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Is Upgrading Your Helium Miner Antenna Worth It?
An Experiment with an 8db Antenna
In the crypto mining community, many have tried their hand at helium mining, with varying levels of success. One miner has shared his experience comparing a stock 2.3db antenna that comes with the mntd helium miner and an upgraded 8db antenna from spotminer.com. By carefully analyzing the data and taking into consideration factors such as witnesses, beacons, and network changes, he was able to determine if the investment in the upgraded antenna was worth it.
Downloading Transactions for Analysis
The miner began by downloading transactions from the helium explorer dashboard to compare earnings before and after installing the upgraded antenna. By exporting the data to an Excel CSV file, he could analyze the earnings in two-week increments and determine the difference in profitability.
Comparing 2.3db and 8db Antenna Earnings
The miner first looked at earnings from May 5th to May 19th, when the stock 2.3db antenna was in use. After installing the upgraded 8db antenna, he examined earnings from June 2nd to June 16th for comparison. He also removed data from May 20th to June 1st to account for any delays or network changes.
The results showed that with the stock 2.3db antenna, the miner earned 3.63 helium in the two-week period, translating to approximately $40.8 in value. After upgrading to the 8db antenna, earnings increased to 4.34 helium in a two-week period, representing a $7.83 increase in value.
Factors to Consider When Upgrading Your Antenna
Elevation, Witnesses, and Beacons
It’s essential to note that every miner’s situation is different, and factors such as elevation, witnesses, and beacons can impact a miner’s earnings. These factors won’t always guarantee that upgrading your antenna will lead to increased profitability.
Network Changes and Stability
Another consideration is any changes made by the helium network that might affect network stability and overall earnings. The miner analyzing data across a six-week period acknowledged that these elements could have impacted the data but still found value in the 8db antenna upgrade.
Individual Location and Experience
One miner’s success does not guarantee that another miner in a different location will experience the same results. Every miner should carefully assess their specific situation and location before deciding whether upgrading their antenna is a worthwhile investment.
Conclusion
For this specific miner, the investment in an 8db antenna proved to be worthwhile. However, your mileage may vary, and it’s important to carefully consider factors such as location, witnesses, network stability, and more before making a decision to upgrade.
In the future, this miner plans to continue expanding his helium mining network by adding more devices and possibly hiring a professional to install the miner higher up on the exterior of his house. For now, he is enjoying the increased earnings and the fun of experimenting with helium mining.
Share your helium mining experiences in the comments below, and let us know if you’ve found upgrading your antenna to be worth it. Happy mining!
Nothing regarding helium mining is worth buying IMHO.. I have two hotspots, one does ok but the other one (that just sees 1 other hotspot, because there is only one) keeps stopping/falling off all the time.. It can work fine for a few days after reset, and then it stops, same happends with the one it witness. The "Light hotspot will fix everything" was the biggest bullshit.. It all turned into a joke. My hotspots will stay up, but im not useing more money on that shit. 🙂
A couple of things, I'm curious as to why spotminer sent you an 8dbi antenna when their website says that you should use it if your potential witnesses are 50 miles or more out. While I don't know where you live I think I have a decent idea that you are within about 120 miles of myself and I'm assuming your area is even more densely populated with miners than mine is and you would actually want a lower dbi antenna. Also, while it's not easy, it is possible to use hotspotty to look at witnesses and signal strength. My mining company has a MNTD. miner deployed in a third floor condo at the beach and we recently did the same thing as you and put an 8dbi antenna up to see if we could do any better. I used hotspotty to compare witnesses and while we didn't get any new witnesses since our signal strength that the witnesses did pick up was improved.
Is that a PRS (Paul Reed Smith guitars) shirt? I have never seen one like that before.
High Shamrock Rat not in USA???
8 db gives “stronger” signal but more narrow and will be disrupted more by trees/buildings. So if view is clear then 8, if suburbs with trees or buildings then 5 db. The longer the ax cord the more the db will drop too. Just got set up and still syncing. You’ll see much better results once your attic walls/roof aren’t disrupting signals! Cheers!
