Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

A Rough Guide To Helium Hotspot Placement

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by

Nik
in ,

This was writ­ten in late 2020/early 2020 for folks curi­ous about opti­miz­ing a Heli­um Hotspot place­ment. Some state­ments are out of date, though the meat of it all is gen­er­al­ly correct.

Most start with their anten­na, which is (almost com­plete­ly) the wrong approach for max­i­miz­ing earn­ings. The only way you could make a less effi­cient improve­ment at the start is to focus on what cables to buy. 

There are four fun­da­men­tal aspects of an opti­mal Heli­um hotspot place­ment; anten­nas and cables are at the bot­tom of the list for importance.

Before we get there (relax, it’s only a few para­graphs away), let’s get a few impor­tant points out of the way:

First, while I think every­one read­ing this should buy at least one hotspot and place it as opti­mal­ly as you can, over the long run you’ll earn far more by fig­ur­ing out a way to actu­al­ly use the net­work and not just pro­vide coverage.

Sec­ond, if you fol­low and read through every link in this arti­cle you’ll be ready to make excel­lent deci­sions about the best pos­si­ble hotspot place­ment. The whole thing (Heli­um, anten­nas, opti­mum hotspot place­ment) will take about an hour to digest and understand. 

Third, if you don’t want or have the time to fig­ure out Heli­um on your own, for a long time I offered both cours­es and consulting. 

ASSUMPTIONS

  1. You know that Heli­um is a net­work of Hotspots that trans­mit and receive radio sig­nals, then pass those sig­nals onto the inter­net. In gen­er­al, the more sig­nals a giv­en hotspot receives, the more HNT it earns. When this was writ­ten, Heli­um was on its own chain. It’s now on Solana. Hotspots record trans­ac­tions on a blockchain and reward own­ers for pro­vid­ing cov­er­age with HNT, a cryp­tocur­ren­cy token.
  2. You have, or have ordered, or are think­ing about order­ing, a Heli­um hotspot.
  3. You haven’t read every last post and thread on the inter­net about max­i­miz­ing a hotspot placement. 🙂

There are only a few things that real­ly mat­ter when it comes to your hotspot place­ment. Some of them will change over time, some of them are fun­da­men­tal. All are dri­ven by just one goal over the long term: 

ADD VALUE TO THE NETWORK

FUNDAMENTALS FOR OPTIMUM PLACEMENT

In order of importance: 

  • HOTSPOT DENSITY
  • ANTENNA “VIEW”
  • APPROPRIATE ANTENNA
  • MINIMIZED & HIGH QUALITY CONNECTION LENGTH/CABLES

HOTSPOT DENSITY: Opti­mum den­si­ty is deter­mined using Uber’s H3 map. At the low end, hotspots won’t earn from oth­er hotspots less than 300 meters away. At the high end, hotspots can “wit­ness” oth­er hotspots 50 km out.

Back to the Uber map. The map uses (most­ly) hexa­gons to form grids of dif­fer­ent sizes. Each size is called a “res­o­lu­tion” or “res” for short. Each hex size has an appro­pri­ate den­si­ty for its resolution.

Here is a dat­ed inter­ac­tive map (it stopped being updat­ed in late fall of 2020) of den­si­ty and hotspot place­ments. It’s col­or cod­ed and fair­ly intu­itive. Green means good den­si­ty, red indi­cates too dense. Here’s a quick screenshot:

At each “res” there is an opti­mal num­ber of hotspots per hexa­gon. That num­ber can change. It is deter­mined by a base rate of hotspots per hex plus the num­ber of hotspots in sur­round­ing hex­es. Go ahead, read that sen­tence again a few times. The details are in HIP 17, look for “Pro­posed Chain Variables.”

Yes, it’s a bit com­pli­cat­ed. It was made this way in order to pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly account for den­si­ty dif­fer­ences between cities, sub­urbs, and rur­al areas.

Here’s a screen­shot map of San Fran­cis­co (pulled from the HIP 17 Visu­al­iz­er) to give anoth­er perspective.

