19 posts tagged with "Blockchain + Meatspace"

Onocoy is a GNSS DePIN project with a "bring your own" hardware invitation. You buy a base station, set it up, and start providing its correction stream to Onocoy.

The "bring your own" model has a couple advantages over projects that require you to use their hardware.

First, you can easily use your own data stream by connecting directly with the receiver. Second, you can really dive into the details of what you're doing to see where you can improve. Third, using your own station requires you to learn a little bit more about the world of PNT (Position, Navigation, Timing), which is just flat out fascinating.

Of course, for us regular (non-GNSS nerds), a "bring your own" station is a little intimidating; it ain't quite plug 'n play. Let's go through the broad strokes you'll need to do, then get down into those details to make sure you maximize your rewards.

First, you have to buy a base station. The good people over at SparkFun were gracious enough to send me over the best of what they have, which is a SparkFun RTK Mosiac X5.

Here it is sitting on my workbench, merrily collecting signals and issuing out an RTK correction stream. Yes, I've covered up the location of my top secret hidden lair in San Diego.

I installed it in my office with the antenna up on the roof. I used PoE (Power over Ethernet) because I avoid WiFi connections wherever I can. I've got a Ubiquiti router and PoE switch, so injecting power and finding a port isn't a problem.

Still, for both antenna and PoE I had to cut some holes in my wall and run cable through the walls and up to the roof. I think that's fun work, but I also don't have to do it every day.

The more stable your antenna on the roof, the better. Ideally the antenna mount is bolted on with zero (millimeter or less) wiggle. I've got mine on a heavy duty non-penetrating roof mount. While it's not perfection, it's pretty darn stable.

Ok, that's the physical deployment side. Let's jump into the geek-side and plug our faces into the computer.

To get the bare minimum setup for the Mosiac, just plug the thing in like I have (connected to power and ethernet and the antenna), then navigate on your network to whatever local IP you've set up. In my case, it's 192.168.50.46. Obviously that'll be different for you. You'll see when you go there the "Septentrio" branding; the Mosiac X5 is their most compact and high precision GNSS receiver.

Once you're on the local IP for your Mosiac it'll walk you through basic setup. SparkFun has a guide that makes it dead simple, here.

You'll also need an Onocoy account in order to take your shiny new RTK stream from the Mosiac and feed it into Onocoy. You can set up over at console.onocoy.com. Once you're there and signed up, open the Reference Stations tab and hit "Connect Server".

Onocoy has excellent documentation on setup and it will change over time. One thing I've learned with writing these rough guides is that it's far better for you if you refer to the project's set up docs than mine, at least for basic setup stuff.

Use the Onocoy Installation Guide to connect your station's stream to the Onocoy network.

Once you've finished setting up your Onocoy & Mosiac, you should see something like this on the Mosiac side:

That shows that you're receiving signals from satellites, and feeding out a data stream to Onocoy. Cool, right?

After 24 hours of having it up, your Onocoy console should look something like this. I mostly pay attention to the Satellites and Signals boxes, and spent a bunch of time comparing with local stations.

The general conclusion I came to after looking at my station vs all the other local ones (including ones clearly set up by professionals) is that the SparkFun setup I've got is as good as it gets out of the box; there's nothing better on the market for what we're doing.

The only real issue is that I've added a station in San Diego that either wasn't desperately needed or is more useful than others but is in a deployment area that's already saturated.

If you're thinking of deploying a station and your main motivation is the Onocoy tokens, use the Estimator tool available on the Onocoy Explorer to get an idea of what you'll earn.

That's it for now! Poke around on both the Septentrio & Onocoy sites to learn more. Next up? How to use the SparkFun RTK Torch!

"What the heck is that thing?" It's something I hear via the built-in mic all the time as I've been driving my new Frodobot around Normal Heights.

A Frodobot is a small, remote controlled robot designed to "crowdsource a massive global real-world robotics dataset" according to founder Michael Cho.

For most of us, it's just a fun little RC robot to drive around and wonder at the tech allowing you to control a robot via an internet browser from anywhere in the world. It connects via its own little built in cell phone, so as long as you've got cell service where it is, you can drive one.

It's kind of like the nice version of being one of those drone pilots stationed in Nevada, except instead of executing airstrikes you're delivering desserts.

You could also be exploring with your buddies; every Frodobot has 2 cameras (front & rear), a mic, and speakers. You could be in Belfast, your buddy could be in Kinshasa, and both of you could be driving robots together in my hometown of San Diego.

Now, that's not quite reality yet; Frodobots are still super new, and there are only two options to drive one. First, you sign up to drive one in the Frodobots fleet, which for the most part are all on an industrial building's rooftop in China that's set up with a maze to navigate through.

The other alternative is to buy your own Frodobot, which is what I did. In fact, I bought 2. They advertised $199 each, which was a little less than what I actually paid, plus $236 in shipping.

They shipped via DHL from Hong Kong, arriving just 4 days after I'd ordered them; super fast!

Now, you might ask, "Nik, why the heck did you buy a Frodobot, never mind two of 'em!?"

First off, I love geeky little things that are new. Second, I thought they'd be fun to use at my other company, Paleo Treats, as part of a local marketing strategy. Third, I think there's some small income potential here to rent out the bots to people from around the world. Fourth, I'm betting that Frodobots is going to be a DePIN, and I've seen how important it is to start early on ordering hardware for DePINs.

The first thing doesn't need a ton of explaining.

The second thing is pretty straightforward; we've been using our little Frodobots to make mini-deliveries of our desserts to other businesses. It's a fun thing we can do to to collaborate with other businesses. Nothing crazy, just delivering stuff via robot. You can check those out over on the Paleo Treats IG.

The third thing or fourth things are why you might be here.

The question to answer there is:

How do I make money with remote controlled robots?

It's pretty simple: Frodobots is setting up a marketplace where you can rent out time on your Frodobots to anyone else in the world. A user will log in to something like driver.frodobots.com, pre-pay for time and probably some insurance payment, then they can select your bot, and as long as you have it on and charged up, they can drive it around.

Now, I'll get a little hand-wavy here and just guess at a couple of reasons that driving a Frodobot might be worth paying for. None of these have been vetted by GK Legal, they're just ideas.

The Maze​

You could set up a local "maze" course in the parking lot (or warehouse) of your business and offer prizes for who completes it the fastest, or, if you have more than one Frodobot, who completes it first out of a group. The prizes might be money, or a coupon to shop at the business, or more time on the Frodobots marketplace.

This seems the most realistic, as Frodobots is already doing this in terms of renting out time for money and then awarding special roles as prizes.

Local Gifting​

We think it might be fun to offer up the chance for someone to deliver a gift to their friend. Let's say you live in Alabama, but your bestie lives down the street from a business with a Frodobot. You might buy something at the business, have 'em put it in the Frodobot basket, then drive it down to your friend's place as a special delivery. Since there's a camera, mic, and speaker, you get the fun experience of interacting with your friend through the robot. Sure, you could call 'em, but this is something new: "I delivered your gift myself, with a robot I controlled." Not everyone can say that at a dinner party.

Local Challenges​

Given local street layouts, it might be fun to do a larger version of the maze, where you captain a Frodobot around to local markers, "tag" them, and come back, all under a certain time. If you're an enterprising type, you could print up QR placards that you affix to the entryway to a business at Frodobot camera height. You could then automate the whole thing, and award prizes based on when the QR was scanned.

Casual Walk​

This was actually one of the first ideas I had for this. My nephew lives overseas and my parents live in other states. I thought it would be cool to hand over control of a Frodobot to them before I go on my morning walk with the dogs. In a way, I get to take them along on my walk, get to chat with them and share the same things I'm seeing; when I feed the crows with peanuts, what my little doggies are getting up to, and just have a slightly different experience than they might have if I just Facetimed 'em and they had no choice in what they got to look at.

All those are just ideas of what you can do with a remote controlled robot. Let's dig in a bit to the tech next, then we'll finish up with the "What if it becomes a DePIN?" question.

The Tech​

Ok, so what's in 'em? The components are in two separate areas; the sensor package, which is up in the "head" (where the camera, speaker, and mic are) and then the locomotion package, which is down in the body.

I asked ChatGPT to help me go through what I saw up in the head:

On Main Board (labeled TC-RV2216 Core)​

• Rockchip RV1126: A high-performance AI processor from Rockchip, typically used in smart cameras, AIoT, and other intelligent devices.
• Rockchip RK809-2 : This is likely a power management integrated circuit (PMIC) used to manage power requirements of the device, working in conjunction with the main processor.
• SEC 110 K4F8E30 : This appears to be a memory chip from Samsung Electronics (SEC), possibly RAM or flash storage.
• SEC 149 C041 : Another memory chip from Samsung, probably an eMMC flash storage used for the operating system and data storage.
• YXC 24: This might be a crystal oscillator used for timing purposes, with "YXC" being the manufacturer and the numbers representing part code or frequency.
• SP485EL: A low power half-duplex transceiver chip used for serial communication, likely RS-485.

Over by Modem (top right)​

• PAM 8610: A digital audio amplifier chip, used for driving speakers and providing sound output.
• Fn-Link 6223a-ST : A Wi-Fi module providing wireless connectivity.

Other components​

• Slkor LM2596S-12: A voltage regulator chip, likely used to convert higher voltage down to 12V.
• GG2302: This could refer to a specific part or chip on the board, but without more context, it's unclear what its function is.
• Buttons for Power On, Reset, Update
• USB OTG: Stands for USB On-The-Go, a USB port that allows the device to switch between acting as a USB host or USB device, enhancing connectivity options.

Then, down in the body, the following.

As you'll see, GPT wasn't sure what all of 'em are, but for some of the nerds who'll read this they may make sense, so I'm leaving them in.

