How I Built An Awesome Lightweight Off Grid Helium Miner

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. 

Hey, before we go any fur­ther, please know that I’m NOT an elec­tri­cian, this is NOT pro­fes­sion­al advice, I’m just a dude who enjoys tin­ker­ing and build­ing things. Some of these com­po­nents, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the bat­tery & charg­er, can cause seri­ous haz­ard if not cor­rect­ly installed. Please find a local pro­fes­sion­al to help you exe­cute a safe deployment. 

I’ll start with the last ques­tion. Why would you want a tiny off grid min­er? The short answer is “weight”. If, like me, you are super stoked on the idea of hik­ing in an off grid min­er to a place deep in the wilds, you will even­tu­al­ly get over the idea of car­ry­ing in heavy equip­ment. I did that on my first off-grid, car­ry­ing in awk­ward­ly loaded 60+ lb rucks over 6 miles of rugged ter­rain with 3k’ of gain. 

It was the hard­est thing I’ve done since run­ning a hun­dred miles back in 2015. Fun once, and rad to share with a friend (we EACH had huge, awk­ward loads to car­ry), but not some­thing I was des­per­ate to repeat.

Still, being gen­er­al­ly unafraid of phys­i­cal work, I did the same thing a few more times, just to be sure it was­n’t just a one-time suck­fest. One off-grid took 6 (SIX!) trips in to install.

By that time, I fig­ured out that while I real­ly like hik­ing heavy shit long dis­tances out in the moun­tains, I’d prob­a­bly enjoy hik­ing in a light ruck even more. So I set about build­ing one. I also want­ed to re-mea­sure my ini­tial pow­er draws because I was see­ing off grid setups that seemed small­er with a high­er load..

After a con­ver­sa­tion with @BFGNeil on Dis­cord about using a Pi Zero and a RAK 2245 hat to put togeth­er just the pack­et for­warder (from a DIY Alpha code I received way back when they were still avail­able), I decid­ed to try it out. The enor­mous advan­tage of hav­ing just a pack­et for­warder (and not the full fat min­er) is the low­er data plan size I can use for the cell backhaul. 

I cannnot over­state this advan­tage. Please do NOT think you’ll be able to use a small data plan (100MB or less) on your pro­duc­tion Heli­um com­pat­i­ble Hotspot. You’ll need 50 GB MINIMUM, and will be much safer with 100 GB. I got lucky to find Heli­um right as they launched (and then quick­ly closed) the DIY pro­gram. This guide gives you an idea of what a Light Hotspot will be like.

One last note before we dig in. Off grids are hard, and com­pli­cat­ed, and some­times com­plex. If you just want to buy an off grid set­up, I’d start with IoT Off Grid. If, how­ev­er, you LOVE build­ing your own stuff, keep reading!

Let’s start with a gear list. 

PLEASE NOTE: This is MY gear list. It will prob­a­bly not fit exact­ly what YOU are try­ing to do. My goal is to have a tiny, light­weight, right-on-the-edge of pow­er require­ments for a Light hotspot in a high sun area. Make SURE you mea­sure your pow­er draws before just blind­ly order­ing what I used and think­ing it’ll mag­i­cal­ly work for your area. Your chal­lenges will be mak­ing sure you have enough pow­er and mak­ing sure you have enough data. 

[ninja_tables id=“2104”]

The great news is that pack­et for­warders are what “light hotspots” will be, so it’s like­ly that you’ll be able to do this same thing and in a clean­er look­ing pack­age by mid-2022.

The sec­ond advan­tage of a Light Hotspot is the low­er pow­er con­sump­tion. Com­pared to a reg­u­lar min­er, with a pack­et-for­warder-only set­up you can shave off enough watts to real­ly drop both bat­tery size and solar pan­el size.

Here’s the pow­er it’s pulling. Note the size of that “hotspot”. It’s MUCH small­er than cur­rent pro­duc­tion hotspot, and pulls about ½ of the power.

Remem­ber, volts x amps = watts, so this is right around 1.5 watts. It jumps around a bit, but in any event, that ain’t much. 