Screenshot of San Francisco using the HIP17 visualizer.

Notice the green hotspots don’t have oth­er hotspot as close to them as the orange and red ones. Red is the worst; they’re basi­cal­ly on top of each oth­er and pro­vid­ing dupli­cate (or trip­li­cate or worse) cov­er­age, which isn’t use­ful to the network.

If you want to know if your loca­tion will be good, you’ll need to study HIP17.

If you read HIP17 until you under­stand it, you’ll be in the 1% of Heli­um Hotspot own­ers who don’t real­ly have ques­tions about opti­mum density. 

It looks com­pli­cat­ed at first, but it’s actu­al­ly straight­for­ward. If you’ve ever read about Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, you’ll have an under­stand­ing of hotspot den­si­ty: Not too dense, not dense enough, but just right.

If you need to visu­al­ize things, use Heli­umVi­sion or Hotspot­ty. Use the options for hex over­lays in Heli­umVi­sion or just zoom in and out on your Hotspot with Hotspot­ty. If you need help with Heli­umVi­sion, con­sid­er tak­ing my Heli­umVi­sion Mas­ter Class.

If you don’t have the time or just want to skip that part, you can hire me and I’ll help you pick the best option for your area and circumstance. 

BOTTOM LINE: You need to have opti­mum den­si­ty for max­i­mum earnings.

ANTENNA VIEW: Before you go order­ing the lat­est and great­est super-hot anten­na (more on that lat­er), make sure your anten­na has a view. A “view” has three impor­tant aspects.

  • Out­side. Walls and even win­dows will block radio waves.
  • High above oth­er obstacles.
  • Clear view to as much as possible.

The view of your anten­na is far more impor­tant than upgrad­ing your anten­na. A high­er ele­va­tion “stock” anten­na (the one that comes with your hotspot) will out­per­form a super fan­cy anten­na that’s low down EVERY TIME. You can see the line of sight of your anten­na to spe­cif­ic spots using RF Line of Sight or Helium.Vision.

Get as high as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble. How high? From the Amer­i­can Radio Relay League’s doc­u­ment on anten­na placement:

“To a dis­tant receiv­ing sta­tion, a trans­mit­ting anten­na at 120 feet will pro­vide the effect of approx­i­mate­ly 8 to 10 times more trans­mit­ting pow­er than the same anten­na at 35 feet.”

You may be think­ing, “I’ll nev­er get my anten­na 120′ high.” That’s OK, do the best you can, but know that until you get it high, you’ll be miss­ing out on earnings. 

A good rule of thumb to start approach­ing 90% of opti­mum earn­ings is at least 20′ above your roof and sur­round­ing roofs.

Here’s an exam­ple of a good ele­va­tion placement:

Correct elevation placement on rooftop

That anten­na is on top of a 23′ pole on top of a 15′ high roof in sub­ur­ban San Diego.

Anec­do­tal reports show that even a *1 meter* ele­va­tion dif­fer­ence can notice­ably affect earnings.

Get as clear a view of as much “civ­i­liza­tion” as pos­si­ble. Remem­ber, the net­work is only as valu­able as the USEFUL area it can cov­er. A hotspot on top of a moun­tain with clear views of noth­ing but nature for 30 miles is not cov­er­ing (to the net­work, any­way) USEFUL territory.

A hotspot on a sub­ur­ban roof sur­round­ed by a few mil­lion peo­ple and lots of data oppor­tu­ni­ties will pro­vide far more use­ful coverage.

Cor­rect ele­va­tion is vital for max­i­mum cov­er­age. LoRa is more or less a line-of-sight radio tech­nol­o­gy. While the radio waves will go through a few things (a wall or two, a win­dow, or a leafy tree), for the most part you want to be able to have a direct line of sight to both your cov­er­age area AND oth­er hotspots. 

APPROPRIATE ANTENNA: The anten­na is what most peo­ple focus on, think­ing that if they just have the “best” anten­na they’ll make the most HNT.

