Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

The DePIN Library

  • Does A Helium Hotspot Actually Expose You To Powerful Radiation?

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    by

    Nik
    in

    Are Heli­um Hotspots dan­ger­ous to be around? How much RF ener­gy do they emit? Should you or your hosts be wor­ried about the expo­sure lev­els? Let’s run through the facts, then you can make your own decision.  We’ll start with this: In gen­er­al, Heli­um Hotspots rarely emit any RF. They’re built to receive sig­nals far…

  • How I Built An Awesome Lightweight Off Grid Helium Miner

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    by

    Nik
    in ,

    How small can you build an off grid min­er? Can every­thing fit in one back­pack? How light can that pack be? Final­ly, why would you want a tiny off grid miner? And yeah, those are Pup­pies Make Me Hap­py sunglasses.  I’ll start with the last ques­tion. Why would you want a tiny off grid min­er? The…

  • What Should You Look For In A Helium Antenna?

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    by

    Nik
    in

    “Will this anten­na work?” I get that ques­tion a lot, usu­al­ly about some anten­na that was dis­cov­ered after hours of search­ing and sift­ing through Google results. Anten­nas are one of the most con­fus­ing parts of Heli­um, most­ly because RF is fair­ly com­pli­cat­ed and the aver­age hotspot own­er has as much expe­ri­ence with anten­na design and…

  • HIP 17 — Why Are You Getting Scaled?

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    Nik
    in

    It’s one of the most con­fus­ing aspects of Heli­um; you put up your hotspot in an “emp­ty” res 8 hex, but you still get your trans­mit rewards scaled. Why is that, and what can you do about it? First, let’s talk about “trans­mit reward scal­ing”. What is it? Let’s take it straight from the Github pro­pos­al:…

  • Helium 101: Cable Loss and EIRP.

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    Nik
    in

    Got ques­tions about what kind of cable you should use to con­nect your Heli­um hotspot to your anten­na? Want a Heli­um-spe­cif­ic cable loss table? You’re not alone! Lots of folks want to know if they should use LMR 240 or 400 or 900, or how long it can be, or if they should use the cable…

  • How to do a Helium Hotspot Placement Assessment

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    by

    Nik
    in

    Get­ting the most out of a Heli­um hotspot deploy­ment requires a strat­e­gy to max­i­mize your place­ment, anten­na ele­va­tion, and then phys­i­cal­ly deploy­ing the thing.  Most of the earn­ings will come from the place­ment. I know it’s usu­al­ly eas­i­est to just put it up in your house, but it’s prob­a­bly worth assess­ing a few spots before you…

  • Gristle King On Helium Uplink

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    Nik
    in

    It’s been a heck of a ride so far, from the begin­nings of look­ing for a bet­ter way to find lost paraglid­er pilots all the way out to being fea­tured by Heli­um as a top hotspot opti­miza­tion expert.  Travis Teague and I just did an episode of the Uplink, which Heli­um releas­es to show­case how…

  • Shield Your Helium Hotspot From Powerful Lightning Strikes

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    by

    Nik
    in

    How do you attach a light­ning arrestor to your Heli­um hotspot anten­na? What does one look like? Is it dangerous? Let’s start with a pic­ture. This will answer 90% of your questions. You can (and accord­ing to knowl­edgable ham radio oper­a­tors) SHOULD con­nect the light­ning arrestor at the oth­er end of the cable, down by…

  • How To Read An Antenna Chart

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    by

    Nik
    in

    Heli­um is a gate­way into the world of RF, or radio fre­quen­cy. While the eas­i­est thing to do when you get your hotspot is just plug it in and set it in a win­dow, most of the time you’ll earn far more if you opti­mize a bit. Most of those opti­miza­tions are focused on improv­ing…

  • Is The Helium Bobcat Miner Any Good?

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    by

    Nik
    in

    A few months ago, Ann at Bob­cat reached out to see if I’d like a hotspot for review. She’d read the Rough Guide To Hotspot Opti­miza­tion arti­cle and liked it. She thought it might be use­ful to get a Bob­cat hotspot into my hands ahead of the wave of nor­mal pro­duc­tion. I thought so too.…