• Espressif ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 : This is a Wi-Fi + Bluetooth module from Espressif. The ESP32-S3 is a series known for its high performance and versatile application range, including IoT, wearable electronics, and smart home devices.
• ADB210 YRZ #713: This could be a part number or a specific chip, but without more context, it's difficult to determine its exact function. It might be a part of a larger integrated circuit or a specific identifier for a custom component.
• SS14: This is a Schottky diode, known for its low voltage drop and high efficiency, commonly used in power rectification and as a protection device in circuits.
• 4701, 2202, 1003: These are likely resistor or capacitor codes, indicating their values. For example, 4701 could mean a 470-ohm resistor, and 1003 might be a 100 nF capacitor. These components are fundamental in electronic circuits for controlling voltages and currents.
• SS36: Another Schottky diode, similar to the SS14 but likely with different voltage or current handling characteristics.
• BAXY NO58: This appears to be a specific part number, which could relate to a custom component or a specific version of a standard part. The exact function would depend on the device's design.
• T4: This could represent a transistor or a specific code for a component. Transistors are used for switching and amplifying electronic signals.
• IRFR7440: This is a power MOSFET, used for switching and amplifying electronic signals in high-power applications.
• THP4 M51: Likely a specific part number or identifier for a component, needing more context to determine its function.
• HIP4081AIBZ : A high-frequency, high-voltage full-bridge N-channel FET driver IC, used in motor control circuits and other high-power applications.
• WCH CH240C : This might be a USB to serial chip, often used for connecting USB devices to serial interfaces.
• MAX3485: This is a low-power, half-duplex RS-485/RS-422 transceiver, used for serial communication in industrial environments.
• JM32R LM259: This seems to be part of a product code, possibly related to a power management chip like the LM2596 (voltage regulator), but the exact part is unclear.

Ok, so what are the takeaways from that? First, that the team at Frodobots is making little to no money on selling hardware; at $199 this is a pretty darn good price.

Second, the presence of the RV1126 tells me that we'll see obstacle avoidance as a feature in the future, and I won't be surprised to see some autonomous driving capabilities like "Hey Frodobot, can you go down and pick up a loaf of bread at the corner store" at some point in the future, where the route gets mapped out, sent to the Frodobot and it drives the route on its own.

Third, the Fn-Link in the head (WiFi connectivity) means we may see not only local programming possibilities wirelessly (though you can probably just plug in to the USB port as well), but there may be some crossover with other DePINs regarding mapping out WiFi networks.

That brings us to the last of the reasons I bought this:

What if Frodobots becomes a DePIN?​

A "DePIN" stands for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network. It's a new type of business model where people (or businesses) buy hardware that provides some kind of service. The service can be wireless connectivity, or weather data, or dashcam imagery. Whatever it is, providing the service is rewarded with tokens. Those tokens can usually be traded in cryptocurrency markets.

A good example is Helium Mobile, where you can buy a Helium Hotspot, provide coverage for people using a Helium phone plan, and be rewarded in tokens for the amount of data that flows through your Hotspot.

In the case of Frodobots, you've got to ask a few questions: What is that they want? What is the most efficient way to get it? How would you build an incentive structure to achieve that?

As founder Michael Cho has said, the goal of Frodobots is to "crowdsource a massive global real-world robotics dataset". The DePIN play there seems pretty straightforward:

Provide a way for people to earn tokens by generating a real-world robotics dataset, and make that ability globally accessible, whether you're the robot owner, driver, or fleet manager.

Of course, any proposed business has to have some value, so how might be figure out the value of this market? According to a market report from Marketsandmarkets.com, "The global AI in Computer Vision market size is [...] projected to reach $45.7 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 21.5% from 2023 to 2028."

Of course, that's just AI in computer vision, which is only a part of what Frodobots can do. As [Forbes has said](http://Data is the lifeblood of modern artificial intelligence.), "Data is the lifeblood of modern artificial intelligence", and the real world data these robots can provide at a large fleet level may be staggering.

Again, from the Forbes article:

Getting the right data is both the most important and the most challenging part of building powerful AI. Collecting quality data from the real world is complicated, expensive and time-consuming.

[-Forbes](http://Getting the right data is both the most important and the most challenging part of building powerful AI. Collecting quality data from the real world is complicated, expensive and time-consuming.), Synthetic Data Is About To Transform Artificial Intelligence

Frodobots may offer an alternative, or better yet, a supplement to synthetic data that isn't complicated, expensive or time-consuming.

The value of real-world robotics datasets lies in their ability to reduce time, cost, and resources required for developing, training, and validating robotics systems and AI models. You don't have to look very far to see super smart people diving deep into figuring out how to build foundation models for robots to interact in the real world.

Basically, if you have access to a large data set from the real world, and especially if that dataset involves the interactions between humans and machines, that is potentially a very valuable thing.

Contrary Research unpacks this idea in the Scale AI Report that we *used* to not have enough data.

A long-running issue with building artificial intelligence and machine learning applications was a lack of well-organized data required to build models.

-Peggy Wang & Sachin Maini

Companies like Frodobots may help to start alleviate that data shortage, helping to continue building our models and understanding of the world in new ways.

All of that adds up to why I bought a couple of Frodobots. Frodobots represents this fascinating intersection of technology, business, and community engagement, and I love being a participant at that glorious intersection.

If you buy one and want a code for $50 off, use: 8HSR5H

If you're looking for a mobile plan for yoru Frodobot, the best I found for unlimited data was a Helium Mobile plan at $20/month and $5 off the first month if you use that link or code KAS6KPL

Rock on!

Archived Comments​

Oro - 4/11/2024​

Thanks your thoughts on Frodobots! I discovered them here and will likely be ordering one or two using my Discord discount. Here is a Reddit AMA from the co-founder that has more information about them https://www.reddit.com/r/frodobots/s/4fMb7SztC5

Nik - 4/11/2024​

Yeah, Michael did a great job over on Reddit with those, thanks for linking 'em!

Oro - 4/11/2024​

NP! Nik, what IoT 4G carrier are you using for your FrodoBots Zeros? I'm considering Soracom. Do you have any experience with them?

Nik - 4/11/2024​

I'm using a pSIM from Helium (hellohelium.com). $20/month unlimited. $5 off first month with code KAS6KPL Mint Mobile has $15/month for the first 3 months but limited to (I think) 15 GB.

Oro - 4/13/2024​

Thanks, Nik! Mint Mobile has an Unlimited Plan for $15/mo for 3 months rn. The same plan/price can be extended too: “Once the 3 months are up, you can renew with a 3, 6 or 12-month plan to keep the savings going.” https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/ I’m going to get two lines for two Zeros. I’ll update once everything arrives. ? ?

Nik - 4/14/2024​

Oh nice, I didn't see the unlimited plan option when I signed up. Nice find!

Oro - 4/24/2024​

Hey Nik! I got my Zeros and The Tech looks the same. There are some cosmetic differences though: my Zeros have a small 3-D printed cap over the wires connecting the head electronics to the body electronics instead of the full stainless panel that yours have. I like the look or yours better; not sure why it was changed (cost? repairability? both?). I activated one of my Zeros and the Mint Mobile Unlimited plan I used is only $15/month for 3 months; it doubles to $30/month if renewed for 12 months. I'll likely be moving to another carrier in 3 months.

Nik - 4/24/2024​

Right on. I've thought a little about how to improve that side panel, hadn't thought of replacing it with a 3D printed cap though. I was thinking more of hammering out a little channel for the wires (though it's clearly not necesssary.

Oro - 5/1/2024​

Hey, Nik. Do you happen to have pictures of the back of the circuitboard in the head? I'm running my Zeros in a low bandwidth area, and I'm thinking of adding physical switches to disable one or both cameras so that not as much data is sent to the Agora API. The two HD video streams are not necessary when I'm driving using line of sight and they slow down the responsiveness of the Zero. Hopefully in a future version of the firmware turning off the cameras will be an option without using physical switches.

Nik - 5/1/2024​

Yep, here ya go:

Ok, so ya caught the Wingbits bug and are willing to play the game just to see how good you can get? It's fun to mess around with the Tar1090 tool (which I've covered in a previous post) and see the pretty pictures, but...what about them numbers?

Pretty clearly here we're seeing that Setup 2 is better than Setup 1. For right now, let's skip the "why" and ask, "How do we KNOW this?"

I know, I know, you're super smart and you can just look at the pictures and see that #2 is reaching out further.

Still, you might be a little geeky, and you might enjoy digging into the graphs and learning about the system so that you know for a fact not only how to move from #1 to #2, but how to measure it along the way to make sure you're making the right moves.

So, how do we do evaluate our setup, which include the dongle, any filters or amplifiers, cable, and antenna? One way is with graphs1090.

Once you have Wingbits installed, you get to graphs1090 by going to http://192.168.xx.xxx/graphs1090/ You'll want to replace the xx.xxx with your local IP.

That will bring up a page that looks like this.

Officially, Wingbits calculates your rewards with this equation:

user rewards = uptime % * data provided in hex % * hex rewards * 1 Wing

The rough translation of that is "I want you to be a reliable source and cover as much ground as accurately as possible."

For this post, we'll focus on the second term, data provided in hex %.

Let's start with the big picture:

For every hex out there, there are X number of available messages to collect each day. Your goal is to have a setup that collects as many of those messages as possible and submits them to Wingbits.

@acci via Discord

We have (at least) two issues when understanding how those messages count: How many messages we're getting out of the total, and the clarity of the messages.

Think of it this way: If you receive an envelope in pristine condition, open it up and have a clearly legible letter inside, you can understand the message. If, on the other hand, you get a torn-in-half envelope with water-stained and faded writing on the letter inside that you can barely read, or the thing is on fire when you get it, well...you got the message, but it's not really useable.

You want to get lots of envelopes that are clearly readable.

There's one more thing when it comes to testing your setup: Some of us have an unfair advantage when it comes to testing.

I live in San Diego, which has an international airport and is a tourist destination. We almost always have aircraft in range. I've got two rigs outdoors and up high. During most weekdays each can easily see over 500 message/second. You'll see the "messages/second" down in the ADSB-Maxima box, and it's a good measure of just how busy things can get.