The anten­na shipped with any pur­chased hotspot is already pret­ty good. How­ev­er, as many Heli­ites are both tin­ker­ers and dri­ven by earn­ings, many will “upgrade” their anten­na in order to reach more hotspots.

Anten­nas do 2 things: They trans­mit (tx) and they receive (rx). Most folks get wrapped up in how well an anten­na trans­mits, but in the long term that doesn’t mat­ter that much, as the val­ue of Heli­um is in how well an anten­na can RECEIVE.

Remem­ber, the Heli­um net­work offers val­ue by being able to receive trans­mis­sion FROM sen­sors TO hotspots, then push that infor­ma­tion onto the blockchain via an inter­net connection.

While there is and has been a place for being able to trans­mit pow­er­ful­ly, that val­ue will dimin­ish rapid­ly over the com­ing year.

What the heck is “dBi”? It refers to the focus and shap­ing of the ener­gy an anten­na trans­mits and receives.

Here’s a quick dbi gain visualizer:

I can hear you now: “Ok dude, but what anten­na should I buy?” 

You can read this in-depth arti­cle on how to match your place­ment with an anten­na, but you’ve basi­cal­ly got 3 options. 

First, and rec­om­mend­ed: Don’t buy any­thing, just use the anten­na your hotspot came with. Get your den­si­ty and view squared away first.

Sec­ond, if you’ve got a great place­ment with the right ele­va­tion, buy either an HNTen­na or any­thing in the 3–6 dBi range from McGill.

Third, if you feel like you need some­thing high­er gain and you under­stand the trade offs of a high­er gain anten­na, get a high­er gain anten­na from McGill.

“But, but, what about the [insert fan­cy anten­na] I read about on the Dis­cord chat? Should­n’t I get the most pow­er­ful anten­na pos­si­ble? I want more money!”

Big antenna with a long view on a mountain.

No. Re-read the above piece on hav­ing a “too pow­er­ful” antenna. 

The one pic­tured above is a high gain sec­tor (direc­tion­al) anten­na on top of a moun­tain. Despite hav­ing an enor­mous “view”, it does worse than many place­ments that are much clos­er to oth­er hotspots. I replaced it with a 3 dBi omni, no dif­fer­ence in earn­ings. Den­si­ty mat­ters more than antenna.

Even “hot” anten­nas that are tuned to fit with­in Heli­um guide­lines (decreased trans­mit and receive pow­er) won’t rad­i­cal­ly out­per­form oth­er antennas.

One Hotspot own­er I know ran a Near­son 9 vs a Rak 8 dBi in ear­ly 2021 and kept track of earn­ings between the two. The RAK beat the pants off the Nearson.

MINIMIZED CONNECTIONS: Ok, now we’re com­ing to stuff that does­n’t real­ly mat­ter but you’ll ask about and geek out on any­way. How should you con­nect your hotspot to your antenna?

This is RF 101 (Radio Fre­quen­cy): You want a thick, clean, short (ide­al­ly 5′ or less) cable that goes from your hotspot to your anten­na. I rec­om­mend and use LMR400 from USACoax.

If you’re run­ning a cel­lu­lar back­haul you’ll prob­a­bly be fine with anoth­er LMR vari­ant for the cell anten­nas (each set­up is unique) but you will want to place those cell anten­nas exter­nal to the enclosure.

Get your hotspot up high near your anten­na to keep cable runs to the anten­na short. Run pow­er and eth­er­net to the high hotspot, then have a short anten­na cable to the anten­na. Do not (if you want max earn­ings) place your hotspot in your attic then run 20′ of thin crap­py coax cable to your anten­na. That will cre­ate more radio pow­er loss than you want. 

If you MUST have long cable runs, spend the mon­ey on good cable. If you do that, you may (but prob­a­bly won’t) get the same results as Docile Bone Pony, which uses 60′ of LMR 400 and is on top of a 16 sto­ry build­ing in the mid­dle of a large city. 

So. That’s most of what you need to know about a opti­mum hotspot placement. 

ADDENDA

What else should you know about when it comes to Heli­um hotspot earnings?