Add in a cell modem and the solar charge con­troller with the pack­et for­warder on a Pi Zero and you’re look­ing at about 3.4 watts total. For com­par­i­son, a RAK V2 by itself pulls around 2.3 watts.

Want more data on pow­er draws? Here ya go!

[ninja_tables id=“2112”]

Of course, it also depends on the win­ter sun hours in your area. If, like me, you live in Amer­i­ca’s Finest City (San Diego), you have more win­ter sun hours than just about any­one in the US. That means you can use a much small­er solar pan­el (30 watts is what I chose) as well as a small­er bat­tery (20 Ah in my case.)

I put those togeth­er in an enclo­sure with the pack­et for­warder, a small­er cell back­haul (IBR200 instead of the 650C I’ve used before, many off grid­ders are now using a Spitz), the same charge con­troller I’ve used, and had a tidy lit­tle package.

Still, you’re left with mount­ing the thing, which can be a real bear. The solu­tion I came up with was inspired by some­thing I saw over at MP Anten­na, plus the fact that I love to hand bend metal. 

I start­ed out with a sheet of 12″ x 48″ .0125 5052 alu­minum. 5052 is a good mix of tough­ness and rigid­i­ty. 6061 will crack when you bend it, and 3003 will flex too eas­i­ly. I marked out the holes for cut­ting and the lines for bending.

I want­ed to be able to mount this brack­et any­where, eas­i­ly. One of the chal­lenges of an off grid set­up is actu­al­ly mount­ing the thing. Though you can’t see ’em in the above pic, the lat­est ver­sion has slots for worm dri­ve (hose) clamps as well as the screw/bolt hole mounts you see here. This will eas­i­ly mount to a round object, like a pipe or a pole or a tree. It’ll mount to a flat sur­face as well, like a rock wall or the side of a building.

Next up is drilling & cut­ting ’em out. Alu­minum is pret­ty easy to work with, which makes this a nice project.

Next up was cut­ting the “win­dow”, which allows you to reach in with a drill and mount on the back holes before putting the solar pan­el on. Here’s the plate drilled and cut, ready for bending.

When I go into pro­duc­tion (that’s a joke, by the way) I’ll use a press brake and water jet, but for pro­to­typ­ing you can’t beat a bar clamp (as long as you don’t mind a lit­tle phys­i­cal work). You put the plate in the bar clamp, make sure your bend line is straight, tight­en every­thing up, and start ham­mer­ing. Hand bend­ing takes patience; you don’t see a lot of progress at first, but over time you’ll end up with a beau­ti­ful­ly bent line.

https://vimeo.com/573430910

As you can see, I set up a lit­tle card­board angle mea­sure­ment device which gives me an angle of 148, or a 32 degree bend. 32 is our lat­i­tude, and gives your solar pan­el the most sun rays dur­ing the short­est days of the year. Here’s what it looks like with the first bend finished.

From there you just slide the plate up and ham­mer out a 90 degree angle. I’ll usu­al­ly go back and forth a few times with the bends. On a press brake you don’t need to, but when hand bend­ing I always find a lit­tle extra love makes for a clean­er job.

It’s not uncom­mon to have “extra” bends in there, which you’ll need to flat­ten out on an anvil. In this case the “roof” had a slight arc to it. I leap at any chance to use my Nim­ba Titan, here she is ready to assist in the flat­ten­ing process. Man, the right tools make the job easier!

All that ham­mer­ing attract­ed my wife’s atten­tion. She knew the best fuel for any endurance event is the cake from Paleo Treats, so she brought some out. Damn, that Key Lime is good!

https://vimeo.com/573431945

Fueled with cake and ready for the next step, I assem­bled the box, the pan­el, and the antenna. 

This next part may be con­fus­ing, as I’m using pic­tures from a few dif­fer­ent builds here. The parts you see in this build on the inside of the enclo­sure are the RUT240 cell modem (NOT the IBR200), a Ren­ogy Wan­der­er 10, and a Bioen­no Pow­er 20 Ah LiPoFe4 bat­tery. The hotspot itself is a Pi Zero cou­pled to a 2287 con­cen­tra­tor and Pi hat from Par­ley Labs. 

