Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

What Should You Look For In A Helium Antenna?

—

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 the­o­ry as a warthog does with wear­ing Kiton tuxedos. 

Hot tip up front: Anten­nas have very lit­tle to do with your earn­ings. Most of your earn­ings come from your place­ment, most of the rest comes from how high you can get in that place­ment, and the final lit­tle sliv­er comes from anten­na choice. If you want to go deep into the best anten­na for your Heli­um hotspot, read up on it here.

My rec­om­men­da­tions for most instances is two-fold: If you have extra cash, try the HNTen­na, either indoor or out­door, for what­ev­er set­up you’ve got.
If you are deploy­ing a fleet and have to watch costs, use any of the McGill anten­nas, the 6 dBi is a sol­id mid­dle-ground applic­a­ble to almost all installs.

For those of you who don’t want to spend that much, here’s what to look for in a Heli­um hotspot antenna:

  • Over­all, you want an anten­na with a fair­ly nar­row range. What is a nar­row range? Ide­al­ly, less than 30MHz of band (15 on either side of cen­ter). In the US, 915 is our cen­ter, and 902–928 is what usu­al­ly I look for.
  • In that same vein, Wide Band and Ultra Wide Band should be avoid­ed. While they sound like they might be great because they “cov­er a wide band”, that’s like say­ing a Ford Fal­con should fly because it has “Fal­con” in the name.
  • An anten­na for Heli­um should be either ver­ti­cal­ly polar­ized or mul­ti-polar­ized. I’ve writ­ten about anten­na polar­iza­tion in this post on anten­na radi­a­tion pat­terns.
  • Any anten­na you buy should have a datasheet. That’s the thing that shows you its pat­tern from the top and sides. If it does­n’t, con­sid­er it exper­i­men­tal and usu­al­ly a waste of money. 
  • If the anten­na is high gain (say above 6 dBi), you want elec­tri­cal down­tilt of 1–3 degrees. This helps you to not over­shoot near­by hotspots.

Ok, so that’s how to assess what you should buy. The next step is actu­al­ly test­ing the thing. We’re going to go a lit­tle into geek land here, be ready. I’ll step up the cost slow­ly, from zero to, oh, more than you want to spend.

We’ve got 3 gen­er­al things to check:

  • Is it actu­al­ly work­ing in “the real world”?
  • Does the anten­na per­form the way it’s sup­posed to?
  • Is our hotspot actu­al­ly putting out any RF energy?

Is It Working In The Real World? — Discovery Mode

  • Equip­ment Need­ed: Hotspot and the Heli­um phone app
  • Cost: 0. Well, it will even­tu­al­ly cost a few data cred­its, but if that’s a bur­den then you’ve got big­ger prob­lems than your anten­na working.
  • Use­ful­ness: Rea­son­ably use­ful. There’s no rea­son you should­n’t do this.

The cheap­est way to see if your anten­na is work­ing is to jump into Dis­cov­ery Mode on the Heli­um app. You need to have a hotspot con­nect­ed to a wal­let you con­trol for this step. 

Here are good exam­ples of what you might want to see. Keep in mind that the visu­als may change over time, so you’re see­ing some vari­a­tion here. Yes, I’m choos­ing hotspots that have an unusu­al num­ber of witnesses. 🙂

Here’s what you don’t want to see:

Obvi­ous­ly, if you see some­thing like this, that’s an indi­ca­tion that some­thing might be wrong with 

  • Your anten­na
  • The Heli­um app 
  • The chain itself. 

You should­n’t imme­di­ate­ly freak out if you see that, but you should dive a lit­tle deeper. 

What do I mean by that? I’d check activ­i­ty and rewards on either the app or Explor­er. If those are recent (with­in the past 24 hours), you’re prob­a­bly fine as far as your hotspot and anten­na work­ing. Here’s a screen­shot from Explor­er for the above Dis­cov­ery (failed) attempt. This hotspot is doing fine, there was just some­thing wonky with either Dis­cov­ery or the chain.

Of course, you might want to scroll back to your most recent bea­con and make sure you’re being wit­nessed, although with all the bea­cons being wit­nessed in the above case, you’re prob­a­bly fine. Anten­nas trans­mit & receive at the same “lev­el”. I had to scroll back a day or so to see the most recent bea­con, but there it was, com­plete with witnesses. 