How much HNT you get per witness/beacon trans­ac­tion will change as the net­work devel­ops more ful­ly. With a lim­it­ed amount of HNT made avail­able (2.5 mil­lion per month until August 2023, when it drops to 1.25 million/month) to reward trans­ac­tions AND many more hotspots com­ing online in the next few months, earn­ings will steadi­ly dilute.

Yeah, but how much can I earn? Check here for a very rough esti­mate. This can change sig­nif­i­cant­ly, so it’s just a start­ing point.

No mat­ter what, with the growth of the net­work your HNT earn­ings will CONTINUE TO DROP.

This MAY be off­set by an increase in HNT price. It may not. 

How can I earn even more? The long play with Heli­um is to fig­ure out how to actu­al­ly use the ser­vice. What kind of data can you col­lect, what kind of sen­sors should you use, how can you offer that as a service? 

If you want help with that or with opti­miz­ing your hotspot place­ments, I’m avail­able for hire.

How much pow­er and data do hotspots use? Hotspots use about as much pow­er as an inter­net router, and as much data as heavy Net­flix user who watch­es 2 or 3 movies most nights (100–150 GB/month). This will con­tin­ue to increase until Light Hotspots come online some­time in ear­ly 2022. 

If you live in the First World and have a broad­band inter­net con­nec­tion, hav­ing a Heli­um Hotspot will be basi­cal­ly unno­tice­able to you from an ener­gy cost/data use perspective.

I’m ready to buy a hotspot, where should I order? I’d rec­om­mend order­ing a hotspot from Par­ley­Labs.

Is there a dif­fer­ence in hotspots/miners/radios? Not real­ly. It’s not like you can get a more pow­er­ful min­er that’ll earn you more. The biggest dif­fer­ence is when they’ll arrive, which is a func­tion of how fast they can be manufactured.

Is it real­ly worth it to put up a Heli­um hotspot? I sure think so. Will it be for you? If you have an opti­mal place­ment and fol­low all the advice above, prob­a­bly. This isn’t invest­ment advice. You could lose all the mon­ey you put in. 

How much can I make? If you do a good job, between .5 — 1 HNT/day as of March of 2022. More on that here. Or just go to Site­bot and start pok­ing around to see what the cur­rent max­i­mums are. 

How do I turn HNT into cash? Open up an account on any rep­utable exchange. 

Is this a safe invest­ment? No. This is cryp­tocur­ren­cy com­pet­ing with giant tel­cos (Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pa­nies). It may be a boomer (like when Uber com­pet­ed with cabs or Airbnb com­pet­ed with hotels) or it may be a flop (like every oth­er start­up com­pa­ny that tried to take on the big dogs.)

You should not re-finance your house to put up hotspots. You should be able to lose all the mon­ey you put into hotspots with­out putting your­self, your fam­i­ly, or any­one you know at finan­cial risk. Sheesh. 

Should I just hire you to do all the work for me? Maybe. If you don’t like to read or geek out, or you just want to try Heli­um with­out spend­ing a few months research­ing it, I’ll walk you through the process of set­ting up the best pos­si­ble place­ment for your sit­u­a­tion. You can take my cours­es (look on the top of the page under Cours­es) or go here to get started.

RESOURCES

Software

  • Heli­um Vision — Paid ser­vice w/free tri­al for assess­ing loca­tions. Def­i­nite­ly try this out!
  • Hotspot­ty — Excel­lent way to visu­al­ize den­si­ty issues AND to man­age your fleet
  • HotspotRF — use code gristleking for 20% off your first month.

Mapping

Hardware

Media & Learning Resources

Comments

297 responses to “A Rough Guide To Helium Hotspot Placement”

  1. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Right on Arun, glad you’ve found it all use­ful. Keep charging!

  2. ali Avatar
    ali

    thank you, great insight­ing points.