My buddy r4wk, on the other hand, lives way out back of beyond and routinely gets less than 50 messages a second. Unless he decides to pack up and live closer to a major air traffic hub, it'll just take him longer to gather enough data to make a good decision.

So, how much data do you need? It depends on what you're trying to know, and how sure of the data you want to be. You can get a rough idea of how many aircraft you're tracking by looking at the ADS-B Aircraft Seen / Tracked graph, but keep in mind that's not the total, just a per second amount over the course of the time period you're looking at.

If you want to know exactly how many planes you see in a given time period, you can install and run the Unique Aircraft Tracker which you can find on my Github. By default its set for 15 minutes, but you can change it to any length of time.

gk@wingbits:~ $ python3 unique_aircraft_tracker.py
Unique aircraft in the last 15 minutes: 106

If you're geographically lucky and can "see" a ton of plans, your testing period can generally be shorter.

If you're like my buddy r4wk, you'll need more time to gather the same amount of data. You'll need to figure out what works for you, in your situation.

Ok, so with "how many planes/messages do you need" addressed, what else should you look at?

We'll start with using graphs1090 to tune your setup a bit. I'd recommend you do this in the early evening, after a full day of messages. Set the timescale to 24 hours (at a minimum), then look at the section marked "Messages > -3 dBFS". This is the first ROUGH step of gain tuning, there is a deeper dive into why dBFS isn't the only metric to use over here.

In general, you want that to be less than 10%.

The "dB" is probably familiar to those of you who've deployed Helium Hotspots. This is your RSSI, or Received Signal Strength Indicator. The FS refers to the dB being measured Relative to Full Scale, where Full Scale is 0. You don't want to reach Full Scale. :) Think of Full Scale (in our envelope example before) as your envelope being on fire. Very hard to read a burning envelope.

Now, you might think you just want to stay hell away from those red lines. How would you do that? By turning down your gain. Think of (and yes radio nerds, I know this isn't exactly right) gain as volume. As you crank the volume, at some point it gets distorted and becomes difficult to hear what's going on.

How do you tune your gain? First, there's a way to definitely NOT do it; DON'T use the the Automatic Gain Optimization script. It won't get you where you want to go fast enough, and it may overshoot in either direction.

You can see your current gain in the graphs1090 section labled (oddly), "Misc". Here, you can see my gain is set to 38.6

Changing gain is easy (and let's be honest, it's fun to fiddle with this!). Open up a Terminal to your Pi or whatever you're using and type this, where "xx.x" is the gain you want.

sudo readsb-gain xx.x

Your options are limited to the following. If you set something else, it'll snap to the nearest number in the following list.

0.0 0.9 1.4 2.7 3.7 7.7 8.7 12.5 14.4 15.7 16.6 19.7 20.7 22.9 25.4 28.0 29.7 32.8 33.8 36.4 37.2 38.6 40.2 42.1 43.4 43.9 44.5 48.0 49.6 -10

You CAN get around this with an external gain tuner, but for now let's just use what you already have.

Once you've set your gain, you can wait a bit and watch the 1090graph tables, OR you can stay in the command line and execute this, to give you a real time gain read over a specific time period since readsb started.

grep -sh /run/{dump1090,dump1090-fa,readsb}/stats.json -e '' | jq '.total.local | ((.accepted | add), .strong_signals, .signal, .noise)' | xargs -n4 echo | awk '{printf "\nPercentage of strong messages: %.3f\nSignal: %.1f\nNoise: %.1f\n", $(2) * 100 / $(1), $(3), $(4)}'

That will return something like this:

Percentage of strong messages: 6.657
Signal: -10.0
Noise: -22.3

In that command, you can change the word total in .total.local to one of the following to read the last 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 15 minutes.

last1min
last5min
last15min

I'd suggest at least 15 minutes, but part of the joy of this whole thing is mucking about with it and deciding what works for you.

Now that you've set your gain, let's make sure you didn't set it too high (or too low).

We'll use the ADS-B Range graph to help us confirm that we're still getting enough range even as we turn down our gain.

You can also run the Unique Aircraft Tracker Python script from above, changing your time period to match what you're testing.

Here in San Diego on a weekday, I'd be pretty comfortable running 15 minute tests after I changed something on the rig. That could be the gain, or a different antenna, or a new filter, etc.

At this point (mid-November 2023) it's difficult to say what to aim for with Wingbits. It's not clear if we want max range, or a low amount of "too hot" messages, or the maximum number of aircraft. My *guess* is that you'll be best off striking a balance with all three. Remember, that's just a guess; the official goals haven't been released.

Going Further - ADS-B Analysis With Dirk Beer​

Ok, let's say you want even more number-y stuff. Where might you turn? Why, my good friend and fellow San Diegan Dirk Beer! Dirk has written an additional Python script to help assess your range.

It does this by making an assumption; the aircraft that just transmitted via ADS-B will do again. If you received the first transmission, you should receive the next. If you don't receive the next, it's not because the aircraft ceased to exist, it's that your rig no longer has the range to adequately hear it.

You can find Dirk's scripts along with his well written instructions over on his Github.

Running them will give you a graph like this:

You can use this to act as a check the range reported with my Python scripts, then continue to adjust your gain (or other aspects) accordingly. Dirk has been working a bunch on this lately, and you may find that you'll get most of the information you need just from his script.

Whatever you do, have fun with Wingbits, enjoy learning about new tools and ways to use 'em, and have a blast! Huge thanks to @acci, @grayhatguy, @dirkbeer, and @r4wk for the help with this post; this community is so rad!

Archived Comments​

A Rough Guide to Wingbits - Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN - 12/28/2023​

[…] Graphs1090 gives you some more stats to geek out on. If you want to go deep­er into it, check out this article. […]

I've written about the basics of Wingbits in a recent post; if you haven't read that yet or you're new to the project, take about 7 minutes and read through it; it'll make the rest of this much easier to understand.

This is the first in a few of the "Advanced User Series" posts on Wingbits. I'll be making a few assumptions for these: First, you understand the basics of the project. Second, you want to do the best job possible. Third, you're not trying to do this the cheapest way possible. You can definitely do a shittier job more cheaply and easily than what I'm about to describe. If minimum effort is your game, this ain't your post. Fourth and finally, you don't mind mucking about (a little bit) with code, mostly copy/paste.

Let's start with setting you up to see how your rig is working. We'll do that using two tools that came with Wingbits and that are built by a Github user named Wiedehopf. Those are called Tar1090 and Graphs1090. This post will focus on Tar1090.

Tar1090 allows you to see what aircraft your rig is currently tracking, including their altitude (by color), the furthest point they were picked up, and if you want to dive into details, their airspeed and how far from you they are. It looks like this, and is hosted on the machine you've got Wingbits on.

To see this, once you've installed Wingbits on your Pi and have it up and running, go to http://192.168.xx.xxx/tar1090/ replacing the xx.xxx with your IP address.

Ok, so why do you care about seeing that (other than that it's pretty cool to watch all those planes zing around the sky)? Well, you might want to know what you're rig is covering so you can decide whether or not to buy or bid on a SkyHex. The SkyHex map is made up of large (Uber res3) hexes, and looks like this in my local area:

I live in the red circle, in San Diego. You can see that a couple of hexes around me have been bought at least once. Each SkyHex has 3 slots available. Owning a slot allows you to earn off signals received from that SkyHex. You don't have to be deployed in the SkyHex to earn from the signals captured from it.

The question here is: Should I just buy the San Diego hex I'm in, or should I buy a few of the ones around me? What could I actually earn from?

To figure that out, I'm going to overlay the SkyHex map on top of my tar1090. Now, in the instance below I used my massive graphic design skills to make it super easy to show you this. There isn't currently a way to overlay the SkyHex map on the tar1090, so I did it in Canva. I highlighted the edge of my range (using a bone-stock antenna) with the blue.

On the surface, I should probably buy all the hexes above me (I'm the black dot with the white ring) and the one to my southeast, but not the south or southwest one. But wait...the next thing you'll want to know is how much traffic is happening within the blue lines.

With a few tweaks, tar190 will allow you to see a heatmap of where most of your flights are tracked. This makes is easier to decide whether or not you want to buy surrounding hexes. After all, it's probably not ultra useful to buy a hex where you can only occasionally track aircraft.

How do we set up the heatmap? Get ready for some geekery!

First, open up a terminal window and log into your Wingbits instance. In my case, it's on a Raspberry Pi and I'm on a Mac, so I'm using (duh) Terminal. We’re going to add a directory and change ownership of it to let readsb store heatmap data. All this is detailed over in Wiedehopf's guide, but I found some of it hard to understand and put together, so @acci over on the Wingbits Discord helped walk me through the basics. Thanks @acci!

Start by pasting in the following, one line at a time:

sudo mkdir /var/globe_history
sudo chown readsb /var/globe_history

Once those are done, you’ll want to go into your readsb file and add some lines to it. To do that:

sudo nano /etc/default/readsb

Add in the heatmap command --heatmap-dir /var/globe_history --heatmap 30 to the bottom, like this:

JSON_OPTIONS="--json-location-accuracy 2 --range-outline-hours 24 --write-json=/run/readsb/ --heatmap-dir /var/globe_history --heatmap 30"

Once that's done we've got two more steps. First, we're going to restart the service.

sudo systemctl restart readsb

Then we're doing to go set up the URL so you can actually see the heatmap. It will be different than your normal tar1090 URL. Copy and paste the following address, changing out the xx to match your address, then bookmark it so you don't have to remember it each time.

http://192.168.xx.xxx/tar1090/?heatmap=200000&realHeat&heatRadius=3

It may take a few hours (or a few days, depending on your air traffic) to really fill in. You can change how it looks and what it displays using Wiedehopf's system, but the above "args" will give you something like this:

Obviously that gives you a much better idea of how much area you're consistently covering, and you can decide what hexes to buy based on that data. Feel free to play around changing out those args to suit what works best for you; you can change how long a timeframe you're looking at, how big the individual heatmap dots are, their opacity, and more.

