A Rough Guide To Helium Hotspot Placement - Gristle King (2024)

This is writ­ten for folks curi­ous about opti­miz­ing a Heli­um Hotspot placement.

Most start with their anten­na, which is (almost com­plete­ly) the wrong approach for max­i­miz­ing earn­ings. The only way you could make a less effi­cient improve­ment at the start is to focus on what cables tobuy.

There are four fun­da­men­tal aspects of an opti­mal Heli­um hotspot place­ment; anten­nas and cables are at the bot­tom of the list for importance.

Before we get there (relax, it’s only a few para­graphs away), let’s get a few impor­tant points out of theway:

First, while I think every­one read­ing this should buy at least one hotspot and place it as opti­mal­ly as you can, over the long run you’ll earn far more by fig­ur­ing out a way to actu­al­ly use the net­work and not just pro­vide coverage.

Sec­ond, if you fol­low and read through every link in this arti­cle you’ll be ready to make excel­lent deci­sions about the best pos­si­ble hotspot place­ment. The whole thing (Heli­um, anten­nas, opti­mum hotspot place­ment) will take about an hour to digest and understand.

Third, if you don’t want or have the time to fig­ure out Heli­um on your own, you can take a course or hire me.

ASSUMPTIONS

1. You know that Heli­um is a net­work of Hotspots that trans­mit and receive radio sig­nals, then pass those sig­nals onto the inter­net. In gen­er­al, the more sig­nals a giv­en hotspot receives, the more HNT it earns. Hotspots record all trans­ac­tions on a blockchain and reward own­ers for pro­vid­ing cov­er­age with HNT, a cryp­tocur­ren­cytoken.
2. You have, or have ordered, or are think­ing about order­ing, a Heli­um hotspot.
3. You haven’t read every last post and thread on the inter­net about max­i­miz­ing a hotspot placement.🙂

There are only a few things that real­ly mat­ter when it comes to your hotspot place­ment. Some of them will change over time, some of them are fun­da­men­tal. All are dri­ven by just one goal over the longterm:

ADD VALUE TO THE NETWORK

FUNDAMENTALS FOR OPTIMUM PLACEMENT

In order of importance:

• HOTSPOT DENSITY
• ANTENNA “VIEW”
• APPROPRIATE ANTENNA
• MINIMIZED & HIGH QUALITY CONNECTION LENGTH/CABLES

HOTSPOT DENSITY: Opti­mum den­si­ty is deter­mined using Uber’s H3 map. At the low end, hotspots won’t earn from oth­er hotspots less than 300 meters away. At the high end, hotspots can “wit­ness” oth­er hotspots 50 kmout.

Back to the Uber map. The map uses (most­ly) hexa­gons to form grids of dif­fer­ent sizes. Each size is called a “res­o­lu­tion” or “res” for short. Each hex size has an appro­pri­ate den­si­ty for its resolution.

Here is a dat­ed inter­ac­tive map (it stopped being updat­ed in late fall of 2020) of den­si­ty and hotspot place­ments. It’s col­or cod­ed and fair­ly intu­itive. Green means good den­si­ty, red indi­cates too dense. Here’s a quick screenshot:

At each “res” there is an opti­mal num­ber of hotspots per hexa­gon. That num­ber can change. It is deter­mined by a base rate of hotspots per hex plus the num­ber of hotspots in sur­round­ing hex­es. Go ahead, read that sen­tence again a few times. The details are in HIP 17, look for “Pro­posed Chain Variables.”

Yes, it’s a bit com­pli­cat­ed. It was made this way in order to pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly account for den­si­ty dif­fer­ences between cities, sub­urbs, and rur­alareas.

Here’s a screen­shot map of San Fran­cis­co (pulled from the HIP 17 Visu­al­iz­er) to give anoth­er perspective.

Notice the green hotspots don’t have oth­er hotspot as close to them as the orange and red ones. Red is the worst; they’re basi­cal­ly on top of each oth­er and pro­vid­ing dupli­cate (or trip­li­cate or worse) cov­er­age, which isn’t use­ful to the network.

If you want to know if your loca­tion will be good, you’ll need to study HIP17.

