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

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

  1. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Nash, just updat­ed the post. I used to rec­om­mend those patch anten­nas, but that was before PoCv11. There’s just not that use­ful any­more. If you get an HNTen­na up high you’ll be doing about as well as you can do, although you can def try oth­er anten­nas as well. The big obsta­cle will be not that many hotspots near you.

  2. Aaron Olson Avatar
    Aaron Olson

    Thanks for the post. I out mine in the attic for two days and it got more wit­ness­es, but less HNT and less over­all activ­i­ties. Should I put it in a spot with more activ­i­ty and more HNT or in the spot with more witnesses?

  3. Hans Avatar
    Hans

    My sis­ter is in a great spot cen­tral Char­lotte, NC. Only one oth­er on her Hex. I have a stock 4DBi anten­na on a Bob­cat min­er in her office win­dow on sec­ond floor. Could I do bet­ter 10–15 ft high­er up INSIDE her attic? What anten­na would be good for inside an attic and close to down­town of a city.

  4. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Anten­na won’t mat­ter much, 3–6 dBi is fine. Under-report on app to punch through known attenuators.

  5. Hans Avatar
    Hans

    Thank you Nik. Would you say win­dow on sec­ond floor is bet­ter.. or attic 15 ft high­er with the stock 4DBI. Cur­rent­ly get­ting 1.0 scale and 36 wit­ness­es in win­dow. When you say under-report… are you refer­ring to if the anten­na is 4 DBI.. put 2.8? Some­thing like that? Real­ly appre­ci­ate your ser­vice to the community.

  6. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Yep, you’re off­set­ting for the known atten­u­a­tion of your attic. Can’t empha­size enough that you should test that pri­or to doing it.

  7. Jamie Avatar
    Jamie

    Why are direc­tion­al anten­nas no longer rec­om­mend­ed after PoCv11? Would the longer range of a 9dbi direc­tion­al anten­na not pass valid­i­ty checks, as the sys­tem assumes the range should be with­in the para­me­ters of a 9dbi omni antenna?

  8. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Jamie, they were nev­er real­ly that use­ful in the Heli­um space. I tried a bunch of ’em think­ing they’d out­per­form omnis, but so far that has­n’t proven true for my deploy­ments. The range isn’t an issue; a 3 dBi will reach 200 km, so there’s no “range” rea­son to get a high­er gain antenna.

  9. Matthew Yim Avatar
    Matthew Yim

    Hel­lo again! So I noticed that the anten­na you rec­om­mend­ed that looks like a dome is only 3dbi. Do you rec­om­mend that over rak wire­less 5.8dbi? I’m in a sub­ur­ban area , specif­i­cal­ly ash­burn, va if you wan­na take a look.

  10. Matthew Yim Avatar
    Matthew Yim

    Wow to your most recent com­ment about 3dbi reach­ing 200km! I had no idea that was the case?!? Then why are so many peo­ple opt­ing for high­er gain antennas?

  11. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Matthew, anten­nas don’t real­ly mat­ter. I’ve been using the 3 dBi HNTen­na with good results, but any of the good anten­nas from 3–5.8 will be fine.

  12. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    I don’t know why so many peo­ple are using high gain anten­nas. Prob­a­bly a mis­tak­en belief that “big­ger is better”.

  13. Zach Avatar
    Zach

    I’m about 3/4 up on a small mountain/large hill. I just deployed my hotspot with a Rok­land 6dbi about 4 days ago. Might be a bit ear­ly to tell, but only wit­ness­ing about 3 times a day, and being wit­nessed about 5 times a day (less than .1 HNT per day). Read­ing this, I’m won­der­ing if going low­er would be wis­er since most every­one on the side that isn’t blocked by the moun­tain is below me. How­ev­er, some of the HS I’ve wit­nessed are doing close to .7–1.0 HNT per day with anten­nas with high­er gain than me 7.5–9dbi. Very con­fus­ing which route to go here, but also lim­it­ed time­frame on the data to real­ly make an assessment. 

    I also input exact­ly 6dbi into the app and won­der if that affects my results as well.

