16 docs tagged with "helium basic course"

This was written in late 2020/early 2020 for folks curious about optimizing a Helium Hotspot placement. Some statements are out of date, though the meat of it all is generally correct.

I got a chance to sit down with the mighty @BFGNeil recently and boy did I learn a ton! Neil is one of my fellow Helium Discord moderators and one of the most helpful and knowledgeable members of the community.

Got questions about what kind of cable you should use to connect your Helium hotspot to your antenna? Want a Helium-specific cable loss table?

It's one of the most confusing aspects of Helium; you put up your hotspot in an "empty" res 8 hex, but you still get your transmit rewards scaled. Why is that, and what can you do about it?

The Hotspotty team was gracious enough with their time to walk me through some significant improvements of their Helium tool.

Well, the race is officially on. With at least two unofficial halvings coming in the near future, it's pretty darn important right now to:

How small can you build an off grid miner? Can everything fit in one backpack? How light can that pack be? Finally, why would you want a tiny off grid miner?

One of the most frequently asked questions in all of the Helium space is: “How much will I earn?”

With a generous assist from the folks over at HNTenna, here's a step by step method for setting up your RUT 240 (the cell modem that allows an off grid Helium Hotspot to connect to the internet.)

It's been a little over a year since I started deploying Helium Hotspots. In that year, after deploying Hotspots both on grid and off grid on homes, commercial buildings, and (my favorite) in the mountains, I've learned a ton about what to do, what not to do, and how to make the most of the Helium experience.

I recently drove up to participate in the USA Hike & Fly's Ojai race on October 31st, both as an athlete and a provider of tracking with Helium. The athlete side was fun, but expensive. I landed in the bushes and tore up my wing enough to warrant buying a new one. Not cheap. Still, rad to blast up the backside of the range then launch off the ridge in an attempt to fly the course instead of hike it.

How do you attach a lightning arrestor to your Helium hotspot antenna? What does one look like? Is it dangerous?

So you just found out about Helium and want to crush it with your hotspot deployment? First, remember WUPU. That stands for Wide-Unique-Proveable-Useful coverage. WUPU is what makes for a reliably high earning hotspot. Here are the top 5 things that go against WUPU. Let's start with the worst thing:

Ok, so you just found Helium and are wondering what to do next? Let's walk through the whole system so you'll know what to do and what NOT to do. We'll go through the ecosytem of Helium, the incentive of HNT, explain Helium Wallets as well as the Burn and Mint equilibrium, and make sure you get started the right way the first time.

Short version: Use a low gain antenna, report your location and antenna gain accurately. If you're in the US, this isn't a big deal, as our radios pump out enough power to get excellent range even with a low gain antenna. If you're in a region (UK, EU, etc) where your radio output is low, PoCv11 will probably decrease your range significantly.

Here is a step by step method for understanding how to choose the best antenna for your hotspot placement. Each placement demands a well matched antenna in order to provide value to the Helium Network and consequently earn the most HNT possible for that location. Do NOT, by the way, try to get the giant antenna in the picture below. While it looks huge and cool and rad, it is the wrong antenna to use for these deployments. I spent a fair amount of blood and treasure to learn that lesson. You don't need to.