If you read HIP17 until you under­stand it, you’ll be in the 1% of Heli­um Hotspot own­ers who don’t real­ly have ques­tions about opti­mum density.

It looks com­pli­cat­ed at first, but it’s actu­al­ly straight­for­ward. If you’ve ever read about Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, you’ll have an under­stand­ing of hotspot den­si­ty: Not too dense, not dense enough, but justright.

If you need to visu­al­ize things, use Heli­umVi­sion or Hotspot­ty. Use the options for hex over­lays in Heli­umVi­sion or just zoom in and out on your Hotspot with Hotspot­ty. If you need help with Heli­umVi­sion, con­sid­er tak­ing my Heli­umVi­sion Mas­terClass.

If you don’t have the time or just want to skip that part, you can hire me and I’ll help you pick the best option for your area and circ*mstance.

BOTTOM LINE: You need to have opti­mum den­si­ty for max­i­mum earnings.

ANTENNA VIEW: Before you go order­ing the lat­est and great­est super-hot anten­na (more on that lat­er), make sure your anten­na has a view. A “view” has three impor­tant aspects.

• Out­side. Walls and even win­dows will block radiowaves.
• High above oth­er obstacles.
• Clear view to as much as possible.

The view of your anten­na is far more impor­tant than upgrad­ing your anten­na. A high­er ele­va­tion “stock” anten­na (the one that comes with your hotspot) will out­per­form a super fan­cy anten­na that’s low down EVERY TIME. You can see the line of sight of your anten­na to spe­cif­ic spots using RF Line of Sight or Helium.Vision.

Get as high as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble. How high? From the Amer­i­can Radio Relay League’s doc­u­ment on anten­na placement:

“To a dis­tant receiv­ing sta­tion, a trans­mit­ting anten­na at 120 feet will pro­vide the effect of approx­i­mate­ly 8 to 10 times more trans­mit­ting pow­er than the same anten­na at 35feet.”

You may be think­ing, “I’ll nev­er get my anten­na 120′ high.” That’s OK, do the best you can, but know that until you get it high, you’ll be miss­ing out on earnings.

A good rule of thumb to start approach­ing 90% of opti­mum earn­ings is at least 20′ above your roof and sur­round­ingroofs.

Here’s an exam­ple of a good ele­va­tion placement:

That anten­na is on top of a 23′ pole on top of a 15′ high roof in sub­ur­ban SanDiego.

Anec­do­tal reports show that even a *1 meter* ele­va­tion dif­fer­ence can notice­ably affect earnings.

Get as clear a view of as much “civ­i­liza­tion” as pos­si­ble. Remem­ber, the net­work is only as valu­able as the USEFUL area it can cov­er. A hotspot on top of a moun­tain with clear views of noth­ing but nature for 30 miles is not cov­er­ing (to the net­work, any­way) USEFUL territory.

A hotspot on a sub­ur­ban roof sur­round­ed by a few mil­lion peo­ple and lots of data oppor­tu­ni­ties will pro­vide far more use­ful coverage.

Cor­rect ele­va­tion is vital for max­i­mum cov­er­age. LoRa is more or less a line-of-sight radio tech­nol­o­gy. While the radio waves will go through a few things (a wall or two, a win­dow, or a leafy tree), for the most part you want to be able to have a direct line of sight to both your cov­er­age area AND oth­er hotspots.

APPROPRIATE ANTENNA: The anten­na is what most peo­ple focus on, think­ing that if they just have the “best” anten­na they’ll make the mostHNT.

The anten­na shipped with any pur­chased hotspot is already pret­ty good. How­ev­er, as many Heli­ites are both tin­ker­ers and dri­ven by earn­ings, many will “upgrade” their anten­na in order to reach more hotspots.

Anten­nas do 2 things: They trans­mit (tx) and they receive (rx). Most folks get wrapped up in how well an anten­na trans­mits, but in the long term that doesn’t mat­ter that much, as the val­ue of Heli­um is in how well an anten­na can RECEIVE.

Remem­ber, the Heli­um net­work offers val­ue by being able to receive trans­mis­sion FROM sen­sors TO hotspots, then push that infor­ma­tion onto the blockchain via an inter­net connection.