Here’s just the RUT240 and the DIY Hotspot.

I print­ed up lit­tle red PETG brack­ets for the RUT240 and the Pi Zero on my Prusa 3D print­er. At about $800 for a kit, they’re a very use­ful thing to have if you get into this off-grid world.

If you don’t have (or want) a 3D print­er, go to the Prusa World map page and look for folks near you who are will­ing to print them up for you. That’s how I did my first 3D prints. Here’s the Pi Zero nes­tled into its brack­et. Brack­ets make it very easy to attach com­po­nents to the “perf board” that comes with most enclosures.

Wait, you want every­thing labeled for ya? No prob:

inside an enclosure with labels

Here it is mount­ed on the near­est avail­able space (my work­bench) as a test run. Please note that you’re not lim­it­ed to mount­ing on workbenches. 😉

The box still needs vent holes cut and vents mount­ed along with the holes & glands for anten­na cables, but this gives you an idea of how the thing works. It is WAY eas­i­er than any oth­er off grid mount I’ve built. Here’s a quick video of it with the HNTen­na and a cell anten­na mount­ed, though no cables run yet.

https://vimeo.com/573292248

The next step is break­ing it all down and see­ing if I can fit it in my back­pack. One of the real beau­ties of this set­up is how small it is. Most back­packs on the mar­ket are way too small to fit a large enclo­sure. This back­pack is built for elk hunters to car­ry out their meat, but I fig­ured Stone Glac­i­er would­n’t mind if I repur­posed their EVO 3300 as a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions pack. To be clear, this is not (by far) the cheap­est pack you can buy to do this job. I just like nice things.

From left to right you’ve got the pack, the solar pan­el, below the pan­el is the HNTen­na, then the enclo­sure with a GK tool roll on it, and final­ly, the bracket.

Now, that brack­et has some sharp edges, so if you’re going to strap it on a pack you’ll want to cush­ion those. I had some left­over foam lay­ing around the shop, so I taped it on with painters tape (comes up off eas­i­ly) and set up the pack.

You can’t see it in that pic, but I’ve also padded the solar pan­el, which is against my back in the pack. While the pan­els don’t scratch super eas­i­ly, they’re not the tough­est thing out there, and any scratch can decrease the effi­cien­cy. That’s some­thing you want to avoid when you’ve got such a small pan­el. Here’s the pack with every­thing in it, all ready to go.

I’m guess­ing the whole thing weighs less than 35 lbs. If you’ve ever got­ten into pack weight and how it can effect your abil­i­ty to per­form under pres­sure, you know that this is right at the lim­it of what saps courage over time. I’m not expect­ing to engage in any fire­fights while mount­ing this thing, so I feel pret­ty safe, even if I’m slight­ly over S.L.A Mar­shal­l’s rec­om­mend­ed weight.

After load­ing the pack up I decid­ed to re-wrap the brack­et with a clean­er look­ing foam set­up using pipe insu­la­tion. Here’s what that looks like, just for reference.

The gear is pret­ty straight­for­ward (aside from the brack­et). This is a slight­ly dif­fer­ent set­up than the one I’ve shown you. Try to iden­ti­fy the com­po­nents on your own, hit the com­ments if you need help.

IBR200 cell modem, Ren­ogy Wan­der­er charge con­troller, 12–5v buck con­vert­er, and then what­ev­er your hotspot is. Here’s the inte­ri­or lay­out with almost noth­ing hooked up. The two pink/orange cables go out to the cell modem anten­nas. You can see the vent up at the top right. There’s also one at the bot­tom left. Because the PiZe­ro does­n’t have a native Eth­er­net con­nec­tion I picked up a con­vert­er for it. Every­thing else is pret­ty straightforward.

If you’re look­ing to do this same thing, keep in mind that this enclo­sure may NOT fit your hotspot, at least as I cur­rent­ly have it laid out. RAK V2s will be fine, but oth­er hotspots may need to be mount­ed on the door, or just require a reshuffling.

