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. Drei Avatar
    Drei

    Hi Nik, thanks for the pre­vi­ous, reply. If I read up a lit­tle more… which I did, I would have found out the answer. One thing worth men­tion­ing to oth­ers is that if you want to run 2 hotspots in the same area, try at least dif­fer­ent squares, or have 2 isps, since using 1 isp will cause trou­bles and can become invalidated.

    Now, in the UK it seems my choic­es are lim­it­ed. What do you and any­one else from the UK recommend?

    1) mcgill microwave 4dbi
    2) mcgill microwave 6dbi
    3) paradar 4.5dbi
    4) paradar 6.5dbi

    My loca­tion is Lon­don Sub­urbs towards Essex (Brent­wood). One one hand I have Lon­don, on the oth­er the coun­try­side. I realise that in Lon­don my sig­nal is going to stop the moment it reach­es any flats or high build­ings, which now you get everywhere.

  2. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Drei, any of those will be fine. If you want to sup­port the GK blog you can use this link for the McGills; they give me a refer­ral fee for that at no cost to you. No big deal if you don’t, it’s just an option. 

    I haven’t seen the paradars but as long as they’re not knock-off cheap­ies they’ll do a good job as well. There WILL be slight dif­fer­ences in all of ’em, but you’ll have to test to fig­ure it out, and from what you’ve described, any of those gains is a great place to start.

  3. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    Hey I got a pret­ty stu­pid ques­tion, but I want to make sure. I want to buy LMR — 600 with my Pan­ther X2. On their site it says this “LoRa Anten­na — RP-SMA‑K”. Which con­nec­tor should I have on my LMR in order to con­nect it to that miner.

  4. Drei Avatar
    Drei

    Hi Nik, of course I will use the refer­ral link:)

  5. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Thank you!

  6. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    Hi nick.
    I almost fol­low and read all your arti­cles tried to apply most of the sce­nario could quite my loca­tion. But still in a very bad rewards..
    I’m in 70 meter high build­ing behind me the moun­tains in front of me the hall city.
    I used 5 dbi I’m no 8 and 12. All of them did nothing.
    I tried to use the fil­ter. Then direc­tion­al 8 dbi anten­na still my rewards are very bad.
    Around me lot of p2p inter­net providers and many high­er tow­er for gsm and tv satellites..
    I’m so con­fused .tried so many ways but noth­ing helps my sense­cap min­ers or votes miners.

    How­ev­er in my cou try it’s not easy to get the McGill it rak anten­na we are only using the Chi­nese made antennas.
    But what to do. 8 months of search­ing try­ing and experiments.

    That’s one of my min­er try to check and tell me if there’s some issues I did­n’t noticed 

    (Brave carmine don­key) now hooked the 8 dbi direc­tion­al. Lmr400 4 meters. Open port real up and sta­ble pow­er as well.

    Many that is in advance.
    Cheers buddy.

  7. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    You’re one of the high­est earn­ing Hotspots in the area, there’s prob­a­bly not much more you can do. Great job so far!

  8. CARLOS MOENCK Avatar
    CARLOS MOENCK

    HELLO
    I WOULD LIKE YOUR HELP IN CHOOSING THE BEST ANTENNA FOR MY NEW SENSECAP M1 THAT ARRIVES ON WEDNESDAY. I LIVE IN MIAMI, SOUTHWEST, WHERE MOST OF THE BUILDINGS ARE BETWEEN 1 AND 2 STORIES HIGH, BUT THERE ARE LOTS OF BIG, LEAFY TREES. SO MY QUESTION IS THE FOLLOWING, KNOWING THAT I WILL PUT MY ANTENNA AT A HEIGHT OF 4 METERS, I CAN’T PUT IT HIGHER THAN THAT:

    1- PLACE AN 8 DBI OMNIDIRECTIONAL RAK ANTENNA. 

    OR

    2- PLACE A 3 DBI MULTIPOLARIZED OMNIDIRECTIONAL ANTENNA LIKE THE ONES SOLD BY HN ANTENNA. 

    I THOUGHT ABOUT THE FIRST OPTION BECAUSE WITH THE 8 DBI ANTENNA AND MY LOW HEIGHT I CAN REACH EVERYWHERE AND PASS ANY OBSTACLE LIKE TREES AND HOUSES HIGHER THAN THE HEIGHT OF MY ANTENNA.

    I THOUGHT ABOUT THE SECOND OPTION BECAUSE OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE MULTIPOLARITY BUT I THINK THAT THE 3 DBI INTENSITY WOULD BE LIMITING MY POSSIBILITIES TO REACH MORE HOTSPOTS DUE TO MY LOW HEIGHT.

