Helium HNT Hotspot Mining Wiki & FAQ

killtheplanet · April 22, 2021, 10:43pm

LongFi. Which is the combination of Heliums blockchain and the LoRaWAN frequency, is a low bandwidth and long range network that aims to get all the small things on a widespread network. LoRaWAN is better than using wi-fi as the transceiver and transmitter uses far less power. This means that Location trackers and other LoRaWAN appliances can last much longer on the same battery power.

Vosk gives a good introduction to Helium in this 19 May 2022 video
In 2022 Helium Inc rebranded to Nova Labs - Vosk talks about it here
If you are new and looking at Helium Voskcoins 5 June 2022 video ‘Helium Mining Sucks now’ might be worth a watch

Helium Manufacturers

What’s the best one to buy?

Miss Vosk covers it here in a 29 October 2021 update (Bobcat)
Vosk covers it here on a April 2021 update (Bobcat)

What’s the difference between them? Vosk addresses it here. A handy hardware-specs-only comparison is being built up here by crapdeathnel_x

Please use the following links to support Voskcoin and our community. Nebra , Bobcat , RAK .

Each hotspot vendor will provide everything you need to get your first miner up and running. One thing to note is that hotspot miners come with different frequency bands. Please make sure you are picking the correct selection for your region.

A list of each vendor and how many Helium miners are deployed is listed here

A spreadsheet tracking all the new vendors and where they are in the approval processes is available here

All certified vendors for Helium are listed here

Bobcat (300)

Currently still (December 2021) recommended by Vosk. This is because they have proven delivery estimates which currently stands at roughly ~28 weeks.

Order link
Still the Vosk recommended miner here, on 21 Nov 2021
On 24 March 2022 Bobcat released announced that you can now manage your Bobcat on a cloud-based and from the mobile app - see the announcement
Vosk talks about the upcoming Bobcat 500 in this 24 March 2022 video
Latest shipping news is always here (under ‘Shipping Updates’)
As of 5 Nov 2021 AU915/AS923/KR920 miners are orderable
See Vosk’s 16 June 2021 video titled “How to Buy Bobcat Miner 300 Helium Hotspot Miner”
Since 4 June 2021 the easiest option is to pay in USDC using Coinbase at checkout, video here.
You can purchase USDC/USDT immediately and withdraw with crypto.com - see Vosk’s video here
How to buy the Bobcat with USDC on Coinbase video - Bobcat’s version of doing the same shown here
How to buy the Bobcat with USDC on Binance (9 Jun 2021) here
Orders cannot be cancelled or returned
Vosks’s 29 October 2021 Bobcat video review here
Vosk’s April 2021 Bobcat video here
Comes with a 4dbi antenna (spec sheet) this antenna is waterproof & confirmed here
Bobcat technical specsheet
Utilises RP-SMA connector for antenna, if your connector has broken off for some reason, see this repair guide
Good manufacturing capabilities - does Xbox component parts
There is a good Bobcat-specific website here which covers troubleshooting, no witnesses, antenna repair, Bobcat’s setup, Proof of Coverage, and tuning the hotspot
Made by RAK but Bobcat outdoor enclosure kit available here video demo here
Good video showing the Bobcat’s working/operating temperatures
Bobcat has a good blog which contains firmware and other updates
The bobcat diagnoser is run as a webpage on your miner, blog post and video here, Reboot & ReSync added on 28 August 2021
No Witnesses! How to Test and Repair your Bobcat Miner Antenna
On 24 November 2021 Bobcat confirmed that many of their units are being shipped with 2GB of ram
If you have issues with your order,
– contact information is here
– Or use this form for assistance
– Or watch Vosk tell you the same here
For reference, a confirmed Bobcat order says:

Congratulations!
Your order number #XXXX is successful. We’d like to begin by thanking you for your time and patience throughout this process.
Your miner will ship in 20-28 weeks from the time you placed your order.

Bobcat explains the Shipping label order process here so you can understand the shipment process better
Serial port details of your Bobcat, MicroUSB cable at the back runs at 1500000 baud, 8N1, credit
There is talk about improving the antenna circuit within the Bobcat in this Sorin video, US & UK part for reference

Bobcat 5G (500)

Order link
VoskCoin gives his opinion on this hotspot on this 30 June 2022 video
This was officially approved on 9 June 2022, maker key is here

Nebra

Sold out since 24 April 2021 due to component shortages

Keep in mind that Voskcoin does not recommend this miner, as per this 21 Nov 2021 video
Vosk’s Nebra Helium Hotspot Miner Review (1 Jun 2021)
Be aware of: HIP19 action: Revocation of Nebra’s Approval as a Helium Hotspot Manufacturer raised in August 2021 which is up for discussion & voting ultimately, by 2022 this has not received much attention
If you are having trouble onboarding your Nebra, try unplugging your Ethernet cable and rebooting your hotspot, before doing a bluetooth pairing
Indoor & Outdoor unit supports Wifi
Outdoor unit supports PoE
Instant sync was introduced on 1 Oct 2021
Check Nebra’s page for estimated batch shipping dates
POE how-to here
FCC/CE docs here, here and here outdoor here
Features a web interface for diagnostic data
It has a ‘cloud dashboard’ available here however it will turn into a paid-for option
To find out in which batch you are in, please see the batch calculator
4 June 2021 blog update

Nebra Outdoor:

1st look, 2nd look

Please do not order via Parley Labs and order directly through Nebra to support VoskCoin. Parley does not make their miners.

Cal-Chip / RAKv1.5 / RAKv2

NOTE: Significant delays see the shipping calculator. No orders are currently being taken due to supply issues

Manufactured by RAK however distributed by CalChip
Vosk referral link with 3% off - or use code ‘voskcoin’
Vosk’s review of the CalCHip RAK V2 published 9 May 2021
RAK has produced mostly miners for Emrit and other whitelabeled vendors at this stage on behalf of Cal-Chip
Bundled with a 2.8dBi (US) or 2.3dBi (EU)
Datasheet here
Weatherproof enclosure video
Rak V2 teardown
Check out the Shipping calculator to find out where you are in the order backlog
Public letter (June 3 2021):

image682×836 110 KB
CalChip distributed this on 15 October 2021 with regards to their delays and the RAKwireless offerings
RAKv2 SD card replacement howto BFGNeil explainer here
On 31 March 2022 Nebra announced that it has custom firmware which adds instanc sync and soon a remote dashboard to RAK & MNTD miners

RAKwireless MNTD

Order link
15 November 2021 Vosk’s review of the MNTD
22 October 2021 Miss Vosk Medium Post explaining the origins of MNTD and how their drops typically work
On 11 November 2021 vosk asked if anybody was interested in a green VoskCoin-endorsed version here, register your interest!
On 5 October 2021, RAkwireless started producing MNTD see about it here these appear to be in stock sooner than RAKv2 units
RAK has confirmed the US915 band editions will autoswitch for AU915
Bundled with a 2.3dbi antenna (EU) or 2.8dbi antenna (US)
Keep an eye on their Twitter feed and subcribe to their newsletter for upcoming drops
You can find the RAK rep on our discord with nickname jmarcelino
MNTD SD card replacement howto BFGNeil howto here
On 31 March 2022 Nebra announced that it has custom firmware which adds instanc sync and soon a remote dashboard to RAK & MNTD miners

Syncrob.it & SP North America

Syncrobit is the official manufacturer and producer of their Helium hotspot miner and released a co-branded miner with SP North America.

Keep in mind Voskcoin does NOT recommend ordering Syncrobit - as per this 21 Nov 2021 video
Get $25 off with coup code VOSKCOIN at https://voskco.in/hntsyn - new orders has been paused from July 14 2021 to keep on with demand, this will re-open once they have caught up on orders and are fulfilling in-line with projections
VoskCoin’s update video on SyncroBit and SPNA on 3 November 2021
VoskCoin’s review of the miner - 8 June 2021
Lowest manufacturing capabilities compared to the other manufacturers on this page that we are aware of
Datasheet of the product
11 May 2021 update - Due to chip shortages price has increased to $650
As of July 10 2021 if your Miner Height ever falls more than 250 blocks behind the blockchain, a resync will automatically be initiated
For those struggling with POE - You cant use a standard splitter, the mini usb is not universal, you were supposed to get one in the kit - contact support
Outdoor Enclosure Installation Tutorial
SyncroB.it Gateway Set Up Guide

LongAP

On June 4 2021 they announced the LongAP Pro which is the outdoor version - site here

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LinxDot

Another Helium manufacturer, orders are now open to all

Page here use discount code ‘Voskcoin’ for 3% off
Voskcoin’s review of the Linxdot on 11 November 2011 written version here
Fully onboarded on 2 August 2021
US/EU/AU approved
Their HIP19 application is here and got approved on 28 July 2021
3dbi antenna (no longer a 4)
Batch2 onwards will feature a new Rockchip board instead of a PI CM4
Uses the Syncrobit ‘instant sync’ feature as it is the same firmware

Smart Mimic / Finestra

(credit: CreditCardBuffet@Discord)

A vendor who already sells a few LoRa gateways and sensors who appears to want to create a miner.

Miners tend to be sold under the ‘Finstra’ name
Their HIP19 application is here
Website
NOTE: This miner has NO Ethernet, Wifi only, unless you cut it out like this:

image1079×1341 66.7 KB

Kerlink

This miner is manufactured by Cal-Chip and not yet available, pre-orders only.

Note that this miner requires validators to be offloaded from the miners, which is schedule to happen Q3-Q4 2021, to quote Kerlink:

Kerlink will release miner software to run inside the gateways (full miner), but that requires the HIP25 (Validators) to be in production (to eliminate the high CPU usage on the gateways due to the Consensus Group work).
Kerlink will eventually switch to light gateways, as any other manufacturer.

Note that eventually all miners will have their software converted to a light hotspot - per the light hotspot roadmap detailed on this page.

Order page here
Onboarding Troubleshooting link
HIP19 application here
Kerlink Miner (to come) Vosk mentions here on 9 May 2021
Product comparison:

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SenseCAP

Vosk’s 18 Dec 2021 review of the Sensecap M1 and Voskcointalk article here
Sensecap utilises several distributors you can check out - this list keeps updating continually
Sensecap started selling data-only hotspots if you are into that around April 2022
The Sensecap hosted Dashboard encountered a “security issue” in early Jan 2022 - this video summarises it
On 16 June 2021 SEED / SenseCAP has been approved by Helium Inc to take pre-orders after completing hardware audit, onboarding integration and adhering to regulatory certification
HIP19 application with Helium
Bundled antenna was going to be 1.2 dBi but now it will be 2.6dBi for US & 2.8dBi for EU
USB-C powered
Spec Sheet
FCC & CE certified June 22 2021
SenseCAP M1 FAQ
SenseCAP M1 Local Console Guide
On 17 August 2021 they released a management dashboard
On 11 October 2021 they released a local dashboard as well as ‘Turbo Sync’ (like fastsync)
Modo Tech has a good video on how to replace the SD cards on Sensecaps here
For those curious about the different models and the RAM they have onboard - model numbers starting with ‘2’ has 2GB, ‘4’, has 4GB and ‘8’ has 8GB in this table:
- 2915 - 4915 - 8915 for the US models
- 2868 - 4868 - 8868 for the EU models
- 2923 - 4923 - 8923 for the AS models
How to format a existing MicroSD card
How to flash a new SD card image

Pisces Miner

Pisces Miner is EU only, ordering is via waiting list so join their list if interested
Pisces Miner was fully onboarded on 2 August 2021
First batch was a small batch sold with USDC (ERC-20) at around $600
Someone made a replacement dashboard for it
Pisces P100 Troubleshooting guide
On 31 Jan 2022 Pisces has offered a SAW filter to reduce your noise if required (source)
With SSH access possible there is a bit of a community forming creating custom scripts, a collection of them are here and a log analyzer here
They started selling their SAW filter for both internal and external units here

ClodPi

ClodPi was fully onboarded on 2 August 2021
Pre Orders began on 6 August 2021 at 9AM IST here 45k Rupees
One of the only manufacturers for the India market

COTX Networks

On June 16 2022 COTX released the COTX X5
On June 15 2022 COTX released the COTX X1 Lite this is a data-only hotspot (unlike the X5)
Vosk’s Order link - email them to get on their order list here
Vosk’s review of the COTX Helium miner on 7 Jan 2022. Vosk also have a written guide which goes into the temporary suspension of them here
Cotx Networks
COTX networks Helium Hotspot info page, do not sell direct and only via distributors, listed below:
- CubifyS pre-orders accepted from EU & US at this site - they also offer Emrit-type 80/20% hosting deals
- hntservice pre-order accepted at this link
- fastminers.io sells it here (US/EU)
- ShopEM BV (Netherlands)
- HNT Service (Romania)
COTX Twitter
FCC approved on 23 September 2021
4dbi antenna
Crypto Gossip talks about them here on 11 August 2021

Controllino

As of 7 March 2023, Nebra will be supporting firmware updates for Controllino
Controllino
Batch 1 pre-orders only at this time
BFGNeil has a review here and here
Some good third party monitoring opensource goodness here
For ~90 EUR you can purchase a ‘license’ to run additional software on your miner, see this

Heltec Automation

Heltec Automation - HIP19 approved
If out of stock on their main website above, there is a ‘offline order’ system available here
First unboxing/review
Manual
In late Nov 2021 some complaints has been picked up on RSSI values - see thread here as it develops, this was updated on 15 December 2021 with:

Regarding the receiving sensitivity of some devices, we have been attaching great importance to it recently and have been doing related tests and experiments. Compared with other miners using SX1302 chipset, SX1308 has the following differences:

The receiving sensitivity of SX1308 is lower than that of SX1302;

In the reference design of SX1308, the FEM chip used is SE2435L, while the recommended FEM of SX1302 is SKY66420-11. The SE2435L has lower amplification gain and higher noise figure;

SX1308 will generate a lot of heat during operation, this will cause the center frequency shift.
Combining the above reasons, the receiving sensitivity will be about ~5dB lower than other machines using the SX1302 version. Antennas and coaxial cables may affect the overall receiving sensitivity.
Why should we choose SX1308?
We started preparing for the Helium project in April 2021. Under the circumstances at the time, SX1308 was the least likely to be out of stock.
solution:
We will incorporate the temperature drift into the RSSI calculation in the V1.2.8 update;
We are developing and testing filters and two-way signal amplifiers that can be used to correct the problem. This device can correct the inherent deficiencies of SX1308 in hardware;
Starting from December 2021, this problem has been improved on newly produced miners;
We are applying for a new generation of Hotspot based on the SX1302/3 baseband chipset.
If you have any questions about such issues, please send an email to xiaohong@heltec.cn for feedback and consultation. Your data and feedback are very important to us.

