Antennashttps://gristleking.com/antennas-for-helium/https://unsealed4x4.com.au/picking-the-right-uhf-antenna-for-your‑4×4/ Cables and Connectorshttps://www.spo-comm.de/en/blog/know-how/what-is-the-difference-between-sma-and-rp-smahttps://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/cable/coaxperf.html FCC Regulationshttps://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct07/Oct_07-Basics_of_Unlicensed_Trans-JD.pdfhttps://www.multitech.com/support/resolutionid/5086522 https://afar.net/tutorials/fcc-rules/   Tagged Acces­sories, Anten­na, Cov­er­age, Heli­um, Improve­ments, LoRaWAN […]

  26. Joseph Avatar
    Joseph

    after read­ing your arti­cle i have been doing quite a bit of research. i real­ly appre­ci­ate the time you put in to writ­ing this up.

    i have a sense­cap on the way. i am try­ing to fig­ure out what anten­na to order because there is not a lot of hotspots in my area (Rock­wall, TX)

    the sim­u­la­tions are with 30 foot LMR 400 at 1.2 loss, 30 feet in the air on the roof of my house, then i tried var­i­ous dbi in the sim­u­la­tion. the only one that seems to per­form at all is 12dbi. i didn’t even want the anten­na up this high because it’s a rent house and max with sense­cap is 9dbi. 

    it appears from the from the ele­va­tion exper­i­ments in google maps that there is a 20 foot ele­va­tion gain before i get to the lake in any line of site path I try to outline.

    it seems like direc­tion­al may not be an option because of the ele­va­tion gain and because I can real­ly only get up about 25 foot at the most, that’s my roof peak

    it basi­cal­ly looks like i’m blocked from all of the hotspot clus­ters on the oth­er side of the lake due to this 20 foot ele­va­tion gain

    any ideas if this looks accu­rate? should i just start with a 5.8 dbi omni and see what happens?
    (geo/address is not my address, but close enough)

    https://beta.hotspotrf.com/map/?share=81689db12bba4656ac6716e3a413b5b1

    https://beta.hotspotrf.com/map/?share=df4867603c6f40f7b33a6f1b8bdedde9

    https://beta.hotspotrf.com/map/?share=1a1c78bd7a854777ad89c607d5a67096

    https://beta.hotspotrf.com/map/?share=cee96b2feaa149d59718065b7f627f17

    Google Maps Ele­va­tion Experiments

    https://imgur.com/a/6Wycsmq

    I have post­ed in the sense­cap dis­cord and the heli­um sub­red­dit and i’m unable to get a response . i’m real­ly try­ing to learn and research here and your arti­cles have helped me so much

  27. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Joseph, if you’re blocked by ele­va­tion, your best bet is to find anoth­er loca­tion; the anten­na won’t make a dif­fer­ence. I would­n’t give the sim­u­la­tions too much weight (they’re use­ful, but not the gospel), and I def­i­nite­ly would­n’t use a 12 dBi anten­na. Let me know if that helps you.

  28. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi David, yep, stick with stock to start off. Use an HNTen­na indoor anten­na if you want to spend mon­ey and upgrade, but start with stock.

  29. Joseph Avatar
    Joseph

    Thank you so much for the response. I’m at a loss for anoth­er loca­tion unless i was to work out a deal where some­one takes 70% of my earn­ings. Do you think a low­er dbi anten­na would get up and over the ele­va­tion with­out rais­ing my anten­na above 25 feet when the ele­va­tion gain seems to be 20 feet and it rais­es that 20 feet in a dis­tance of 1.93 miles from me?

  30. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Prob­a­bly not, but you can try. RF can be weird. Still, I’d focus my efforts on find­ing anoth­er loca­tion. Loca­tion is 80% of your earnings.

  31. David Avatar
    David

    Hi Nik,
    My Bob­cat is due to arrive any day now and there is a lot of info float­ing our there… I like what you say and have read most all your posts; a lot of infor­ma­tion, most beyond my under­stand­ing. Is there a place­ment opti­miza­tion map avail­able? Some map that allows me to input my address and based on all para­me­ters, advise where to place my anten­na and how high, etc?
    Is there a ser­vice that can help?
    I know a lot of peo­ple who but min­ers and keep buy­ing more ad new equip­ment, try­ing to opti­mize their ini­tial invest­ment and I rather do this one, and right. 

    Open to suggestions.
    Thanks,
    David

  32. Edward Avatar
    Edward

    Hi,

    What anten­na do you rec­om­mend for a 5 sto­ry build­ing (60 feet) in nyc?

  33. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi David,
    The best tool I’ve found for place­ment opti­miza­tion is Helium.Vision, but it’s not auto­mat­ic at find­ing the best spot. I offer con­sult­ing that’ll walk you through the strat­e­gy side as well as help­ing you find the best spot local­ly, you can read more about that here.

    I think you’re on the right track aim­ing to get it done right the first time, keep going!

  34. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Out­door HNTen­na from hntenna.com

  35. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Quick ques­tion: I recent­ly upgrad­ed my anten­na to the 3dbi out­door HNTen­na. Which anten­na do I set inside my bob­cat? I chose cus­tom anten­na and set it to 3dbi but won­der­ing if I should have gone anoth­er way. Would love your thoughts.

