re: Which one of you made $10k last month mining Helium?

whats your agreement with your hosts?

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how is a radio antenna making 300+ a month.

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yea i need to move mine.

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yea i need to move mine.

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I wont do an install any lower than 20 ft. Even in suburbs, get it above roof line. If host isnt willing, i dont bother. So far no one has had any issues with an antenna sticking up behind their house.

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People look at me like im speaking greek.

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I keep it as simple as possible initially and have a very general email template. I dont start to describe it until they’ve read the email.

Very very high level overview. Public radio band antenna, here is the public ledger if you’d like to take a peak….

What i need from you:
Place to Mount antenna
Internet connection
Enough power to run a lightbulb

What I give you
Monthly esrning report that can be verified by you at the oublic ledger linked above, and 20% of the value.


I pitch it as an offer for them, not a request or an ask. Im offering you a chance at free money, and end with a line recognizing it sounds cosmic but happy to answer any questions they have. Some ask questions and get interested, most dont care so long as they get money.

Have a 25 ft ladder. The only one the ladder couldnt reach was up at 30 ft. Had to get on to the roof snd stand at the peak. That house already had a 35ft antenna mast for an old Tv antenna. Just repurposed it.

I put one on a chimney that had siding too.


See if you know someone who would let you borrow theirs. Home Depot equipment rental has some 20+ ft tall ladders as well




ETA - there are other options, but can get a little pricey. Max Gain Systems sells telescoping fiberglass masts of different heights. You could check into one of those.

Im looking at grabbing a 40ft version and anchoring it in a 5 gallon bucket filled 3/4ths of the way with concrete. Since im doing 40 ft, i’ll just need to put a bracket attaching the mast to fascia for additional stability. I can carry all that in my truck to the location and pre-attach everything, just lay it on its side to extend it all out and then stand it up.

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I got my freedomfi on Friday. Debating to keep or flip. Scouting a few good locations but if I can't lock down something I'm prob gonna flip it on ebay.

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I went ahead and got mine ordered. I see them selling for $1500+ on ebay, but I think I will keep mine mostly because I need as many helium hotspots as I can get. I'm also pretty excited about the 5G and public wifi capability, though I have a lot of reading to do to figure out how all of that works.

For those still following along, I have begun prototyping end devices which use the network. There are a lot of commercial products available, but they're pretty pricey and not very flexible. I'm trying to settle on a base DIY platform so that I can just swap sensors and a bit of code and deploy custom devices pretty quickly.

Here is what I have so far:

Arduino Pro Mini - $5
LoRa radio - $10
DHT22 temp/hum sensor - $4
LiPo 1000mAh battery - $4
USB battery charger - $3
Misc wire & other components - $1
Total - $27

Parts were purchased in multi packs of 3-5 units to keep unit costs reasonable, however these are Amazon retail prices and unit costs can come down considerably if bought in bulk from overseas. I still need to figure out enclosure options, but with a few more dollars for that I think I can still get my total cost per device down in the $15-25 range, depending on options.

The battery charger setup works very well. The device will run directly from a standard micro-usb cable, and when unplugged it just keeps running from the battery until it can't anymore. I'm using PlatformIO with VS Code to program, and I'm using sample code that I found and modified slightly. I have a battery life test in progress right now. It is transmitting every 10 minutes and will do so until it dies. I will do it again and transmit every 5 minutes until dead. After that I think I can do a little algebra and figure out how much battery is consumed per transmission vs. when the device is idle. Then I will know which parts of the code need to be optimized first.

Here is the data I've collected so far:



The DHT22 collects temp and humidity data. The device is in my home, so the temp is a pretty steady 20C (68F). The jump in RH from ~40% to ~50% was when I moved the device from one room to another, and I had no idea it could vary that much room to room. On the battery chart, it was a steady 3.5V for a while, which was when the device was hooked to the programmer on my laptop. Where the voltage starts rising is when I connected the usb charger and battery to the device. Once it hit 4.3V, I unplugged it and it has been running on battery power since then. After about 16 hours, it's down to 4.1V. You can see that it dropped quickly at first, but has since leveled off to a lower rate of discharge. That is typical of lithium batteries. I expect the device to run until voltage drops to around 3V. Might take a week or so.