  14. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hey Zach, let it go anoth­er day or so before you make a final deci­sion. Earn­ings prob­a­bly have less to do with the anten­na than the loca­tion. Loca­tion is critical.

  15. Justin B Avatar
    Justin B

    Hey so I have a ques­tion, I have a free­dom­Fi min­er that comes with a tiny lit­tle 1.2 dBi anten­na. It’s a rel­a­tive­ly new set up. I’ve got the device sit­ting next to my sec­ond sto­ry Win­dow, and it just does­n’t seem to be wit­ness­ing or being wit­nessed very often. I’ve wit­nessed devices and been wit­nessed before, but none of my bea­cons have been seen in the past 2 days, and I haven’t wit­nessed any of my neigh­bors either, so I’m not real­ly sure what’s going on. 

    I can’t real­is­ti­cal­ly mount an anten­na up any high­er due to my HOA, but I can prob­a­bly put a rel­a­tive­ly covert out­door anten­na right out­side my Win­dow, as long as I don’t drill any holes in the build­ing. Cen­tral Mass­a­chu­setts if it mat­ters. Is this like­ly worth my time / mon­ey? Or is it like­ly that I’m just not in a good location.

  16. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    If you can’t mount it high­er and you’re not get­ting the results you want, I’d look for anoth­er location.

  17. Mike B Avatar
    Mike B

    I have a ques­tion. I cur­rent­ly have a 5.8dbi Omni direc­tion­al that is attached to a PVC pipe that is attached to the con­duit pipe with elec­tri­cal wires lead­ing into my house. Could the close prox­im­i­ty to those elec­tri­cal wires be caus­ing my ter­ri­bly low earn­ings? The actu­al anten­na is prob­a­bly 6 ft above the wires but the coax­i­al does rum down beside it. Thanks in advance!

  18. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    Hi Nik,

    Great infor­ma­tion. Thank you!

    I have a Linx­dot min­er on order(only one with a rea­son­able deliv­ery) and get­ting my site ready. I am in the hills in rur­al area at 900′ AGL. There are mul­ti­ple min­ers in front of me in a clear line of sight at an ele­va­tion of ~ 300′ AGL. My clear line of sight view shed is ~150 degrees. All min­ers are in this view and between 8- 15km away. I was plan­ning on mount­ing the anten­na out­doors on a build­ing, mast height ~ 45′ AGL. I will be just below the decid­u­ous tree canopy which would be 150′ in front of the pro­posed loca­tion. It should be not­ed that there is a radio tow­er 500′ away (behind the pro­posed loca­tion) from pro­posed loca­tion at 150′ AGL with fire and police colum­ni­a­tions equip­ment. My con­cern is hav­ing enough reach to hit the min­ers in my view. Read­ing through your info i learned that i should not use a high gain anten­na but most like­ly a low or medi­um gain. What anten­na i be look­ing fo? Can you make a rec­om­men­da­tion? I am hap­py to pay a con­sult­ing fee to pick your brain as i want to get this right.
    Take care,
    Ed

  19. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Unlike­ly. Earn­ings are far more a func­tion of loca­tion and ele­va­tion than antennas/cables etc.

  20. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Ed, if you’re sur­round­ed by trees it’ll be a tough push to get out no mat­ter what anten­na you use. I might go with a 5.8 and under-assert gain to give it a lit­tle more punch get­ting through the trees.

  21. Ron Avatar
    Ron

    Hey Nik, Read­ing through your arti­cles and com­ments on arti­cles. Are you say­ing that assert­ing the dbi in the app will actu­al­ly impact your sig­nal to the anten­na? I bought a hotspot off a friend and he only had an 8dbi anten­na, it’s up in my attic until the snow melts and I can get on the roof. No one was wit­ness­ing my bea­cons, but I set the anten­nae in the app to 5Dbi and now more wit­ness­es. Is this expect­ed if the app set­ting does have an impact? (have a 5.8dbi on order now, i think the 8 is too much)

  22. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Ron,
    Assert­ing the dBi will only decrease sig­nal pow­er if the assert­ed gain puts you over the legal lim­it. Oth­er­wise, the assert­ed gain is just used in the calcs. Does that make sense?