Let’s say your Explor­er page does­n’t look like that, and you have zero wit­ness­es on your bea­con. There is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that your hotspot is work­ing fine BUT one of the wit­ness­es was on a relay, so despite the bea­con actu­al­ly going out, it is report­ed as (basi­cal­ly) incorrect/not work­ing as intend­ed. Still, let’s not get too far into the weeds on that. Let’s stick with anten­nas for now. How do you test your antenna?

Is The Antenna Performing The Way It’s Supposed To? 

  • Equip­ment Need­ed: Vec­tor Imped­ance Ana­lyz­er or NanoV­NA
  • Cost: $70–150
  • Use­ful­ness: Very use­ful for mak­ing sure your anten­na is good. This is more impor­tant if you’re buy­ing an anten­na from less rep­utable sources. Most­ly this is use­ful for mid-lev­el geeks who just want to know what’s going on. 

In the image below, the VIA is the lit­tle black box between the long grey anten­na (a Nebra) and the short white one (an eBay spe­cial.) The black anten­na on the top is the HNTen­na, my go-to for most deploy­ments. A VIA is used to test the effi­cien­cy of an anten­na. If you’re see­ing a low VSWR at your fre­quen­cy, you’ve prob­a­bly got a great anten­na. More on that in the Spiess video below.

I bought my VIA from Bang­good, you can get ’em on Ama­zon. Those links aren’t exact­ly what I bought, there seem to be 4 or 5 vari­a­tions of this thing that are all sim­i­lar enough to work for you. You’ll need to get a pack of adap­tors as well, pick those up on A‑zon.

Pro-tip: Make a “con­nec­tor saver” cable that attach­es to the con­nec­tor of the VNA. That way, when you’re attach­ing your anten­nas you don’t risk dam­ag­ing the con­nec­tor direct­ly on the VIA. 

So far most of the anten­nas do just fine, although I have seen a few duds.

Andreas Spiess has a great video on how to use this VIA, check it out start­ing at 7:30.

I use one to test any anten­na that comes through the shop. You may find some RF snobs that turn their nose up at it. Yes, it’s not the high­est end device, but I don’t see a rea­son for every­one with a Heli­um hotspot to buy (and learn how to use) far fanci­er equip­ment. This is a great quick and easy check.

Is The Hotspot Putting Out The Correct Amount Of Energy?

  • Equip­ment Need­ed: Bird Mod­el 43 RF Wattmeter
  • Cost: $300–500
  • Use­ful­ness: Almost total­ly use­less for the aver­age Heli­um Hotspot own­er, but a very cool piece of kit, and it reas­sures you that your hotspot IS actu­al­ly beaconing. 

When I went out to vis­it the HNTen­na folks a few weeks back, Adam pulled out a device so well designed that it has­n’t been changed since the 1950s! It’s a Bird Mod­el 43P Wattmeter, and it tells you how much ener­gy is being pushed out from a device (your hotspot) and into an anten­na. I’m kind of a suck­er for old school badass things, so I imme­di­ate­ly bought one on eBay. I’ll tell you right now: You don’t need to. They are SUPER cool, but so far into geek-land that for 99% of Heli­um peeps it’s just not the right fit. Still, I bring it up in case you want to see what’s one lay­er deep­er when it comes to RF investigations. 

Here’s what it looks like in use. You plug the hotspot into the left side, the anten­na into the right, then fire up Dis­cov­ery mode so the hotspot bea­cons. When it does, you can mea­sure the ener­gy of that bea­con. For US hotspots, it should hit 1 watt. Using the bot­tom scale and divid­ing by 10 gives you the 1 watt. Yes, I know, dif­fer­ent scales, divid­ing by ten…that’s just stan­dard RF geek­ery. This thing is doing what it’s sup­posed to do.

But, But, But…What Else Can I Test?

I’ll leave you with what you should do if all that HNT is just burn­ing a hole in your pock­et and you’re des­per­ate to know even more about the RF waves all around you. Here’s the HNten­na crew walk­ing me through test­ing the Heli­um Tab using a device called a Hand­held Microwave Analyzer. 

See that lit­tle spike every time we press the but­ton on the Tab? Yep, it’s work­ing. No, you don’t want to know how much that HMA costs. Or maybe you do.

In any event, we can see the Tab work­ing it’s tiny lit­tle elec­tron­ic but off to push out sig­nals. Magic!

So now you know way more about how to choose and test an anten­na for Helium. 