Now that I've seen that, I have a better idea of what I might reasonably cover and what SkyHexes I might buy.

Another important tool you can use with the tar1090 map is use the Hey What's That instructions to get an idea of what your maximum theoretical range should be.

If you're hitting it or coming close, you'll know you don't need to do much more. If you're not, well, there's work to do!

Remember, this is a crypto DePIN project, which puts it as a high-risk enterprise. Don't put any money in you can't afford to lose! I've gotten the most joy participating in these projects by focusing on learning new things and doing the best job possible. Earning tokens is a great way to keep score, but fairly obviously not a reliable way to pay the rent.

Huge thanks to @acci over on Discord for helping walk me through the heatmap workflow! Any mistakes are mine, no warranty or guarantee is made on any of this, have fun learning & pursuing excellence with me!

Archived Comments​

Wingbits Optimization: Graphs1090 Plus - Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN - 11/19/2023​

[…] how good you can get? It’s fun to mess around with the Tar1090 tool (which I’ve cov­ered in a pre­vi­ous post) and see the pret­ty pic­tures, but…what about them […]

Warren Bowman - 12/23/2023​

This is great information and really helpful. Thank you so much! I just got my antenna, registered and active today, so tomorrow I will work on getting that heat map going. Thanks again.

A Rough Guide to Wingbits - Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN - 12/28/2023​

[…] I’ve writ­ten up a tuto­r­i­al on how to get a lit­tle more out of Tar1090 than just the basic install, if you want to do that, go here. […]

Tracy Johnson - 2/8/2024​

Thank you Gristle King for this writeup! Much appreciated.

William - 7/2/2025​

7/02/2025 On Tar top right side it says total aircraft. Is this a daily number or monthly number? On Tar top right side it says history. Is this aircraft history for month or year? Just trying to clarify a statement I made about this site.

I've been watching Wingbits for a while now. They're a new DePIN rewarding you for tracking commercial and private planes, and some parts of the project remind me of the early days of Helium, back when I wrote the original Rough Guide for Helium. Wingbits is a project that allows you to choose your hardware and that rewards you for providing "better" service. In the early days of Helium I gained a significant advantage by trying to provide the absolute best service over just sticking a Hotspot in a window. I *think* the same kind of thinking will be useful for Wingbits.

First, let's go through what Wingbits is. Wingbits rewards you for placing hardware (a small computer like a Raspberry Pi connected to a radio receiver and an antenna) and receiving automatic transmissions from most commercial aircraft regarding where they are and how fast they're going. If you want to fast forward and just buy the gear now because you're all excited, skip ahead here. Just remember to come back here and keep reading.

The transmissions you'll capture are called ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast. They provide the GPS location, altitude, ground speed, and other information about an aircraft. This transmission is public, and can be received by anyone. It is more accurate than radar, and is required for most aircraft in the US.

Basically, ADS-B is a way for an aircraft to say, "Hey, I'm here, I'm going this fast, at this altitude; DON'T HIT ME!"

Like all DePINs, in return for you setting up the hardware and passing data, in this case ADS-B data through Wingbits, you receive tokens. Those tokens can be traded for other currency.

Ok, so why has Wingbits particularly caught my attention? Because unlike many other DePIN projects, you can build your own hardware, you can make that hardware better, and better hardware means potentially more tokens.

Now, NONE OF THIS IS FINANCIAL ADVICE, so don't go spending money just because you read about it on some guy's blog on the internet. Do your own research before jumping in.

For me, Wingbits represents three opportunities: First, the challenge of building something in the radio world. Second, the chance to learn about something new. Third, the ability to write about this and share it with folks. All of those are super fun for me. Take careful note that earning tokens is NOT in my top three reasons for doing this. Yes, it's fun and a way to keep score, but for me that's about where it ends.

Before we get to how to build a rad ADS-B set up for Wingbits, let's talk about why this particular DePIN exists.

ADS-B data has traditionally been gathered and supplied by volunteer hobbyists. These are the kinds of nerds who just like finding things out and sharing what they know. For years, these hobbyists have provided the data they collect to a company called ADS-B Exchange for free; the company made it easy to see all the other information provided, and most hobbyists were satisfied with that arrangement.

Then, in January of 2023, ADS-B Exchange sold to JetNet for a reported $20,000,000. All of a sudden, the hobbyists who'd been providing free info realized that what they'd been doing had value. They just didn't know how to capture it. Enter Wingbits, an attempt to capture the value provided by hobbyists and return some of it to them for their contributions, using the DePIN model.

Ok, so HOW do you make the best possible setup? Let's approach this from two angles: What the network "wants", and how best to provide that.

Originally, the Wingbits teams licensed out hexes. If you bought one, you could earn from it; if you didn't, you couldn't. As the project grew, they decided to change that. I think I've scrubbed out references to "buying hexes" below, but keep in mind that at the end of the day, the person who provides the "best" coverage in a hex is likely to earn the most tokens.

Let's start with the size you'll have to cover. In the Wingbits Litepaper (a rough sketch of what the project is about), the rewards system is set up around hexagons from the Uber H3 system. The hex sizes are res 3, or about 4,600 square miles of area and about 73 miles between parallel edges. In the below view you can see those hexes.

There are 41,162 res3 hexes in the world, most of which are in the ocean and probably can't be covered. That leaves us earth-dwellers with about 15k hexes to populate. Each hexagon has a fixed amount of Wings tokens assigned to it daily. As of 08June2024, that number is 24.

Rewards in this system are directly tied to the quantity and quality of uploaded telemetry data

Wingbits SkyHex Medium article

These rewards may change over time. Please refer to Wingbits documentation for the latest.

Ok, what does that mean for you? Wingbits wants you to RELIABLY capture LOTS of HIGH QUALITY data. The better you do at any of those, the more you'll be rewarded.

So, let's do a couple of examples.

Wings Tokens Earning Example 1​

You're out in Montana, all alone in your hex and you've deployed 1 antenna. Let's say you're trying to be awesome and keep this thing on all the time, for 100% uptime.

You'll earn: 100% uptime x 100% of data (you're the only antenna) x 24 Wings = 24 Wings/day.

Wings Tokens Earning Example 2​

For this one let's imagine you're also in the hex I am, here in San Diego. You're committed to excellence (like me) but you've got janky internet, so you're not up all the time. Still, you're in a great location, so you actually capture 70% of the data to my 30%.

You'll earn: 70% of data x 24 Wings = 16.8 Wings/day.

Wings Tokens Earning Example 3​

Worst case scenario here: You're in San Francisco. Aside from the excellent food and being in the heart of technological innovation, you've got some serious downsides; namely the number of people competing with you.

You're only capturing 15% of the unique data; the other antennas are just outcompeting you.

Available Wings: 15% x 24 = 3.6 Wings/day.

Important to Note: You Don't Need To Be Deployed In Your Hex​

You just need to provide coverage for the hex you bought. You could live outside of it, or on the edge of it way up on a mountain, not actually have you antenna deployed inside the physical hex, and still be providing excellent coverage.

Now, HOW you capture that data is where I think the fun part comes in. Remember, you want to RELIABLY capture LOTS of HIGH QUALITY data.

RELIABLE means you've got a strong and fast internet connection so your hardware doesn't go down. I know some of you are going to use the WiFi side of the Raspberry Pi, and to be honest, that'll probably work fine. I'll be using an ethernet cable. I'm aiming to win, yo.

LOTS of data will depend on where you are as far as your "sightlines" to aircraft and where you place your antenna. I know, I know, it's easy to put it inside near your window and call it good. Just remember, if there's one person like me anywhere near you, they'll be putting that antenna up high where it has clear lines of sight everywhere, and they'll crush you. This is a contest, after all.

The other thing to remember with LOTS of data is where YOU are vs where your antenna will cover. In many cases you''ll have a range of over 100 miles, so even if you're in the middle of a hex (and you buy the one you live in) you could reasonably buy surrounding hexes and pick up traffic there.

HIGH QUALITY data is where we start to venture into the black magic of radio. You'll want to be capture exactly the right signal, and you'll want that signal to be clean and strong. Getting that combination will require an antenna tuned to the ADS-B frequencies. There are 2, the main one is 1090 MHz and the other one, much less used, is 978 MHz. I'll roll with one of each just to see what happens, although my focus is on 1090.

Just for clarity on that, the 1090 is the worldwide standard. 978 is US only, and really for smaller craft. I'll go after 978 because it's fun and I'm in the US. Most folks should focus on 1090.

The next part of high quality data, once you get a signal on a tuned antenna, is filtering out the "trash" around it. For that, you can use any number of filters. I've linked one that is fine below. If you want to go batshit crazy and get the custom-made pure glory, DM me. It probably doesn't make a difference, but I like nice stuff, so I bought one.

Third is an LNA, or Low Noise Amplifier. This is built into the gear linked below, so as long as you get that you don't need to worry much about it.

Now, I'm POSITIVE some radio-nerd will read this and point out how I could read the ADS-B off the UFOs on the backside of the moon if I just did [insert your favorite radio hack here]. That's what makes this fun; there's all kinds of stuff you can do to level up your game. Remember, this is just the Rough Guide. It'll get ya 80% there, and probably 95% if you buy everything below.

Gear List​

You'll need at a minimum a small computer (Raspberry Pi), an SDR (radio receiver) and an antenna. Separate the Raspberry Pi from the SDR with a USB extension.

You may want to invest in nicer gear, although I'd caution against that unless you know what you're doing. I'll cover optimization in a later post; the first big step here is to use gear specific to 1090. I know, I know, you have some old Helium antennas laying around. It's true that they work, but it's like bringing a knife to a gun fight. You want to win, right?

If you want to support the Gristle King enterprise and say thanks for writing this blog, use the following Amazon referral links to get a basic set up.

