Anyone got a Helium hotspot?

Someone on here is look in the crypto thread.
Cvr6 or something is the username.
I am still thinking about it but the gear is still in short supply.

schrickvr6 is the username might be able to help

Difficult to say what gain without knowing your location and topography, I could run a simulation if you send me your postcode. As for brands McGill are decent but a bit pricey and I'm not overly keen on some of their sales tactics. Have not tried one but Ceetech are pretty new on the scene and highly regarded, Connextech are really good value for money and also well priced for cables.
Getting the antenna as high as possible is essential, ideally on a pole on your chimney or similar and connect with LMR/HF/CLF 400 series cable. Most of my installs I try to get the hotspot into the loft to keep the cable run and losses as short and low as possible.

Thanks for the reply - I've sent you a PM @schrickvr6 . I figured the loft would be the best place but it would be good to know if it's worth the effort!

I get the impression this is not about exploiting the helium that emerges from the ground under one's property. Which would be cool.

Greyspoke you are indeed correct 👍

Yes that would be cool and no doubt a hell of a lot more lucrative!

Ooooh I've earned £0.40p! This time next year Rodney......

The equipment cost is the issue for me.

Yeah it is very difficult to get hold of and also very expensive, I managed to get mine from a friend who ordered last year sometime and then lost interest in it as he said he was told they needed to be 5G now so the wireless only ones were no good. 🤷‍♂️ I offered to plug them in and see what happened and not much is the answer thus far.

I have ordered a 6.2dBi antenna and a 10m very low loss HF400 cable to see if I can get some significantly better performance from my roof top. I am in an area which is higher than quite a bit of the surrounding area and without any scientific analysis and after reading This I just sort of guessed that 6.2 is a sort of middle of the road starting point and has got to be better than the supplied mini antenna attached to the box sitting on my upstairs windowsill.

Actually @pk13 there are a few on ebay at a reasonable price by the looks of it... One currently at £50 with 6hrs to go... Not sure if the seller is planning on paying the £10 to re-assert it though.

@schrickvr6 Did my message come through? The messaging system on here isn’t always 100% reliable one my experience.

Talking to myself here it seems…. Apart from schrickvr6 (who seems to have gone to ground for the moment) does anyone else have a hotspot? I’m very interested to know some experiences…

For the record I have bought an antenna and some decent cable and I’m mounting it on the roof tomorrow to see what (if any) difference it makes to my earning rate….. I’ve discovered that it will run from the power that goes down a PoE cable so that negates the need to get 240v sockets in the loft, just need to get the network cable up there…..

It would be nice to know your monthly income when set up

Take a look on the explorer on the Helium website to get some idea. Just a few clicks and you can see the rewards claimed by a particular hotspot. Should give you an idea.

Unsurprisingly, the value of HNT is following everything else down to the bottom, wherever that is, heard someone give September as a prediction of when the bottom might be!

Yes, I’ve seen the Helium explorer, thanks. What I’m really keen to find out is things like how much the installation itself affects the earnings - things like antenna type in different environments. For example my antenna is 6.2 dBi but I have no idea if a 12dBi one would be better. There are websites that profess to tell you what the best setup is for your location but they charge a fee and I’ve no idea if the information is any good/accurate so I’m loathe to start signing up for random info. The current price of HNT is certainly not making it look particularly lucrative I must say but obviously in the long term if it’s possible to generate a whole load of HNT then it might be interesting. It also looks like the IoT network might be given less weight than the provision of a “peoples” 5G network,  but that requires yet more investment as my hotspot won’t do 5G. Again, no idea if that’s correct.

So at the risk of talking to myself yet again, just a quick update for the benefit of @pk13 mainly, I've installed an antenna on the roof and my earnings have err.. gone through the roof - well relatively anyway. With the box on a windowsill it generated about 0.1HNT in 5 days but In the last 48hrs it has generated about 1.1HNT. With HNT currently at about £9 I've therefore currently got £10 in my wallet... 🙂

My miner just arrived so looking to get it set up over the weekend.

Only took 4 months for it to arrive so we'll see if it's worth the wait.

Cool @brucewee. Any others in your hex currently? Also, what sort of hotspot did you get?

Nearest hotspot to me is 4 miles

I'm communicating with others up to 23 km away thus far. Suitable antenna seems to be incredibly important.

Looking at the map by my house it varies one is hitting 30$ a month on average and others hitting next to nothing I have a sneaky feeling one is on a roof of an industrial unit

What the hell is a helium hotspot?

What the hell is a helium hotspot?

Helium – Introducing The People's Network

@pk13 I suspect the ones doing nothing are inside and with the stock antenna fitted. It's vital that the antenna is a) outside (it will still work in the loft I think but no where near as well) and b) a suitable dBi for the surrounding topography. I've got some near me doing zilch too. If you get the name of one and look on https://app.hotspotty.net/ the marker on the map is at the exact location the hotspot was asserted. It also gives the lat and long so you can look it up on Google. The Helium Explorer page just puts the HS at the centre of whatever hex it is in.

Any updates from those of you who have set up a hotspot? The theory behind it sounds good, and I briefly considered setting up a year or so ago but the supply/cost of hardware was prohibitive.

I’ve generated about 75HNT so far but the current price of HNT is less than £2. It was £10 about 10 months ago…

Ouch. Return on outlay doesn't look too good at current rates. But I suppose the aim could still be to build a stash of HNT in the meantime, in the hope that values improve in the future?

I think I've got a methane hotspot, though I suspect its got more to do with my boiled egg addiction.