  23. Andrés Martínez Avatar
    Andrés Martínez

    Hi Nik, thanks for the info! My hotspot is 25m high and theres only like three build­ings around the city, and the city is kind of flat. Would you rec­om­mend me a 5.8dbi antenna?

  24. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    That should work fine. 🙂

  25. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Hi Nik — I final­ly got a cou­ple hotspots deployed using some of the knowl­edge gained from you, includ­ing this arti­cle. One of my recent hotspots (Ele­gant Turquoise Pan­da — a bob­cat cur­rent­ly with man­u­fac­tur­er anten­na sit­ting in a win­dow) is posi­tioned such that it seems to be wit­ness­ing & get­ting wit­nessed by hotspots that have low­er trans­mit scales. I am in the process of putting up the “oil can” 3 dbi HNTen­na out­doors, as that had been my plan since research­ing all this last sum­mer. How­ev­er, I have real­ly start­ed to ques­tion whether this will have any bet­ter result (OR may actu­al­ly hurt cur­rent results!) than the cur­rent setup.

    In think­ing through ways to opti­mize the set­up, I have noticed there are many more hotspots with high­er trans­mit scales to the north. So I came back to this arti­cle and, like some of the oth­er com­ments here, I not­ed that you removed the rec­om­men­da­tion for a direc­tion­al (“patch?”) anten­na. I thought that might be a good solu­tion to get more activ­i­ty with high­er trans­mit scale hotspots. I know “out­side and up” is rec­om­mend­ed, so I am going for­ward with the HNTen­na, but if a direc­tion­al anten­na might help exclude low­er trans­mit scales, would­n’t that make sense?

    Thanks in advance. I’ve real­ly appre­ci­at­ed your arti­cles and see that I’ve got­ten behind a bit!

  26. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    It’s an inter­est­ing idea, to aim your cov­er­age at “high qual­i­ty” hotspots. The only way to know for sure is to test it, but…the loca­tion itself is the dri­ver of earn­ings. A “bad” loca­tion is hard to over­come, no mat­ter what you do with ele­va­tion, point­ing, anten­nas, etc.

  27. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Thanks so much! I think it is a good loca­tion — up on the ridge on which down­town KC lies and, giv­en the first few days with the basics and being indoors, it appears to be earn­ing at to slight­ly above the net­work aver­age. I’ll let the com­ment thread know how the switch to HNTen­na out­doors works…

    Next ques­tion is “What was the direc­tion­al anten­na you had rec­om­mend­ed back in the ear­li­er ver­sion of the arti­cle?” Also, since it seems you have got­ten away from deploy­ments with direc­tion­al anten­nas, would you hap­pen to have one you want to get out of your way for cheap? 😉

    Again, Thank you!

  28. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    The heavy duty 9 dBi patch from L‑com. I’ll hold onto mine for oth­er projects, but they’re pret­ty cheap anyway.

  29. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    Hi Nik, what dBi would you rec­om­mend for a hilly ter­rain? I cur­rent­ly have a 5.8 dBi about 20 feet from the ground on top of my house. How­ev­er, I sit in a depres­sion on 3 sides and mov­ing to anoth­er loca­tion isn’t real­ly an option. I know if I could get it high­er it would be bet­ter, but what if I can’t? Would a 3 dBi be bet­ter because of the wider angle to get it out and up and for dif­frac­tion or maybe I am under­stand­ing that wrong? Not super wor­ried about range, if I could pick up more of the oth­er hotspots with­in 5km of me I would be hap­py. Thanks for your time.

  30. Ernest Avatar
    Ernest

    Hey Nik, I live in the sub­urbs on a hill and have an anten­na on top of my roof about 40~ feet above ground. I am run­ning 40ft of LMR400, which comes down to about 1.57db of loss. I used to run a 5.8db anten­na in my attic when I had near 0 loss. Now that I’ve put it on the roof, I swapped to an 8dbi anten­na to off­set the 1.57db loss from the long cable. Was this a valid action or do you think there would be bet­ter cov­er­age with the old 5.8db antenna?