  3. William C Calderon Avatar
    William C Calderon

    Good stuff. Thank you very much. I wish I had an anten­na expert to mount an 8 dBi anten­na on my roof, and also guide me how to get out of my Bob­cat 300 min­er with RELAYED STATUS. Can you rec­om­mend a per­son in the Chica­go Sub­urbs area? Thanks a million

  4. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi William,
    Any local elec­tri­cian or satel­lite dish installer will be able to mount your anten­na. As far as get­ting out of relay, it’s more a ques­tion of doing it right and then not rely­ing on Heli­um Explor­er to check your work, but rather Helium.Status.

  5. Lessons Learned From A Year Of Helium Deployments - Gristle King - A Guide to Helium

    […] 6 months into this, after writ­ing the first few arti­cles (the Rough Guide and the one on choos­ing an anten­na specif­i­cal­ly), I start­ed get­ting phone calls from […]

  6. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    Do you have any con­cern a large anten­nae like that on the top of your roof makes you a tar­get by poten­tial­ly broad­cast­ing to the passer­by you’re miner?

  7. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sure, it’s def­i­nite­ly an iden­ti­fi­able thing. Not sure what to do about that; I just leave mine up high and let ‘er rip.

  8. Francisco Costa Avatar
    Francisco Costa

    Hel­lo first I want to con­grat­u­late on such a good video. I recent­ly got into heli­um min­ing and there is a cou­ple things I cant seam to wrap my head around. I live in a small town and there is already around 8 heli­um min­ers set up, but fair­ly spread out. The ones in the cen­tral area are min­ing around 2HNT month­ly, then there are 2 that are placed almost in the mid­dle of nowhere and are min­ing 15+HNT monthly.
    This is real­ly mak­ing me ques­tion where I should chose a urban area with plen­ty con­dos or just plain suburbs.
    Could use or opin­ion on this one!

  9. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Thanks Fran­cis­co. I’d rec­om­mend using Heli­umVi­sion for assess­ing loca­tions and mak­ing those kinds of deci­sions. I’ve built a Mas­ter Class for using HV; it’s pow­er­ful but can be com­pli­cat­ed. Rock on!

  10. Dino Patel Avatar
    Dino Patel

    Hey Nic thanks for this. Super helpful! 

    My ques­tion is more about devices. I’m in Africa and curi­ous about how to know if you’re get­ting a legit device or not. Can I build my own? Or buy from any­one build­ing rasp­ber­ry Pis and just con­fig­ure it to con­nect to HNT? Or does HNT only allow approved devices to con­nect to its net­work? There are a lot of resellers enter­ing the mar­ket and try­ing to fig­ure out how not to get scammed. Thanks!

  11. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Heli­um only allows approved devices to mine HNT; you can’t build your own. I’d start on Heli­um’s page about approved hotspots/makers.

  12. Alvaro Avatar
    Alvaro

    Hi Nic,
    Thank you for all the infor­ma­tion you are shar­ing with us.
    I have one ques­tion, in a few days I´ll receive a new device (Pisces P100) and I want to locate it as good as possible.
    I´m liv­ing in a 7th floor flat (from 8, 20m aprox. from the floor) with a bal­cony, where I´ll instale the antenna.
    My ques­tion is, in a bal­cony you don´t have 360º view (maybe 180º-220º), do you think it can be a big disadvantage?
    Thank you

  13. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Not a huge dis­ad­van­tage. Just get the anten­na out­side and you’ll usu­al­ly do much bet­ter than if it’s inside.

  14. Al Wormininski Avatar
    Al Wormininski

    I must have read this arti­cle a hun­dred times and it’s spot on with excep­tion to rec­om­mend­ing Par­ley Labs. After this last Nebra update I real­ly hope you all take your busi­ness else­where. I did­n’t think Nebra could be beat for poor ser­vice but Par­ley hold­ing my funds for 10 months and then offer­ing a con­so­la­tion prize is a slap in the face. I’m sure this will get delet­ed but this is still a com­ment for the Heli­um Net­work and a red flag post­ed for future min­er pur­chasers. Good luck all!