To login to the local dashboard, username is: HT-m2808 and the password is the last 6 digits of the MAC in lowercase, no colons

PantherX

WARNING (June 2022) that PantherX was on the naughty list and their key was suspended until 24 Nov 2022 (see the naughty list link)
Approved 27 September 2021
Website
The X2 has a 1.8GHz processor, 4GB of memory, 32GB eMMC and 64 GB TF card and comes with a 3dBi antenna
Vosk talks about them on this 14 December 2021 video
Vosk talks about them on this 8 Dec 2021 video make sure to check the later section as well where he is not recommending them
Vosk’s Voskcointalk thread on the PantherX
Panther X1 CN470 manual
Panther X2 CN470 manual
Panther X2 EU/US/AU manual
Sorin reviews/opens one here
Coupon codes,

A coupon for $30
Units required to purchase: 1 hotspot
Code: PantherX2Buy1Get30USD

A coupon for $120
Units required to purchase: 3 hotspots
Code: PantherX2Buy3Get120USD

A coupon for $240
Units required to purchase: 5 hotspots
Code: PantherX2Buy5Get240USD

Appears to be CN470 / EU868 only for $499 USD
Approved for China, USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand on 3 December 2021
Dashboard default username/pass: admin/admin - when setting the password you can SSH to the miner with username admin and the same password

Hummingbird

Website
Approved 27 September 2021
Appears to be China-only - no details yet known

Milesight

Approved 15 October 2021
Resellers listed here
Modo Tech reviews it here
UG65 model comes standard with 802.3AF PoE

RisingHF

Approved 15 October 2021
A distributor link

Browan/MerryIoT

MOC approval for sales in USA & Europe given on 3 December 2021
Has been on sale here
And on sale here
Specifications here (but very light on detail)
User manual
Issues-chart:

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Midas

Midas Technologies HIP-19 application
HEXASPOT joined their distribution network (based in the Netherlands) for EU868 units on the 28th of March 2022

Atom

Atom was approved in April 2022
TBC everything else

KS Technologies

KS Technologies was approved on 18 April 2022
TBC everything else

EDA IoT

EDA IoT was approved on 18 April 2022
TBC everything else

Aitek Inc

Aitek was approved around 24 May 2022
They seem to have a website here

Dusun

Dusun was added to the approved list on 29 April 2022
First orders online appeared on Fastminers.io for frequencies EU868, US915 & AU915

Helium Inc (OG)

The original Helium Miner manufactured by Helium is no longer for sale.

On 31 March 2022 Nebra released firmware for it which introduces fast-sync and other goodies

Other manufacturers (inbound)

These are yet to be HIP19 (or just) approved and not for sale yet - these will move to the above section once they are approved and nearing a state of pre-ordering.

There is a vendor tracking spreadsheet available here

‘SONoC’ received a maker key on 1 March 2023 wallet here - waiting for more information!
‘Polyhex’ received a maker key on 26 January 2023 wallet here - waiting for more information!
TMG received a maker key on 30 September 2022 wallet here
ResIOT.io received a maker key on 30 September 22 wallet here
uG Miner received a maker key on 8 September 2022 wallet here - waiting for more information!
Osprey received a maker key on 8 September 2022 wallet here - waiting for more information!
Embit was approved on 18 April 2022 (here), waiting for a web page to create a section for it
Atom was certified on 5 April 2022 as seen here and application here

Naughty list

VoskCoin discussesHelium manufacturers and resellers acting like bad actors in this 3 Nov 2022 video

Manufacturers who has accepted pre-orders before HIP19 approval or who has been found guilty of assisting hacking/cheating get on a naughty list , this is a rough list of those…

PantherX

PantherX’s key was re-enabled on 24 Nov 2022:

State on 15 June 2022:

source

Video Link: Manufacturing Compliance Committee (MCC) Meeting - June 15 2022 on Vimeo

Meeting Notes: Manufacturing Compliance Committee - Meeting Notes - Google Docs

Manufacturing Compliance Committee (MCC) update:

Panther Hearing - Final Results

The MCC has come to a conclusion regarding the Panther hearing. The MCC unanimously voted to
have Panther’s Maker Key suspended for one year, with an opportunity to reduce this suspension
to six months with evidence of the following actions:
The Panther team will keep the firmware updated for Hotspots.
Transparency, resolving questions around the current fleet.
Panther to provide a plan of action for anti-gaming solutions for their Hotspots
Dissolution of partnerships with distributors involved in gaming and end affiliate partnerships that promote gaming.

In order for the MCC to assist customers who have, at no fault of their own, been unable to onboard their Hotspots,
the MCC is requesting the order information from Panther (not individuals) for all pre-sold and shipped orders
as soon as possible. The Panther team was emailed today for this requested information, and this process will
begin as soon as the MCC receives this.

It is the goal of the MCC to help community members onboard legitimate Hotspots. Thank you all for your patience.

Older updates,

Onboarding PantherX miners that has not already been onboarded will fail
Existing/Onboarded PantherX’s will function for the time being
MCC decision still to be made (the maker key suspension is temporarily at the moment until a decision is made as per below)

IMG_1196.png1242×2688 580 KB

source
The 9 June 2022 decision response from PantherX:

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On 6 June 2022 the MCC confirmed that Panther Hotspot onboarding has been paused:

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On 31 May 2022 the Manufacturing Compliance Committee announced:
SOURCE

Panther - MCC Hearing

A case was brought to the MCC regarding Panther by the PoC Security Working Group (POCSWG). On the basis of the evidence > provided by the POCSWG, the MCC voted to temporarily disable Panther’s API access to onboard new Hotspots to the chain until > the case is heard and resolved.

The MCC will hold a hearing this Wednesday, June 1, 2022, to hear evidence and testimony by the POCSWG and from Panther. > Afterward, the MCC will deliberate on a more permanent action.

Airbit

They also appear to have stolen some images:

And…

Deeper

On 5 April 2022 this was announced:

On 9 April 2022 this was announced:

Manufacturing Oversight Committee (MOC) update:

Deeper Network - Hearing Results

Yesterday, April 7, the Manufacturing Oversight Committee (MOC) held a hearing with members of the Deeper Network team and the PoC Security Working Group (POCSWG). During this hearing, the MOC heard evidence and testimony from both the POCSWG and Deeper Network. Deeper Network was given the opportunity to explain and provide evidence in defense of the finding of the POCSWG. 

Based on the evidence presented and the testimonies given during yesterday's hearing, the Manufacturing Oversight Committee (MOC) has unanimously voted that Deeper Network, whether intentionally involved or not, is in fact responsible for the gaming of Deeper Hotspots and the damage done to the Helium Network. 

Deeper Network has stated that the cheating was organized by their exclusive distributor Jhuan Information Technology Ltd. However, the MOC feels based on the testimony given by the Deeper Network team that this business relationship was a significant partnership, and whether intentionally involved or not, Deeper Network bears the responsibility and obligation to vet its distributors to ensure their integrity. 

The MOC has ruled to suspend Deeper’s Maker Key for a minimum of one year, with no further guarantee of readmission in the future. 

The hearing was recorded and can be reviewed by the community here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C7eaq1Kwd21971YAV0J4nLig0z1Zr0ks/view?usp=sharing

Gristle King did a video about it here

RevoFi

In late August 2021 their HIP application were denied

This was received on 10th July via email from RevoFi (ie, ignoring above and before they have been approved by Helium):

COTX

NOTE: This suspenction is now lifted, below for historical reasons only

On 22 October 2021 this was released:

As previously announced, the Manufacturing Oversight Committee (MOC) has voted to place COTX Networks under a 6 month probation for its involvement, if only negligently, with partners who constructed massive illegitimate hotspot deployments that attempted to receive Proof-of-Coverage rewards without actually providing network coverage. As part of this probation, COTX is prohibited from accepting and shipping new hotspots orders for six months, starting retroactively from September 27, 2021.

While this suspension is designed to establish a message with all manufacturers that direct involvement in “gaming” is not a tolerable nor sustainable business practice, the MOC recognizes that the Helium Network’s most ardent and effective asset are hotspot hosts – customers who have and will continue to enthusiastically purchase hotspots from approved manufacturers. As the MOC’s rulings do not spread as far and wide as any manufacturer’s marketing efforts, we’ve set an order fulfillment cutoff date for one week after the suspension.

This means that, with exceptions, consumer orders placed by October 4, 2021 will be allowed to be fulfilled. The full ruling is as follows:

Orders must have been made on or before 1 week after the 2021-09-27 suspension. This comes to 2021-10-04.

The order quantity must be 20 units or fewer, or

If the order quantity is more than 20 units, it must satisfy all of the following:

3.A The customer gives COTX permission to identify the customer to the MOC, and

3.B COTX forwards the customer information to the MOC, and

3.C The MOC approves the order.

For all orders of quantity 21 or more in which the three items 3.A, 3.B and 3.C cannot be satisfied, we ask the COTX and/or its distributors issue a refund.

On 14 October 2021 this was released

COTX Suspension/Probation

The Manufacturing Oversight Committee has voted to convert COTX Network's suspension into a 6 month probation period. Under this probation COTX's ability to on-board hotspots will be restored to allow existing orders to be fulfilled subject to certain restrictions, but COTX will be prohibited from taking new orders until the probation period has ended.

We are requesting data from COTX and will describe the fulfillment process in more detail once that data arrives. We will also explain the rationale behind the suspension and probation in further announcements

This was released on 27 September 2021:

Temporary Manufacturer Suspension: COTX

The DeWi Manufacturing Oversight Committee (MOC) has voted to temporarily suspend COTX Networks’ ability to onboard hotspots due to troubling patterns we have observed with COTX hotspots that have been deployed by their partners and employees in advance of sales to the general public at large. In the meantime, COTX will continue to provide the MOC with explanations and reports to help rectify, and hopefully, resolve the issue.

What does the suspension do?

While the suspension is in effect, new COTX hotspots will not be able to placed on the blockchain. Existing COTX hotspots will continue to function normally.

Why the suspension?

We’ve identified a population of COTX associated hotspots that show troubling signs of “gaming” – attempts to earn rewards while not providing real coverage for the Helium network. While we acknowledge that any manufacturer’s hotspots can be abused this way, we are compelled to take action when the hotspots are directly under the control of the manufacturer or its major partners.

When will the suspension be lifted?

No date has been set to re-instate COTX’s onboarding ability. The suspension will only be lifted once the MOC has completed its investigation and is convinced that COTX’s deployment and sales plans will benefit the network overall.

Pycom

On 9 March 2023 Nebra announced they would be providing firmware for Pycom going forward
Pycom Limited went into administration on 16 September 2022 link
Pycom (twitter)
First batch shipping July 2022 for 275 EUR started advertising on 5th April 2022 as seen here
Order page here

Miner Placement

There are various things to consider when positioning your miner and maximising earning potential. Considering that Helium operates on a Proof-of-Coverage algorithm, placing your miner in a location where it can communicate with other miners is the goal. The more hotspots it can communicate within a specific range, the higher probability of earning more coin over time.

Range is important. On paper (reality is a bit more technical), it is advised to space miners 300 meters apart from each other (of any type). With that said, it has been reported that if line of sight is good as well, 300-350 meters can potentially be too close. If miners are too close, witnessing can become invalidated, resulting in reduced reward pay-outs. Note that all vendor’s default antennas are good for several miles of range assuming no obstructions in line of sight.

This is why you do not see mobile phone masts every block, it does not expand network coverage in a optimal way. Do not cluster.

To get a visual representation of how your exact location may communicate with neighboring hotspots, please check out Hotspotty. Input your address to review the sweet spot range. Your hotspot miner will be the black dot. Any additional miner that is within the red-colored heat map is considered an “invalid witness zone”. Alternatively, look at helium.vision, there is a good video demo on ‘If your place is good for Helium Hotspot Mining’

PLEASE NOTE: This is a over-simplified explanation, and the technical details are in HIP17. ie. You can’t have more than 1 hotspot within a res 8 hexagon (to maximise your reward scale) unless that hexagon has 2 other populated hotspots as neighbours - this of course gets complicated to explain in scale, so please see the HIP17 link for further detail.

On 18 May 2021, Helium announced Disco Mode - you can use this (once you have a miner setup) to compare locations for the best rewards. Ed Ballou talks about it here (24 May 2021)

How much will I make?

Please understand that the current hotspot population is growing by the day. What may be virgin territory today could be a strong hotspot region over time.

A good simple idea can be found at HeliumTracker.io where the average earnings per hotspot is shown on the right and on the left menu you can see the ‘Hotspot Charts’ and ‘Top Cities’.

