So I ordered a Helium Miner….. (Part #1)

So as the title of this blog post says, “So I ordered a Helium Miner”…..

What is Helium? and what is a Helium miner you might ask? Helium is a public blockchain, developed to incentivize everyday people to assist in the creation and support of a decentralized wireless network, known as “Helium – the People-Powered Network“. In essence, contributors to the Helium network provide their own equipment and devices known as LoRaWAN hotspots (miners), which connects to other LoRaWAN hotspots (miners) in your local area to build out a mesh style network, and in return are paid in the $HNT (Helium) crypto-currency (which is currently valued at around $40 CAD/$HNT).

What is a Helium Miner?

Helium Miner is a device (think like your internet modem), that plugs into your home internet, and also to an antenna which operates on a low level frequency (~915 Mhz), and connects to other miners/antennas in your area and creates an area of coverage or support for the Helium network. This network is used to connect a wide variety of IoT style devices to a network with mass coverage and resiliency in order to send and receive sensor and or other transaction data for example. These miners are primarily used to create the network, but they are also used to transfer data, and complete Proof-of-Coverage and witness tests, which help to validate and support the quality and integrity of the network.

How Much Do Helium Miners Make?

In short, well….. it depends. There are many, many, many factors that contribute to the profitability of Helium mining, and it’s a constant shifting landscape. I’ve heard of people making anywhere from nothing / nadda, zilch to consistently making thousands of dollars per month, but it seem somewhere between 1-6 months is the average ROI. There are also other ways to increase the value of the Helium $HNT that you mine, for example there is the price appreciate of the Helium crypto-currency ($HNT), can Stake/Earn your mined $HNT to earn interest or a premium, or you can roll your $HNT earnings into another more profitable crypto-currency like Bitcoin or Etherium, or something speculation coins like Doge or Shiba Inu. For me, if I break even within 1-6 months, great, if it takes longer than that I’m fine with that as well as this is not a short term play for me.

What Affects the Profitability of a Helium Miner

As mentioned above there are many things that can affect the profitability of a Helium Miner, and what works for me may or may not work for you. I have seen people with very simple setups that are making a good consistent income with the default setup and nothing more special than that, and others with fancy enhancements that should work perfectly (on paper) yet produce sub-par results. I believe Helium Mining profitability has 4 main components – Mining hardware and connectivity, antenna placement, physical location, and the Helium Software.

Hardware and Connectivity

As with any electronic device you own beit a cell phone, computer, tablet, etc…. if you have good hardware you will have a good experience, yet if not you are asking for trouble or other ongoing problems resulting in an unpleasant experience. So in short, make sure you are using quality hardware and equipment. From a mining perspective, there are a few hardware and connectivity components that support your miner and mining experience:

Miner

There are many different manufacturers of Helium miners available and selling at various price points. I have done quite a bit of research on helium miners and to be honest, most have some number of negative comments (of course – everything does). These comments vary from performance and profitability to usability and delivery dates, yet the make/model that seems to stand as the best is the Bobcat 300. This is based on my own research (Google, FaceBook Helium Groups, YouTube), and I do not receive any incentive for saying this. From what I have seen and read about this the Bobcat 300 is the most efficient and self-supporting miner on the market with one exception that this model only has 1GB of RAM. The 1GB of RAM is on the low side which could result in lag and performance when syncing with the greater Helium network.

Please note: Personally, I have not used the Bobcat 300 or any other miner at the time of writing this. I have Bobcat 300 on order (not received or setup), and I have not used any other hardware to compare. The above is based on research I have done, and progress and updates will be provided in subsequence Blogs. Updates will be provided in subsequent blogs.

Antenna

Ahh yes…. the Antenna. The antenna is the most important component of your setup, yet finding the correct Antenna for your situation is a science all on its own. The main components of this are the Antenna’s Strength, as well as its placement (to be discussed below). Antenna Strength is measured in dbi’s, and the factory antenna that comes with most devices is around a 4 dbi antenna. I have seen some good success with a 4dbi antenna in terms of profit, but you may need to do some enhancement and upgrades to your antenna to get a further reach and connect to other antennas on the helium network. Everyone is in their own unique situation and there is no one size fits all for an antenna, so you need to play around with a few different ones to see what works best for you. In my case I believe a 5.8 dbi external antenna will work out best for me which I will describe more in detail below.

Antenna Cable

The Antenna will now need to connect to the miner, and this is done through a cable known as an SMA cable (think a small version of a coax cable), that connects to the antenna input port on the miner. In order to get the best performance this SMA cable needs to be no longer then required (shorter is better), and has the least amount of signal loss as possible. From what I have found the best cable to use is known as an SMA LMR 400 cable. This type of cable comes in a variety of lengths and is recommended as there is lower dbi loss. It is best to plan out your mining setup, and placement in order to determine how long of SMA cable will need to be (more details about placement below). In addition, as there may be signal loss this can be compensated by using a stronger/higher dbi antenna, but again everyone’s situation will be different for everyone, and may take some trial and error to find the best configuration that works for you.

Network Connectivity

Next the physical miner device will need to connect to an internet connection. This may be difficult for some as, most internet demarcation points (point where your internet comes into the house), are towards the lower half of your house, and since the miner is antenna based, it needs to be high up. In most houses, Wi-Fi is typically the solution and will work, but there are some limitations and restraints with working with Wi-Fi (in general), that may impact the performance of your miner and in turn your rewards.

