Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

Author: Nik

  • Foundations of Relayed Hotspots (and how to fix ’em!)

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    Nik
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    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…

  • Lessons Learned From A Year Of Helium Deployments

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    Nik
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    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…

  • Hotspotty Improved: Deep Research For A Better Way

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    Nik
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    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…

  • Reports From The Field: Tracking With Helium

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    Nik
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    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,…

  • How To Troubleshoot Your Helium Hotspot

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    Nik
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    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…

  • The Helium CLI Wallet — Not For The Faint Of Heart

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    Nik
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    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.…

  • What Does PoCv11 Mean For Me?

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    Nik
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    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,…

  • What Does A Good Hotspot Cluster Look Like?

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    Nik
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    40–60 Hotspots, all about 1,500m away from any oth­er, with any one of ’em hav­ing clear line of sight to at least 30 others.  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…

  • Helium Deployed: The Network In Action

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    Nik
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    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…

  • Is Helium A Better “Last Chance”?

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    Nik
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    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…