If you are curious as to if a desired location (whether it be your residence or a family friends) will be profitable, please use Helium Explorer . All you need to do is type in your city, and a list of active hotspots will generate.

Click on the 3 word seed phrase to open that hotspot account. From here, you’ll see a map of it’s connections, 24 hour/prior 24 hour and 30 day/prior 30 day payouts, the profit % change, along with witness and nearby hotspot information. This resource is the best tool for gauging approximate profitability in your area.

If you reviewed your territory and noticed there are no neighboring hotspots near your location, what is the next best option? Time to phone a family or friend! A plausible option is to let a fellow contact “host” your hotspot miner. That way, you are maximizing your miners profitability.

You can also (after paying a small fee) get a rough indication of what you might earn for a particular location by using hotspotrf.com - more on them below.

VoskCoin discusses his opinion change on Helium on this 3 Nov 2022 video
VoskCoin answers this on this June 30 2022 video
Please also see Am I too late to buy a miner?
Voskcoin talks about it on this 7 April 2022 video
Voskcoin addresses ‘is it still worth it’ on this 12 March 2022 video
GristleKing discusses ‘How Do You Know How Much HNT You’ll Earn?’ on this 6 March 2022 video
Voskcoin on this 18 Dec 2021 video explains “Your earnings will vary”
HODLHelium has a good explainer around “Is It Worth Getting Into Helium Mining: Winter 2021” - to answer the ‘is it worth it’ questions
Vosks updates on how much miners make on this 29 October 2021 video
Vosk talks about ‘How much am I going to make?’ on this 19 Sep 2021 video
Vosk talks about Helium mining profitability in this video on 19 August 2021
Vosk talks about the mining earning variability in this video on 28 July 2021
Vosk talks about how much you make depending on your proximity to other miners on June 1 2021 here
Vosk talks about ‘How much money will I make’ here
Also try the Helium Hotspot Earnings Calculator
Vosk talks on 8 June 2021 about how the Hotspot reward system works
Vosk talks about how the Hotspot reward system works here
Miing Chamber talks about the reward system here
Keep in mind you can only practically witness 18 hotspots

How does witnessing more miners increase my earnings?

@Toby’s example:

Just to let you all know my scenario and what rewards looks like here is my setups in stage 1 2 and 3 (Stage 1 = 1 hotspot, stage 2 = 2 hotspots etc)

Week 1-10 average 1.5
Week 11-13 average 11
Week 14 36

(Numbers = HNT)
Orange lines = Witness

A video discussing this as well, here
Vosk discusses witnessing here (9 May 2021)

How do I set up my miner?

It takes about 5 mins, turn it on download the app on your phone (links can be found at the bottom of the helium.com website and usually on a QR code with the miner), bluetooth search for it, pair it up assert location on the map on your phone connect to WiFi or Ethernet and boom done.
Video tutorial here

Vosk runs through the setup process here on 8 June 2021
Vosk runs through it again here as well

Antenna Placement

No you do not need to immediately buy a ‘stronger’ antenna - see all the links below as to why/how
Stick with the antenna you got it with at first - Vosk 9 May 2021
Vosk talks about this on his 8 Dec 2021 video
Gristle King talks with Ben from MP Antenna on this 19 November 2021 titled ‘Helium Indoor Antenna FAQ’
Antenna Installation Guide - discusses internal/external antenna placements
Setting up a Helium Hotspot with an After-Market Antenna
A rough guide to Helium hotspot placement
What’s the best antenna for your Helium hotspot?
Sign up for free at hotspotrf.com you can simulate your positioning for free, and it will show you your network connected , can change variables like height , antenna strength and terrain around you - how to use it instructions here
RF Line of Sight site for similar placement planning
Another RF Sight tool site - a video on how to use it here
Vosk talks about ‘Helium mining height & antenna facts’ in this 19 Sep 2021 video
Vosk talks about antenna placement here
Keep in mind that all hotspot vendors connectors to the units are RP-SMA-Female (ty @Paul)
If given the choice of extending the antenna cable or extending the ethernet cable it is best to keep the antenna cable as short as possible - however safety is important. Ed Ballou has a video on this here
Good video showing a external antenna placement, connectors and setup

Antenna Strengths

Vosk discusses this topic on this 8 Dec 2021 video
Vosk answers ‘What is the best antenna for Helium hotspot miners’ here
As mentioned, the standard antennas are GREAT - 10km+ in NYC has been achieved by a discord member as an example here -

image1662×404 48.1 KB

(RAK v2 unit at 30ft elevation)

This image best describes what higher dbi antennas do:

Please realise the donut shapes these make, especially at higher dbi - pictured another way:

(Credit to @2thdoc)
This is why you don’t put a high dbi in a city for example:

(credit @Shwetty)
Don’t be fooled by the picture of a 2dbi antenna either - the ‘bubble’ is huge:

(credit @Shwetty)

Note: 3dbi can reach out to almost 20 miles line of sight

A good video on how antennas work
A good Cisco paper discussing antenna patterns
Keep in mind, lower dBi antennas have more vertical range and less horizontal range. Higher ones have less vertical range and more horizontal range. Find a good balance that hits your nearby hotspots.
Careful with 8dbi or you will overshoot hotspots that are close to you and won’t witness/challenge them
Higher gain does not mean better or stronger all it means is that it’s more directed. Think of it like a flashlight or a garden hose. The more focused the light becomes the more direct the light goes
Antenna are environment dependent. If it’s in an urban environment a higher gain is not good you need a lower gain. If you are in open area trying reach specific point in an area than a higher gain is better
Antenna gain is just for penetration through buildings, trees etc. Your better sticking a 3dbi high up. and a 5.8 on ground for example

Helium-Hotspot-Antenna952×635 167 KB
Angle of elevation also matters. If you mount a long range (narrrow beam) antenna on a high elevation and all the other miners are at a lower elevation your signal will just go right over the other miners and not link up. So in the picture with the two cars a 3dbi antenna will reach the other car but the 6dbi one will not since the signal just goes right over the other car.
This Eigen Tech video is a very good explainer on how gain, dbi’s, antenna strengths work and what kind of antennas to get to maximise your earnings
Keep your antenna cable runs low - a handy refference for signal loss over cable lengths here and a video showing this here, Gristle King writes a good piece about it here as well
Here is also a good cable length loss calculator
Jimmy is Promo discussing antennas here
Advice on maximum antenna strengths discussed in the FAQ below
Helium Noob has a good video about 'Is your Antenna Legal’ - US-centric but the math applies anywhere
EU equivalent on antenna power limits
Losses through typical materials:

image745×419 4.78 KB
Want to know more about LoRa at the protocol level and how it relates to antennas? Read this
Want to understand Gain/dB/dBm/dbI better? Read this
Useful dBm (and others) calculator
Gristle King has a good video on testing your antenna ‘the right way’
hs-analyzer.com is a good site to check your RSSI, valid/invalid witnesses and more

Antenna Connectors

Handy chart from Phayu:

This post explains all that is to know about RP-SMA, N-type, as well as PoE options etc.

The short version - all miners thus far have a Reverse Polarity SMA Female connector (RP-SMA-Female) on the casing (other than the Nebra outdoor which has an N-type Female and PantherX using SMA Female)- therefore you need a RP-SMA male on the antenna cable end for most miners.

.

First to understand is that the ‘bit in the middle’ (like with other cables) does not make it male or female - it is the outer edge that does:

And here’s a great graphic presentation

(credit: @Paul)

Rokland has a video showing these differences
Nebra has a good guide as well here

Antenna Reviews

I’ll put some antenna reviews people pointed me to here and break out into sections over time.

RAK

3.0 dBi - poor VSWR > 2 (2.49 at 904.5 MHz)
5.8 dBi - Excellent VSWR < 2 (1.09 at 904.5 MHz)
5.8 dBi & 3.0 dBi + info on the Vector Impdance Analyzer
Sorin testing between 4.5dbi Paradar, 5.8dbi RAK, 8.5dbi Paradar, 9dbi McGill & 6.5dbi MiktoTik
Sorin testing McGill 9dbi vs RAK 8dbi & McGill 6dbi vs RAK 5.8dbi here on this 25 Dec 2021 video

Antenna / Cable Vendors

Please ensure you read ALL of the above sections before upgrading your antenna (bigger != better, etc). If you are here nontheless and are looking at outdoor options, here’s some we came across:

Global,
– Check your Helium miner manufacurers and distributors websites, Cal-Chip, RAK, Nebra, etc.
– Laird/RAK/Borwan
– HNTenna
NA.
– Rokland - has a bunch of good feedback but caters for US only
– USACoax for LMR cables
– 619OTA recommends this Ebay Seller who will confirm you are using the right connectors
– IOT OffGrid
– Fiz-Tech
Europe,
– McGill has a good reputation
– ConnectedThings - based in the UK
– Connextech - UK based antenna vendor
– Paradar - UK based antenna vendor
– Hexaspot - EU based antena/cable vendor

Helium App Questions

This is a attempt at collecting and answering a number of issues/errors that occur in the Helium App

Registering the miner

Issues with pairing or going through the registration progress (where the miner get their name)?

Wait until the miner is ‘ready’ on Bobcat’s this means the LED must NOT be Yellow

Syncing to the Blockchain

Initial syncing can take between 1 and 8 days - watch this video which runs through the same points
It takes even longer from 99.1%-99.999% than 0-98%
If it has been “stuck” at 0 blocks or 1 blocks synced see the last bullet
It is quite normal (as blocks are generated every ~67 seconds) for the percentage sync to drop over time as it falls behind
If your hotspot has been at the same block for more than 24h we suggest a reboot, or trying a wired connection, otherwise - just leave it
Some miners offer a fast-sync option, see how to access those menus here a special Bobcat guide to do that is here as well
If you do not have this option, put it in diagnostic mode and check progress that way - do not rely on Explorer/The mobile App alone

If you are feeling techie and want to pass the time whilst this is happening,

If you have a Bobcat
- Since 7 September 2021 the ‘fast sync’ method was introduced - read up on how to use it here
- You can browse to the IP address of the miner and click on the link that says “Sync Status” and see the difference between your height and the blockchain height, OR,
- You can browse to the IP address of the miner and click on the link that says “Miner (5s, miner slow down)” - take the miner_height value and compare with the blockchain_height value
For anything else, you can
- Get the current blockchain height at https://api.helium.io/v1/blocks/height
- Get your hotspot’s height at: https://api.helium.io/v1/hotspots/YOUR_MINERS_ADDRESS under the ‘height’ field
Or - Install this app and go into the diagnostic screen to see what the miner ‘thinks’ is the current height - observe over time

Bobcat Random Syncing

Do you feel like your Bobcat is falling in and out of the status of syncing or have you just setup your Bobcat recently and want to avoid a long initial sync delay?

NOTE: The Explorer and the App is lagged and not always up to date and cannot be relied on (Sept 2021), it might simply be saying your hotspot is ‘syncing’ when it is definitely not, since Bobcats allow you to check this directly with the miner we can check for it here.

Video guides to this process,

Vosk runs you through fast-sync on this 29 Oct 2021 video
Alternate video,

Or just follow these steps,

Browse to the IP address of your Bobcat on your local network, if you are unsure how to do that, see this section
Once successful, the page should look something like this:

– If you do not see a webpage, you either have the IP address wrong or the miner’s webserver is unavailable, wait 30mins and check again, if that fails, turn it off, wait a minute and turn it back on and wait 10 minutes generally resolves this
Click on ‘Sync Status’, a perfectly running one will look something like this:

{
  "status": "synced",
  "gap": "-1",
  "miner_height": "1022841",
  "blockchain_height": "1022840",
  "epoch": "26492"
}

Take a note of the ‘gap’ line,
– If the value is negative it is synchronised
– If the value is 10 or less, the status will say ‘synced’ and everything is OK (regardless of what Explorer says)
– If the value is 400 or less, the miner is busy syncing and will eventually appear sync - reload this page every 10 minutes or so to check
– If the value is above 400, follow from step 5 onwards under ‘Bobcat Perpectual Sync Issue’ below
If the ‘gap’ over a period of several hours have narrowed to less than 100 and then suddenly jumped back up to a high value (above 400) you might have the ‘Perpetual Sync Issue’ please follow the steps to resolve that in the section below

Bobcat Perpetual Sync Issue

This issue starting arising week-of 13 September 2021 - this may or may not help some Bobcat’s perpetually syncing.

FIRST: Be 100% confident your Bobcat is perpetually syncing, this means that you have checked your Bobcat’s Status screen (/status.json) and seen that the ‘gap’ number decreases slowly and then over time (3+ hours) reset back to a much higher again (instead of being below a gap of 10).

NOTE: The whole process takes about 6 hours

[Credit] (Discord)

THIS METHOD IS NOT A GUARANTEED FIX.
USERS WHO USE THIS METHOD DO SO AT THEIR OWN RISK.
PLEASE READ INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY (especially where it says IMPORTANT)

Switch to Ethernet if you can
Access the miner dashboard by entering the miner’s IP Address into the browser. From the menu, click on Reset Miner
Go through the steps to get this started (type in ‘I Agree’, enter username: bobcat password: miner)
IMPORTANT, WAIT FOR THE MESSAGE BELOW TO BE DISPLAYED (might take ~20mins):
1: your miner is going to rest
2: housekeeper was sent home
3: dockerd is stopped
exit status 1
5: detonated a bomb, old blockchain data gone
6: detonated another bomb, miner gone
7: the housekeeper is back, but everything is gone
8: rebuilding everything
9: cleaning up
10: cleaning bomb resedue
your miner has successfuly started, but it may take 15 minutes to load files, please be patient. you can run the diagnoser after the light turns green
Go back to the miner dashboard and click on Sync Status. Do no proceed to the next step until you see your miner height above 900,000. The reason for this is because the blessed snapshot isn’t confirmed as loaded until this happens. If you do this step too early, start at step
1 again.
Once confirmed, click on Fast sync(Alpha)
Again, go through the steps to get this started (type in ‘I Agree’, enter username: bobcat password: miner)
IMPORTANT WAIT FOR THE MESSAGE TO BE DISPLAYED:
Synching your miner, please leave your power on.
This concludes everything you need to do to fix the perpetual gap problem

Update Hotspot

Your initial assert might take a long time as your miner is probably not synced or there is a issue with the blockchain. Just be patient and have a look at the explorer under the activity tab to see if/when your assertion has gone through.