    SO I APPEAL TO YOUR HELP AND EXPERT OPINION ON THE SUBJECT HELIUM, FEEL FREE TO RECOMMEND ME WHAT IN MY CASE YOU WOULD DO. AND IF YOU HAVE PURCHASE LINKS FOR THE TWO VARIANTS IT WOULD ALSO BE OF GREAT HELP.
    THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR VALUABLE HELP AND COOPERATION WITH THE HELIUM COMMUNITY AND HAVE A HAPPY SUNDAY.

  9. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Car­los, if you’re that low and have to punch through trees, a 6 dBi from McGill will get you the best of both worlds. Link here: https://grstl.ink/mcgill-6dbi

  10. CARLOS MOENCK Avatar
    CARLOS MOENCK

    THANKS A LOT GRISTLE KING YOU ARE THE BEST

  11. Shukhrat Avatar
    Shukhrat

    Hi Nik,
    Very help­ful arti­cle. What would you rec­om­mend for me? I live on a hill with lots of trees and 2–3 sto­ry build­ings. Basi­cal­ly New Eng­land. The hotspot is nice vanil­la jaguar. The back of the house is pret­ty much blocked by the hill. How­ev­er, I plan on putting my min­er up on a tree, prob­a­bly 50–75′ up in the air. Hope­ful­ly, that can help with the hill. What would you rec­om­mend for antenna?

  12. belvin.jerrod Avatar
    belvin.jerrod

    Hi Nik,
    I am get­ting ready to put a hotspot @ a friends house. Hotspot­ty & HV mark it as a GREAT spot & sim­u­la­tion. Due to his HOA, he can­not have an anten­na on the house. That being said we can get it up to the attic. Which anten­na would we use? The Hnten­na indoor or outdoor?

    Thanks

  13. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Pro­l­ly a high­er gain if you have to put it inside.

  14. Shukhrat Avatar
    Shukhrat

    Hi Nik,

    I had post­ed a ques­tion ear­li­er today. Would you be able to give an anten­na recommendation?

  15. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    The McGill 6 should be fine: https://grstl.ink/mcgill-6dbi

  16. Chris Evans Avatar
    Chris Evans

    Hi Nik, thanks for the con­tin­ued qual­i­ty content!
    HNTen­na does­n’t have a 915MHz option for AUS/NZ, will the US/CAN one work with my 915MHz hotspot here in AUS? If not, do you have any ideas on sup­pli­ers that man­u­fac­ture mul­ti-polar­ized anten­nas for the AUS/NZ 915MHz network?
    Cheers mate, appre­ci­ate all the great work you do. 🙂
    Chris

  17. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Yep, the US915 will work just fine over there. I checked with David de Haaij on this, you’ve got an “expert” go ahead from him. 🙂

  18. J-F Avatar
    J-F

    Hi Nik,

    Do you known Laird Anten­na? I would your knowl­edge in Mul­ti Polar­ized Laird Mul­ti https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/laird-connectivity-inc./TRAB9023NP/3521732 vs HnTen­na ANT-NH900. Did you known if this anten­na is sim­i­lar? The Anten­na is cheap­er like hnten­na and no cus­tom and duty to Canada.

    Regards

    J‑F

  19. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Looks like a 3 dBi anten­na, I don’t see any­thing about mul­ti-polar­iza­tion. Anoth­er 3 dBi option is the McGill.

  20. pcste Avatar
    pcste

    Hi Nik

    Im still a bit con­fused about cable loss.
    I’m look­ing to put an anten­na on a roof in a small city in uk (no high buld­ings around but a bit of a hill on one side)
    was going to get a mcgill 3dbi. i have to run near­ly 40ft of lmr-400 cable which would give me a loss of 1.7db
    does that mean my anten­na then becomes 1.3dbi ? if i am run­ning a lot of cable should i choose a 4dbi or 6dbi because of cable loss?
    Thanks

  21. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    It won’t change the radi­a­tion pat­tern, but it will bring the sig­nal strength down to 1.3 as you’ve cal­cu­lat­ed. A 4 or 6 dbi anten­na might be a bet­ter option there. I’d test your stock anten­na first, you might be sur­prised by performance.

  22. Richard edwards Avatar
    Richard edwards

    Hi Nik, great info. Seri­ous­ly, good advice for noobs.
    How­ev­er, I dis­agree with some points. First­ly, high gain anten­nas should always be first choice. All the sites I designed for the first UK nation­al IoT net­work had pro­com 9dBi anten­nas, be the sites 10m or 70m high. So many peo­ple make this mistake.
    Sec­ond­ly, high­er gain anten­nas do not fly over the top due to being laser like. The dia­grams are just the 3dB beamwidth (area where pow­er is half of max­i­mum). Cov­er­age is still pro­vid­ed out­side this area. Added to high ele­va­tion and you’re still good. For exam­ple, the sites we had in Lon­don pro­vid­ed good cov­er­age even down the thin nar­row streets with high build­ings either side.
    Third­ly, cor­rect about indoor prop­a­ga­tion loss.. with the sig­fox net­work i worked on 5m inside was OK, but much more than that was a problem.
    Quite hap­py to pro­vide more info on cel­lu­lar net­work radio plan­ning, per­for­mance and optimisation.