    For ref­er­ence, I used to get around 300 wit­ness­es and ~80 wit­ness­es with the min­er and anten­na in my attic.

  31. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Kevin, a 3 dBi anten­na (and gain pat­tern) might help pro­vide broad­er cov­er­age, but I would­n’t expect a huge change. The obsta­cle is earth, and no amount of (rea­son­able) gain will get through a hill.

  32. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    What type of mate­r­i­al can be used for anten­na mast. Since these min­ers seem so light I was think­ing of mount­ing my syn­cro­bit and rak 5.8 anten­nas using 1.5 ” PVC 20 ft high . But im read­ing gen­er­al­ly PVC is a poor mate­r­i­al?? I also pre­sume I would still want to use a light­ing arrestor although I under­stand the rak anten­na has ground­ing? Using PVC would I have to ground the mast??

  33. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Mike, PVC is prob­a­bly not the best mate­r­i­al for long term out­door deploy­ments. I use met­al masts, 4130 steel (which is prob­a­bly overkill.)

    No mat­ter what mast type, you should use a light­ning arrestor and run a wire to ground.

  34. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Try­ing to decide between a Hnten­na 902–928MHz, and a McGill. Loca­tion is flat, in an area well pop­u­lat­ed with min­ers. Ele­va­tion would be 30ft.

  35. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Prob­a­bly not a huge dif­fer­ence. Loca­tion & ele­va­tion dri­ve earn­ings. Both are good antennas.

  36. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    Hi Nik,
    Thank you for real­ly great infor­ma­tion. I saw some youtube clips with a guy hav­ing sim­i­lar sur­rond­ings as me hav­ing good suc­cess with a Yagi anten­na. So I was think­ing of get­ting one. Then I saw here that you say don’t both­er with the Yagi. Why is that? Is there some oth­er brand you would pre­fer if going the direc­tion­al route?

    Thanks a lot!
    Patrick

  37. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Typ­i­cal­ly the Yagi beams are too nar­row to cov­er a broad area, which is what the Heli­um ecosys­tem gen­er­al­ly wants.

  38. Michel Avatar
    Michel

    Hye Nik,
    A high gain anten­na might any­way be very use­ful for acquir­ing more IoT devices sig­nals… So, I would not dis­cour­age 10–12 dBi antennas …

  39. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Michel, hmm, I don’t think that’s cor­rect. Talk­ing with BFGNeil, the way a high gain works and the pro­to­col sen­sor data is trans­mit­ted on aren’t a great match.

  40. Zeth L. Avatar
    Zeth L.

    Hey Nik, I live in a pret­ty rur­al sub­ur­ban area (flat land, most­ly 1 and 2 sto­ry hous­es around, no extreme­ly tall build­ings) clos­est hotspot is around 4km away. I just received a Sense­Cap M1, and I have it set up with the stock anten­na (1.2 dbi I belive) mount­ed high in a win­dow about 12 ft/3.3m above the ground. Read­ing your info I assume a 3dbi anten­na would suf­fice if I were to mount it rough­ly 20–40 ft above the ground and out­doors. The name of my hotspot is Overt Sil­ver Viper in North Car­oli­na. If you could let me know your rec­om­men­da­tion and opin­ion, that would be much appre­ci­at­ed. Thanks!

  41. Jeff S. Avatar
    Jeff S.

    Hi Nik,
    Thanks for the inter­est­ing piece and while a lot of the jar­gon is over my head my take­away is loca­tion is key and that the right anten­na for the right topog­ra­phy makes a dif­fer­ence. I have a Sense­Cap M1 about 25′ above ground lev­el on my roof with an 8 dbi anten­na. Switch­ing from my bed­room win­dow with my 3 dbi to my cur­rent set up made a dif­fer­ence but not as much as I would have expect­ed. My pat­tern looks quite a bit like your NY exam­ple show­ing atten­u­a­tion and topog­ra­phy (I am Tangy Cobalt Python if you care to look). I will try going back to the 3 dbi on the roof to see what hap­pens. If that shows even bet­ter results would pur­chas­ing a 5dbi pos­si­bly giv­en bet­ter results than both 3dbi and 8dbi? Or would 3 dbi and 5 dbi like­ly be about the same?
    Thanks in advance

  42. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Jeff, it’s always a lit­tle bit of “test and see” when it comes down to it. I don’t think you’ll see a huge dif­fer­ence no mat­ter what you do anten­na-wise, the key will prob­a­bly be get­ting it higher.