[ninja_tables id="6525"]

If you want to spend more money for possibly better results, you can use this gear list:

[ninja_tables id="6685"]

Keep in mind that while the gear in the second table is "better" that may not help enough to offset the extra cost. I like doing things well, so I've basically used the second version, but it IS more expensive.

Build It​

Build instructions are straightforward. I used Simeononsecurity's DeFli dual guide setup the first time. Then I cut out the DeFLI setup part and focused on Wingbits for mine. If you don't mind me assuming you know a bit about the Pi, here's what to do:

Start by "Registering an antenna" on your Wingbits account.

The ID will be the station name, something like "super-secret-scorpion".

Next, we'll turn to your Raspberry Pi.

• Set up your Raspberry Pi, connecting your SDR Navflight stick to the Pi using the USB extension cable, then the SDR to your antenna. If you bought the filter, put that between the SDR stick and the Pi. It'll look like this, from the top: Antenna, filter, SDR stick, USB extension, Raspberry Pi.
• Flash an SD card with RaspOS Lite. Use the Gear settings to enable SSH, set the hostname, and timezone. Fancy.
• Insert the SD card in the Pi and power it up.
• SSH in and run the command found in your Wingbits dashboard, something like this:

curl -sL https://gitlab.com/wingbits/config/-/raw/master/download.sh | sudo bash

You'll probably find that the first time you run this code you'll get an error at the end, something like

vector is active. ?
readsb is inactive. Waiting 5 seconds...
readsb is still inactive.

Just reboot and install again. Yeah, I know, a little janky. Hopefully you won't have to do this, but as of November 5th 2023, that's what I had to do. By the way, I was able to get mine working on PoE with a splitter that was 5V and 2.5A.

You'll be asked for your "antenna ID" once that finishes. You got the antenna ID in the first step, remember? It was something like super-secret-scorpion. Make sure you include the dashes!

• Set up your location using YOUR coordinates, not the 33/-115 ones below. You can use Google Earth or latlong.net to find yours.

sudo readsb-set-location 33.67854 -115.12356

You CAN set autogain if you'd like, but I'd recommend against it.

Troubleshooting isn't particularly easy or clear, and I've found that most times if you just check your connections (Pi-Dongle-antenna) and then reboot a few times, it all works.

Weidehopfs Tar1090 and Graphs1090 are included, so you can see what's working by going to http://192.168.x.yy/tar1090 and http://192.168.x.yy/graphs1090 making sure to replace the .x.yy with whatever your appropriate details are.

The Tar1090 is a cool local (hosted on your Pi or whatever computer you use) interface to see what flights are being tracked. It's fun to watch. It looks like this:

I've written up a tutorial on how to get a little more out of Tar1090 than just the basic install, if you want to do that, go here.

Graphs1090 gives you some more stats to geek out on. If you want to go deeper into it, check out this article.

I expect within the next few months we'll significant improvements in both of these regarding testing antennas and setups and how it effects token earnings. Here you can see where I went offline for a few hours as I moved from a test rig inside on my desk up to the roof, with an accompanying bump in stats.

Ok, that should do it! As a teaser, I've heard that these things use 40-60 GB a month, so an off-grid setup might be something fun to explore, although as a long-lasting solution it's probably not the best move with current tokenomics if your goal is to maximize earnings.

In the meantime I'd strongly recommend joining the Wingbits Discord to learn more and stay up to date, please say "Hi" when you come in (I'm @gristleking in there). Huge thanks to @!simeononsecurity, @acci, and @gwosty on the Wingbits Discord for all their help with this. Now let's track some aircraft!

Extra Credit for the Nerds​

Airspace is broken up into several classes; you can think of them as areas where there is more or less control by "the tower". Class A is the most restricted, generally beginning at 18,000' above mean sea level and up to 60,000'. This is where commercial airlines, cargo operators like FedEx, and high performance aircraft fly.

ADS-B is also required in Class B airspace (all around your busy airports) and Class C airspace (less busy airports).

Archived Comments​

Wingbits For The Advanced User: Tar1090 - Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN - 11/8/2023​

[…] writ­ten about the basics of Wing­bits in a recent post; if you haven’t read that yet or you’re new to the project, take about 7 min­utes and read […]

Scott Mitchell - 11/11/2023​

So how am I paid for this? Is there a wallet that gets attached to the station name? Is there or will there be app like Helium that you will onboard the station in, and tie into a wallet that way? I currently feed ADS-B exchange, Flight Aware and Flight Radar 24 with 3 different units. 2 are home built Raspberry PI and 1 is bought from Flight Aware, so I don't think I can modily it.

Nik - 11/11/2023​

No tokens yet, so no pay. Eventually they'll sort that out, you're still what we might call "uncomfortably early." :) You should be able to add in Wingbits to one of the Pi units, but I'm not sure.

Warren Bowman - 11/15/2023​

I have spare helium miner sitting around. I understand it can be repurposed for Wingbits, would raspberry pi perform better, or is it more a question of antenna size/placement?

Nik - 11/16/2023​

Hi Warren, the performance will be much more about antenna placement than what kind of Pi you're running. Does that help?

Wingbits Optimization: Graphs1090 Plus - Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN - 11/19/2023​

[…] so ya caught the Wing­bits bug and are will­ing to play the game just to see how good you can get? It’s fun to mess around […]

Cambo - 11/22/2023​

Great post, thanks for the detailed intro! Are there any considerations for the antenna cable? I'm looking at a 25-30ft cable run from antenna to filter/stick to get the antenna high up on the roof. Heavy on Helium and this was a key factor for setting up the gear, e.g. LMR400+ for long cable runs to minimise signal loss. Can't see much of an impact for wingbits though as just receiving signal, no POC etc.

Nik - 11/22/2023​

Yeah, cable loss will effect how much your rig can "hear". I'm using LMR400 for anything over a foot of run.

Baron Hall - 11/22/2023​

Is there any work being done to shim Wingbits into an existing PiAware setups?

Nik - 11/22/2023​

I think so; def. check in on the Discord, lots of folks are running multiple projects on a Pi there. Cheers!

Baron Hall - 11/26/2023​

I found balena-ads-b which supports all the ADS-B feed sites, including Wingbits. It took me just a few hours to port my existing PiAware setup (since 2014) over to it and I am now feeding both from one install. I'd also recommend the FlightAware Pro Stick Plus as it includes the 1090 band pass filter for the same cost as your recommended SDR. Lastly, if you bother to also send the data to FlightAware, they upgrade your account to Enterprise level for free (a $99/month value), which is non trivial.

Pengo - 12/27/2023​

Thank you for the clear instructions. One question, do the services restart automatically in case of power loss?

Nik - 12/28/2023​

Mine usually do, but occasionally don't. I almost always check.

Derek - 1/13/2024​

Hi Nik, Thanks for this! Will utilize your affiliate links. What do you think of this: https://www.amazon.com/ADSBexchange-com-RTL2832U-Antenna-Software-Industrial/dp/B09F2ND4R6/ref=sr\_1\_2?keywords=flightaware+pro+stick+plus&qid=1705194966&sr=8-2 Re: Lastly, if you bother to also send the data to FlightAware, they upgrade your account to Enterprise level for free (a $99/month value), which is non trivial. Would you be able to do that ONLY with their SDR or is that something you would setup in the Wingbits software?

DePIN – Infraestructuras Descentralizadas – Planeta Selene - 7/8/2024​

[…] Wingbits es una startup innovadora con sede en Estocolmo que está revolucionando el seguimiento de vuelos mediante tecnología blockchain. La plataforma recompensa a la comunidad por configurar hardware que captura las transmisiones automáticas dependientes de vigilancia (ADS-B) de aeronaves comerciales. El ADS-B proporciona información detallada sobre la ubicación GPS, altitud, velocidad terrestre y otros datos de una aeronave, que es más precisa que el radar tradicional. La misión central de Wingbits es agregar datos de vuelo a nivel global para desarrollar modelos avanzados, como algoritmos de predicción de retrasos. 1thehub.io2depinhub.io3youtube.com4gristleking.com […]

Jim - 8/1/2024​

Can't find a working discord invite on site or on X? Any help?

Nik - 8/1/2024​

To Wingbits? Should be down at the bottom of their page; I just tried it, worked for me.

Jim - 8/1/2024​

Wingbits yes, thanks for replying. I manually copied the invite into discord now and it has worked. Before was relying on browser invite and it kept failing.

Peter Kennedy - 8/2/2024​

Would you be willing to build me a Wignbits station? I live in SD North County. I have my antenna installed and I have a Wingbits account. Please give me an estimate if possible.

Nik - 8/3/2024​

Hey Peter, you can totally build one yourself. All the parts are listed on this page. If you run into any problems you can ping the Wingbits Discord. What has you most worried about the build?

Peter Kennedy - 8/8/2024​

Hey Nik - You have more confidence in doing this than I do. I asked someone who regularly builds for Flightaware to build me a Wingbits. After a week he gave up, too hard for him. Everything with Raspberry Pi is Greek to me. Please let me know if you would and how much it costs. Sincerely, Peter

Nik - 8/8/2024​

Hi Peter, hit me on email with "Wingbits build" in the subject. I'll get some more info and then get a price to you. My hope is that I can convince you to build it yourself, but if not, I'll have an option for you. Email is my first name, then gristleking.com.

shawn - 11/24/2024​

What's your understanding of the latest rewards program from Wingbits for mainnet. Has it changed from the testnet rules? Latest from Wingbiits docs seem to conflict with your statement`You Don’t Need To Be Deployed In Your Hex`, they're FAQ mentions flagging stations that are located outside of their registered res6 hex - https://docs.wingbits.com/project/wingbits-faq My cursory understanding from browsing their docs on upcoming mainnet(starts Jan/2025) and using their HW, MGW310 or WB200, is that only one person can register a station in each res6, and the only requirement for registering is being the first to do it online and the station will have to be located in that res6 hex. Then each station can capture/report data from as many nearby re3 hexes around it as it can reach and get rewards that way. But that seems to imply only registered res6 stations will be allowed to participate and earn on mainnet. Maybe you can clarify/confirm, do you know if other stations can be deployed and live on mainnet and located in a res6 hex of which it is not the registered station but can still be able to earn rewards such as if it has a better antenna, etc? Wingbits says they will drop your res6 registration if your station reports outside the res6 hex, but it's not clear how that would be executed, as no one else can register for a res6 hex that is already registered. It seems confusing, maybe I am misunderstanding though, I want to get a station and be ready come Jan/2025, but not seeing an incentive as of now, what's the point for people to buy/build a station if the res6 hex you live in is already taken/registered? Seems like the product could have just followed a PoC proof of coverage model for station rewards instead to allow the network to dynamically use the best coverage overall rather than this registration process.