Ok, that wraps up most of the details on this project. If you’d like help get­ting your Heli­um Hotspot off grid, con­sid­er hir­ing me to walk you through the best ways to both build and place your hotspot. Rock on!


Comments

57 responses to “How I Built An Awesome Lightweight Off Grid Helium Miner”

  1. Hey Nik that’s pret­ty impres­sive! I wish I lived in an area where I could go off grid like that. I bet that will def­i­nite­ly be worth all the hard effort you put forth into this project. Rock on!

  2. Thanks Gary!

  3. Hi Nik! That’s awe­some what you achieved here! What about the net­work? How did you con­nect the hotspot to the net­work? Are you using 4G with a ded­i­cat­ed plan?

  4. Why no info about your anten­na and the dbi?

  5. Hi Michael, it’s an HNTen­na, should be a link in the arti­cle to it. Just in case, vis­it them here.

  6. Yep, that’s a Cradle­point IBR200 in there, which is a cel­lu­lar modem. Cell modems allow your hotspot to con­nect to the inter­net. Because this is just a pack­et for­warder I can use a much small­er plan than a “full fat” min­er. Once Light Gate­ways start to be sold, you can do the same thing. In the mean­time, you’ll need on the order of 40–50GB/month, although that may not be enough. One off-grid I know is on track to use 90GB this month!

  7. Still wait­ing on my hotspots to come in, but when I do I will be sure to give you a call1

  8. Hey, Nik,

    And why are you deploy­ing this tech?

    Alan

  9. Hi Alan, most­ly because this is the most fun way for me to deploy a Heli­um min­er. I like the mix of design­ing, build­ing, assess­ing a place­ment, then get­ting it deployed. There are cer­tain­ly eas­i­er ways to do this. For the first test run on this min­er I’ve just got it deployed on a moun­tain top you can dri­ve up to; easy to test that way, and great coverage.

  10. Brandon Kling Avatar
    Brandon Kling

    Nik why only 3dbi? Is it because you are deploy­ing this in a place with vary­ing elevations?

    Also why HNten­na? I’ve seen RAK/CalChip anten­na’s also.

    thanks.
    ‑bran­don

  11. Hi Bran­don, 3 dBi because most of the time a high gain isn’t the right choice. HNTen­na because I think it’s the best anten­na on the mar­ket. I’m see­ing it rou­tine­ly hit oth­er gate­ways 170+ km out.

  12. This looks great but I won­der­ing, what will make it secure from van­dals or from peo­ple com­ing around your set up and mess­ing with it? Of course it will be locked but don’t you think off grid min­ers can be some­what risky?

  13. Yep, that risk def­i­nite­ly exists. Aim to mit­i­gate by putting it behind fences or some oth­er “pri­ma­ry” form of protection.

  14. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    Nik- great piece! On the secu­ri­ty ques­tion, I know Heli­um Explor­er will show that a min­er is in a hexa­gon, but that is a pret­ty large area. Is there a way for some­one to iden­ti­fy exact­ly where the set­up is locat­ed if they want­ed to go out and mess with it?

  15. Yep, any of the cur­rent paid ser­vices (Helium.Vision, HotspotRF etc) will report your assert­ed loca­tion. That infor­ma­tion is pub­lic, you just can’t see it on Explor­er. One way to hedge against being found is to assert in the mid­dle of the near­est street inter­sec­tion with­in about 150m of your loca­tion. Close enough that you’re still accu­rate re. cov­er­age stuff, far enough away to main­tain pri­va­cy. If you’re way off in the back of beyond with no min­ers (or street inter­sec­tions) close by, it’s just tougher to hide it, though you *prob­a­bly* have some more wig­gle room with distances. 

  16. This is epic!!! Quick ques­tion, how much data does a min­er con­sume per month? 10gb? 20gb?

  17. Hi Marie, plan on 90 GB/month and you should be fine. At the begin­ning it was 20–30GB/month but that has slow­ly crept up.