  43. Allan Avatar
    Allan

    Hey Nik,
    Love all your con­tent espe­cial­ly your Youtube channel! 🙂

    Quick ques­tion: I live near the ocean which obvi­ous­ly extends out flat, but behind us there is a sig­nif­i­cant hill that ris­es up quick­ly. Lot’s of hotspots on the oth­er­side of the hill but prob­a­bly unreach­able… My think­ing was to put up a 9 db omni anten­na or maybe* a mcgill 10 db direc­tion­al and point it across the water and go for the hotspots 10–25 kms away as I see a lot of local hotspots with low trans­mit rat­ings and think­ing maybe they will drag me down a bit.

    Thanks!
    Allan

  44. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Yep, not unrea­son­able to rou­tine­ly hit that dis­tance across the water, but you won’t need 10 dBi or even 9 for that. A 3 or a 6 will be fine. I’ve got a 3 that rou­tine­ly hits over 100 km away over water, some­times as far as 200 km. 30 km is nothing. 🙂

  45. DANIEL KAUFFMAN Avatar
    DANIEL KAUFFMAN

    Do you have a rule of thumb for how you weigh the trade-off between putting an anten­na up as high as pos­si­ble vs. the loss from addi­tion­al LMR400 cable length? For exam­ple: If I am putting an anten­na on top of my res­i­den­tial roof in a sub­ur­ban area, am I typ­i­cal­ly bet­ter off with a very short mast and ~3′ of LMR400 cable, or a 30′ mast with ~33′ of LMR400 cable? Ide­al­ly, one would want a 30′ mast and ~3′ of cable, but that would require putting the heli­um hotspot out­side at the top of the mast which has some com­plex­i­ties and lim­i­ta­tions. My ini­tial hypoth­e­sis is that height is more impor­tant than cable loss, so a taller 30′ mast with ~33′ of LMR400 cable would earn more than a very short mast with min­i­mal cable loss.

  46. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Agree re. height being more impor­tant than cable length/loss. At 30′ you’re not los­ing much on LMR400.

  47. Drei Avatar
    Drei

    I have been look­ing for any­one men­tion­ing mul­ti­ple Anten­nas. Could you have 1 that reach­es fur­ther and 1 that reach­es wider in your area? So one high­er up and one lower?

    What about 2 hotspots at the same loca­tion, 1 with the 9dbi fur­ther reach high­er up so it cov­ers the whole city and the 2nd one with a 4/5dbi so it cov­ers the wider area?

  48. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Drei, tech­ni­cal­ly you can do this, prac­ti­cal­ly it’s usu­al­ly not worth the has­sle. The cov­er­age from even a 9 dBi isn’t as nar­row as I draw it in the pic­tures. The loca­tion will be far more impor­tant than the actu­al set­up on the loca­tion. Video on this top­ic here. 

  49. Ioannis F. Avatar
    Ioannis F.

    Hel­lo NIK

    Thank you for the arti­cle and all the info, real­ly great!
    I am wait­ing for my Sense­cap M1 this Mon­day and I would like your advice about upgrad­ing the antenna.
    My height is 100m+ (high rise apart­ment), my180degrees (front) is unob­struct­ed and quite flat( Qatar ) , 180 degrees on the back the same but my build­ing will be block­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly most of the avail­able hotspots are on the back and some on the front..does an upgrade on the anten­na be worth it? I can’t go higher.
    Thanks for any time you put to share some advice.

  50. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Ioan­nis, I’d start with the stock anten­na for 3–5 days and see how well it does. If you’re hit­ting in a nice pat­tern all around you there’s no huge need to upgrade. LoRa is pret­ty robust and can get through a build­ing or two.

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