Nik - 11/24/2024​

Yeah, this sounds right (first to register), but I'm not sure.

ROBERT SCHUITEMAKER - 2/12/2025​

Seems Wingbits no longer does BYOD (bring your own device). They did for a while and then you needed to purchase a device to confirm your location but they no longer sell them. Pity as I already have a SDR feeding FlightRadar24 with ADSB data. I installed the Wingbits software and my site was marked as 'online' but GeoSigner was labelled N/A and Tar1090 didn't show flights. From what I read, and see on their map, you can share a res6 hex with another site, but not a res3 hex. I tried to claim my residence (street) but get the error "Hex already reserved or claimed", which sucks.

Nik - 2/12/2025​

Yeah, BYOD is long over. I'd reach out to the team to see if your station might quality, though I don't think it will.

A common question with any DePIN project is: Where do all the tokens go? In GEODNET, 35% of all tokens emitted go to those of us deploying GEODNET base stations and providing coverage. But what about the rest of the tokens? Where do they go? How many are there? How do you KNOW?

Let's start with what GEODNET provides on their site, which is a breakdown of where the tokens are allocated. The total supply is 1 billion tokens; this is what was minted to start the project. There will be no more tokens minted; that's it. Now, just because they're minted doesn't mean those tokens are immediately emitted all at once. It just means they're created and ready to be used. The minted tokens are separated into segments to reward different participants in the project.

As you can see, the biggest section goes to those actually building the network (that's the big yellow section marked "Mining 35%".)

Where do the rest of 'em go, and how do you know?

This is one of the most powerful things about a blockchain project. You can see, on a public and immutable ledger, where all the tokens are and have been. To do that, you need two things:

• Access to a blockchain explorer (I'll be using PolygonScan)
• Knowing which wallets are linked to which segments.

Let's start by going to PolygonScan and looking for the GEODNET project. Here's what I saw in late August of 2022, when this was written.

You'll notice some important details, like the total supply, the contract address, the number of wallets (2,558) and then the tab we're going to hit, which is the Holders tab. Once we're here, we look for 6 important addresses:

• Mining - 0xfa5fed5cc2b6dd8f370651d17242c52ed711b14f
• Team - 0xca3e874bc4e830796d822f529c29df30302324b2
• Remaining for Investors - 0x486559899e96981dfe55c4e6ebf5101a76bfadfa
• Ecosystem - 0x3a6906e4239f9860c81035c54198df58d892653b
• Vendor - 0x82146cf0f350c241757660fd803c73313b06d75c
• Public Sale - 0xcecccb3ee2c208fb58a5a02499e97d4bf041ff6f

Two additional important addresses are:

Pending Burn / Revenue Buy Back - 0xc327C048d75398Da9DB5254679bb84a4a9e42010

Already Burned - 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dead

When you search for the Pending Burn wallet (last 4 - 2010) you'll need to click on the "ERC-20 Token Txns" to see what's going on with it. Here's an example:

As you can see, it's receiving GEODNET tokens IN and immediately sending OUT USDT. This is the "buy back" aspect.

The way "buy back and burn" works is that the GEODNET Foundation takes 80% of the revenue it currently earns from paying customers, buys GEODNET tokens with that revenue, and then burns those tokens to a "dead" wallet, in this case, it's in the name: 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dead

If you want to see how many tokens have been burned, look at the burn wallet, which can be found here. An example from August 22, 2023, is below. Note how many many tokens have been burned so far (2,290,000).

There is no way to retrieve tokens from that wallet; they are gone! It doesn't mean you can't track them, just that they're permanently out of circulation.

You can explore the various addresses as much as you want. If you'd like to learn about staking GEODs to earn 10% or deploying a miner to earn up to 14X tokens, check out this article (and now you'll know how to track it all!)

So there you have it: All the important addresses on GEODNET and a way to understand where all the tokens are, and where they've gone.

Rock 'n roll!

****Full Disclosure: Author Nik Hawks is owner of the consulting company Gold Hawks & Associates LLC, which maintains GEODNET as a client. Nothing in this article should be taken as financial advice.*****

How can you make the most of the new GEODNET staking program? Staking allows anyone to signal that they want a miner deployed in a certain area. Staking also offers larger rewards for both the staker and miners than a normal deployment. I'll assume for now you know what GEODNET is; if not, hit this article first.

In very broad strokes, there are 3 entities involved: The staker, the miner, and the GEODNET Foundation. The staker puts up a stake (either partial or full) signaling that they want a miner deployed into a specific area. Miners who deploy into that area earn a multiple on their normal rewards. The GEODNET Foundation (at least for now, August 2023), reviews the proposed stakes to make sure a staked area is healthy for the network.

The GEODNET team has released details of the beta version of their staking program, which is the first of its kind as far as using staking to incentivize real world deployments as signaled by the network. Full disclosure: The original staking proposal was written by me and Max Gold over at Gold Hawks & Associates.

Stakes cover a SuperHex (the set of magenta hexes above), which is 7 res5 hexes in a rough circle shape. GEODNET uses the Uber H3 hexagonal mapping system. Each res5 hex is about 20 km from side to side and covers an area of 250 km². A single well-placed miner can adequately cover a full SuperHex, but for redundancy, up to 3 miners may be deployed into separate res5 hexes in the SuperHex and earn enhanced rewards.

So what do you need to stake? 50,000 GEOD tokens (current price here). You can earn tokens by mining, or you can buy them on any of the DEXs (Decentralized Exchanges) like 1inch, Uniswap, etc. There is no central exchange currently listing GEODNET, and currently liquidity is pretty low, so if your'e going to buy, buy carefully. As always, this is crypto. Crypto is ultra volatile, so do your own research and make your own decisions on where/how/if you should acquire GEOD tokens.

How does it work? You can Propose a full stake (provide all 50k tokens yourself) or start a partial stake in increments of 2,000 GEOD. Partial stakes create an Available SuperHex and must reach 50k GEOD within 30 days or the stake is returned. As of today, August 20th, all Proposed Stakes must be submitted to the Foundation manually. In the near future, proposing will be allowed once you are logged in with a verified GEODNET Console account.

Once a fully funded stake is proposed and approved by the Foundation, it is considered Active. There is a 180 day period for Active stakes, during which up to 3 miners can deploy into separate res5 hexs within the SuperHex staked region and earn reward multiples. If no miners have deployed within 180 days, the stake is returned without any additional tokens (no 10% bonus if nobody deploys).

If at least one miner is deployed into the staked region within 180 days of activation, the area is considered an Producing Superhex, and the staker will receive a 10% bonus on the staked amount 1 year after the first miner deploys.

Staking Terms​

• Proposed SuperHex - A region proposed to the Foundation as a stake with any amount from 2k-50k.  An accepted Proposed stake can create one of two SuperHex variants, "Available" or "Active".
• Available SuperHex / (partial stake) - An accepted proposed stake with any amount from 2-48k. Lasts 30 days from first partial stake.
• Active Superhex / (full stake)  - An accepted proposed stake with 50k. Lasts 180 days or until a miner deploys, whichever happens first.
• Producing SuperHex - SuperHex with at least one deployed miner earning the reward multiple
• Saturated SuperHex - SuperHex with 3 miners, each in their own res5 hex

The different stakes (Available or Active) will show up on the GEODNET Console map differently. Available is green, and Active is blue.

Miner Rewards​

Ok, that's cool Nik. What about the miners? What do we get? As soon as a stake is Active, the first miner deployed into any res5 hex in the SuperHex within the first 30 days will earn a 4X multiple on their mining rewards for one year from the time of the first deployment. Deployment will switch the SuperHex from Active to Producing. If you have a triple band miner (and you bloody well should, they're the highest earning miners in GEODNET), that means as of August 2023 you'll earn 48 x 4 = 192 GEOD tokens/day.

The second and third miners deployed into an empty res5 hex in the SuperHex are weighted equally for rewards: Each earn half of what the first miner earns. Once the third miner is deployed, the Superhex is considered Saturated. Any further miners deployed will earn the standard reward without any multiple.

After the first 30 days, the reward multiplier goes up by 1x and continues to go up by 1x every 15 days.

Ok, you have my attention, those rewards can get huge! But wait...where do these tokens come from? All GEODNET tokens come from a max supply of 1 billion tokens that are broken up in the following circle chart. You can see the full breakdown over on GEODNET's token page. The mining rewards tokens come from the yellow Mining section (35%). The Staking rewards will be withdrawn from the red Ecosystem section, which is 10% of all tokens.

To put this in perspective, since the inception of the project used only 9% of the Mining tokens have been distributed and we've recently halved mining rewards. The project is in very good shape there as far as total emitted rewards vs total available. You can always check current amounts of tokens in any given wallet over on PolygonScan for GEODNET, clicking on the Holders tab.

Love all the token talk, but this is the real world. Can you give an example of how and why staking works in GEODNET?

Currently, GNSS systems are complicated and expensive, requiring significant investment ($5k is a normal starting price) to deploy. GEODNET vendors like Hyfix provide easy-to-set-up and cost effective (~$700) miners that anyone with electrical power, an internet connection, and a clear 360 degree view can deploy.