If you’d like fur­ther help with Heli­um, whether it’s under­stand­ing the net­work or opti­miz­ing your place­ment, con­sid­er hir­ing me or tak­ing the Heli­um Basic Course, which you can find here.

Rock on!

Comments

58 responses to “What Should You Look For In A Helium Antenna?”

  1. scott dieken Avatar
    scott dieken

    Hey Nik
    I went to buy that out­door anten­na for $150 but here is the mes­sage I got.
    Your cart has been updat­ed and the items you added can’t be
    shipped to your address. Remove the items to com­plete your order. We don’t offer ship­ping to Arizona.
    HUH?
    any­where else I can get that anten­na. I like that the anten­na is thick and not tall and since I have had such good results with the stock rak anten­na I am not try­ing to go real high on the DB raiting.

  2. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Scott, hmm, I haven’t seen that before. I’ll ask the HNTen­na crew.

  3. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    You may have cho­sen the EU ver­sion; they don’t ship that to Arizona. 🙂

  4. John Avatar
    John

    Do you have a few hotspot names I can look at that using HNTen­na in urban settings?

    Just curi­ous as I have seen decent dis­cus­sion on dis­cord but no actu­al data.

    Thanks!

  5. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi John, sure. Thank­ful Caramel Quail and Chilly Blood Mon­goose both cur­rent­ly have an HNTen­na on ’em which has been on for a while. Nei­ther of those are opti­mal­ly posi­tioned, so I’d be care­ful draw­ing infer­ences from them, but…they’ve got that antenna. 🙂

  6. scott dieken Avatar
    scott dieken

    those two with hnten­na look like they are pro­vid­ing great cov­er­age, but that brings up the ques­tion do why some hotspots with great cov­er­age do so poor­ly in rewards. look at cool wool giraffe. That’s a stock rack anten­na using lmr-400 10ft to get it about 6 feet above the roof. were those hotspots with hnten­na were using a 3dbi mul­ti polar anten­na? The one that goes for $150

  7. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Well, the more wit­ness­es you have does not equate to earn­ing more HNT. I’m not sure why TCQ does­n’t do bet­ter. CBM is flat out over crowd­ed. Most of both of their wit­ness­es are low scale value.

  8. Bruce Avatar
    Bruce

    Hi Nik,
    Does a high­er dbi anten­na allow you to wit­ness hotspots far­ther away? Or does it just mean your bea­cons will reach hotspots far­ther away?
    Thanks

  9. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    They’re gen­er­al­ly sym­met­ri­cal, although the issue isn’t witnessing/beaconing to *more*, it’s that the sig­nal val­ues can put you out­side of the valid ranges. Take a look at this arti­cle.

  10. Sami Avatar
    Sami

    Dear Nik,
    do you think a 8dbi Lora anten­na with the fol­low­ing would be fea­si­ble for a rooftop in a big city in Europe?

    IH-G08-F8688-V1 Antenne
    Fre­quen­cies 860 MHz bis 880 Mhz
    Gain 8 dBi
    VSWR 2:1
    Polar­i­sa­tion Vertikal
    Angle (-3dB) — hor­i­zon­tal 360°
    Angle (-3dB) — ver­tikal 15°
    XPD (Cross Polar­iza­tion Dis­crim­i­na­tion) >20dB
    max input pow­er 50 W
    DC Ground yes
    Imped­ance 50 Ohm

    Thanks in advance

  11. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    That’s a pret­ty poor VSWR, typ­i­cal­ly you want that below 1.5.

  12. scott dieken Avatar
    scott dieken

    Can you tell me how is the best way to make sure your anten­na is per­fect­ly straight up and down with­out any lean.
    when you are broad­cast­ing sig­nals for miles even a 1 degree lean i think would make a difference.
    its tough to eyeball.
    scott dieken

  13. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Scott, with a low­er gain omni it does­n’t seem to make much of a dif­fer­ence. You can use a lev­el on the pole the anten­na is attached to.