  23. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Richard, great points on the over­shoot; I’ve got to update that graphic. 🙂 

    Keep in mind that with Heli­um, peo­ple are deploy­ing to max­i­mize earn­ings, not pro­vide sen­sor cov­er­age. In the ear­ly growth of the net­work, high gain anten­nas were penal­ized. At this point (March 2022) the gain does­n’t mat­ter much, so a high gain is fine.

    Inter­est­ing to hear from a real world expert, thanks so much for chim­ing in!

  24. Bryan Avatar
    Bryan

    Hi Nik,

    Thanks so much for the information!

    I just got a Sense­Cap M1 and set it up (Brave Corn­flower Rat­tlesnake). I live in an area that is a bit con­gest­ed with oth­er min­ers at res­o­lu­tion 10 there is 1 too many and at res­o­lu­tion 4 there are 455 too many so, the trans­mit scale all around me hov­ers around .50 — .65.

    There are near­by cities that have real­ly sparse net­work den­si­ty (all res­o­lu­tions are wide open) and when I wit­ness units there they have full trans­mit scales. There is prob­a­bly room for improve­ment with my set­up — maybe try­ing to opti­mize for reach­ing out to the less pop­u­lous net­works using an 8 or 9dBi antenna?

    I rent a town­home with thin roofs (no insu­la­tion and asphalt shin­gles) and cur­rent­ly have my min­er set up, indoors, in a win­dow sill on the 3rd floor and am using the includ­ed 2.6dBi anten­na. I might be able to mount an exte­ri­or anten­na to the out­side wall of my unit (though the HOA might not like that). Today I found that I have access to the attic and can mount the anten­na about 15–20 feet high­er than I would be able to mount it on the out­side of my unit. 

    What would you sug­gest as the best setup? 

    1. Get an after­mar­ket anten­na and park it in the win­dow sill (25–28 feet high).
    2. Get an after­mar­ket anten­na and mount it to the out­side wall of my unit (25 — 32 feet high, maybe).
    3. Get an after­mar­ket anten­na and mount it in the attic (35–40 feet high).

    After a few hours of googling I can’t find a good resource on how much pow­er I may lose putting it in the attic (some peo­ple say as much as 50%).

  25. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    High­er is usu­al­ly bet­ter, at those dis­tances you can man­age the cable loss with thick­er cable (LMR400 or 600).

  26. Terry Avatar
    Terry

    Hi Nik,

    Im con­sid­er­ing to start my min­ing jour­ney and I would real­ly appre­ci­ate your help.

    I live in the coun­try­side in the UK (near Rip­pon­den) where around here there are only 5 hotspots about 1.6–2.4km away from me. There are not a lot of hous­es in the vil­lage and there are most­ly fields and hills.

    I was think­ing of my putting the anten­na at the top of the house (out­side) through my attic room so rough­ly around 7–8m elevation. 

    Could you please advise what would be the best anten­na for my use and whether you think there would be any decent rewards?

    Thank you in advance for your time

  27. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Ter­ry, a 6 dBi from McGill should be fine if you can get it out­side. Rock on!

  28. Lach Avatar
    Lach

    Hi Nik,

    Am look­ing to order a 3dBi anten­na, is there any sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between say the ANT-NH900-OUT-WHITE and a stan­dard fiber­glass pole 3dBi (860–960MHz)?

    Cheers

  29. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Per­for­mance-wise, yes. Earn­ings-wise, prob­a­bly not huge. Real­ly depends on where you’re deploy­ing. In an urban envi­ron­ment with lots of reflec­tive sur­faces a mul­ti-polar­ized anten­na can make a big dif­fer­ence. In sub­ur­ban and rur­al envi­ron­ments it may not make as big of a difference.

  30. JimmyWireless Avatar
    JimmyWireless

    I have a two way split­ter, go with one Omni and one directional?

  31. John Avatar
    John

    I live at a con­do and unlike­ly to be able to get my min­er out­side on the roof. Area around is fair­ly flat with a few hills, sub­ur­ban. My options are out­side, 2nd floor bal­cony or inside 3rd floor win­dow, there’s a tree about 20–30feet in front of the win­dow. Bal­cony is also near said tree and would also be some­what blocked by the neigh­bor 15 feet away. Try­ing to fig­ure out which of those is best.
    Con­sid­er­ing rak vs high­er DBI hntan­ten­na, or if I can ever find a mul­ti­po­lar­ized 8dbi.

  32. Hamazz Avatar
    Hamazz

    Nik,
    Love your hard work and sup­port to the community.