Typically, a GNSS company will pay highly skilled labor to deploy and maintain a GNSS base station in a specific area. This is expensive, time consuming, and centralizes where the profits go. As an alternative, GEODNET is a more decentralized project that allows anyone, whether they are a customer, miner or just an interested third party, to signal where coverage is needed, provide that coverage, and be rewarded for providing it. Cool, right?

Where and how would that coverage be used? Let’s take two examples: The Central Valley in California, and the country of France.  

First we’ll do California.  California  is about 3/4s the size of France, and has at least one relatively small area, the Central Valley, which produces 25% of America’s fruits, nuts, and other food products.  The Central Valley is about 20,000 sq miles, which sounds big, but it’s only 1% of all US farmland. 

Agriculture is a straightforward use case for GNSS.  Modern farmers use high accuracy techniques enabled by satellite navigation to maximize crop efficiency.  Providing coverage to the Central Valley is exceptionally useful for GEODNET customers.

With staking, the Foundation or a customer or the community in general can stake areas in the Central Valley that currently have no miners.  Staking an area signals to the entire network that "this place is important, you should deploy a miner here!" This type of staking is an excellent demonstration of leveraging decentralized decision making; we're not relying on just one entity to decide where to deploy, we're relying on the network itself signaling that.

Ok, so that's agriculture. What about another example?

France is 213,000 sq miles; about ten times as big as the Central Valley.  Each GEODNET miner can provide cm accuracy for about 120 square miles.  To provide blanket coverage for France you’d need over 1,700 GEODNET miners.  However…France doesn’t need perfect blanket coverage, but it does need wide coverage, especially in certain areas.

France is also notoriously difficult to penetrate with DePIN projects. For whatever reason, the French are resistant to earning crypto for deploying hardware. Staking rewards should help overcome that resistance and encourage deployment where coverage is needed.

Who might need coverage in France, and why? Perhaps a company who wants to monitor scooter use in a city to help governments understand how scooters are being used and whether or not they should be banned or otherwise limited.  In this case, the company may not want to go about deploying base stations, and they may not need them permanently deployed, so staking offers a great opportunity to signal demand and get a return on tokens at the end of a year.

Another example is marking very precisely where land mines have been found so they can be disposed of. This is critical work though not always well funded, so a low cost highly accurate project like GEODNET is an excellent fit.  

Ok, I’m ready to go!  What do I need to know about deploying a GEODNET miner?

Every miner will need power and access to the internet.  Miners use about 10-15 GB of data a month, though it’s spread out so you don’t a particularly fast internet connection; it’s more important that it’s stable. You'll also need a clear 360 view of the sky all the way to the horizon. I've written a blog post on deploying GEODNET miners here, go take a look!

That wraps it up for the new GEODNET Staking program, if you'd like to stay up to date you can join the GEODNET Discord and you can always follow me on Twitter (X) or YouTube or sign up for email down at the bottom of this page so you get notified whenever I publish new content.

Rock 'n roll!

Disclosures: Author Nik Hawks is a consultant with Gold Hawks & Associates, which currently maintains the GEODNET Foundation as a client.

Archived Comments​

Anthony Passero - 8/31/2023​

What is the current status of the Internet of Things?

We're about to make one of the largest migrations ever done on a blockchain, from one L1 to another. Sure, there have been other large migrations, but this is easily the largest ever seen in the DePIN space. With that that as our framework, let's talk about the reasons for the move, the challenges we face, the opportunities on Solana, and what your expectations for the move might reasonably be.

First, let's talk reasons. The idea of Helium having their own L1 was born out of necessity; no other L1 at the time did what Helium needed to be able to do. The Helium team (now mostly the Nova team, though many former Nova employees are now at Helium Foundation) built the thing they needed. When they built it, I don't think anyone on the team thought Helium would get as big as it did as fast as it did. But it did.

We all watched Helium grow from from 0 to 900k LoRaWAN nodes in less than 3 years, something that never happened before and probably won't ever happen that fast again. We're coming back down to more reasonable levels now, around 400k Hotspots as I type this in late March of 2023. I expect we'll eventually settle somewhere around 200k globally, for reasons that combine utility ("I need a Hotspot here to provide coverage") and incentives (at around 200k Hotspots on the network the amount of HNT earned is enough of an incentive to maintain it).

Of course, Helium isn't just the world's largest LoRaWAN network anymore (for comparison, TTN, the nearest competitor, is one twentieth the size with 22k gateways globally). From the beginning, their white paper has talked about multiple wireless protocols, and we've seen CBRS launched in the last year with rumblings of WiFi, VPNs, and CDNs in the future. To accomodate all these networks, we need something that the Helium L1 doesn't have, which is the ability to easily run multiple tokens all tied to one token, with data credits flowing across all systems.

Enter Solana. Love it or hate it, it's one of the largest blockchains that can handle this job. It's big, it's fast, it's got a lively developer community, is reasonably stable, and is likely to continue to improve. Of course there are others that could also work, but Solana is where we're going.

So, now that we've established where we're going and why, let's talk about the challenges, opportunities, and expectations. Let's start with expectations for the transition.

Expectations & Action Required​

Let's start with what you should do to prepare.

First, make sure you have your 12 words for any Helium wallet you have written down somewhere safe. You can hammer 'em into metal, you can type 'em on a typewriter, you can write 'em on a piece of paper...whatever. Just make sure you have 'em somewhere safe. What else should you do?

Second, transition from the blue to the black Helium app. The blue one is the old one, the black one is the new one. Search in your App store for the Helium app that's black, load it up, enter your 12 words, and you're done. You can always find it at: https://docs.helium.com/wallets/helium-wallet-app/

Yep, it's that easy. If you want to explore a little bit more, pick up a Phantom wallet, dig into the Settings on the Helium black app, and play around. One note; if you're using a Phantom wallet you'll need your "Private Key" (the grey button in the image on the left above), not your 12/24 word secret phrase.

Now, that's all YOU have to do. The Helium team has way more of the load than you.

On April 18th (the expected transition date), I'd make sure I don't have any Helium-related activities planned. No installs, no transfers, no DC top ups, no mission critical sensors, no new purchases. Just chill, yo. I'd expect about a 48 hour transition. The transition is unlikely to be without flaw. Despite the best efforts of very talented people, this is a complex and large thing never done before.

As a reasonable human, you should expect turbulence in the short term. Exchanges will halt deposits. You won't be able to pull tokens out. The system won't work temporarily. In the long term it'll work out, but if you brace yourself for significant short term turbulence you'll be able to navigate the transition much better. This includes the expected FUD that'll take over the Helium Twitterverse as we transition. If you see things like "Helium is DED!" or "Helium fail" or "Blockchain darling dead on arrival" you'll know that the team is making good progress, learning a ton, and not yet on the far side of a successful transition.

Challenges​

Ok, so let's hit a few of the challenges we expect to face with this transition. After all, there's no sense in ignoring known issues.

The transition to Solana means that Helium will rely on Solana staying up over the long term. Historically they've been pretty good about that, but they have gone down, and when they do that'll affect the Helium ecosystem. Helium will continue to work (due to the Oracle system), but you won't see token payments flowing into your wallet until Solana comes back online, at which point you'll get all the "back pay" you're owed.

This idea of a blockchain going down isn't something unique to Solana; every blockchain has occasional problems. The good news here is that the Solana ecosystem is healthy, it's very likely they'll continue to improve it, and in the long term if we really need to we can shift again.

A second challenge is that manufacturers of Helium Hotspots won't keep up to date. Syncrobit is an example of this. They stopped releasing updates a few months ago. RAK, Bobcat, and Seeed are examples of manufacturers who are being good actors, keeping their firmware updated, and staying on top of making sure the network stays healthy.

Opportunities​

Ok, let's talk about the good stuff. What will happen?

Hotspots will beacon every 6 hours, so you'll know it's alive, it'll earn (small amounts, to be sure), and there'll be much less uncertainty regarding your Hotspot's status.

We'll see new tools, an updated Explorer, more outside vendors coming in to provide useful data, a more scalable network (something that can support millions and even billions of devices, not just hundreds of thousands.)

The LoRaWAN infrastructure will be much more flexible; you'll be able to run any LNS you want, or even be a roaming partner. Pretty rad!

We'll see that updates will be way easier, the network will be more stable, gateways will connect directly with packet routers at the edge, and in general you'll have far less of a technical headache when it comes to making sure everything is working. Remember, Helium recently passed a stringent audit from Sec3, and while no human made is perfect (other than my wife), the network is looking pretty darn healthy from their perspective!

Finally, with Helium on Solana, we'll have access to the larger DeFi and Solana ecosystem, which brings us all one step closer to a universally integrated decentralized system. That is VERY cool.

What's Next?​

For now, we just chill. Make sure you have your 12 words, switch from the blue to the black app, then go do something else for about a month. If you're unable to tear yourself away from the Helium ecosystem and want a blow-by-blow view, you should expect to wake up after Migration Day and you'll see your Hotspot has mined IOT, not HNT.

As for me, I'll be deploying sensors for another few weeks. On April 18th I'll probably roast a few batches of coffee and see if I can record a few segments for the new DePIN State show I'm running with Max Gold. If you want a bag, swing on by the Paleo Treats office; I'm giving 'em away because, while roasting is fun, I need to get in my reps, and that requires producing way more coffee than I can drink. Enjoy the abundance!

Archived Comments​

Bronson - 4/20/2023​

Have you done anything on the different new tokens, what they are, how they're used, and when/what to invest in?

Nik - 4/20/2023​

Yep, YouTube video on staking and delegating HNT on the new wallet is here. Rock on!

