Helium Tools, Part 1: Helium.Vision — For Power Users

Let’s start with the basics: When it comes to Heli­um, most peo­ple rad­i­cal­ly under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of Place­ment and get dis­tract­ed by anten­nas and cables. If that’s you, read the Rough Guide to set you straight.

Trust me, I’ve been there. The first hotspot I put up was suc­cess­ful, and while I’m very pleased with its suc­cess, it was an acci­dent of geog­ra­phy, not a deter­mined, strate­gic effort to max­i­mize the most impor­tant aspect of any deploy­ment: Location.

Let me break it down this way. When I think of earn­ing pow­er split out between loca­tion, ele­va­tion, anten­na, and cables, the pie chart looks like this:

Are you still think­ing you real­ly need that fan­cy antenna?

Loca­tion is king. If you’re in the right place, and if you can find that gold­en sce­nario I call “Canyons and Crags”, you stand to have the high­est earn­ing hotspots in the world. All the ele­va­tion, the fan­ci­est anten­nas, and the low­est loss cables won’t make a twig of dif­fer­ence if you’re not in the right location.

That’s where Helium.Vision comes in. One of a few ser­vices that have sprung up to help hotspot own­ers max out their deploy­ments, this one is aimed at “pow­er users”, hotspots own­ers with mul­ti­ple hotspots who have the ener­gy and resources to find the best loca­tions and secure them.

I sat down with Helium.Vision own­er Nick Hough to have him walk me through how to use this pow­er­ful tool. If you’re the “just tell me what to do type”, this is not for you (I can help you with that, just not in this post.)

If, on the oth­er hand, you’ve got 10+ hotspots com­ing in the mail and want to make sure each one of ’em is a top earn­er, well, this 40 minute video deep dive on how to use Helium.Vision will prob­a­bly be the dif­fer­ence between hav­ing high earn­ing hotspots and just sprin­kling ’em around Aun­tie Irma’s and Grand­ma Betty’s. 

HV com­bines topog­ra­phy, hotspot loca­tions, Cloud RF, and build­ings to help pick the absolute best place­ment for your hotspots. We cov­er how and why you’d use the dif­fer­ent lay­ers, the use of Place­ment Query (the heart of the tool), how you can track hotspots both in and out of your sta­ble, and how to keep an eye on what’s going on in your region. This last one has been inter­est­ing; 2 hotspots have been brought to my atten­tion in the last 24 hours here in San Diego. 

This is the first in a series of posts I’m doing on Heli­um tools you can use to improve your deploy­ments. From oth­er soft­ware offer­ings to how to make your own cables to how to run your sig­nal through a coax-lined house, I’m pumped to share ways that you can opti­mize your Heli­um hotspots deploy­ments. Let’s build this network!

p.s. I don’t do affil­i­ate links or refer­ral pro­grams. If I’m giv­en some­thing by a man­u­fac­tur­er (like that Bob­cat hotspot), you’ll know about it. These reviews are intend­ed to help YOU opti­mize your deploy­ments and learn about Heli­um. Rock on!

Where to find:

Helium.Vision

Heli­um Consulting

The Rough Guide to Hotspot Optimization

How to Choose A Heli­um Antenna