    I got a bit of con­fu­sion on best set­up, Low­er vs high­er Dbi, think­ing of going high­er gain direc­tion­al tilt­ed down slightly.
    I cur­rent­ly got a 5.8Dbi omni anten­na at a height of 12m off the ground, 75m up a hill, 87m total, look­ing onto the city with flat topology.
    There is noth­ing behind me, think­ing of going for a 8dbi direc­tion­al anten­na tilt­ed to focus on the city below, as there is noth­ing behind except mountains.
    Due to some tall build­ings low­er down the hill, part of the sig­nal gets blocked im think­ing as the wit­ness­es have dropped from 45 odd to 13 recent­ly. and i know there are at least 70 plus hotspots in the vicinity.

    Any advice

  33. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Hamazz, I’d prob­a­bly leave the set­up you have, although you’re wel­come to exper­i­ment. Did wit­ness­es drop after you changed anten­nas, or was there noth­ing on your end that you did?

  34. John Avatar
    John

    Hi NIk,

    Any thoughts on mine above about the 2nd or 3rd floor con­do / what anten­na to use?

  35. John Avatar
    John

    Hi Nik,

    Any rec­om­men­da­tions for my placement/antenna? (The one above with the 2nd floor bal­cony and 3rd floor window)

  36. Hamazz Avatar
    Hamazz

    Nik
    Did not change the anten­na yet, i think changes in the net­work and OTA firmware upgrade could be the rea­son for reduced witnesses.
    I also got a 3dbi Mcgill Omni which i have not used yet, was try­ing to decide between going for that or a direc­tion­al, as there will be no hotspots behind me, so half the sig­nal going out by the omni will not achieve any­thing, focus­ing the Dbi on just the for­ward fac­ing would result in more witnesses?

  37. Shanon Avatar
    Shanon

    Nik,
    Would fit­ting a cav­i­ty fil­ter to a 6Dbi omni anten­na improve the sig­nal qual­i­ty and cut out the noise of the oth­er fre­quen­cies result­ing in bet­ter rewards?

  38. Pete Avatar
    Pete

    Great arti­cle! Thank you so much. Once thing is unclear for me. I under­stand the high­er the dbi the more laser beam, does that mean that high­er dbi are NOT omni-direc­tion­al? Do I need to rotate my anten­na 20 degrees at a time for a week to see if my results will improve?

  39. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    The whole laser beam idea is a lit­tle over exag­ger­at­ed. High­er dBi will focus your sig­nal more, but it’s typ­i­cal­ly not enough to real­ly wor­ry about. In gen­er­al, it squash­es it from the top and bot­tom, just like if you pushed on a bal­loon from the top and bot­tom. No need to rotate.

  40. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi John, I’d just try both for 10 days each. There’s no clear/definite answer with­out gath­er­ing data.

  41. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    You *might* see bet­ter results with a direc­tion­al anten­na, but unless there’s any­thing block­ing your cur­rent sig­nal path you prob­a­bly won’t notice a difference.

  42. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Only if there’s cur­rent high inter­fer­ence from oth­er radio sig­nals; if you’re on a cell tow­er or near a cell site.

  43. ken Avatar
    ken

    Hi,
    Is there a dif­fer­ence between the McGill 6or 8 DBI and one you get from Amazon?

  44. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    There cer­tain­ly can be. McGill tunes & tests theirs, so you know what you’re get­ting. The Ama­zon ones can some­times be smok­ing hot deals and some­times be…smoking hot piles of garbage.

  45. elize Avatar
    elize

    Great advice

  46. Pete Kepler Avatar
    Pete Kepler

    What do you think is bet­ter; anten­na in an attic at 35 feet AGL or out­side 15 feet on the top of a back porch?

  47. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Pete, you’ll have to test that. I’d start with the 35′ AGL option.

  48. Mr. Rado Avatar
    Mr. Rado

    I have 10 min­ers and use rfar­eas mag­net­ic field anten­nas. the best for me. from the cen­ter of my town (Sofia) I have links up to 40 km. and there are very many inter­fer­en­cies near the anten­nas. good result for me.

  49. Sebastian Avatar
    Sebastian

    Hi Nik
    I live in Horns­by, Aus­tralia, my house is sur­round­ed by hills, mountains(lots of trees), only 5% of sur­round area low­er than my house. I mean my house is locat­ed under valley.
    I recent­ly bought HNTen­na and installed to replace nor­mal 3dbi antenna(before 6dbi) but it looks very sim­i­lar per­for­mance so far.
    Do you rec­om­mend any oth­er anten­na? or HNTen­na is bet­ter than oth­er? in my house conditions.

  50. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Sebas­t­ian; no anten­na will blast through earth. Not much you can do in the bot­tom of a val­ley. See if you can find a bet­ter loca­tion for it.

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