I got a chance to sit down with the mighty @BFGNeil recently and boy did I learn a ton! Neil is one of my fellow Helium Discord moderators and one of the most helpful and knowledgeable members of the community. Neil’s built what I think is the single most useful tool for most Helium Hotspot …
Foundations of Relayed Hotspots (and how to fix ’em!) Read More »
It’s been a little over a year since I started deploying Helium Hotspots. In that year, after deploying Hotspots both on grid and off grid on homes, commercial buildings, and (my favorite) in the mountains, I’ve learned a ton about what to do, what not to do, and how to make the most of the …
Lessons Learned From A Year Of Helium Deployments Read More »
The Hotspotty team was gracious enough with their time to walk me through some significant improvements of their Helium tool. Bottom Line Up Front: If you run a fleet of hotspots, using the newest version of Hotspotty will make managing payments FAR easier, will improve your deployments at scale, and will help you assess the impact …
Hotspotty Improved: Deep Research For A Better Way Read More »
I recently drove up to participate in the USA Hike & Fly’s Ojai race on October 31st, both as an athlete and a provider of tracking with Helium. The athlete side was fun, but expensive. I landed in the bushes and tore up my wing enough to warrant buying a new one. Not cheap. Still, …
Helium is a rapidly growing and wild ecosystem. Like any other new ecosystem, things are constantly changing, and the main sources of information most new users rely on (Explorer and the Helium app) can be up 48 hours behind. That means when you check your Hotspot via Explorer on Tuesday, you could be looking at …
There’s almost no good reason to use the CLI (Command Line Interface) wallet for a normal person, but…not everyone who gets into Helium is normal. If, like me, you’re faced with having to use it, this series of instructions might help. This is NOT written for experts who know what they’re doing; they’ll laugh at this. …
The Helium CLI Wallet — Not For The Faint Of Heart Read More »
Short version: Use a low gain antenna, report your location and antenna gain accurately. If you’re in the US, this isn’t a big deal, as our radios pump out enough power to get excellent range even with a low gain antenna. If you’re in a region (UK, EU, etc) where your radio output is low, …
40–60 Hotspots. Wait, you want more, and you want to know how I came up with that (with help)? Start by reading my post on PoC cycles, otherwise you’ll be missing some key points. Done? Great! Let’s start with the worst case for HNT earnings: You’re a lone wolf Hotspot, with no Hotspots within tx/rx distance. …
Our pilot project is complete, and boy have we learned a ton from this one! While many are still focusing on earning HNT for Helium Hotspot deployments, the obvious move for those of us interested in longevity is actually USING the Network. Over the course of a week, supported by Tommy and Ryan at Lonestar …
I got into Helium accidentally. I was looking for a way to find and communicate with other paragliders out back of beyond. I had participated in a Search and Rescue for a well known paraglider out in remote Nevada at the end of summer 2020. The missing paraglider pilot (James Johnston, aka Kiwi) had GPS and …