Failed Transaction

This has been seen when updating location / antenna / height, suggestions:

Check on the blockchain explorer if you have not already asserted (activity tab)
As suggested - possibly try again in ~30mins

How to transfer a miner

Note that the hotspot being transferred should be fully synced (or within roughly 1200 blocks) to allow for a transfer
Helium documents this well here

Characteristic error

Leave the device for ~30 minutes, restart your phone, open it again and it should be showing that it is syncing.

Onboarding Error

Error saying invalid_onboarding_address

This typically happens when the blockchain or onboarding servers (which can at times be vendor specific) has issues.

If this happens to you,

Retrying in 15-30 minute intervals typically helps
Keep a eye on http://status.helium.com
If this fails for more than a day, contact the vendor

gateway_already_active

Usually means that this has already been registed, force-close and try again in 30mins, you will probably see it has registered.

Constructing Error

‘There was an error constructing the Add Hotspot transaction. Please try again.’

Simply force-close the app (as it likes to cache) - and try again in 30mins - this is apparently a onboarding server issue however we have seen this occur more during busy times on the Explorer website especially.

My hexagon is not showing?

Helium has a ‘tileserver’ which sometimes get backed up due to the big amount of hotspots going online, over time this ‘job’ will re-run and add your hotspot to a tile.

Example issue from 22 October 2021

killtheplanet · September 16, 2021, 10:55pm

FAQ

Tipping Jar

Keeping this post up to date takes some effort, if this has been helpful in any way and you wish to buy the dude some coffee, you can tip some HNT to,

killtheplanet

13k9BE5RGGg1WRLcWqAV7ofcavxk4cLYE8jkSvaQMHaasdrsuxk
Vosk’s confirmation
Hat tip to y2kanonomous, Phayu94, Steverino, sk8er1113 and arronblackll

Paul

Paul - for all your relaying needs
135xE3EbEMWFVkNn5th9GEsovE365Zz4YZKjme9JikLje8bqbZa
Vosk confirmation

Post-Solana Upgrade Section

This section is applicable to events just after 20 April 2023 when the migration to Solana has ocurred

Credit to Bobcat for a number of points.

IDK What's changing?

Gristleking has a geat article here to run you through what’s changing and why it is changing from the Helium Layer1 to Solana.

There was also a good Solana transition AMA you can listen to here from the Helium Foundation

What's changing with the wallets and seed phrases?

Helium and Solana use the same ed25519 encryption algorithm for wallets, which means your existing private key and seed phrase will remain the same after migration is complete.

Public addresses (receive addresses) will be different so be sure to update any deposit addresses you have saved and double-check receiving addresses carefully before sending funds after the migration has completed.

What's changing with cold/ledger wallets?

Ledger users will need to update their Helium Ledger App to a version that’s pending release. This upcoming version will use the Solana private key derivation path that moves all your tokens and balances over to Solana. You may need to uninstall any Solana Ledger Apps during the Wallet migration process.

Your public key will change on Solana but the private key will remain the same.

The Ledger Migration document includes the utilities needed to update your Helium Ledger account.

What about the Blue/Black app?

The Blue app is legacy and should not be used
The Black app is to be used after the SOL migration
Onboarding hotspots is done by the relevant maker app

How do I migrate my wallet?

Install the ‘Black App’ and follow the prompts to import your wallet from the ‘Blue App’ - if you do not have the ‘Blue App’ installed you can use your mnemonic phrase.

Claiming rewards

The Helium Network move to the Solana blockchain will result in all Hotspots automatically becoming Solana NFTs which, along with the Helium Network Tokens (HNT, IOT, and MOBILE), can be viewed in the Helium Wallet app.

All LoRaWAN Hotspots will be rewarded in the new IOT subDAO token instead of HNT. Rewards will accumulate to each Hotspot, not directly to a wallet, and must be “claimed” before they will be in the owning wallet. There is no limit to how frequently nor how many times a wallet can claim rewards from a Hotspot, keeping in mind that every claim requires a small transaction fee in SOL. At the time of the Solana Migration, each claiming transaction will be a fraction of a cent in SOL.

How do I trade IOT?

Some people encourage you to use the Black Helium App click on the bottom-right ‘earth’ logo and click on the ‘jup.ag’ URL and use that
Others (thanks Phayu!) encourage you to use the Phantom Wallet in your computer’s browser and swap with that. To do this: Open up your helium app > Reveal Private Key > Put in your pin > Tap to reveal > copy > open Phantom/Solfare > Settings > click on your wallet > Add/connect wlalet > Import private key > Paste private key
For all of the above, transactions cost a small amount of SOL - many of us did not have enough SOL in our wallets to be able to do those transactions so ensure to top it up if you have failed transactions

Networking

All manufacturer units support WiFi or Ethernet
Expect to use approx. 40-140GB of traffic per month for your miner (this depends on if you are relayed or not, who you are carrying traffic for, etc), this will reduce with Milestone 4 when no syncing is required.

What does a static or DHCP reservation mean?

Typically you want your router to assign a static IP (or sometimes called a DHCP reservation) for your miner, so that it always gets the same IP address on your internal network.

This in turn ensures that your portforwarding (see section below) works as intended.

There is a good guide to explain how this works here

What does relayed mean?

Ensure you forward TCP port 44158 to your miner from the internet to ensure your miner does not appear as ‘relayed’ (more info here), video tutorial here, similarly see ‘Fixing Relayed Hotspots’
A good tool to check your own port forwarding - do NOT use your hotspot’s IP address, use the IP that shows up on the web page!
A written guide on what to do
Gristle King and BFGNeil talks for 43mins on this 17 November 2021 about relayed issues
Here is a great workflow as well credit to Jason on Helium’s discord - keep in mind that the cellular workflow mostly applies to US only (v4):

image724×3121 420 KB

The 4 steps to relay freedom

Reserve an IP address for your hotspot on the router
Port forward TCP 44158 to that same IP address on the router
Validate that port 44158 is open: Open Port Check Tool - Test Port Forwarding on Your Router (do not put your hotspot IP address into the web site. Only change port 80 to 44158 and click Check)
Wait 2-15 days for the App/Explorer to update your status

How long does it take to not be relayed?

Check that you have validated that your port 44158 is really open using the tool described in step 3 above
If it is OPEN - it can take the blockchain up to 8 days to be updated with this gossiped information
If it’s closed - start again with the section above

Still need relayed help?

If you still need help, reach out to @Paul#2702 on discord, via the ‘#Relayed Help’ channel - Vosk discusses this good man here

How relayed status affects your earnings

One of the vendors summarised it well from the original Helium pages:

Relayed Hotspots & the Importance of Opening Ports

Relayed Hotspots do not just affect the Hotspot owner, but can also affect its neighbors and the network.

Relayed Hotspot as a Challenger

When a relayed Hotspot issues a challenge, the receipt (or acknowledgment of the challenge) by the challengee and witnessing Hotspots may not arrive in time to be accepted. This is due to the receipt having to traverse various other Hotspot connections to arrive at the relayed challenger.

Any witnesses that heard the beacon will have issues submitting their receipts to the challenger in a timely manner.

The Challenger does not earn HNT, Challengee does not earn HNT, witnesses do not earn HNT!

Relayed Hotspot as a Challengee (Beaconer)

A Challenger that sends a request to the Challengee expects an acknowledgment or a receipt by the Challangee within a certain period of time.

If the Challengee is relayed, the initial request can take too long to arrive at the relayed Hotspot, and the request becomes stale and invalid.

The Challenger does not earn HNT, Challengee does not earn HNT, witnesses that respond do not earn HNT.

Relayed Hotspot as a Witness

Hotspots that witness Beacons have to submit their receipt to the Challenger in a timely manner in order to earn HNT.

If the witnessing Hotspot is relayed, then they are unlikely to submit their receipt in time.

How do I see more technical relay info?

Find your miner’s ‘long address’ - ie, not the three-worded name, but the long address as shown here:
Now browse to https://api.helium.io/v1/hotspots/<THE_ADDRESS> - replace “<THE_ADDRESS>” with the long-form address as shown above.
A UPNP relayed hotspot will have something like this in the listen_addrs field:

image919×58 1.19 KB
ie. a UPNP relayed miner contains a app/session id and ipv4 address
A non-relayed one will look something like this:

image745×195 37 KB
A relayed one will look something like this (with just p2p info):

image730×231 42.3 KB

What is CG-NAT and why is it bad for me?

CG-NAT stands for Carrier-grade NAT.

Due to the exhaustion of IPv4 addressing space, many smaller internet providers, and most mobile carriers, have their clients behind CG-NAT.

What does it look like?

When you are CG-NAT’d it means that the modem/router you are using gets a external (NOT LAN) IP address from the ISP/carrier that is in the RFC1918 address space, in other words, a private IP address, such as 192.168.x.x, or 10.x.x.x, or 127.16-32.x.x

Your LAN ‘behind’ this modem/router would typically be on a similair (but different) RFC1918 address space as mentioned above.

Your ISP/carrier then takes the traffic across ALL over their subscriber base on these private IP addresses and then CG-NAT’s them across a pool of public IP addresses.

In this example let’s assume,

Your miner’s LAN IP is 192.168.1.5
Your router’s WAN IP is 192.168.0.1
Your ISP/carrier’s CG-NAT pool is: 80.80.80.1-50

Therefore - if you were to browse to something such as whatismyipaddress.com the internet site will see the IP address to belong to the ISP/carrier’s CG-NAT pool, ie. 80.80.80.1-50, and not that of your router’s WAN IP address (as would be the case without CG-NAT).

NOTE: Your ‘WAN’ IP address NOT being a RFC1918 address does not exclude you from being a CG-NAT specifically, it could just be that the address range is not routeable outside of the ISP/Carrier

Why will a port forward not work?

The only place you can put a port forward is on your router, 192.168.0.1 in the example above, this IP address is a private and non-route-able address range and therefore is only useful for traffic between your carrier and you, not the internet.

Can my ISP/carrier not put in a port forward for me?

Think about it - using the example above, you might come from 1 of 50 IP addresses across all of their customer base, for which you are asking to ‘hog’ one port on each of the 50 to your router, it is easier to lose the customer for this obscure request.

What can I do about it if I need to use a CG-NAT provider?

A bit more ‘level 2’ difficulty, however the most practical would be to utilise a router with VPN support, get a VPS running with a dedicated IPv4 address, and you can simply VPN all the traffic to/from the miner over the VPN link.

NO - you should not be looking at your standard pay-for-VPN offerings as you typically can choose the specific port you need forwarded, and unless it’s tcp:44158 you will be stuck.

If you are still not scared off from doing this - Modo Tech has a good video that touches on the subject on doing this.

KTP also wrote a howto for this kind of setup here

Can I setup WiFi remotely?

If you are sending a miner to a third party who will NOT be in control of your wallet (which controls the miner) you can let the person at the remote site,

Install the Helium App
Get the miner into Bluetooth pairing mode - as if setting up a new miner in the Helium App
Make it connect to their Wifi network
The Helium App will NOT let them control the miner as only the wallet owner can do that
Video showing this method here

Bandwidth requirements and consumption

Bandwidth

On average (measured Nov 2021) we see about 650kbit/s being utilised by a functioning (and not relayed) miner, therefore a 1Mbit service would be “more than enough”

Consumption

This changes as the number of miners increases, this is roughly true for November 2021:

A non-relayed miner will consume 120-150GB per month as the number is dependent on the number of non-relayed miners on the network)
A relayed miner will consume in the range of 25-75GB per month
The Helium team is aware that most of this traffic is wasteful and are in the process of reducing the amoung of wasteful data use
In the longer term, as hotspots will long term not have to keep a copy of the blockchain, this data usage should dramatically decrease as well (no ETA)

Can I access my miner remotely?

There are three kinds of access methods typically found,

Bluetooth onboarding/diagnostics
Network based (typically a webpage)
Cloud based (typically a management dashboard)

Accessing the miner over bluetooth

This typically involves,

Opening the Helium app on your mobile device
Going to the miner’s name and clicking the cogwheel (or pressing the + to onboard a new miner)
Adding a new miner / Pushing the ‘diagnostic’ button

Accessing the miner over IP

Some miners have a web interface you can connect to by browsing to the miner’s IP address on your local network.

If you do not know the IP address of your Bobcat on your network,
– Put it in diagnostic mode, pair it to bluetooth and look at the diagnostics screen
– Login to your router and look for the Bobcat unit in the active clients/DHCP leases table, it typically describes itself as the miner vendor type or model number or even hotspot name
– Use a tool such as ‘fing’ to find stuff on your network
These miners have local accessible webpages you can browse to from your browser by typing in the IP address, if you require credentials, check the relevant manufacturer section of this wiki:
– Bobcat
– Linxdot
– Sensecap
– Syncrobit
– PantherX
– Browan
– Heltec

Accessing the miner's cloud based dashboard

Some vendors offer a management dashboard, they are:

What is the current network status?