The sensor sends a very small packet of data, about 11 bytes stores temp, humidity, and battery voltage information. The hotspot adds more information, such as the RSSI and SNR values shown above. RSSI is the Received Signal Strength Indicator, which is basically the same as a wifi signal strength icon. The value is how "loudly" my hotspot hears the device. LoRa should work down into the -120db range. The drop from -55 to -75 corresponds to when I moved it from one room to the other. A pretty big difference, but as it turns out I moved it from a location with 3 sheetrock walls in the way to a location with 3 sheetrock walls and 2 brick walls in the way. I expect the signal to improve once I start doing outdoor range testing. SNR remained pretty steady, which is good. LoRa should work down near -20db SNR.

If I continue sending one packet every 10 minutes, it will cost me roughly $0.00145 per day, or 53 cents per year. But if the packets go through my own hotspot(s), then I will earn exactly that much back through data transfer rewards, so it's essentially free. If the network continues to grow as rapidly as it is, I think very soon Helium devices will replace cellular GPS tracking devices. My MIL pays $100/year to track her dog. Crazy we will be able to do it for $1/year.

Nice. Are you taking orders? I don't even know that I could possibly need but I certainly can't do it myself.

Don't know if anyone here cares, but I think it's neat so I'll keep updating. I've been working on these sensor devices when I have time, so here's where I am so far.

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I realized it was never going into a low power sleep mode, so after adding a popular low power library to the code, the difference so far is pretty drastic

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So that "drastic" improvement amounted to about 12 days vs. the original 4 days. Again this is using a 1,000 mah lipo pack, which measures about 1"x1.5"x.25".

Turns out I still wasn't using sleep mode properly, and I also had my sensor wired so that it was drawing power all the time (a small amount but enough to matter here). After fixing those errors I've started a new longevity test, and so far it's looking like it'll last about 3 months on 5 minute transmission intervals. It should last nearly twice as long with 10 minute intervals, and if I switch to an 18650 cell that should triple the life again. Also there are probably more things I should be doing to lower the power consumption during sleep, so more work to do here.

I also configured the helium console with a custom MQTT integration pointed at my Home Assistant server, so I'm getting my readings in HA so I can set up some automations. Here are the temp readings from inside my freezer, which is where this sensor has been living for the last few hours:



Looks like the compressor kicks on about every 30 minutes. I'll probably set up a notification if the temp ever gets above 5 degrees, and another for if those compressor cycles ever start stretching out.


Next up I will probably do a mailbox notifier because I've always wanted one. There are a few commercial options, with Ring being one of the cheapest at $30, but frick Amazon. I'll power mine with a couple of CR2032 coin cells which I hope will last a few years doing only a couple transmissions per day. If I can package it up nicely, I might sell kits or pre-assembled units if anyone is interested. Should have coverage most anywhere judging by the Helium map. I'll build a simple companion app for notifications, and of course an API for integration with HA or whatever else you want to use.

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frick, why did I go with the RAK units? They send me weekly shipment emails and they're only on order # 13,000. My order number is 50,000+.

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So nearly 11 months later, this first order I placed finally shipped last week and is out for delivery today. Today. Just my luck they'll get delivered and then blown/washed away by this storm.

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so you telling me if i put an antenna up for you in my backyard, you're going to give me $300/month?

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Probably not at this point, a lot has changed in the last 3 months. Market price of HNT has dropped, tons of hotspots added (which divides the rewards), growing pains with the network resulting in reduced rewards. The devs are very active and there are supposed to be some good fixes coming soon.

Even with all the recent troubles though, my miners are making about 2HNT/month each (which at current price is ~$50/month), and they are *not* in good locations with great setups. The network average right now is 3HNT/month, and there are many in the BR area making 5+. Still not $300/month, but I'm not complaining about my little bit of easy money.

Helium aims to mint 2.5 million HNT per month, which at the current count of nearly 700k hotspots should work out to an average of 3.5HNT/month or 0.12HNT/day. A lot of people just stick them near a window with the stock antenna, so just putting in a little effort to put it high and outside and a little money on a better antenna, then you can beat the vast majority out there.

I have two in service and I have two more on hand that I'm trying to place. If I can get all 4 of mine pinging each other I should be able to boost earnings on all of them to over 3HNT/month each. That would be about $300/month between the 4 of them after about $3k total invested. Not bad IMO. And I'll be holding most of it as HNT for a while.