It sucks.. pain in a… tried many things but no positive results
I have a 5.8dbi mounted on the outside on my house. I only made 1.6 hnt over the last 2 weeks. I look at a few miners close to me to gauge how well I am doing. Right now I am comparable to them so I call it a win. I tried an 8dbi antenna but only ran it for a week. I didnt get much as far as witnesses. But I would say in the past 3 weeks the witnesses and beacons have gotten better after a recent update to the HNT network. My 8dbi test was well before this update. The average witness is about 5-6km away with a few at 14km. I use Helium Geek app on android for additional info.
Does it really matter though? Obviously the helium foundation is pushing 5G. I wouldn’t waste any money on helium miners. The devs who pushed LoRAwan, is now pushing the complete opposite direction. Buy new 5G miners that won’t get shipped for 12 months, and once they finally do get shipped, you will be completely upside down on your helium investment
I think you could have provided important information like that shown @ 2:25. The Helium Map shows how many connections you have and you can see whether the pattern is more OMNI shaped in a circle about your location or DIPOLE shaped in a long thin zone to the front and rear of your location. Also, the distance your connections reach. I've seen some maps where the connections are all close to your location and others where there are no close connections, but many connections far away. You'll do much better to have the Professional mount your antenna above your roof. Now I have heard that the network penalizes you for having too good an antenna so consider that as well. (you know, to be fair to others who have a crappy antenna).
Definitely a steeper learning curve than GPU mining but Helium mining with great locations is still more profitable dollar for dollar, even in this down market. We'll see where we bottom out, but I've been mining HNT since Aug 21 and it's been a fun ride.
I've yet to get a single witness. I have a Bobcat 300. It's mounted way too low and I'm about 30 miles from the nearest miner. So even though I purchased an 8 DBI antenna off Ebay.. it hasn't made any difference. It's gonna be mounted about 40' up in the air mounted to a tree. Bobcat will be placed in a sealed outdoor enclosure. Time will tell. Perfect charcoal dog
14 day profits with 5.8dbi antenna, for me 0.3 hnt…
Currently waiting on 2 Bobcat hotspots. Going on 3 months now
Out of curiosity, I live in a super rural area. I probably wouldn't get anything out of this, right?
(I know about the changes, I just don't know what makes the network "tick". Seems like you need to be in a city, or a dense suburban area?
I have 2 bobcat peoples miners a few weeks ago and I have 8dbi on both and there crushing it
I have mined helium for 6 months. It has been a complete waste of money I have upgraded my antenna and placed it on the roof I tried 4 locations and I have made .17 helium. Personally would never recommend they just pay everything out to the nodes and give them all the voting power on changes.
With the new hip I’m not very bullish on helium these days. I got a bobcat at the beginning of the year and put a 5.8 dbi Rokland antenna and ran it up a 50ft ham radio tower with ldf4-50a heliax. It’s been ok. Got a few witnesses all the way down in Columbia.😅
I've got 2 units that run 4.5dbi Paradars that are still reliably 0.3-0.4, 3 other units vary from 0.1-0.2 with occasional spikes. All externally mounted, which is a must. ROI is still better then GPU mining, not sure if anyone should be jumping in currently for new units though unless they are $300 or less.
Since the light Hotspot upgrades I haven't had any activity.. lol I have no idea why.. ugh
it's nuts how much hnt you were getting with the stock antenna 😲😲😲. I was getting flats most days until I got an 8dbi and now I'm just below network average , also my area its not the best so yeah.
That's not the right way to compare the antennas, you should compare if the signal strength improved and if you now reach farther hotspots
I haven't gotten my antenna outside but I put an 8 on mine because at the time I had no one near me. I need to work on getting ethernet into my attic and mount the miner in the attic and run the antenna outside. But at the time I got the antenna as high as I could and finally started getting connections. Now I have 3 other miners in my hexagon so yes I did see an improvement but I ain't holding my breath that this thing will ever earn its cost back now that they are screwing us and seeing I have to share my hexagon with three other people.
started out ok went to bad /ugly now it seem OK not fantastic
been doing it for about 1 month went to 3bbi then to a 10dbi did not help so dropped to a 5.8 seemed to work better hav min outside on a pole about 3 to 4 m above ground getting 5 to10 witnesses every 24 hr i am semi rural area sticking with 5.8dbi
I have 2 helium miners and both suck.
Is Helium even a thing now? I was thinking of diving in, but with IOT, 5G, and all I have no idea of whether it will be worth it.
First. Everyone has been complaining so much. My rewards have gone up over the last few weeks.