Concerned the Helium network or validators have a issue? Check the status dashboard:

My miner is syncing/offline/needs attention?

Is your miner saying it is syncing, offline or that it needs attention? Here’s some tips:

The Helium App (not in Bluetooth Diagnostic mode),Explorer website and many other sites are hours to days lagged/behind to ‘what is now’, everything might just be fine!
On the App/Website the ‘trigger’ for being offline is purely that it “thinks” it has not heard from your hotspot for a while (this is called gossip), this trigger can be a bit sensitive due to the amount of miners joining the network every day and the back-end systems needing to try and keep up
Your miner might have fallen off the blockchain rendering them ‘offline’, the same advice applies here
Therefore, you should just check that your miner is functioning as it should and most critically, that it is up to date on the block-chain, the method for doing this is different between manufacturers, see “Can I access my miner remotely”
– Ensure Inbound&Outbound shows as OK
– Once you have access, observe the ‘gap’ or ‘blockchain height’ vs ‘your height’ or ‘sync progress’, if you are using the Bluetooth Diagnostic tool click on the ‘send email’ button to get this information
– You typically want to be within ~50 blocks of the current block-chain height
– If you are more than 400 blocks behind, your miner might have a ‘fast sync’ or ‘turbo sync’ feature to help you narrow that gap, here’s the Bobcat way of doing that as an example
– If you have no options available and there is still a gap all you can do is wait - check every few hours to ensure that the ‘gap’ decreases
– If you have just followed the above advice and you still see the App/Explorer saying you need attention / the miner is offline, keep the first bullet point in mind
If you have tried all of the above and it is not related to blockchain height,
– Some have reported that working miner’s even report this error, it might be normal and just a network anomaly, which will work itself out
– Check connectivity (can you see the miner on your LAN in a ping, etc, does your router see it? Does it have internet access?, etc.
– If your block height has not increased in several hours, try rebooting the miner
– If your block ‘gap’ INCREASES (but height increases) it means it is struggling keeping synced - you typically have a local/internet issue then, if it is on WiFi, take it off it (this is a common issue)

Are our hotspots still syncing?

After the light-hotspots rollout of May 2022, do our hotspots still sync?

At the time of writing (June 2022) they still are purely as backup but this will be stopping soon. Any hotspot should at least sync higher than block 1,350,664 which includes the light-hotspot variable flip

Security

What about the security of these miners?

See Helium’s comment on this here
As with most IoT devices technical peeps tend to put these devices on a segregated network segment

But you can see me on the map?

NOTE: On 17 June 2021 a update was released that will start moving miner positions into their hex-res8 positions please see this section for more information.

The protocol is ‘Proof of Coverage’ the location is literally the point. Not that it isn’t a consideration before getting into it but it isn’t connected to your name and the dot on the map is within 300m, so that house you think its in, it may not be, could be any of the houses within 300m of that.

If you’re the only one within 300m, then yes its obvious which house it is, but not who lives there. If Satoshi Nakamoto had one of these it wouldn’t give you a way to find him.

It is not much different than someone having your IP address which they can get by embedding a tracking pixel into anything you consume online. You, personally are just more aware with this now because you saw the map, its not that your pseudonymous ID is not already linked to an address its just that you are ignorant to it.

The geo location is also not specific enough to find the exact house someone lives in, unless a) it is the only house in that area so impossible to be wrong, or b) the house has a 8-10 dbi antenna stuck on the side of it.

It is good practice in mining anyway to move currency from a wallet you use to mine to another wallet (on exchange, hard wallet, Helium app on another phone)

My miner is generating security alerts?

Some “firewall” / “security” software or services MAY flag your miner as a security threat as your miner are receiving and sending many connections to/from many other nodes on the Helium network all the time as part of the normal operation of the device.

This ‘pattern’ of traffic is typically associated with peer-to-peer software or command & control malware systems. However in the case of Helium miners it is perfectly normal behaviour.

You can therefore ignore the warnings / turn off those specific alerts / throw it in the bin as it adds no value.

PS: The above picture is from Comcast Xfinity - you can turn off XFI security by navigating to More and selecting My Services. From here, select Disable under xFi Advanced Security and follow the on screen prompts. Once disabled, you will lose 24/7 threat monitoring and real-time reporting on your home network.

See the security section if you have more questions.

Hacking/Gaming?

This section discusses circumventing the reward structure for your own benefits, rather than the security aspect of it (check security for that)

In short - there is no official way to report hacking, however there is a site for users to look at for patterns into this kind of gaming here on suspots.com or here on Crowdspot.io. Helium itself currently has no report or deny-list as there are no definitive rules to determine “gaming”. Nor is there a defined process as to how to address it even if someone could somehow be confirmed to be doing something wrong. This is being worked on and will be proposed in HIP-40

Some other hacks mentions,

GristleKing discusses ‘How Do you Cheat On The Helium Network?’ on this January 2022 post
HNT RSSI cheat/hack discussed here on 29 Dec 2021

POC Hacking

As the network grows, especially in more congested areas, bad actors will be motivated to assert their miners in a way to maximise their benefits. Since Proof of Coverage is the mechanism to verify positioning, these bad actors will manipulate positioning in a unethical manner for maximised returns.

As the network grows this problem will grow in complexity as well as detection and of course remediation steps however will continually be worked on.

Interesting links on this topic,

See the ‘banning’ section for how listing/delisting works

The content below are referencing historical events and their discussions:

This 28 Dec 2021 video discusses the current state on POC hacking with the infestation in Europe
On 14 July 2021 a Helium dev said:

If we released a statement every time someone wrote some FUD about helium i dont think we’d ever get anything else done.

On 13 July 2021 tactical investing did a video about the article below and spoofing in general
On 2 July 2021 it was mentioned that online validators can hopefully assist in POC abuse situations
Helium’s CTO discusses it here on 1 May 2021
Helium’s Dirty Secret - POC Hacking explained - from Jan 2021
Notably a Helium developer responded on these particular examples here

Credit: @Sound

Beacon Hacking

First noticed 24 September 2021
Mr Huge discusses it on 25 September 2021 on this video
This issue appears to have been addressed somewhat by 7 October 2021

Cal-Chip Witnessed Beacon Hacking

Noticed around 9 October 2021, specifically some Cal-Chip hotspots started Witnessing the maximum amount of witnesses (18 at the time of writing) every 1-2minutes, thereby increasing their earnings dramatically, two examples:
– Magnificent Mercurial Yeti
– Exotic Taupe Frog
We know these have been reported but have not seen a response yet

Banned hotspots

The denylist is published here

For now, hotspots have the ability to get banned if they are found ‘guilty’ of hacking. This started with:

Maintain Temporary Hotspot Denylist and Publish Temporary Hotspot Denylist voted on Jan 14 2022
A good/interesting resource crowdspot.io/denylist

Historically

Capcom on 27 September 2021 said here:

We see the question often of “why isn’t this Hotspot banned???” when suspicious PoC behavior is observed. there is currently no mechanism to ban Hotspots from the network, nor has any serious discussion ever taken place about how such a system would work. I wanted to drop this template of a proposal around how a denylist could be implemented by validators that would effectively turn suspected Hotspots into data-only Hotspots. please note that neither myself nor Helium Inc are actually proposing this, but I did want to get some discussion going on the subject, and give people a template with which they could decide to make a serious HIP proposal (see HIP/0007-managing-hip-process.md at main · helium/HIP · GitHub on how to create a real HIP). the template for the denylist idea is here: denylist.md · GitHub

What's the future for Helium & HNT?

VoskCoin asks if Helium has a future in this 3 Nov 2022 video
5G

What about more miners coming online?

You make more money mining with more miners near you vs none, it’s not like normal mining. Video discussing it here.

Will PoC go away?

Thanks @Sound for the eloquent contribution -

Yes - in around 20 years, every year it will get less and less till it’s finally eroded away - see this.

So you will earn less from miners coming online + every year the POC % goes down + halving every 2 years.

This can be offset by,

IF the value of HNT goes up, more partners come online(in dense populated with good spacing?).
When the founders take a % cut in their payouts as well. Though there is no telling if their loss is the miners gains.
Become a validator and make hnt from the census group

What are data credits?

It looks like this:

1 Data Credit = $0.00001
HNT is burned to create DC
How many DC you get per HNT burned depends on HNT oracle price
1 DC is worth 24 bytes of data.
So the above packet transfer was a data transfer of 96 bytes

(Credit to @jmznoh)

What are snapshots?

Snapshots are ‘blessed’ (approved) copies of the blockchain for a miner to download (also known as fast-sync and turbo-sync) which may or may-not be released with a firmware update.

(As far as I am aware) each vendor provides their own snapshot URL

OG / RAK / MNTD Snapshot URL is here
Nebra uses https://helium-snapshots.nebra.com/latest.json and then pulls the snapshot from https://helium-snapshots.nebra.com/snap- with the height appended after the snap- ie. a height of 1210923 would produce a snapshot url of https://helium-snapshots.nebra.com/snap-1210923
LMK of others

Is it safe?

Concerned about safety of the miners?

kyk13 Did a excellent article on this on this topic
Yes, as safe as a cordless phone
See this

Which miner should I get?

Since all miners perform the same, you should get the miner that arrives in a timeframe you can cope with at a cost you are willing to depart with.

Which region frequency should I get?

See Helium’s region/country list here

Note:

What Frequency Should Australia Be On With Helium? Is a 29 March 2022 Gristle King video which covers the switch of Australia from US915 to AS923-1
Note Bobcat (and several other vendors’) US 915 Band is NOT legal in AU - see this

But do I want two miners in one place?

Okay, however they will not witness each other which means reduced earnings. See Miner Placement for more.
Gristle King also talks about it here

Why does 1 witness give me 0.5 reward?

Hotspots who only have 1 witness has a 0.5 reward scale, read about HIP17 here

Another example,

In my situation i found the Hotspots effected weren’t the ones with the lower rewards scale but it was the Hotpots who witness the hotpot with the low rewards scale

example-

I have 3 hotspots 2 with a 0.5 Rewards scale and 1 with a 1 rewards scale

One of the hotspots with a 0.5 Rewards scale but could witness the one with 1 Rewards scale would get 100% of the witness rewards (if that makes any sense)

(Hotspot with 1 rewards scale Beacons, 0.5 rewards scale witnesses and recieves 100% of the rewards
Hotspot with 0.5 rewards scale beacons, 1 rewards scale hotspot witnesses but only recieves 50% of the rewards )

Ie, if your miner is within 350m of another miner, the hotspot that is close to you, and that person wont give great rewards to each other, but you can still receive good rewards (i.e 100%) from the other 1.0 Reward scale miners

I witness someone but they do not witness me?

If you witness another miner and they do not witness me, what does it mean? Ed Ballou address it here.

It means someone (you or theirs not witnessing the other) cannot receive your signal as well as you/they could.

Why did I not get a witness award?

Expand it and look at the challenger, if it is relayed you will get no reward
If he is not relayed then you are not reachint other hotspots
NOTE: The challenger could be anywhere in the world and does not need to be local to you

How do I identify beacon issues / Why do my beacons have 0 witnesses?

If you normally get witnesses, zero witness beacons can be a sign of a hotspot networking issue (usually from relayed status), though not necessarily your networking issue. There are three types of hotspots involved in beacon: 1. challenger, 2. challengee/beaconer, 3. witnesses. The beaconing hotspot is #2, but zero witness beacons are often a sign that hotspot #1 has a networking problem and #3 hotspots can’t contact #1.

Zero witness beacons are/can be caused by the challenger hotspot being relayed, and the challenger can be anywhere in the world.

Because the witnesses to your beacon reply to the challenger, not the beaconer. if the challenger isn’t allowing inbound tcp/44158, then the witnesses cant contact it.

Thanks @Shwetty for this

Why am I getting no witnesses?

If you have read the above and still perplexed maybe you have this issue,

This is caused by over-tightening the antenna, which in turn pries the mini-connector off the board as pictured, you can simply replace the pigtail, some help:

A good guide
A video example
Another video example

I have too many miners close to me?

But what if you have reduced awards because too many miners are too close to me? VoskCoin answers this well on this 8 June 2021 video

To demonstrate another way:

Witness too close?

Got a “error” like this?

It means that the hotspot in question is being observed ‘better than expected’, this typically means that the hotsot that you did not get rewarded for is closer to you than where they asserted it to on the map.

No hotspots are around me?

I am alone / no hotspots/miners are around me, closest thing is 40 miles away, what do I do?

Buying more than 1 miner and placing it closeby (but more than 350m away) would be beneficial
Keep in mind that the map will change drastically by the time you get your miner
Video discussing the topic here
See how location is important here
And how witnesses are important here

What is a POC Challenge?

This is used to confirm your proof of coverage, and where you are physically compared to other miners
See the docs here

Why am I getting witness_rssi_too_high invalid?

Your signal is quite strong and being rejected by (probably close) miners due to PoC calculations.
See this 29 Dec 2021 video for more on the subject and how you can potentially address it.

What about noise filters and amplifiers

Please suggest more content to add here!

Network bits talks on this 11 Jan 2022 video about a Noisy Location resulting in missed beacons and the use of a cavity filter

Which mods should I invest in?

It is best to see how your miner performs first with what it came with - all manufacturers send overall good antennas.

Your priorities should be,

Elevation
Line of site to as much as possible should be your second aim, the less obstructions around the better
The antenna cable length should be kept as short as possible (use LMR400 to minimise loss please)
If all of the above is problematic, have a read about antenna placements here

What about profit sharing deals?