Wired Ethernet

The best method would be for a physical Ethernet cable to be plugged directly into your miner and into your home internet connection or router. With a physical ethernet cable since you have a direct and hard wired connection to your internet, you will get lower latency, more stable connections, and higher speeds on your device’s internet connection which means that you will be able to communicate with the Helium network and blockchain faster and increase your miners performance. The concern with this method is that you will need to run an Ethernet cable from your switch/router/modem then to your miner. If your house is not already pre-wired for wired internet, wiring it is not difficult if the walls and floors are open, as you are able to fish the cables through your walls. If you are not able to easily fish your cables and need to cut into drywall, it may be best to look at the other alternatives mentioned below.

Wired Ethernet – Power over Internet (PoE)

On a side, if you are using a wired internet connection, you are also able to leverage the ethernet cable as a power cable as well resulting in only one physical wire running to your mining device. This is done through a technology known as Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). In short, this is a device that plugs into a power outlet and has 2 Ethernet ports, 1 for input (no-PoE), and 1 for output (with PoE). At the miners end the PoE ethernet cable will be connected to another device that splits the power a power connection, and the data to an ethernet connection. Once both the power and ethernet have been connected to the miner it will power up and be ready to go.

PowerLine Networking

If you are not able to use a physical ethernet cable, a close alternate is to use PowerLine Networking to leverage your home power outlets for networking. PowerLine Networking are similar to the PoE device mentioned above where it plugs into the power outlet and has ethernet ports as well. The difference here is once at least 2 of these devices have been plugged in and ethernet cables have been connected (from your internet source and destination), your homes existing electrical wiring to establish a network connection between the 2 PowerLine Networking devices. With this type of networking, while it is not a full wired connection, you still receive most of the benefits, yet will experience a slight degradation in speed (compared to a full wired connection) but either way this would still be faster and more stable of a connection then on Wi-Fi.

Wireless Networking (Wi-Fi):

Wireless networking should be your last resort for networking not just for a Helium Miner but any home device that connects to the internet. While Wi-Fi has its benefits, there are 3 main factors that contributes to its performance.

Wireless Channel : Wireless internet operates in a range that consists of a series of channels. If you are in an area where many of your neighbours are using the same channel this will create congestion and noise on the channel that your wireless controller will need to sort through.
Number of Connected Wireless devices : Wireless controllers can support many connected devices at a single time, but there are limitations to how many of these devices the wireless controller can speak with at a single time. If there are a few devices one a wireless network this would barely be noticeable, yet if you have multiple devices streaming YouTube or Netflix, and someone on a different device tries to go browse a webpage, loading times of the webpage may be delayed as your wireless controller is working hard to ensure no disruption in the video streaming. This can create what appears to be a bottleneck in your internet speeds. There are many different makes and models of wireless controllers leveraging a variety of wireless technologies (i.e. Multiple-In, Multiple-Out – MIMO) that can help address this, yet these devices can be costly.
Signal Degradation/Loss: Another common issue with wireless internet that affects your wireless speed is the degradation in signal over distance due to the physical surfaces it has to travel through, as well as electrical emanations from other devices and appliances in your home. This could include things like the type and number of layers of paint on your walls, what your walls are made of (plaster and rock lathe / drywall), even appliances (such as a fridge, microwave, cordless phone) can affect the signal quality of your home wireless.

Antenna Placement

The short answer to the question “Where should I place my Antenna?” is simple, outside and as high as possible. The idea here is that you want your signal to transmit over your neighbourhood and not through it. If you have an existing television antenna or satellite mount on your home these would be the best and easiest to use. If you do mount your antenna outside you will need to take into consideration where your miner will be located and how you will wire everything everything up. This may include drilling a hole in the side of your house in order to get the SMA or ethernet cable through and connect to your miner or home internet. Depending on your comfort level with ladders and heights this would be the best solution, but is not for everyone, and keep in mind any antenna installed on the exterior of your house, must be installed and grounded correctly. Otherwise, installing your antenna in your attic, or the top floor of your house and close to a windows will also work as well.

Physical Location

Your physical location is another contributing factor to your success in Helium Mining. Depending on the elevation of your area this may affect the distance your signal can carry. If your elevation is higher up, similar to the antenna location your signal will travel further, as opposed to if your location is in a valley or otherwise is at a lower elevation your coverage distance will be limited as the surrounding terrain is blocking your signal.

Helium Network Coverage and Saturation

Last but not least is the Helium network coverage and saturation in your area. Below is a Network coverage map from the Helium Explorer that shows all miners and their transmit scale. As you can see toward the top of the map is a heavily saturated area for Helium Miners, while this is good for the network, this is not beneficial for someone supporting the network in return for rewards. Area’s that are on the greener side have less miners in the area and may be more profitable. Area’s with no colour do not have any miners in the area, which you may think would be a good thing as if you are the only miner in the area then you will receive all the rewards. As these uncoloured area’s are typically found in rural area’s in order for this to be profitable you will still need to be within distance to communicate with other miners on the network, and also there would need to IoT devices in the area that uses the Helium network. On the other hand if you are in a rural area and near a farm that is using agricultural IoT Helium Device this could be very profitable.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have only ordered the Bobcat Helium miner and have not actually received nor installed it at this time. This post was only intended to provide a summary of tips and other information that I have found to determine if mining for me would be possible and/or profitable. Follow-up posts will be done to describe how I estimate my profitability, determine my hardware and document my setup and troubleshooting steps. Please stayed tuned for updates.

Check out the other posts in my “So I ordered a Helium Miner” Blog series: