Hi All,
I’ve got a few questions about HNT mining. (Also, sorry this is going to be a long one) I’ve been ASIC mining on SHA-256 and Scrypt for about 4 years now, but I just found out about HNT and I’m trying to get into mining that as well. I’ve been watching a lot of videos and doing a lot of reading, and so I’ve got a handle on what it is and how it works, but I feel kind of like I did when I was first getting into ASIC mining, and I’m overwhelmed with all the info out there.
Here is my situation. I work for a network of very pro-crypto radio stations. We have decided we would like to put HNT miners on our radio towers, and from what I can tell that should be a huge advantage as our shortest towers are 199’ and our tallest are almost 300’…So we can get our equipment very high up. Then I run into the question of what equipment to get? I have a bobcat on order but wasn’t sure if using that with the RAK outdoor case is a good option or if I should hold out till the NEBRA outdoor units come back in stock. I’m also not sure on antenna DB. I was looking at the 10DB unit from Rokland, but Rokland told me 10DB at 250’ would probably be overkill (although I’m 40 miles from Boston, so if I can hit stations in Boston that seems like it would boost my profitability.) Also, I’m not sure how to get power and internet to the units. Most of our towers are out in the middle of fields. We have internet at each location, but the router is usually several hundred feet away from the tower, so just plugging in an ethernet cable isn’t really an option. I could probably set up a Wi-Fi bridge, and then run the internet and power on POE, it is just a rather complex situation as I don’t exactly have a plug on a broadcast tower that I can plug into. Any thoughts?
What you are asking ‘us’ in the HNT mining community now is to help you establish gaming. That is not what the HNT network was designed around.
Its a 2dB to 4dB antenna that comes with these HNT miners. Anything outside of that is for a rural user wanting to put ONE miner inside the house and a 5dB up on a 20 foot pole to reach some perspective miners within 30 miles.
Putting on a tower does nothing for witness as it will only beacon in that type of setting.
As to how you make it standalone is yet another aspect that was never designed for the HNT miners. there are ready made IP65 boxes with solar panel to charge a battery and run an inverter to make enough power for the miner. I can see that someone on 10 acres of land might want to do in order to hit a hotspot 60 miles from a rural home.
In my opinion you are on your own on how to put it on a 300 foot tower so you be like this guy… whom is now hit by the POC update and lost alot of money in the last 14 days.
That is one thing that I don’t understand. You said that helium is “catching these and disabling them to bare minimum results.” Why would the network want to penalize somebody who has put more effort into the install and reward a guy that just puts it on the window sill?
To the OP, I’ve actually put quite a lot of effort into my install, as it was doing nothing at all when I put it in the window. It was doing good for a couple of days, and has now not earned anything for almost a week as helium is having some kind of widespread syncing issues. I don’t really know what is going on, but it has really been disheartening. I feel that it would be too much work to get results in your situation. The thing goes into relay at random. It says its online and synced, yet earns nothing and doesn’t witness other hotspots. Things have gotten so bad that I have actually stopped trying to get another hotspot and wont recommend anybody to do it.
I don’t understand that thinking either. “let’s build a global mesh network, but penalize those who can cover the most area and serve the most people”??? Also in the pictures that miner388 posted that guy is in the middle of a bunch of hexes, and I can see if one person is dominating all the others around them, but where I am there aren’t many other miners around: my location is where the “star” is in this picture
I wouldn’t say Helium is penalizing these towers. But what was happening is people would put up high gain antennas and then in the miner config setting that to an incorrect smaller antenna. That would make the miner look like it was working AMAZING and therefore get better payouts.
The HNT mining change that is coming (or already happening apparently) is that they use the signal to noise ratio to determine if the antenna reported by the miner is false. If so their earnings are impacted. For instance if you say you are still using the factory antenna yet you have a spectacular SN ratio then you are flagged as a problem location or hacked in some way to game the system.
I don’t know what the payout is on these sites who install better antennas (or on a tower in this case) but it isn’t as much as it was before. The idea behind the helium network is ‘the people’s network’, not how far you can transmit. Smaller more localized networks by the masses are preferred over larger commercial type installs. I get that more rural locations may need more antenna gain to even reach the next miner. But if you are running high gain in the midst of many other miners close to you the new HNT mining algorithms are going to hit you hard on the payouts.
It should penalize them since that is not the goal of the network. The goal is a broad multi-node redundant people’s network, not 1 single location offering services while 15 others around it are cut out because their antenna is lower / less gain.
Thanks for helping us understand why devices on tall towers can be issues. I am in talks with a local rural internet provider to do something similar. Based on what you said about high gain antenna’s on tall mounts or towers in populated areas makes sense. If they see you can witness everyone for miles around and penalize you then it’s pointless. I’m thinking more along the lines of doing this is rural areas where there’s no other miners for miles around but could still end up witnessing enough from long distances. I would hope they wouldn’t be as strict.
I am still waiting for my HNT miner so my facts are from others I’ve read/seen.
You may want to check out YouTube, reddit, and a few other sources too. I’m just telling you what I’ve read but I see it makes sense - and I understand why the developers for helium would do it.
Researching is what led me back to here. I have my 1st RAK just onine and am rural. Will be playing with antennas soon. I think the helium App has issues. It still reports I’m relay when i know it’s good and hotspotty says so.
HNT is really confusing the hell out of me. I have two RAK goldspots and I cant figure out why they aren’t consistent at all. I’m pretty new at HNT mining but I can’t figure out why sometimes I’ll get witnessed/ be a witness, and sometimes I won’t. Sometimes it’s once a week, sometimes it’s once a day, and I have no idea as to why.