  18. Love the enthu­si­asm about build­ing ful­ly off grid min­ers. I want­ed to do this but could­n’t fig­ure out where to start until I read this arti­cle and your pre­vi­ous one. Can you tell me the process as to how you get per­mis­sion to place the min­ers on top of a moun­tain or hill­side? For instance, do you just find a piece of pub­lic land and post it where ever you please or do you have to call the City/County and request per­mis­sion and pay any fees asso­ci­at­ed to it?

  19. Hi Man­ny, I had a rela­tion­ship with the land own­ers on the moun­tain; I’d placed a weath­er sta­tion on there the year before. If you can find pri­vate land own­ers they’ll be far eas­i­er to deal with than the city/county.

  20. Nice work! Do you know if a Mul­ti­tech Mul­ti­Con­nect could be used instead of the RUT 240? If so, any drawbacks?

  21. This is super cool! What’s the ROI look like for this min­er? or how much do you make each month from it?

  22. Depends on where you place it; loca­tion is every­thing when it comes to earnings.

  23. So you just bought a RAK2245 which is a light hotspot? How did you pair it to your phone/helium app?

  24. Hi Ray, sort of. This is a bit con­fus­ing. For about a month and a half in late 2020, Heli­um opened up a DIY pro­gram, where you could buy your own hard­ware, receive an “alpha code” from Heli­um, and build your own Hotspot. They quick­ly turned it off as they learned how sus­cep­ti­ble to gam­ing it was, but any­one who had received a code was able to build a work­ing hotspot with it. I had a few friends do that, and fun­ni­ly enough they aban­doned the project and gave me their alpha codes. This is a hotspot I built that uses one of those alpha codes. It does­n’t pair with a phone or app.

  25. Genius. Pure Genius… and I actu­al­ly LOL’d at the word Suckfest.

  26. Right on Dan, glad it made ya laugh and helped you learn. Charge!

  27. Glenn Stanford Avatar
    Glenn Stanford

    Great! Exact­ly what do I need to deploy on tow­ers with­out ISP ser­vice. Can get the min­er just don’t know did­dly about all the oth­er equip­ment. I am versed in PV and asso­ci­at­ed equipment.
    How are you dump­ing your excess PV har­vest? A dc light bulb etc?
    Thanks

  28. Hi Glenn, if you have access to a tow­er you’ll need both pow­er & inter­net con­nec­tion, the lat­ter of which can come via cell modem; a RUT240 is a good option there. Not sure about excess PV har­vest, am let­ting the charge con­troller han­dle that. 🙂

  29. […] It start­ed with the usu­al last minute scram­ble to get every­thing ready for a big project. The night before I was out in the shop cut­ting masts and prep­ping enclo­sures to make sure I had every­thing ready for a big week! Dur­ing the past year, I’ve learned a bunch about get­ting these things out in the wild. The lat­est improve­ment I learned from a client (thanks Dave H!) was using these lit­tle tripods for a “plant it any­where” set­up that’s easy to carry. […]

  30. Hey Nik, I am actu­al­ly real­ly want­i­ng to do an off-grid sys­tem because I live in Utah and a hotspot up on the side of the moun­tain would do incred­i­bly well. But my only fear is hav­ing some­one steal all the equip­ment because the loca­tion is all seen on the app. have you run into that yet?

  31. Hi Mason,
    Yep, I’ve heard of hotspots get­ting stolen; one of those risks you run. Mit­i­gate it with plac­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty, ide­al­ly behind a fence or oth­er­wise dif­fi­cult to get to (obvi you need to ask for permission.)

  32. […] Peak. For those of you way into build­ing these things, this is a slight­ly old­er build mode (direc­tions here). Notice the RP-SMA con­nec­tor (not an N?type) for the bulk­head con­nec­tion. N?types […]

  33. Hi Nick.
    I think the solar pan­el will vibrate in strong winds.
    It would be good to fin­ish two struts between the pan­el and the main sup­port plate on which there is a box with a hotspot. This pre­vents vibra­tions and pos­si­ble break­age of the solar panel.

    Ivo — Czech republic ?