Emrit IO etc. falls in this category,

Emrit has a application process where you provide your location and they will consider sending you a Helium miner for free. Emrit in turn will give you 20% of the earnings that the miner makes.

Assuming you are approved, this appears as a low-risk and little-investment opportunity to see how a Helium miner will perform at your location.

Some things to consider,

Power (~10W, ie. minimal) and broadband use is of course your outgoing costs
The miner is never yours, there are T&C’s to agree with
As you take no risk, you will only get 20% of the rewards
The device is not linked to your wallet
Emrit’s terms of service
Emrit ‘review’

Alternatives,

Lonewolfrescue.net will buy your miner off you and give it a ‘new home’ and give you 10% of the miners earnings
hotspotshare.com - 50% instead of Emrit’s 20%
NobleIOT
CoastFii
FairSpot (US) - interview with CEO here
iHub

Do they ship to me?

All vendors do worldwide shipping.
See Helium Manufacturers
Keep in mind to buy the right frequency band miner for your country!

Reported Scams

DYOR / This is not always current - but some we have heard of:

coinminingdirect.com
helium.bar - Official Helium discord labelled as scam - nothing more concrete yet - reviews here
jumbootech.com - Scam alert here
superpromo.us - Scam alert here
heliumantennas.eu

What about PoE

power-he-man

At the time of writing (June 2021), the only Helium miner that supports PoE “out of the box” is the Nebra Outdoor unit and Syncrobit’s.

You can however always use PoE splitters / injectors - a good post that includes the barrel sizes here.

This guy shows his POE injector and splitter used for a Bobcat
Gristle King shows PoE injector/splitters in this video
This barrel-type TP-Link splitter and injector works fine on Bobcat & Linxdot

What about Amazon sidewalk?

On 8 January 2022 Amazon Unveiled the Sidewalk Bridge Pro by Ring, read about it here
Helium CEO talks about it here
Crypto Gossip talks about it here (June 8 2021)

If I have two miners do they challenge each other?

All miners send/receive challanges - see Vosk’s video here

I have a finance/tokenomics/tax reporting question

VoskCoin talks about HNT distribution in this 30 June 2022 video
Good site for calculating any tax on your HNT mining at minertax.com
Another good HNT Transaction Export tool for reporting purposes
Miner history for a period tool
The Helium Flywheel: Why Network Growth & Halvings Are A Good Thing! - a good article around the economics
Good chat about known risks here
Crypto Gossip talks through the Helium Token and Halving here
VoskCoin runs through ROI on Helium on this video from 8 June 2021
Coin Bureau has a good all-round tokenomics video from 3 October 2021 here
See how token allocation will change over time (taken from here) credit: @jonenren1

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Is it still profitable?

It depends, reasoning:

See Vosk’s 5 June 2022 video discussing ‘Regretting buying my Helium miners?’ here
VoskCoin runs through the profits from each of his hotspots on this 30 June 2022 video
On average (see caveats below), if you are bullish on HNT it might be more practical (if you do not have killer spots) to buy the coin instead of mining it
If you at least witness one hotspot you SHOULD be making enough to cover the electricity use of the device, ie. do not put this in a faraday cage / basement
If the rate of the profit you accumulate is acceptable to you is of course the actual question, we got a couple of section in this very FAQ/Wiki to help make your decision on that,
- Starting with 'Why are my earnings so low?’ in the section below
- Am I too late to buy a miner?
- See “How much will I make” which runs you through why the location and height is important
- Lastly, also check out the Finance section which have plenty of details on the tokenomics

From all of the above you should glace that nobody can tell you exactly “how profitable” a miner in a specific location will be, however you will have an idea on how to increase your returns by optimising location, antenna and height. You will also have learnt that the HNT earnings will only go down over time (however it may not have a correlation to the FIAT value).

Why are my earnings so low?

Wondering why your rewards are so low? Here’s some (certain not all) reasons:

Understand what is normal - you can see the current average reward rate here
Voskcoin talks about it on this 4 April 2022 video
Maximise what you CAN influence - elevation and position - see Placement and lastly antenna
Compare your earnings with those close to you
More miners come online every day, there is a set amount of HNT for miners per month, therefore the same total amount of rewards are split across a increasing amount of miners every month. Check the tokenomics section in the heading above for more information.
On the same topic, KoalaBlast has a good post about it here
Understand your transmit scale and what affects it - more miners in your area (not just your Hex!) will scale your rewards down, see sections " What is HIP-17 and the Hexagons about?" and * Miner Placement for more information
Those who you witness (and yourself) might have reduced earnings due to being relayed, see " How relayed status affects your earnings"
There might be technical issues on the network,
– You can see the official Helium network status here
– Miners (yourself and/or others) might be strugglint to keep sync to the blockchain due to a recent change, see " Syncing to the Blockchain" for more information
– Sorin discusses ’ Low rewards or flat line? This can be your problem - Gossip protocol issue?’ in this 6 Jan 2022 video
Environmental factors affect radio performance,
– Raining
– Humidity
– Temperature
– Cloud cover

Hotspot/Host Management

Some options to look at if you manage a fleet of hotspots/miners for fleet management:

Phayu94 has written a review of the main contenders

Options include,

hotspotty.net
patrium.app
Sensecap.cloud - Fleet management for Sensecap miners
Nebra Dashboard - Fleet management for Nebra miners

Hotspot/Host Monitoring/Tools/Scripts/Firmware

Some interesting scripts/tools we have come across:

Firmware,

Official firmware can be found here
Dashboards,
HNT_Monitor - Bigdata/Prometheus based hotspot monitor

Others,

See the ‘Hotspot/Host Management’ section above
Paul has a alerting-bot - ask him on Discord in #HAM
Helium-Status lets you check the p2p peerbook, IP’s, etc. of hotspots, started by BFGNeil

MX2Pro vs Helium?

Still early days for both projects however here is one writeup.

You can use a M2 Pro and Helium miner within the same 300m without any concerns

What is HIP-15?

HIP-15 is the Beaconing Rewards system and covers the reward factor and how Proof of Coverage is rewarded.

What is HIP-17 and the Hexagons about?

Density calculations:

HIP17 is about the Reward Scale and is documented here
Gristle King explains ‘What Hex Am I In? Demystifying Helium Hexes’ in this helpful video
The dude from kyk13.com has a excellent video running through HIP17 and density scaling here and another update with more information here
On 19 June 2021, Jimmy is Promo is running through the Helium App Update which included the hexagon views
On 17 June 2021 Helium published ‘History in Hexagons’ and ‘Understanding Hexagons’ which contains a lot of useful information around Hex res’s
HIP17 covers the hex density award scaling for Proof of Coverage
Check out hotspotty.net it has quite a good HIP17 fact-gathering system

What is HIP-19?

HIP19 is the process by which manufacturers apply to create Helium miners where they go through a certification process. This is documented by Helium here.

What is HIP-20 / What about halving?

HIP20 (HNT Max Supply) is documented in this proposal and was approved on 18 November 2020 and documented in this medium article.

In a halving you earn half of the rewards you were before yes. and with more miners that reduces the total amount paid per hotspot down yes but typically since its harder to get said coins price increases.

The first halving occurred on 1 August 2021 at 00:00 UTC, here is the transaction

Total monthly HNT rewards target that can be earned goes from 5 million a month to 2.5 million a month
Of that …

Helium Investors share goes down from 34% to 33% and can only be earned by HST token holders

Consensus share remains the same at 6% and can only be earned by Validators

Of the remaining 61% able to be earned by hotspots

Max data transfer share increases from 32.5% to 35%

PoC Challengers share decreases from 0.95% to 0.9%

PoC Challengees share decreases from 5.31% to 5.02%

PoC Witnesses share decreases from 21.24% to 20.08%

But as the actual Data transfer share is still very low the figure left over from 35% Data Transfers gets shared within the PoC rewards earnings and so the effective PoC percentage is really these:

PoC Challengers approximate share is 2.1%

PoC Challengees approximate share is 11.7%

PoC Witnesses approximate share is 47.1%

As Data transfer usage gets higher in the next 2 years before the next halving the actual PoC percentages will get lower

On 19 August 2021 Vosk talks about the affects of halving we had here
On 12 July 2021 Crypto Layman talked about ‘Is mining Helium still worth it? Lets do the Maths’ assuming post-halving numbers
Vosk talks about this on 26 June 2021
Vosk talks about this on 14 June 2021
Vosk commentary on this
More Vosk commentary on this (9 May 2021)
And in another video here
More Vosk commentary (1 June 2021) here on the same
Crypto Gossip talking about it here
Helium COO talking about the halving
Jimmy is Promo discussing it here
Helium Docs on this
Read the Helium Flywheel, Crypto Gossip discusses this here as well (2 June 2021) and again with updated numbers on 10 June 2021

What is HIP-24?

HIP24 is a proposal to have awards split percentage based for a particular miner to several addresses. This is not yet approved.

See the proposal here
See Helium discuss it here

What is HIP-39 HNT Redenomination?

This was the voting for a 1000:1 split of the HNT token which ended in a ‘for’ vote on 20 November 2021, the announcement on 21 November 2021 said:

73.8% of the community has voted in favor of redenomination, which is above the rough consensus threshold to pass.

The date of conversion will be determined in coordination with the Helium core developers and providers of HNT services such as 3rd party wallets, custodians, exchanges, and market data providers. More detail will be forthcoming as the conversion date is determined.

This has been moved to August 2022 as per this announcement

image936×583 99 KB
This 11 Feb 2022 video mentions rumours that this might be re-voted on
This 6 Jan 2022 update video mentions that the redonimation has been pushed back to late Q2 2022
Vosk talks about it on this 8 Dec 2021 video
The HIP is here
On 9 November 2021 this HIP was put to vote
On 6 October 2021 Modo Tech discusses it here
August 2021 a 100:1 or 1000:1 HNT price split was mentioned, this video explores this

What is HIP-42? Beacon/Witness Ratio - Witness Reward Limit

HIP 42, if implemented, would regulate the number of witnesses a Hotspot is rewarded for based on the number of successful beacons. This rewards 2-way LoRaWAN coverage and as a secondary benefit offers to limit some gaming due to witness stuffing.

HIP-42 document
Sorin discusses it on this 12 Jan 2022 video, you can check if your hotspot is affected here
Sorin discusses how this is a bad idea on this 9 Jan 2022 video
This hip gained popularity when called for a temperature check on 9 Jan 2022

What is HIP-51?

Vosk talks about it on this 30 June 2022 video
Gristle King HIP 51 Explained - Get Up In There, Yo released on 17 June 2022
Gristle King has a good panel interview w.r.t HIP51 in this video
Voskcoin covers what HIP51 mean for the Helium network in this 5 June 2022 video
Voskcoin asks if this is a rug on all existing miners in the same 5 June 2022 video
This was announced in May 2022 - see the blog post here
You can read the HIP here

What is HIP-52 and HIP-53?

Voskcoin talks about what HIP52 and HIP53 mean for the helium network on this 5 June 2022 video
Voting opened on 19th July 2022 source
HIP-52 IoT DAO
HIP-53 MOBILE DAO

What is HIP-54 & HIP-55?

Short versions:

Please also check our What is light / data only / full hotspots? section
Vosk talks about it on this 17 march 2022 video
Gristle King covers it on this 22 Feb 2022 video
Longer discussion from 17 Feb 2022 here
BFGNeil discusses it here on this 18 Feb 2022 video

What is HIP-58?

HIP 58 is the PoC Distance Limit. Where a proof of coverage distance limit of 100 km has been set.

After voting this has been approved on 14 April 2022

What is HIP-67?

HIP 67: Repeal Redenomination is about repearling HIP-39 which the community passed in November 2021 to initiate a 1000:1 HNT token redomination and was announced on 27 July 2022.

What is HIP-70? Solana?

HIP 70: Scaling the Helium Network was announced on 30 August 2022.
The goal is for the network to scale, which means jumping from the Helium blockchain to Solana.

This means that staking validators will no longer have a function and might cause instability in the token prices…Voting started on 12 September 2022, switchover to SOL will occur on 27 March 2023.

27 March 2023 announcement from Helium
VoskCoin discusses Solana and asks if it is the right move in this 3 Nov 2022 video
Voskcoin talks about it here on this 29 October 2022 video
On 15 September 2022 Helium put up a block posted titled HIP-70: Evaluating Layer 1 Blockchains for the Helium Network which explains how/why they made Solana chain to go on
Voskcoin talks about it here in this 10 Sept 2022 video
Crypto Compound talks about 3X inentive bonus, etc on this 12 September 2022 video

What is HIP-73?

HIP-73: Consensus Deselection Weighting

Is about having a tunable chain variable for the Helium L1 blockchain by changing the algorithm of new conensus group members.

You can read about it here

What is HIP-76? Lockup veTokens?

HIP 76: Simplify Lockup and veTokens was announced for voting on 7 March 2023.

The blurb says:

HIP-51 specifies that holders of HNT may lock their HNT for up to 48 months in order to receive veHNT (vote-escrowed HNT). veHNT conveys voting power in the Helium DAO and may be delegated to a subDAO. The combination of HNT locked for a duration, together with the assigned veHNT, is called a position. One wallet may contain multiple positions.

With this HIP, we propose simplifying the relationship between lockup duration and the associated amount of veHNT, eliminating the minimum lockup period, introducing a 1 HNT minimum per lockup position, and clarifying certain rules relating to the “landrush” bonus.

You can read more about it here

Talk to me about the PoC standards

PoC with Off-Chain Proof-of-Coverage was activated on Feb 2 2023, Helium’s announcement is here. This is essential for HIP-70 to go live.