  14. Lilly Avatar
    Lilly

    Hi Nik,
    I am going to put the anten­na for my Bob­cat min­er out­side on the roof of my one sto­ry house, attach­ing it to maybe a 6 ft mast on the eave( would you sug­gest maybe up to a 10 ft mast?)and drop­ping the coax straight down into the room where my router is as I am plan­ning on keep­ing the min­er con­nect­ed with eth­er­net cable. Before I came upon this arti­cle, I was going to pur­chase a Rak 5.8 dBi anten­na since that seems to be pop­u­lar with all the Youtu­bers and oth­ers. I would like to ask you if that is even an anten­na I want to use. I know the HNTen­na that you are rec­om­mend­ing is in a whole dif­fer­ent class but since I am not mov­ing the min­er out­side, I am going to use a LMR400 cable about 30 ft. so with the dBi loss of the cable length and the HNTen­na is at a 3dBi, would that work well for me as I am locat­ed in the city of Tor­rance CA. I don’t have a lot of very tall build­ings around, maybe 3 or 4 sto­ries but I do have a 3 sto­ry apart­ment build­ing locat­ed 1 house away from me.
    Thanks in advance for any input and suggestions.

  15. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Lil­ly, with the cable run you’re plan­ning on, use the 5.8 first. Tor­rance (or any­where in LA) is over­crowd­ed, that may be a tough spot. Go as high as you can rea­son­ably go with the antenna.

  16. Lilly Avatar
    Lilly

    Thanks Nik! I will try doing that first. This one hotspot Faint Pecan Trout is 1.1K from me and is one of my wit­ness­es, it is pulling in 450–500+ HNT per month which is what I want to grow up to be like LOL. I checked around his/her area and don’t see any very tall mount­ed anten­na in the area at all. They have their gain list­ed as 1.2 dBi and 0 meters ele­va­tion… with 87 or so wit­ness­es, I am won­der­ing what they could have set up, any idea? I tru­ly appre­ci­ate you shar­ing your knowl­edge with all of us, and tak­ing your time in answer­ing every­one’s ques­tions. I am learn­ing a lot just from all the Q and A’s.

  17. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hmm, hard to say. Usu­al­ly, high earn­ers are ones that are pro­vid­ing WUPU (Wide, Unique, Prove­able, and Use­ful) cov­er­age bet­ter than any­one else. It helps a bunch if their hotspot can “see” oth­er hotspots that can’t then “see” each oth­er. Glad to hear you’re learn­ing and doing, that’s always a rad way to inter­act with the world. Rock on!

  18. scott Avatar
    scott

    Hi
    So i have a lot of min­ers arriv­ing short­ly that I need to deploy.
    while I strong­ly feel the best way to set up a hotspot is with a very short very high qual­i­ty cable going out side get­ting the anten­na up high with 360 clear view, some peo­ple will not want to or not be able to drill holes in their wall or mount an anten­na out­side for what­ev­er rea­son. I have been stick­ing with the low­er dbi anten­nas with my out­door setups. I am look­ing for­ward to deploy­ing that 150 buck anten­na from hnten­na short­ly, and I will get back to you with results.

    So my ques­tion is for those peo­ple keep­ing the hotspot and anten­na indoors, what would the rec­om­mend­ed dbi and anten­na type be? Would it be a high­er dbi? This is assum­ing they live in a city with many oth­er hotspots around them, and the city is flat with­out any hills. also I’ve heard that win­dows might not be the best place to put the anten­na depend­ing on type of win­dow, is that true? last­ly I’ve heard that quar­ter wave­length anten­nas send the sig­nal up more then a full wave­length anten­na, is this true. thank you very much.

  19. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Scott, I’d put the indoor ver­sion of the HNTen­na as high as you can get it inside the house.

  20. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Hey Nick, on this post (https://gristleking.com/a‑rough-guide-to-helium-hotspot-placement/) you rec­om­mend to buy a 5.8 dBi RAK anten­na from Par­ley Labs. How­ev­er, on this oth­er post (https://gristleking.com/antennas-for-helium/) you men­tion to buy the 902–928MHz Out­door Heli­um Anten­na USA/CAN (915) from HNtenna. 

    My hotspot is called Tart Lemon Saw­fish, in Phoenixville PA, and I am on a steep loca­tion with a good look­ing for the town­ship to one side but a bad look to the oppo­site side (blocked by a small hill). After read­ing your blogs and oth­ers, I know I need to install a 20 or 30″ pole attached to my chim­ney to improve my range to the oppo­site side (and to a few hid­den hot­posts to the good side, which are very low on the ter­rain). But I’m not sure which aten­na do buy. 

    Appre­ci­ate your expert com­ments, thanks!!

  21. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Right on Tom. Either anten­na would be fine. As I’ve learned more about anten­nas I’ve grav­i­tat­ed to the high­er end of things (the HNTen­na). With that said, you prob­a­bly won’t see a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in per­for­mance between those two antennas.