While there is and has been a place for being able to trans­mit pow­er­ful­ly, that val­ue will dimin­ish rapid­ly over the com­ingyear.

What the heck is “dBi”? It refers to the focus and shap­ing of the ener­gy an anten­na trans­mits and receives.

Here’s a quick dbi gain visualizer:

I can hear you now: “Ok dude, but what anten­na should Ibuy?”

You can read this in-depth arti­cle on how to match your place­ment with an anten­na, but you’ve basi­cal­ly got 3 options.

First, and rec­om­mend­ed: Don’t buy any­thing, just use the anten­na your hotspot came with. Get your den­si­ty and view squared awayfirst.

Sec­ond, if you’ve got a great place­ment with the right ele­va­tion, buy either an HNTen­na or any­thing in the 3–6 dBi range from McGill.

Third, if you feel like you need some­thing high­er gain and you under­stand the trade offs of a high­er gain anten­na, get a high­er gain anten­na from McGill.

“But, but, what about the [insert fan­cy anten­na] I read about on the Dis­cord chat? Should­n’t I get the most pow­er­ful anten­na pos­si­ble? I want moremoney!”

No. Re-read the above piece on hav­ing a “too pow­er­ful” antenna.

The one pic­tured above is a high gain sec­tor (direc­tion­al) anten­na on top of a moun­tain. Despite hav­ing an enor­mous “view”, it does worse than many place­ments that are much clos­er to oth­er hotspots. I replaced it with a 3 dBi omni, no dif­fer­ence in earn­ings. Den­si­ty mat­ters more than antenna.

Even “hot” anten­nas that are tuned to fit with­in Heli­um guide­lines (decreased trans­mit and receive pow­er) won’t rad­i­cal­ly out­per­form oth­er antennas.

One Hotspot own­er I know ran a Near­son 9 vs a Rak 8 dBi in ear­ly 2021 and kept track of earn­ings between the two. The RAK beat the pants off the Nearson.

MINIMIZED CONNECTIONS: Ok, now we’re com­ing to stuff that does­n’t real­ly mat­ter but you’ll ask about and geek out on any­way. How should you con­nect your hotspot to your antenna?

This is RF 101 (Radio Fre­quen­cy): You want a thick, clean, short (ide­al­ly 5′ or less) cable that goes from your hotspot to your anten­na. I rec­om­mend and use LMR400 from USACoax.

If you’re run­ning a cel­lu­lar back­haul you’ll prob­a­bly be fine with anoth­er LMR vari­ant for the cell anten­nas (each set­up is unique) but you will want to place those cell anten­nas exter­nal to the enclosure.

Get your hotspot up high near your anten­na to keep cable runs to the anten­na short. Run pow­er and eth­er­net to the high hotspot, then have a short anten­na cable to the anten­na. Do not (if you want max earn­ings) place your hotspot in your attic then run 20′ of thin crap­py coax cable to your anten­na. That will cre­ate more radio pow­er loss than youwant.

If you MUST have long cable runs, spend the mon­ey on good cable. If you do that, you may (but prob­a­bly won’t) get the same results as Docile Bone Pony, which uses 60′ of LMR 400 and is on top of a 16 sto­ry build­ing in the mid­dle of a largecity.

So. That’s most of what you need to know about a opti­mum hotspot placement.

ADDENDA

What else should you know about when it comes to Heli­um hotspot earnings?

How much HNT you get per witness/beacon trans­ac­tion will change as the net­work devel­ops more ful­ly. With a lim­it­ed amount of HNT made avail­able (2.5 mil­lion per month until August 2023, when it drops to 1.25 million/month) to reward trans­ac­tions AND many more hotspots com­ing online in the next few months, earn­ings will steadi­ly dilute.

Yeah, but how much can I earn? Check here for a very rough esti­mate. This can change sig­nif­i­cant­ly, so it’s just a start­ingpoint.

No mat­ter what, with the growth of the net­work your HNT earn­ings will CONTINUE TODROP.

This MAY be off­set by an increase in HNT price. It maynot.