  36. Don Avatar
    Don

    I have an 9 sto­ry office build­ing in a sub­ur­ban city right next to a shop­ping cen­ter with many busi­ness locat­ed near­by. There are two oth­er tall build­ings across the street, each a few hun­dred feet away. I have some cell tow­ers on my flat roof over the top-floor mechan­i­cal room below but there is about 150 feet between the two cell tow­er struc­tures. I am plan­ning to put up a Heli­um 915 anten­na attached to the con­crete side of the build­ing right between the two cell bun­dles. The Bob­cat 300 will be right inside the build­ing with­in about 30 feet max­i­mum cable run.

    What anten­na of your rec­om­men­da­tion would be the best for this rel­a­tive­ly flat area with trees, stores, hous­es, and oth­er tall/short build­ings near­by and below? I can even eas­i­ly see the near­by air­port from the roof.

    And do you rec­om­mend any­thing bet­ter than the Bob­cat 300?

  37. Michel Avatar
    Michel

    Hey, Nick. I have a new­ly installed hotspot, indoors/behind a thick glass win­dow (no access for out­doors option ), around 70m high, clear line of sight. I got a fiber­glass 5dBi anten­na for this one, in 24h i got 31 wit­ness­es. But i’m won­der­ing if it would be wis­er to upgrade lat­er with a 3dBi? i’m afraid the glass would atten­u­ate the sig­nal con­sid­er­ably for a small­er anten­na, would love to get your opin­ion on this one 🙂
    Anoth­er ques­tion, just won­der­ing if installing a fiber­glass anten­na indoors is some­how bad for health ^^

  38. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Michael, sounds like your install is fine for the con­straints you have. I’d prob­a­bly try a 3 dBi, but I like test­ing things. As far as a fiber­glass anten­na indoors being bad for health, check out this post on RF emis­sions. I’m not sure if there’s any­thing inher­ent­ly unhealthy in a fiber­glass anten­na, but I’m def­i­nite­ly not a med­ical professional. 🙂

  39. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Don, I’d use the HNTen­na (hntenna.com) for that deploy­ment; urban deploy­ments with lots of reflect­ed sig­nals are where they’ll usu­al­ly do best.

    As far as min­ers, they’re all pret­ty sim­i­lar, though the Bob­cats are appar­ent­ly sen­si­tive to heat, so make sure it’s in a shaded/cooler place.

  40. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hey Mark, you did the right thing; “Cus­tom Anten­na” is fine. 🙂

  41. john Horlieca Avatar
    john Horlieca

    the ques­tion i have is would a mul­ti-direc­tion­al 12 dbi anten­na work 10 feet above a 2 sto­ry house? and how long before i see an increase in gain

  42. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi John,
    While it’ll work to send out RF, most of those trans­ac­tions will be invalid due to being like­ly to break the cur­rent RSSI/SNR curve Heli­um uses to eval­u­ate sig­nals. Take a look at this post on Wit­ness­ing to help under­stand that.

  43. Johannes Avatar
    Johannes

    Hel­lo, thanks for the awe­some guide. Quick Ques­tion, rur­al Aus­tria all the next hotspots are around 25 km away. The Min­er is on a high Build­ing (30 meters), topog­ra­phy is rather flat also no high build­ings on the way. What anten­na would you sug­gest? Min­er is Bobcat.

  44. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Johannes,
    I’d go with the stock Bob­cat anten­na mount­ed on a met­al sur­face or a low gain anten­na like the HNTen­na. With clear Line of sight and plen­ty of ele­va­tion you don’t need high gain.

  45. VM Avatar
    VM

    Hi Nik,
    many thanks for Your pre­cious informations!

    I need an advice and a help:
    I live in a sub­ur­ban flat area. Near­est hotspots are in 9 — 15 km distance.
    Waht anten­na dBi gain do You recommend?

    Is there some Ero­pean dis­trib­u­tor ar man­u­fac­tur­er for HNTen­na ? Are there some alter­na­tives for mul­ti-polarised antennas?

    Greet­ing from Europe!

  46. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi VM, as long as you have clear line of sight (no mountains/hills block­ing it) you should be fine with a low­er gain (4 dBi or low­er) anten­na. HNTen­na ships to Europe, so you should be fine there. Don’t get too wrapped up if you can’t get one of theirs though, as a stan­dard ver­ti­cal­ly polar­ized anten­na will usu­al­ly do almost as well. Remem­ber, the most impor­tant thing is loca­tion, then ele­va­tion. Anten­nas just don’t mat­ter that much.

  47. mic Avatar
    mic

    Good anten­na! But I use the anten­na for min­er from RFAr­eas. Good man­u­fac­tur­er. And I guess that thi­er anten­nas are the best in the world.

  48. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    All the top man­u­fac­tur­ers make excel­lent anten­nas, glad you found one that works well for you!

  49. Pat Avatar
    Pat

    Hi Nik,
    I need an advice if you don’t mind ofcourse
    I live in on the Hill to be fair with clear line of sight.
    I’ve got anoth­er heli­um min­ers 500 meters under me.
    I choose 8 dbi anten­na but i guess its to strong because is not con­nect­ing with them. Any advice?
    My anten­na is on the roof

  50. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sure, try a low­er gain antenna.

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