  15. Antenna Selection Guide For Your Helium Hotspot | SEKOSD Wireless

    […] as high as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble. How high? as Nik Hawks quot­ed from the Amer­i­can Radio Relay League’s doc­u­ment on anten­na place­ment: “To a distant […]

  16. Lars Avatar
    Lars

    Hi nik,

    Im in a area with very few hnt hotspots at the moment. Theres 1 at approx 3 hexa­gons away, oth­ers are even fur­ther away.
    Im have also on 2 sides big cities at 25km away. How impor­tant is it to con­nect yo those cities with plen­ty of hotspots in com­par­i­sa­tion 2 close cov­er­age in my own Town with only 2 oth­er hotspots in the Town it self.
    As i under­stood, cov­er­age is more impor­tant than dis­tance, but its hard to change the mind think­ing i could ezrn more by being able to con­nect to the big cities, instead of cov­er­age where not a lot peo­ple use all­ready helium. 

    Do to spec­i­fy more. Im locat­ed in a hexa­gon with­out oth­er min­ers, clos­est min­er is at 1km approx to con­nect with, 1 big city in the north of me at 20km, 1 even big­ger city in the South of me. 

    Could you please give some advice on how to upgrade my sit­u­a­tion. Im not con­nect­ed yet, but im look­ing first to get all the box­es correct. 

    Kind regards

    Lars

  17. Darius Avatar
    Darius

    Hi Nik,
    is the loss you expe­ri­ence when using long cables real­ly that much of an issue? I don’t have elec­tric­i­ty in my Attic, so I am plan­ning get­ting like 5m long cable(lmr 400) from my win­dow to the top of my roof. Do you have a bet­ter solu­tion? Thanks 🙂

  18. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Dar­ius, you can just cal­cu­late it using any online cal­cu­la­tor. In gen­er­al, 5m of LMR400 is not a big deal.

  19. jean-francois Avatar
    jean-francois

    Hi, Where you buy and what is the mod­el of this 23 feets pole. i would!!

  20. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Local met­al shop, 23′ of .095 4130 steel IIRC.

  21. Hayden B Avatar
    Hayden B

    Do you have any cable rec­om­men­da­tions for a flat cable to run through my win­dow so I can get my anten­na out­side? I am aware of loss­es but I believe the ben­e­fit of hav­ing it out­side out­weighs loss­es in the cable. And I am in an apart­ment so my options oth­er­wise are lim­it­ed (i.e. non-exis­tant). I’ve been research­ing but I haven’t found any YouTu­ber who sounds remote­ly intel­li­gent who has cov­ered this and I strug­gle to trust any ran­dom source.

  22. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sure, try this one.

  23. Jeffrey Addison Avatar
    Jeffrey Addison

    I have watched many of your video and read this tuto­r­i­al mul­ti­ple times. I will be mount­ing both of my Nebras this week­end using a 30′ pole on one of my peaks (27′). After the 2′ loss for the brack­et, I should reach about 55′. I will be using 3’of LMR400 and mount both Hotspots in an out­door weath­er­proof box 52′ in the air. The box­es will have 2 fans each with a ther­mo­stat and an IOT ther­mo­stat and humid­i­ty read­er that will use the net­work for mon­i­tor­ing. My area is awe­some and Hot­potRF says I should be in the 12–14 HNT per month range. While there are more Hotspots being added in my area, it is rur­al and I hope to reach into the city with my 8.5 dbi anten­nas. My ques­tion is this… Should I have one fan blow­ing in and one fan blow­ing out, or both fans blow­ing out? They will have vent covers.
    I have seen argu­ments on both sides. Also, I will have sil­i­con packs inside of the box­es to catch any humid­i­ty that will find its way inside. Thanks for your time and awe­some teachings.

  24. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Don’t need both fans & dessi­cant packs; they dessi­cant packs will quick­ly sat­u­rate and be use­less. 1 fan blow­ing is fine, either in or out.