How can I earn even more? The long play with Heli­um is to fig­ure out how to actu­al­ly use the ser­vice. What kind of data can you col­lect, what kind of sen­sors should you use, how can you offer that as a service?

If you want help with that or with opti­miz­ing your hotspot place­ments, I’m avail­able for hire.

How much pow­er and data do hotspots use? Hotspots use about as much pow­er as an inter­net router, and as much data as heavy Net­flix user who watch­es 2 or 3 movies most nights (100–150 GB/month). This will con­tin­ue to increase until Light Hotspots come online some­time in ear­ly2022.

If you live in the First World and have a broad­band inter­net con­nec­tion, hav­ing a Heli­um Hotspot will be basi­cal­ly unno­tice­able to you from an ener­gy cost/data use perspective.

I’m ready to buy a hotspot, where should I order? I’d rec­om­mend order­ing a hotspot from Par­ley­Labs.

Is there a dif­fer­ence in hotspots/miners/radios? Not real­ly. It’s not like you can get a more pow­er­ful min­er that’ll earn you more. The biggest dif­fer­ence is when they’ll arrive, which is a func­tion of how fast they can be manufactured.

Is it real­ly worth it to put up a Heli­um hotspot? I sure think so. Will it be for you? If you have an opti­mal place­ment and fol­low all the advice above, prob­a­bly. This isn’t invest­ment advice. You could lose all the mon­ey you putin.

How much can I make? If you do a good job, between .5 — 1 HNT/day as of March of 2022. More on that here. Or just go to Site­bot and start pok­ing around to see what the cur­rent max­i­mumsare.

How do I turn HNT into cash? Open up an account on Binance.

Is this a safe invest­ment? No. This is cryp­tocur­ren­cy com­pet­ing with giant tel­cos (Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pa­nies). It may be a boomer (like when Uber com­pet­ed with cabs or Airbnb com­pet­ed with hotels) or it may be a flop (like every oth­er start­up com­pa­ny that tried to take on the bigdogs.)

You should not re-finance your house to put up hotspots. You should be able to lose all the mon­ey you put into hotspots with­out putting your­self, your fam­i­ly, or any­one you know at finan­cial risk. Sheesh.

Should I just hire you to do all the work for me? Maybe. If you don’t like to read or geek out, or you just want to try Heli­um with­out spend­ing a few months research­ing it, I’ll walk you through the process of set­ting up the best pos­si­ble place­ment for your sit­u­a­tion. You can take my cours­es (look on the top of the page under Cours­es) or go here to get started.

RESOURCES

Software

• Heli­um Vision — Paid ser­vice w/free tri­al for assess­ing loca­tions. Def­i­nite­ly try thisout!
• Hotspot­ty — Excel­lent way to visu­al­ize den­si­ty issues AND to man­age yourfleet
• HotspotRF — use code gristleking for 20% off your firstmonth.

Mapping

• Heli­um cov­er­age map — This shows you where hotspots are currently.
• GLAMOS map­per - Use this to test a loca­tion or an antenna.
• Orig­i­nal hexmap cre­at­ed to help peo­ple visu­al­ize opti­mal density.
• Cov­er­age Map­ping — This shows where cov­er­age has been proven through the use of Heli­um map­pers.
• Google Earth Pro — For look­ing at ele­va­tion changes around you and pick­ing opti­malspots.
• CloudRF — For fig­ur­ing out what your anten­na “should” cover.
• RF Line of Sight — Helps fig­ur­ing out if you have a clear line of sight to oth­er hotspots.

Hardware

• Pur­chase a hotspot at Par­ley Labs. I know the own­er and have done busi­ness withhim.
• Pur­chase a hotspot at Heli­umDe­ploy. This is anoth­er source, both this and Par­ley Labs are trustworthy.
• McGill Anten­nas, Cables, Light­ning Arrestors. Lots of great anten­na options, they know about and cater to the Heli­um community.
• HNTen­na — High end mul­ti polar­ized anten­na. Best for urban deployments.

Media & Learning Resources

• The Hotspot — Pod­cast cov­er­ing the lat­est in Helium.
• Gris­tle King YouTube Channel
• State of the Net­work — Week­ly livestream recording