  22. Ibrahim Avatar
    Ibrahim

    please check those two hotspots the (hid­den) one is bet­ter than (shiny) in dbi and anten­na height also in wit­ness­es but still Shiny earn more HNT around 400HNT/month
    https://explorer.helium.com/hotspots/112bfUFPhUbLASS8mh4WPpnCBm89ZCRJHCrmraCj7ftz5KzSi2cd

    https://explorer.helium.com/hotspots/11eEguhpRmrNv4BcgeJ2QrK3hrH77CUwCYGuhhky7gQiWuuvLRt

  23. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Thanks!

    My next ques­tion is: if I am to place a 3dbi anten­na out­side on top of a pole (on top of a chim­ney), I will use a 50 or 60″ cable, but even the LMR400 cable has a cer­tain dbi loss at that lenght (I guess). So my ques­tion is — isn’t the loss going to off­set the gains of the out­side antenna?
    (FYI my RAK min­er will sit on the base­ment, so yeah — the cable dis­tance will be at least 50″)

  24. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Ibrahim, right now (July 2021) there’s no way to con­firm that the anten­na gain & ele­va­tion report­ed is actu­al­ly true, so I’d take those with a grain of salt. With many grains of salt, actually. 🙂

  25. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Whew, in that case go with the 5.8. I’d also fig­ure out a way to run eth­er­net from the base­ment up to the attic, then have a short­er anten­na cable run to the outside.

  26. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Run eth­er­net from base­ment to attic and con­nect where, if the hotspot will be on base­ment? Also where to con­nect the short anten­na cable to? Sor­ry I did not under­stand that, please clar­i­fy. Thanks!

  27. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Ah, I should have been more clear. I’d move the hotspot to the attic, and run an eth­er­net cable from the router to the hotspot, then a short­er anten­na cable from the hotspot to the antenna.

  28. Viktor Papp Avatar
    Viktor Papp

    Hi Nik,

    I hope you can advise a hun­gar­i­an fan of yours 🙂
    We have close to 0 pos­si­bil­i­ties to get a prop­er anten­na here in Hun­gary, the clos­est order option is from Ger­many. I found 2 pos­si­ble can­di­dates, but not com­plete­ly sure if they would be fine. Please nod if I should go ahead with one or both of them 🙂 Thank you in advance!

    1.MikroTik LoRa Omni Anten­na Kit 6.5 dBi 824–960 MHz with SMA Female Con, TOF-0809–7V-S1
    2.Paradar 868MHz LoraWAN Anten­na with N Sock­et for LoRa, HNT, Ama­teur Radio, Avi­a­tion, FLARM, OGN and Soft­ware Defined Radio (SDR) — 8.5dBi

    I have sev­er­al min­ers and loca­tions ready- 6.5 dbi would be used in top of build­ing (130 feet above ground) in urban areas and 8.5 dbi in rur­al flat areas approx. 30 feet above ground.

    Regards,
    Viktor

  29. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Vik­tor, either of those looks like they’ll be fine. Keep me post­ed on your deploy­ments please!

  30. KJ Avatar
    KJ

    Hi Nik,
    Thanks for shar­ing. I’ve been try­ing to fig­ure out why I’m not get­ting any wit­ness­es. I under­stand there a lot of vari­ables but a new hotspot just came online just north of me and with­in a day it had wit­ness­es (very sim­i­lar tree cov­er­age to where I’m at). I got a Rock­land 8dbi anten­na placed out­side 12ft up and noth­ing. Just went back to the stock bob­cat 4dbi out­side the win­dow and still nothing.

  31. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi KJ, sounds like you should wit­ness. I’d just give it time. How many hotspots with­in 1.5 km? 5 km? 10 km?

  32. KJ Avatar
    KJ

    Hi Nik,

    None with­in 1.5k, 3 @ 5k, and more than 5 @ 10k

    It’s been 12days and nothing. 

    KJ

  33. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Got it, that’ll be tough with that few close by. 12 days is wor­ry­ing. I’d check the blue­tooth diag­nos­tics, then prob­a­bly pow­er cycle it and check all con­nec­tions. Can you bea­con successfully?

  34. KJ Avatar
    KJ

    Diag­nos­tics are fine. Ports are com­mu­ni­cat­ing fine. API call responds well. Just not wit­ness­es on my bea­cons. Pow­er cycled sev­er­al times. The thing I haven’t cycled is the router.