Mark - 9/9/2024​

"I expect we’ll eventually settle somewhere around 200k globally, for reasons that combine utility (“I need a Hotspot here to provide coverage”) and incentives (at around 200k Hotspots on the network the amount of HNT earned is enough of an incentive to maintain it)." There needs to be a shift from quantity to quality, although 200k is probably too low still. In trying to use Helium LoRaWAN in a commercial application I've run into problems like high-rise apartment deployments where a naturally elevated placement gives hotspots good scores and the buildings attract hotspots for a dense coverage, but in practice there is very poor utility at the ground level where I'm interested in deploying sensors into retail stores. Another example is the total lack of coverage in commercial areas like shopping malls or public spaces like parks,etc. I think something to watch out for is Amazon Sidewalk which seems to have planned to address coverage issues with their own commercial quality Sidewalk access points to augment the well-exploited residential coverage they get from Alexa devices. Perhaps Helium could find a way to encourage deployment of gateways into commercial space and/or find a way to incentivize utility like rewarding gateways with good reports from trackers (which should be free from data charges at a minimum, or incentivized for providing the data publicly).

One of many extraordinary aspects of being alive in 2023 is access to resources. In this case, it was access both to a 3D printer (a Prusa Mk3S+ I assembled from the kit) and finding design talent to get maximum value of the printer. Before we get there though, let's start at the beginning.

Sometime in December of 2022 I'd ordered a soil moisture sensor from MakerFabs, an outfit out of Shenzen China set up to produce open source hardware.

I thought it'd be a fun project, I knew that many others had already done it, and that while there might be fiddly bits, it was a well trodden path. I was mostly right, and helped by a bunch of tech savvy people in a channel on the GK Discord server, I ended up writing a post on how to get this LoRa sensor onto Helium's LoRaWAN network.

The one thing that bugged me was the enclosure it came with. It had 2 areas for improvement.

First, it didn't really protect from moisture getting in. The case is a 2-piece design with a few vents in the side for airflow.

Dirk (our GK engineer) had put a couple of 'em in the ground a few weeks before me and was seeing moisture inside of the case. The seams aren't watertight, and the vents don't protect at all from water coming in from the side. Now, the board and the parts on it are covered (as I understand it) with a protective film, but the twin AA batteries are open to the world.

Second, it is a royal pain in the ass to open and close. It ships with 2 x M2x8 bolts and nuts. The bolts are just barely long enough to get through both sides of the case, and the way the case is set up makes it really fiddly to actually thread the nut on. It's not impossible, just an unnecessary obstacle. I tried replacing the 8mm versions with 12mm long bolts, and that was slightly easier, but still, not what I wanted.

Obviously once you've got the sensor up and running you don't really care about opening up the case, but there was just something about not having a well designed case that triggered the thought, "I can improve this." So I did.

I started by thinking about what I wanted: A case that I could open up easily with minimal tools, one that protected the batteries from moisture while giving the actual sensor (an AHT10) plenty of airflow, and something I could print at home on the Prusa. The material had to be something that could withstand being outside and exposed to the elements, so I settled on ASA filament. ASA is a UV-resistant form of ABS, a durable plastic.

I thought a mushroom shape would work well, so I sat down and sketched out a first draft.

As you'll see, this isn't what we ended up with, but it's close. The lesson here is to start. Your idea doesn't have to be perfect, you've just got to get it out of your head and into some medium you can share.

Now, while I have a 3D printer, I am not by a long shot a 3D designer. Here's where the rad part of being alive in 2023 comes in: Designers (and experts of all types) are getting easier and easier to find. I turned to Upwork to find mine. I wrote up a creative brief of what I wanted, added in a few parameters, and posted it.

I added in a few "sifting" questions to help me sort through all the applications faster. I've found writing your own questions on Upwork is really helpful to quickly eliminate candidates who are unlikely to be a fit.

Then I sat back and watched a bunch of submissions come in. Some of 'em read the brief and responded cogently, many were just copy/paste bullshit, and one in particular was from a fellow named George Z. We messaged back and forth a few times, he suggested we jump on a Zoom call (done through Upwork, which was pretty slick), and we talked about it for 15 minutes. I decided he was a reasonable bet, we agreed on a price per hour and he started work.

I took some time to silhouette out the sensor and take a bunch of measurements with my digital calipers. I'd really wanted to buy a 3D scanner, but George let me know all we really needed were precise measurements; that tempered my profligate tool buying habits.

With that sent over, it was time to let George do his thing. When I saw his first proposed design I was reassured I'd made the right choice and this would be a super fun contractor to work with. He did what an excellent designer does, which is to take the clients idea and improve it in ways the client hadn't thought to ask.

The soil sensor slides into a protective cover and is secured with one of the provided screws. The cap is screwed on with a quarter turn locking mechanism (the raised dome in the picture on the right). Simple, durable, plenty of airflow, reasonably easy access (still have a screw at the bottom to secure the board to the printed cover.

I printed up the first models in PETG; the color I had on hand was purple. PETG is cheaper than ASA and easier to print with. It was super exciting to see the first print commence!

Now, nothing goes from zero to hero with just one step, and along the way we had a few mishaps; failed prints, fittings that were a bit too loose or tight, and minor modifications. It took us, oh, 8 print attempts (maybe a few more) to get to a spot we were both happy with. Some of those were my fault as a beginner 3D printer, and some of those are a result of the necessary obstacles on the path to improvement.

The noteworthy modifications were shrinking the cap, making a small channel at the bottom for the screw instead of having it be just a hole, moving and slightly the shrinking the main air flow opening opposite the sensor, and closing off the the cap top on the battery side to protect the batteries as much as we could.

Working with George on this ended up being really engaging and fun as we went back and forth with ideas. When we ended up with a design we were both psyched with, I put in a final request for the Meteo Scientific logo (MS is the sensor business arm of GK) to be added to the print, and we did our first run in white ASA.

If you'd like to see these devices actually in use, I shared a video over on YouTube about how they're getting deployed.

So, that's it, from initial problem identification to solution finding, incremental improvements, and a finished product. The whole thing cost about $500 in design work from George, which seems super reasonable to me for the quality and outcome we got. I've made the print file freely available over on Printables, so if you'd like to print this out for your V3 sensor you're welcome to do so.

All the print settings are contained in that file, so if you've got a Prusa or access to one it should be a straighforward job to have your own housing up and running in no time. If you'd like to hire George to do work for you, check him out on Upwork here (you'll need an Upwork account).

Hopefully this inspires you to lean in a little to the next problem you're presented with and see if you can use the power of our connected world to solve your problem and share that solution with others.

Rock on!

Nik @ Gristle King

Archived Comments​

Mark Roberts - 10/24/2023​

This is an awesome package for the soil moisture sensor. Printed like a dream importing the step file into Prusaslicer and using their generic PETG profile. BTW, referencing your other articles on using this sensor on Helium Console and in Chirpstack... the github pointed to has a new order for the measurements so the decoder in Chirpstack needs to be reworked. -mark.

"The job right now isn't to make IoT easy. It's to make it work".

As I look across the Helium ecosystem in early December of 2022, I'm starting to see the emergence of working businesses built on Helium. Baxus may be the most recent example; a company tracking all the conditions of items as they move around, though mostly focused on their storage conditions. They're starting with whiskey casks and wine barrels and what they're demonstrating is what we saw on the Hackathon train: Helium still requires technical expertise, but it works.

Whether you're figuring out how to use a people counter, a temperature and humidity sensor, or have an idea that the world hasn't yet explored, the time to build is now.

In contrast, if you're looking for an easy "Apple/Mac" experience, Helium isn't yet the place for you across the board. That's not to say it doesn't exist, and the leading example is Trackpac, built by longtime Helium community member Neil Skoglund.

After spending 18 days traveling around Europe and talking to people across the Helium space, one of the key takeaways is that this is what I think of as "the blind period" in the growth of an industry. "Blind" because it's hard to know what's going on. We just came through a massive burst bubble of unhealthy growth. HNT went from less than $2 up to $55, then back down to $2. The fallout from that is felt across the Helium community as those who rushed into this for "on the couch profit" get shaken out, sometimes very vocally.

Many people I met had the question: Is Helium dead? I can see why they'd ask that; especially if they came into Helium, like many, from the access point of mining crypto.

In the graph above (not to scale), at stage 1 we had Helium Inc casting about in the wilderness for years, trying to figure out what it would do. Helium was always about IoT, so that was their North Star. During that time (2013-2019) nobody really knew about them. They they stumbled on the idea of hooking IoT to a blockchain, birthing an industry with exquisite (and probably completely accidental timing. It still took a year to fire; it wasn't until sometime around late 2020 that things started to go parabolic.

That brings us to stage 2, which transformed the company and the community from a few engineers with a geeky idea to several hundred thousand mostly cryptocurrency enthusiasts who were speculating during the great boom of '20-'21. For a while, you couldn't lose. Like all booms, that went up, a few lucky ones (no one I know, and as far as I can tell, no one at Helium Inc) got off at the top, and the rest of us rode the wrong side of the parabolic curve back down to where we are now.

That brings us to the beginning of stage 3. The beginning is the blind period. In the curve above, it's probably the period between the beginning of the stage up until where you see the number 3. Now keep in mind, this curve is just a prediction. And the time scale is funky. Seriously funky. I could be completely wrong about it.

However, what I saw on the Hackathon train, and in Lisbon before that, and London, Paris, and Barcelona after is a period of growth ahead that goes steadily upward, though not at any kind of "change your life" rate for a while. The whole time we're stage 3, the only noticeable improvement will be measured in months at a minimum. Hours, days, or even weeks aren't particularly useful.

Of course, stage 4 is when everyone will want to pile in again. I don't have any predictions worth sharing about when that will be.

In the meantime, the important takeaway from the Hackathon train experience in particular is that NOW is the time to be head down and building.

Find a place you can learn, whether that's a friend, a group of friends, or Helium's #sensor-dev channel on Discord. If you want a first project, start with Joey's IKEA sensor project. There's plenty of info online about it and the community in general is well versed in it.

Just by getting one sensor on board, from soup to nuts, my feeling is that you'll be vaulting yourself well past the "blind spot" on the graph above and be well on your way to capitalize on the growth when it comes.

Here's to your ongoing success in this incredible project, LFG!