  34. Hi Ivo, it might. I like the idea of struts, though it makes it hard­er to pack. I’ve got a new way of putting it all togeth­er with the solar pan­el & box mount­ed sep­a­rate­ly on a pole. The idea came from a client and I’m dig­ging it, although I still have improve­ments to make regard­ing secur­ing the box & pan­el to the pole so they don’t slide around. Hose clamps are fine for “nor­mal” weath­er, but heavy winds will rotate a panel.

  35. I’m afraid that the alu­minum will crack when strong vibrat­ing with­out sup­port from below.
    I have one more ques­tion for you.
    I can use a cable with an imped­ance of 75 ohms instead of a 50 ohm cable ?

    cable : Televes T100 PE 215501 Cu / 100m / 6,6 mm (75ohm)
    — atten­u­a­tion ‑16dB — 100m
    inner con­duc­tor, braid and foil — pure copper
    Will this cable work just like a 50 ohm cable?

  36. Nope, you’ll need a 50 ohm for that.

  37. where do you get that pow­er injec­tion come from does the modem give off pow­er to pow­er the min­er, from what i under­stand a poe pow­er injec­tor is need to pow­er up that poe splitter

  38. The pow­er on an off-grid comes from the bat­tery. The bat­tery will pow­er both the modem and the hotspot. PoE is some­thing dif­fer­ent. More on PoE here.

  39. Matthew Brown Avatar
    Matthew Brown

    Hey Nik,
    Is it still pos­si­ble to cre­ate a DIY hotspot miner?
    Not espe­cial­ly for off grid, but for home or office use as well.
    I would love to explore this since there is such a short­age of device available.
    I also want to explore the off grid instal­la­tions soon, but with no devices avail­able It real­ly isn’t too fea­si­ble for me to do much exploring.

  40. Hi Matt, you can cre­ate one, but it won’t earn any­thing. The DIY pro­gram was closed very quick­ly after it opened up due to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to gam­ing that are still hav­ing reper­cus­sions today.

  41. Hey Nik love the post. Was won­der­ing if you had any rec­om­men­da­tions on wire­less con­nec­tion (cell modem) since set­ting up your off grids. AKA would you rec­om­mend any­thing dif­fer­ent now that you have set some up?
    Thanks!

  42. Hi Spencer,
    Yeah, I think I’m going back to the Cradle­point cell modems. The RUT240 just isn’t as reli­able in my experience.

  43. […] 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 Helium […]

  44. Nik,

    What’s the best U.S. based data plan you’ve come across, or that you are using?

    Jay

  45. Good ques­tion. I’m run­ning the equiv­a­lent of a Light Hotspot, so my plan will not work for you. Right now (Nov 27, 2021), the off grid com­mu­ni­ty is get­ting hit by a Heli­um anti-gam­ing mea­sure and no one has a great way to fix it. Since that update, I’ve heard of many peo­ple using a bog-stan­dard T‑mobile card with 2GB data/month at 4G then unlim­it­ed at 3G and that works for them. No sta­t­ic IP, just a reg­u­lar old SIM card. Still, that’s not a guar­an­tee. More over here.

  46. Hi Nik,

    You drilled the holes your­self through the enclo­sure right? What was used to ensure that you still have the same weath­er pro­tec­tion, is it sim­ply using rub­ber grom­mets? Or are they more spe­cial­ist seals?

    Kind regards,

    Johny.

  47. Hi Johny, I drilled the holes myself. Depends on what you’re putting through, but the N‑types & the RP-SMA con­nec­tors I used have a built in weath­er seal. You could more to that if you want­ed, or you could just use a cable gland, which is what I did with the wires for the solar panel.

  48. Emmanuel Abiona Avatar
    Emmanuel Abiona

    Hi, I’m new are you able to sell me an out­door enclos­er with solar and every­thing in it to make it func­tion­al, for a Bobcat?

  49. Hi Emma­nunuel, nope, I don’t sell those, just show you how to make ’em. There are a cou­ple oth­er busi­ness­es out there who do sell ’em, although none yet where I’m stoked enough on their prod­uct to rec­om­mend them.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.