What is Proof of Coverage? Vosk covers it here on a 15 Nov 2021 video

POCv11 was activated on 13 December around 10:00 AM PT / 18:00 PM UTC

Vosk talks about what you need to do for POCv11 on this 14 December 2021 video
Gristle King on 13 Dec 2021 explains ‘PoCv11 Made Simple’
This dude argues a higher gain antenna in EU still makes more sense in POCv11 on this early December 2021 video
Vosk covers POCv11 again in this 26 November 2021 video
Voskcoin covers this topic on this 21 November 2021 video
See Helium’s blog post about everything you should do
Hotspotty has a good article describing the changes here
Factor in the antenna height and gain you set in the app, right now those values are ignored.
Modo Tech did a good video on actionable items for POCv11 in this video
Network Bits has done a good video explaining the changes
Elgen Tech with a technical video on what to expect
We will be given two weeks notice before POCv11 implementation - you have that time to correct your location, dbi antenna and elevation figures if required
– Note that updating your location costs 1,055,000 DC = $10.55
– Note that updating your elevation/antenna only costs 55,000 DC = $0.55
Source unknown but might be interesting:

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Talk to me about chain variables

Chain variables are variables that are manipulated by Helium Inc on the chain to adjust parameters.

Gristle King has a good video from 26 March 2022 on this topic
Helium Chain Variables — Helium Plus is a good visual resource to this compared to the API’s

Someone mentioned NFT?

This was mentioned in early June 2021 - Zodiac NFT’s for Helium consists of 12 collectable NFT’s you can get for your miner or validator and funds go to charity.

Discussed in this video
Zodiac site here
Helium Twitter announcement

What is a lonewolf?

A hotspot/miner that can not see any other miners to validate. Vosk talks about it here.

Talk to me about validators

Online validators went live on 7 July 2021. This moved ‘consensus awards’ from miners to special online validators.

This made way for enhancements such as,

More predictable block generation times
Stability in the blockchain)
More consistent awards
Removing the blockchain syncing from miners, thereby enabling a future of ‘light’ (thus cheaper) miners
‘Data only’ packet-forwarder hotspots with no proof of coverage capabilities

Content,

Vosk talks about Validators on this 19 Sep 2021 video
8 July 2021 - good video when online validators has just gone live
Good video - “Helium mining: validators explained by Dal Gemmell (full interview)”
Official Helium page on Validators
See more here
Vosk talks about it here and again on June 1 2021 here
On 27 May 2021 it’s been anounced that validators will move to the Akash network in this blog post

Validator pools?

11 July 2021 - Spreadsheet comparing Helium Validator Pools
23 June 2021 - Helium has published a list of Staking Providers here - DYOR
HIP31 might be problematic for this - discussed in this 18 June 2021 Crypto Gossip video
Tactical investing runs through a couple of testnet pools here

Talk to me about how consensus works

See this

Keep in mind that consensus is going to go away to online Validators around Q3,Q4 2021

Tell me about Discovery mode?

Discovery mode is also known as Disco mode - which was released on 18 May 2021. You can use this (once you have a miner setup) to compare locations for the best rewards. Ed Ballou talks about it here 5 (24 May 2021).

Crypto Gossip discusses on 13 June 2021 ‘Why Helium Hotspot Discovery Mode Results Can Differ So Much From Reality’

Am I too late to buy a miner?

VoskCoin answers this on this June 30 2022 video
See is it still profitable?
Understand and read‘Why are my earnings so low?’
Vosk talks about it on this 13 May 2022 video
Vosk talks about it on 19 Sep 2021 here
Vosk talks about it on 13 September 2021 again
Vosk talks about Helium HNT price predictions here on 19 August 021
Vosk talks about it here on 13 August 2021
Vosk talks about it here on 14 June 2021
Vosk talks about it here on 1 June 2021
Should I buy a miner? Vosk talks about it here
Understand ‘Miner Placement’
Research and do the math yourself

I want a miner quickly / what about Ebay?

If you are impatient, you are probably weighing the cost of a Ebay/other scalper priced miner compared to waiting for one and seeking advice on the topic, some thoughts:

DYOR, this is not advice
In terms of ROI,
– See the tokenomics section
– Understand that HNT being mined will become less and less with more hotspots coming online
– Understand that returns are unique to every location and position and how to make the best of the options available to you by understanding miner placement
In terms of other risks,
– Be careful with resellers, Helium miners are tied on to a wallet on setup and needs to be transferred otherwise it is locked to the original owners wallet
– Ensure the hotspot you are buying is NOT on the denylist (has been banned) you can do that on https://explorer.helium.com
– Lots of scalpers are selling positions in queues with vendors rather than in-hand options
– Be familiar with ‘Am I too late to buy a miner?’
Read the whole Wiki/FAQ and any other sources until you are comfortable with your decision

Can I make my own miner?

You could in 2020, you cannot anymore, if you create one now it would not be signed by Helium and therefore you would never get rewards.

You can DIY a Helium Light Hotspot with a Dragino LP28 DLOS8 for packet forwarding but will not be compensated for it (yet) if you want to play with the technology.

What hardware is inside my miner?

Thanks for Paul for pulling this Helium Hotspot Hardware list together:

What is light / data only / full hotspots?

BFGNeil has a good video from 28 Feb 2022 covering this

There is a roadmap for Light Hotspots (or Light Gateways) to go in beta, read about it here

If you want to read about what the plans are post HIP19 (where vendors manufacture for Helium) there is talk of a secure module HAT which can be put on DIY hardware on this HIP proposal

Vosk talks about Light Hotspots on this 19 May 2022 video
Helium released a good Milestone4 Light-Hotspot FAQ on 13 April 2022 for the go-live on May 3 2022
Vosk talks about Light Hotspots again on this 17 March 2022 video
Vosk covers the differences in this 22 Jan 2022 video
kyk13.com wrote a excellent article about Light Hotspots / Packet Forwarders / Regular Hotspots in this blog in late July 2021
On 2 July 2021 Helium made some interesting comments on the future light-hotspot miners and how important it is to drive the cost of future miners down
On 30 May 2021 Ed Ballou answered “If you must sell your current pre-order if light gateways are coming out” here

This was published 4 June 2021:

Can I put the miner in my car/truck?

No - the position needs to be asserted, see the below on the re-assert fee. Youtube link discussing this

I need to move my miner / remotely assert a miner / can I assert it later?

There is a ~$10 re-assert fee to assert a new position (distances more than 300 meters)
Vosk talks about the process here
Yes you can assert it later, when setting up the miner for the first time it asks:

image828×1792 143 KB
The map picker icon looks like this, put it in the center of the circle, not below the point:
- It will snap to the center of the res10 regardless

Tell me about 5G?

First photos of prototype of FreedomFi LoRaWAN / 5G hotspot:

To set the scene:

NOTE this is US only for now and completely optional
On this 3 Nov 2022 video Vosk talks about Helium becoming a Mobile Provider
VoskCoin talks later on in the above video about the HeliumDeploy 5G bundle on this 3 Nov 2022 video
On 29 Oct 2022 Vosk gives his opinion here about the T-mobile deal
On 21 July 2022 it was announced that High-power outdoor small cell radios will receive 4X the rewards of indoor small cells
On 20th July 2022 Hotspotrf relesed their Helium $MOBILE Rewards Calculator
On 20th July 2022 Tactical Investing discusses the Genesis vs PoC vs 5G use case
Bobcat 500 5G Masterclass Setup & AMA released on 2 June 2022
Vosk talks about 5G and cossts on this 24 March 2022 video
Interesting HIP for accelerating Helium 5G in Europe
FreedomFi’s webpage received some updates on 31 August 2021
The idea is that it will provide 5G coverage for areas with bad cell service, therefore expect a lot of Internet use as such a site and expectations of low latency and high throughput
Gristle King has a good article on ‘Understanding Helium 5G’
Ed Ballou covers ‘How much can I make 5G mining?’ in this 3 Jan 2022 video
HIP37 - Omni Protocol is a interesting read on the economic intensives of 5G/data
Gristle King has a good 15 Dec 2021 interview called ‘Experts Answer Helium 5G Questions’
Ed Ballou does a unboxing of the FreedomFi 5G miner on 8 October 2021 here
DISH in the US striked a deal with Helium for 3m 5G units on 26 October 2021 see this
CryptoGossip runs through the Freedomfi purchase options on 29 September 2021
Good 23 September 2021 video from ‘The Hotspot’ titled ‘5G Omni-Protocol & Proof of Coverage (w/ Boris Renski & James Fayal)’
Modo Tech did a good video on 16 August 2021 talking about concerns around the 5G band-wagon and what to expect
Buckle Up. Helium 5G is Coming
Episode Two: The Path to 5G
FreedomFi FAQ here
Helium CEO discusses CBRS & 5G here
Please note it might be prohibitively expensive for those starting off,

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(22 May 2021) FreedomFi CTO showing PoC of using the FreedomFi gateway on the Helium blockchain
(23 May 2021) FreedomFi Helium Hotspot Update going through the FAQ’s by Crypto Gossip
HIP27 discusses 5G/CBRS
FreedomFi shows what’s all involved with a LTE (not 5G) setup in this entertaining video
Previously we had a mini-rant here, this is deleted because it appears this offering is data-only as well as CBRS which skips many regulatory hurdles, whilst there is still some significant costs (outlined roughly above) they are not as costly as operator-level operations

Tell me about Helium Mobile?

Helium Mobile was announced on 12 September 2022 and is a partnership with Heliumn and T-Mobile (US only).

VoskCoin covers the T-mobile deal in this 3 Nov 2022 video
Helium’s Blog article here

Tell me about the Helium altcoins like MOBILE?

VoskCoin covers this in this 3 Nov 2022 video
In the same video the Mobile token is discussed at this timestamp

Can I contact an owner of a miner?

Not directly - however there are a couple of contacting-miner platforms:

heliumhosts.com has been setup to add a element of connecting owners
Hotspotty.net
Sitebot

What if someone steals my miner?

Theft has little purpose as the miner has your wallet address on it - they would be mining to your address unless you released the miner beforehand.

What about mast installations?

This is a specialised area, cell towers require a contract for the lease with the cell tower owner (or revenue share), certificate of insurance, extra equipment to install (~$1k), extra installation costs ($1-3k), internet and of course power is not always available.

Our resident US expert on this is @jhunter007, some photos:

What about lightning arresters and grounding?

These should be installed on any external installation to a ground wire, some info on the topic:

Sorin talks about ‘How to Ground a Helium Antenna - Do we need an arrestor?’ on this 1 Dec 2022 video
A good grounding tutorial
Kyk13 has a good ‘Lightning Arrestors in 30 seconds’ article
Video dealing with sealing / arrestor installation
Arresters you can buy

How do I pitch one to a friend?

Want to put a miner at a friend/neighbour?

Quirky introduction video from Helium
Gristle King around ‘Why is Helium So Exciting?’
Discuss that the device does IoT
Discuss security, dog-trackers, etc will connect to it, not WiFi or your network
Discuss impact to the person - ie. little electricity use, not more than a couple of hours of Netflix use in bandwidth per month
Benefits - pay their internet? A %?
Video discussing this here

@Tankin kindly shared his strategy,

Ideas For Finding Neighbors/Friends To Network/Partner with HNT Miners.

Facebook Community

Check to see if your neighborhood has a Facebook page you can join. If they do then join it, introduce yourself, and talk a little about HNT mining mention how many miners you have and that you are looking to expand the Helium Network, help fellow neighbors earn a bit of passive income.

If they are interested you can proceed to tell them more details about how it works or you can send them this video and then have them follow up with you with any questions they have.

What's Helium? Glad You Asked. - YouTube

After you know they are pretty serious this is when you explain that the hotspots need to be 350m+ apart for the best result if you haven’t already and this is when you ask them for their address to be sure theirs will be 350m or more away from the hotspots you have planned.

If they are 350m+ then you can discuss how you will split it.

I have listed a few examples of ways you can go about splitting, but you can get creative and come up with your own ways if you would like.

If they are within 350m explain that you are sorry but they are too close. Don’t end it there though ask them if they know any neighbors in the area that may be interested and if they do reach out to them.

This works the same for apps like Nextdoor as well!

Door to Door

This is a bit more tricky. However, some ideas for this that you could try is picking a start location and map out houses/businesses that are 350m+ away from there and start knocking doing the same thing as above only in person rather than via Social Media.

Ideas for Splits(You/them)

80/20 forever or whatever % you want

80/20 until the units paid off and then 50/50 or whatever % you want

If they are friends or family offer to take them out for lunch/do something nice for them

Offer them a flat monthly rate or cover their internet cost monthly(I don’t like these as HNT mining can go up or down in profitability so you may end up paying them more than the miner earns. This is why I like the % method best.

Splitting The Earnings

If you are doing a % split you can offer to send them their portion of HNT to their HNT wallet and teach them how they can sell it or you can offer to sell their portion of HNT and then pay them what it sells for via PayPal/Venmo or any other way you choose.
You can make a Facebook page for people in your neighbourhood that are using your hotspots to keep everyone up to date on how they are doing

How much electricity does it use?

Assuming 0.15c/kWh (which is above average):

Bobcat says no more than 0.12kWh per day, so worst case: 56c per month
Nebra says rated up to 15W, so worst case: $1.67 per month
RAKv2 says powersupply up to 5V/3A = 15W, worst case: $1.67 per month
SP NA says 21W, worst case: $2.34 per month

I heard the miners reboot all the time?

A issue with miners rebooting due to a OOM (out of memory) condition has been reported, affecting all miners (not vendor specific).