  35. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Bea­con­ing OK? If not, it might be worth get­ting some­thing to test your cable & anten­na. Full video on this over here. If you can hook the cable & anten­na up to the lit­tle VNA/VIA and keep VSWR under 2, you’re prob­a­bly fine for both.

  36. KJ Avatar
    KJ

    Look­ing into bor­row­ing or buy a via based on your article.

  37. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Cool. You may also find one in the local Heli­um com­mu­ni­ty (check in Dis­cord) or just ham radio peeps.

  38. Jasper Avatar
    Jasper

    Hey Nik,
    Real­ly appre­ci­ate your con­tri­bu­tions to the net­work. I been run­ning my first hotspot for 5 days now (hot bub­blegum sea­horse) and keep get­ting Wit­ness Bea­con (Invalid) with my set­up? It says the rea­son is: witness_rssi_below_lower_bound? Do you have any insight of why this is? Look for­ward to your feed­back kind sir.
    Best,
    Jasper.

  39. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    That can be con­fus­ing, as it comes from the RSSI/SNR chart Heli­um is cur­rent­ly using. PoC V10 RSSI/SNR

    This was orig­i­nal­ly imple­ment­ed to com­bat gam­ing, and will be changed with PoC v11. For now, you might try chang­ing the anten­na. What kind of hotspot is it? Bob­cat, Rak V2, etc.

  40. Jasper van der Zwaan Avatar
    Jasper van der Zwaan

    Thanks Nik! It’s a sense­cap miner

  41. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hmm, I haven’t seen much about their anten­nas yet so can’t be as help­ful as I’d like.

  42. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Yo Nik, thanks for your valu­able com­ments! I have yet anoth­er ques­tion, but this one might be too much into it:

    — which 5dBi anten­na is bet­ter? The RAK one (https://store.rakwireless.com/products/fiber-glass-antenna-kit-for-helium-hotspot?variant=39705923846342) or the Parkey Labs one (https://shop.parleylabs.com/products/5dbi-fiberglass-antenna-for-hnt-hotspots-lorawan-us915) ?

    Thanks! 🙂

  43. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    If they’re not the same thing, they’re close enough that it does­n’t make a difference. 🙂

  44. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Thank you! I was actu­al­ly won­der­ing about the “Polar­iza­tion: Ver­ti­cal” from the RAK anten­na descrip­tion, and the “omni­di­rec­tion­al mono­pole” on the Parkey Labs one description. 

    I mean — is there any tech­ni­cal dif­fer­ence in the sense the RAK one does not do omindi­rec­tion­al, or any­thing else like this? I’m too uknowl­edge­able to under­stand that 🙁

  45. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    They’re both ver­ti­cal­ly polar­ized; almost all anten­nas on the mar­ket for this are. Mul­ti-polar­ized is pret­ty rare. Omni-direc­tion­al is some­thing different.

  46. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Is that mult-polar­ized anten­na from HNten­na bet­ter than these ver­ti­cal­ly polar­ized anten­nas from RAK and Parkey Labs?

    Or there is not going to be a vis­i­ble, sig­nif­i­cant change on the “per­for­mance” of the miner?

  47. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    More of a dif­fer­ence in urban envi­ron­ments, but it won’t be a “change your life” dif­fer­ence. I put ’em on all mine; just one less deci­sion to make.

  48. Paul Avatar
    Paul

    Nik,
    Thanks for all the awe­some info! What are your thoughts on declar­ing changes to your anten­na and ele­va­tion in the heli­um app if you have an estab­lished hotspot already. Is it worth it to loose all your wit­ness­es and have to rebuild them? Plan­ning on going from a 2m indoor ele­va­tion to a 7m out­door loca­tion, pos­si­bly going from a stock bob­cat 4dbi to the HNten­na 3dbi. Is this info just used for the gam­ing check? Is it like­ly to get flagged if I don’t update it?

  49. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Paul, it does­n’t make a dif­fer­ence right now. You’re not real­ly “los­ing wit­ness­es”, as those are just a record of the hotspots that have wit­nessed yours; it’s not like you’re less like­ly to wit­ness them again. Sounds like you’re mak­ing the right move going from indoor to out­door and get­ting it up high. Keep us post­ed on how it goes please!

  50. Antti Avatar
    Antti

    Hi. Thanks for great information.

    I‘m not look­ing to add any extra dbi or change my stock anten­na. I just would like to have my anten­na on the roof. Do you know if Bob­cat stock anten­na can han­dle out­doors? Hard to get a clear answer on this one.

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