  25. Dave Steele Avatar
    Dave Steele

    Hel­lo Mr Nik , I real­ly appre­ci­ate the info here . I just start­ed min­ing heli­um. My loca­tion is excel­lent in all res­o­lu­tions except 1 the ” too many devices” res­o­lu­tion 4 . If I move my place­ment 600 meters I will gain 1.00 on that too but will that be too much I read here and there the most is 300 meters. Thank you

  26. Will Avatar
    Will

    First of all, love your site and your knowl­edge. Far supe­ri­or than most sites out there. Ques­tion — with these met­al poles so high up, what do you do to pro­tect against light­ning strikes?

  27. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Will, you can’t real­ly pro­tect against a direct strike, but you can add a “light­ning arrestor” that’ll dis­si­pate the sta­t­ic charge before it hits your expen­sive equip­ment. I cov­er that over here. Rock on!

  28. Will Avatar
    Will

    I live in MN and am want­i­ng to put my Bob­cat 300 in an out­door enclo­sure. I’m look­ing to get it 20–30′ above my roof. I’m won­der­ing what kind of enclo­sure to use based on weath­er. Our Sum­mers can be hot (90s for 2–3 weeks) & more so very humid. Our win­ters get cold, below 0 Fahren­heit. Do I build an enclo­sure with a fan & vent to cir­cu­late air in/out OR should I keep it sealed to keep the humid & cold out?

  29. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Will,
    Great ques­tion! I’d add heat sinks to the Bob­cat, put it in a sealed enclo­sure in the shade, use dessi­cant packs and mon­i­tor temp & humid­i­ty with an LHT65.

  30. Will Avatar
    Will

    Thanks NIK! One more ques­tion. I’m in the north­ern sub­urbs of Min­neapo­lis. Down­town is 10 miles away, with a pret­ty straight line of site once you get over the trees. I’m work­ing on get­ting my min­er up 25′. I saw a dia­gram some­where that a 3Dbi anten­na will reach out 20 miles with a straight line of sight, is that accu­rate? I’m going with your advice and just going to try the stock Bob­cat anten­na and see what my results are before plunk­ing down big $$ for an antenna.

  31. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Yep, clear line of sight & 20 miles with a 3 dBi is total­ly doable.

  32. rio Avatar
    rio

    hel­lo,
    very infor­ma­tive set of blogs. i recent­ly got my min­er (sense­cap) and am fol­low­ing your suggestions.
    it earned some small amounts 24 hours back but noth­ing since. it has gone online only 2 days back and heli­um explor­er says its still syncing.
    the sense­cap dash­board says its 100% synced.
    i guess there is some delay on heli­um explor­er but is there any effect on earnings?
    is there some delay in when the hotspot starts to earn?

  33. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Yep, Heli­um Explor­er can be delayed by a day or so. Use HeliumStatus.io to get up to date info.

  34. Helium's People-Powered Network with Nik Hawk - The Bad Crypto Podcast

    […] A rough guide to Heli­um place­ment:  https://gristleking.com/a‑rough-guide-to-helium-hotspot-placement/ […]

  35. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    hel­lo, https://explorer.helium.com/hotspots/hex/882c2026d7fffff in this hex is two per­son and both have 1.00 trans­mit scale, in my hex two per­son too but I have 0.50 why, is this nor­mal? about dis­tance in first hex they have dis­tance 205meter and have 1.00 about my hex we have dis­tance 260meter and I have 0.50 please tell me why

  36. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Dave, check this post to learn how scal­ing works.

  37. Bill Avatar
    Bill

    Hi Nik, I hope you don’t mind a cou­ple more ques­tions…. I have researched myself but am get­ting con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion… a while back you were very help­ful to set up a min­er with a friend in a poten­tial­ly bet­ter loca­tion. We man­aged to get the min­er run­ning but in the 6 weeks or so it’s online it has not wit­nessed any hotspots at all although it is earn­ing…. Though in 30 days 16 days did not earn… the sur­round­ing area has plen­ty of good hex with main­ly 1 trans­mit scale ( as have I ) I have clicked on hotspots and I found my hotspot had been wit­nessed by a few. Sor­ry for long mes­sage I sup­pose I would like to know how much impact my zero wit­ness­ing has on earn­ings and maybe a link to read more on opti­mal place­ment and also maybe you can send me infor­ma­tion about the paid sup­port you offer to see if it is a pos­si­ble option for me. Thanks and apolo­gies again for length of mes­sage ( I real­ly mean it when I said that your infor­ma­tion is the best I have come across) Cheers Bill