Ed Ballou talks about it here (24 May 2021)

19 May Update #2:

Syncing Issues: Update The core developers pushed a blockchain release late last night 2021.05.18.0 which alleviates some issues on RAK and OG Hotspots. About 27K of the online hotspots have picked up this release and we continue to monitor all 40k nodes on the network and their sync status. We’re seeing some improvement on some hotspots but are noticing some new issues that we will continue to address. this is roughly in order of importance. 1. Some hotspots with smaller SD card (32 GB) are filling up in space as the new RocksDB checkpoints are using more disk than they did before. When the disk fills up, the miner is unable to proceed. The core devs are working on a way to force more garbage collection to solve this issue and will be issuing a follow up OTA firmware update that includes this . 2. Bobcat and other mis-configured Docker based Hotspots are unable to maintain a maximum open file limit that the miner needs. This configuration needs to be rolled out to all of the Bobcat fleet but since they automatically update around 21:30 UTC, they will need to skip yesterday’s release. We will be rolling back the latest tag and then rolling it forward again after their update time to accommodate their team’s timezone. We advise that all hotspot manufactures ensure their Hotspots OS settings allow for a max open files setting that matches the Dockerfile. We also advise not using the latest tag directly (and some manufacturers already have this process in place). 3. Some hotspots are having trouble picking up the latest snapshot from peers. The network has generated a more available snapshot and the core devs will be issuing a follow up OTA that includes this . The core devs continue to work on the remaining issues and we appreciate your patience!

19 May Update #1:

Required Blockchain Release: Fixing OOM and Sync The team has a new release tagged 2021.05.18.0 which primarily fixes out-of-memory and sync issues observed on older, less capable hardware, and other bug fixes. This is a follow up release to the prior, paused, 2021.05.16.1 release. This is a required upgrade for all miners and will be automatic for all Hotspots using the Helium firmware when we GA.
Read the Engineering Blog for details: Blockchain Release: Fixing OOM and Sync | Helium Documentation No manual intervention is required if you are operating a Helium Hotspot or RAK Hotspot Miner. Other manufacturers will need to update their fleets and owners will need to wait on their manufacturer to push an update to their Hotspot. DIY will need to manually update and Docker builds will kick off as soon as we tag the GA. We will be specifically testing this release with the Bobcat team this evening to ensure a rollback isn’t necessary again. We have been beta testing 2021.05.18.0 since May 18th, 2021 4:30 PM PT. Current ETA for GA is 9:00 PM PT, May 18th, 2021. Sorry for the late evening ping but as you all know, the core devs have been focused on this issue. Thanks for your patience!

18 May 2021 Update:

Paused Blockchain Release: 2021.05.16.1 The core developers have paused the 2021.05.16.1 release as of yesterday and are continuing to work on the memory and out-of-sync issues. A few miners have updated to the latest firmware and the entire Bobcat fleet automatically updated to the latest Docker tag. This exposed some unforeseen issues causing us to pause the wider roll out. The blockchain continues to be stable and assets (Hotspots, HNT, DCs and OUIs) remain safe. We’re working with the Bobcat team to roll back their Hotspots (which will happen automatically later this evening). The core devs will provide an update and information about the next release soon. We’ve been beta-testing a new firmware and are seeing some promising results. Thanks for your patience!

17 May 2021 release notes for 2021.05.16.1 - here

13 May 2021 initial note:

An Update on Memory / Sync Issues

As much of you know, a small percentage of Hotspots are having an issue with memory / sync issues and preventing them from participating in blockchain activity. The scale of the fix required for this issue is larger than the core developers expected and requiring them to rework the miner to use RocksDB’s checkpoint feature. This is a significant change and needs to be done safely.

There will be a separate release that is being testing tonight to support other efforts but it is not intended to address the memory issues. We should have an update tomorrow on the progress being made.

Thanks for your patience!

LoRa Examples

Example products,

LDS02 Dragino Door Sensor - announced 3 December 2021
Asset Tracking for Logistics Operations with Hoopo was announced on 1 September 2021
ARICA air quality sensors, announced 26 August 2021
Lark personalised sensors, announced 27 July 2021
Invoxia Trackers was announced on 13 July 2021 - unboxing/review
InfiSense IoT sensors announced on 9 July 2021
Barnacle Tracker announced June 28 2021 here
ConnectedFresh was announced on 16 June 2021
Actility and Abeeway GPS tracking on the Helium network, announcement and video - released 10 June 2021
Tabs Object locator
Mouse Trap - 1st mouse event
Airly air quality monitor, Helium COO talks about it here
Parking Lot Monitoring - Helium COO talks about it here
NOWI water leak sensor, Helium COO talks about it here
Oyster2 LoRa GPS Tracking Device
Helium keeps a list as well here

Science stuff,

Using Helium on weather balloon science projects

I want to mine offgrid

Check out this - How to take your Helium Hotspot off grid

DIY Solar Off Grid Helium Miner Wiring Diagram, Plans & Parts List might be useful to many
Helium 4G LTE Hotspot Setups, Relay Mode, VPNs, and Resources - covers some options for connectivity
Gristle King explains ‘Will Your Off Grid Helium Hotspot Get Stolen?’ on this 26 Dec 2021 video
Gristle King running through offgrid requirements https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QrqB5uIJ6con 23 July 2021
RaspberryPi offgrid video but quite applicable as power requirements are the same as Helium miners
GKI Readyspot - packable Off Grid Helium Hotpsot and writeup
Good video running through creating your own outdoor enclosure with temperature control, fans, POE splitter, etc.
How to: mining Helium over a cellular connection
Gristle King’s offgrid parts-list
KTP covers offgrid remote management over here

What about Enclosures?

If you did not get what you needed from the above section,

Check the vendor-specific section for particular enclosures
Great video from Ed Ballou on 28 November going through the RAK and Bobcat enclosures
A Bobcat or Sensecap DOES fit in a Nebra enclosure:

image1920×2560 288 KB

image1920×2560 317 KB

Is it benficial to have more than one miner on my account?

Short answer - it does not matter, explainer here

Interesting Apps

Helium Hotspot Utility (Android | Apple ), mentioned here. - Useful for quick diagnostics without using a wallet
https://hotsbot.net/ Notifies you on Telegram of any activity on your Helium account, the author runs through it here on 22 July 2021

Interesting miners / Fun Facts

Interesting miners spotted -

Fun stuff,

Richest Accounts

How to use the Helium Explorer

First Look at the New Beta Helium Explorer 2.0 Website - 9 June 2021 by Jummy is Promo

Where can I exchange/trade HNT?

You can transfer/buy/sell Helium HNT at,

Vosks talks about exchanging here on 8 June 2021
Vosk talks about exchanging here (11 May 2021)
Binance / Binance.us (reportedly)
Crypto.com (as of May 2021) (article)
Video with more info here
See the exchange list here on Coingecko.com
We hear that some people prefer using Simpleswap YMMV

Talk to me about antenna power limits?

Thanks @jhunter007,

For those of you having questions on how powerful of an antenna you can use, please refer to the FCC rules on the US915 spectrum:

FCC allows for 36 dbm total output power. So if the hotspot is doing 27 dbm (which I think is the max that most of the Helium hotspots use)…you can add a max of a 15dbi antenna, from this site:

Maximum transmitter output power, fed into the antenna, is 30 dBm (1 watt).
Maximum Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) is 36 dBm (4 watt).
You can obtain the EIRP by simply adding the transmit output power, in dBm, to the antenna gain in dBi.

image2700×1078 250 KB

This is for those of you that really want to understand the technology. For those of us that don’t, you’re generally fine up to a 8dbi antenna, no matter which hotspot you chose.

What about mappers?

This is a deep rabbit hole - word is that you should start here

What's the best practice for swapping antennas?

Switch your miner OFF when changing antennas!

Each antenna is a resistor and therefore has impedance, if you made the impedance change whilst the miner is on it could damage the radio.

It can be compared to the same effect of wiring speakers to an amplifier:

Once antennas are swapped - it is safe to turn it back on.

credit: @Shwetty

Can I put two antennas on one miner?

Vosk mentions this question on this 20 Sep 2021 video

Assuming that both antennas are 50 Ω resistive, they will combine in parallel for a 25 Ω load impedance when transmitting. This will cause the transmitter to see a 2:1 SWR. This is a 0.333 voltage reflection coefficient so ~11% of the transmitter power will be returned to the transmitter from the tee junction. The remaining 89% of the power will be split between the two antennas resulting in approximately 44% of power to each antenna. The net effect is an measurable dB loss to each antenna.

The above scenario assumes that the transmitter does not further fold back the output power as part of an SWR protection mechanism nor does the transmitter final burn out due to elevated SWR.

If you wish to deploy an antenna with additional gain, you will be far more successful with a purpose built antenna for that purpose.

credit: @Shwetty

One post said,

Why do I have a 1.2dbi antenna?

Are you concerned that the Helium app/explorer shows you/someone else has a 1.2 dbi antenna at 0 elevation?

That’s because when you asserted your miner you did not choose a antenna type or location.
Currently (POCv10) this data is not used at all for any reward calculations so it does not have to be correct or need correcting.

When POCv11 is announced and available this will however need rectifying as it will form part of the reward calculations, see this

What's with the miner names?

They are randomly generated to make it fun but memorable, the Helium COO talks about it here.

The technical explanation - The swarm_key is an ECC Compact Key used by the Miner to sign all blockchain and libp2p transactions. The three word animal name (e.g. angry-purple-tiger) is actually derived from the public key of the swarm_key. (link)

The three sets of names are available here

What are some funny hotspot names?

We’ve seen a few odd ones,

Hot Cream Rooster
Dry Cream Swallow
Huge Cream Swallow
Massive Green Duck
Muscular White Ferret
Bald Oily Beaver
Attractive Fuzzy Beaver
Big Fuzzy Rat
Plain Velvet Beaver

I need Helium Jokes/Memes

Random images found on Discord,

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/828974069378580490/854865377065566258/AirBit.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

Activation rate

For those interested in how many units of each manufacturer are going online every day - I keep a tally here. Data is from Helium’s Makers hotspot explorer

Another nice graph available here at etl
Another effort for stats are available at https://heliumanalytics.io/
Helium Inc dashboards,
– Grafana (Blockchain)
– Grafana (Seeds)

Want to know where those new hotspots are? This is a useful site

killtheplanet · September 16, 2021, 10:55pm

Reserved for future content

killtheplanet · September 16, 2021, 10:55pm

Reserved for future content

killtheplanet · September 16, 2021, 10:56pm

Reserved for future content

VoskCoin · September 16, 2021, 10:58pm

we could nuke the thread and give you post #2 lol

killtheplanet · September 16, 2021, 11:24pm

I had to nuke all previous comments - but now have all the space for expansion, thanks!

killtheplanet · October 1, 2021, 9:36am

The Bobcat section highlights that the antenna is waterproof
Read the antenna placements & strengths section to simulate a position, the loss in lengths of cables, etc.

Cohen_Muse · October 13, 2021, 1:02pm

Hi i’m young but i do some social media and would be very interested in buying a helium miner i want to know if it’s still profitable and if there isn’t a hotspot in my city can i still mine?

killtheplanet · October 14, 2021, 7:18pm

BillyGrande · October 15, 2021, 4:25pm

Hello, I have my Bobcat 300 Syncing for 2 days. On the Helium explorer website, I see that the hotspot is being relayed while syncing. The miner is connected to the Internet via WiFi and the Wifi is actually an extender of my router. A wired connection is not possible. Do I need to apply the fixes for relayed or shall I just wait? Thanks

killtheplanet · October 15, 2021, 4:28pm

Syncing has no relation to being Relayed or not.
However being relayed will impact you, see the relay section for that
If you have issues doing this on your router (not miner) visit us on Discord

iyerkedar · October 18, 2021, 10:24am

I living in United Arab Emirates. I contacted Bobcat support mentioning that i am not able to select country “United Arab Emirates”. They replied saying that currently they do not support this country.

Miner388 · October 24, 2021, 12:38am

Wow, what a compilation of information. People do not realize how long it took to put this together. I seen all these pieces to this puzzle in so many different places. Maybe in another 2 months I would have enough data in my head to put something like this together on ASIC.

Congrats and thanks @killtheplanet

BillyGrande · October 31, 2021, 11:15am

I applied a fix for the relayed status by port forwarding. NAT type is none and
±--------------------------------+
| listen_addrs (prioritized) |
±--------------------------------+
|/ip4/XXXXXXXXX/tcp/44158|
±--------------------------------+
All looked good and rebooted the miner. After 2 days being online, helium explorer says that my hotspot is still relayed. What else shall I do?

killtheplanet · October 31, 2021, 10:13pm

@BillyGrande Sounds like you didnt set a DHCP reservation for your miner
Once that’s done - set the portforward - that way when either the router or bobcat reboots it will always get the same IP address on your network.
See Helium HNT Hotspot Mining Wiki & FAQ - #44 by killtheplanet

BillyGrande · November 1, 2021, 10:31am

Relayed status disappeared without any further change after 4 days. Does the Internet speed affect the update of the explorer and does it affect earnings?

killtheplanet · November 3, 2021, 9:45pm

No and no.
Internet speed does not affect anything
Update of explorer and the app is delayed by hours->days due to the load of new hotspots being added daily.

69spitty · November 3, 2021, 10:27pm

Not sure who else has seen this, but the big earners (hotspots doing upwards of $4,000 a month) have their location height set over 100m, looks like they are being put on radio towers. Anyone have experience with contacting tower owners like this??

Miner388 · November 3, 2021, 10:44pm

some say it is real numbers, some say it is spoof’ed somehow.

The ones I have been tracking are

Dapper Denim Carp

Blurry Honeysuckle Shell

Some say they hit the consensus group. Not sure I buy into that story.

VoskCoin says he hit it in this video

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