Category: Helium
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HIP 17 — Why Are You Getting Scaled?
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:…
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Helium 101: Cable Loss and EIRP.
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…
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How to do a Helium Hotspot Placement Assessment
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…
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Gristle King On Helium Uplink
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…
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Shield Your Helium Hotspot From Powerful Lightning Strikes
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…
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How To Read An Antenna Chart
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…
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Is The Helium Bobcat Miner Any Good?
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.…
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Learn How To Use The Helium Network
While many of you are hammer and tongs at the game of deploying hotspots, the real opportunity is beginning to shift from *building* the network to *using* the network. One of the best ways to learn something is to do it. Let me show you how, for about $40, you can add your first sensor…
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Diving Deeper Into Your Helium Hotspot
I sat down with Vishal from HeliumHiker to go through his pretty rad set of tools for getting deep into a Helium hotspot. I first found Vishal through using his Challenge Receipt Analysis dashboard which is my go-to tool for checking my hotspots and make sure they’re singing. Looks like I might need to dig…
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Unusual Earnings On A Growing Network: Here’s How
Ok, so you’ve deployed your first hotspot or two, figured out how a wallet works and where to send your HNT to convert to local currency (or you’re hodling.) So far, so good. But…how do you make it better? What are ways you can deploy hotspots to provide maximum earnings and coverage? Here’s an example…