  38. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Bill, it’s hard to say why your hotspot isn’t earn­ing. The Net­work has been pret­ty spiky for the past few months as far as earn­ings, so you can have every­thing right and still not get the rewards you think you should. I would­n’t do the paid sup­port for that; as long as your Hotspot is plugged in to pow­er and con­nect­ed to the inter­net you’re doing every­thing you can do. Take a look at this in the mean­time if you haven’t seen it: https://gristleking.com/hip-17-why-are-you-getting-scaled/

  39. Bill Avatar
    Bill

    Thanks Nik, it’s more for my mate I’d like to see a bit more earn­ings. To be hon­est I’m more inter­est­ed in the tech and the future pos­si­bil­i­ties. I have been real­ly get­ting a lot from your YouTube videos. I’m also inter­est­ed in the pos­si­bil­i­ties for using the tech­nol­o­gy and am keen to find out more about sen­sors. I watched a video last night with you and some oth­ers. Am I right in think­ing the lady from Bob­cat was talk­ing about a way to chat to oth­ers in your area and would that be a way of help­ing peo­ple get their hotspots back online etc…. Do you think that if you are near too many relayed or inac­tive hotspots it will effect peo­ple in the area. Before i moved my hotspot from Lon­don in a hex with 9 hotspots 6 need­ed atten­tion and I thought if you could com­mu­ni­cate with them and help them it could help every­one. Is that what she was talk­ing about… love your pos­i­tive atti­tude keep it up

  40. Sid Avatar
    Sid

    Thanks Nik, very help­ful. No doubt ill be in touch when my min­er arrives as I’m 45kn from the next spot.

  41. José Avatar
    José

    Hy Nik, I just begun with a mer­ry­loT. Should I open the port 44158 now a days?
    Thanks!

    José

  42. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Nope, leave it alone. We’re past that par­tic­u­lar require­ment. Rock on!

  43. José Avatar
    José

    Thanks nick!

  44. A Rough Guide to Wingbits - Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

    […] parts of the project remind me of the ear­ly days of Heli­um, back when I wrote the orig­i­nal Rough Guide for Heli­um. Wing­bits is a project that allows you to choose your hard­ware and that rewards you for […]

  45. John Avatar
    John

    Awe­some, thanks for the info.

    One request: please change “Open up an account on Binance.” to “Open up an account on a rep­utable exchange that Heli­um trades on.”

    Binance does some shady things IMHO, and frankly the qual­i­ty of exchanges con­tin­ues to change over time, so rec­om­mend­ing one that may work well in one geog­ra­phy may not play well in anoth­er geog­ra­phy, etc.

    Also, “Hotspots record all trans­ac­tions on a blockchain…” might be tweaks to say “Hotspots record a record of all the HNT trans­ac­tions on a blockchain…” as it reads one might mis­in­ter­pret this to mean traf­fic is some­how get­ting writ­ten to the chain, and of course this isn’t feasible.

    Appre­ci­ate the help­ful links as well — I’m in rur­al ter­ri­to­ry out­side of Tokyo, but plan to throw up a hotspot even though it like­ly won’t make mon­ey… just nice to share our 2GB fiber con­nec­tions with the world when we can.

    Cheers:

    -J

  46. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Got it, updat­ed those. Thanks John! This was writ­ten in late 2020/early 2021, so it’s about 3 and a half years out of date now. I’m sur­prised it’s aged this well!

  47. John Avatar
    John

    I saw the orig­i­nal date — and won­dered if you would respond. I guess good infor­ma­tion has a way of con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide value. 🙂

    Thanks for the tweaks.

    Cheers:

    -John

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