I have been hearing about Helium for a while now and it seems to be gaining traction with n number of gateways now scattered throughout the world it is starting to become a viable solution to providing an IoT backend.
The incentive to gateway owners being the HNT cryptocurrency that is mined when they provide what is called proof of coverage. IoT devices that want to utilize this network of gateways then spend HNT to send messages over the protocol. The underlying physical technology being the LoRa waveform that was developed by Semtec.
You can see if there are hotspots around you using the coverage map, using the map you can click on devices and see how much HNT they are mining to give you a coarse metric for how much you could earn.
There have been several pre-order cycles for the Helium gateways starting with the original that is now discontinued, but they have been getting steadily cheaper and cheaper.
I decided to pull the trigger and pre-order the Nebra indoor gateway from Sparkfun, but there were several other suppliers that are handling the Nebra gateways. They also have an outdoor version that is enclosed in a weatherproof case and has a higher gain antenna. Those are slated to ship later and were almost $150 more than the already expensive $350 indoor version.
SparkFun: Nebra Indoor HNT Hotspot Miner
It took a while to have my order fulfilled so if you decide to purchase be patient!
Hardware
First off let’s get a few issues out of the way, make sure to open the device before power up! My hotspot came with the compute board (the one that holds the Raspberry Pi 3) completely detached. The other issue was that the external antenna connector was not tight enough and rotated when trying to install the supplied antenna.
Nebra has guides to fix these issues but it would be nice if they would be upfront that these issues could happen in shipping. Ok back to the hardware!
Taking off the lid of the Nebra Indoor unit just requires removing four screws, now we get to see all of the inner workings. Front and center is the Raspberry Pi 3 compute module set on a daughterboard that connects to the main PCB via a standard pin header.
This is smart because it is using an older version of the Pi Compute module, so when Nebra wants to update to the Pi 4 at some point only the daughterboard needs to change.
The rest of the mainboard is fairly plain with the standard mini-PCIe socket for the Lora Radio, IO, and power supply rails. Where things start to get interesting is how they have decided to add Bluetooth and wifi to the hotspot.
What they have done is use off-the-shelf USB dongles for wifi and Bluetooth probably to quickly pass compliance testing.
There also looks like a security device that is used as an identifier for the helium blockchain.
Antenna Testing
Since I have a NanoVNA I decided to test the default antenna that Nebra ships with the hotspot and found it to be pretty well matched to the 915MHz frequency that Helium uses in the US.
Setup
You will need to install the helium app which holds your HNT earnings in a wallet. The app can be downloaded for iOS and Android and all you need to do is follow the prompts making sure to write down the 12-word sequence in a safe place. From here we need to set up the hotspot before so we can add it to our account.
Once you installed the app and set up your account, we can connect the antenna, ethernet, then power in that order to the Nebra device. This prevents physical damage to the RF module and makes sure you can connect it to the internet as quickly as possible.
Also before powerup make sure to select a suitable placement for the hotspot near a window that has a power socket nearby and is free of RF obstructions like metal mesh screens. if an ethernet port is unavailable you will need to set up a wifi connection through the app during setup.
Now reopen the app and scan for the Nebra hotspot, this could take a minute to show up. From here it can take a few hours to get everything operational on the Helium network. But you can check its progress in the app and don’t be alarmed if the app indicates that the hotspot is in relayed mode this can take a few hours to resolve itself.
Go to bed and check it in the morning, if errors still persist you may need to manually configure port forwarding on your router etc. Most of the common issues and resolutions can be found here
Performance
Now for the elephant in the room, everyone asks about, how much HNT does it mine, and what is the return on investment?
Over the first few days, my hotspot mined 16 HNT or about 4 HNT per day. At the time of writing this post, 1 HNT translates to ~$14. That means I made ~$224 very close to covering the initial cost of the device in less than a week!!! This is because I live in an urban area with a good line of sight to a handful of other hotspots but am not in a dense cluster where competition would be high. This is important as your proximity to other hotspots can reduce your scaling factor, ultimately reducing the amount of HNT that you can earn.
Here is an example hotspot and how interactions earn HNT through Beacons, Witnesses, and Challenges.
Convert HNT to Dollars
This part was frustrating, mostly because this was my first time needing to send and receive cryptocurrency and unfortunately HNT is currently only traded on one major exchange, Binance. As HNT grows in popularity hopefully this will change.
If you are in the US and are not in one of the excluded states, you need to set up a Binance.us account. This requires identity verification on the order of your firstborn child. This is where I started having problems, I supplied all of the necessary documents but the verification kept failing and currently is still pending. Reading more on Reddit this seems to be a common problem…
So what can we do? Instead of directly exchanging HNT for Dollars, we need to swap it for a more universal cryptocurrency coin that can be traded on another exchange. This is where I found SimpleSwap. Here you can swap HNT for Bitcoin or Ethereum. You need to swap a minimum of 10 HNT currently and I have read the ability to swap HNT can sometimes disappear…
But now what? We need to select another exchange/wallet where we can send the Bitcoin (BTC), for this I decided to use Coinbase. They have a simple app and website and their verification process took seconds. You can receive cryptocurrency by finding your coin’s wallet address in the app.
To do the swap we need to select HNT to BTC and copy your BTC wallet address into the text box. Make sure this address is correct, check a few times just to be sure. If this is wrong your cryptocurrency will disappear! Then hit “Exchange”.
SimpleSwap will create a wallet address for you to send your HNT to, Open your Helium app and scan the QR code in the Send HNT menu.
This can take a few minutes to an hour so keep the SimpleSwap tab open and go make yourself some coffee or tea and watch an episode of your favorite TV show. Once completed you should get an email from Coinbase showing a deposit. From here you need to link a bank account to sell the BTC to dollars.
Conclusion
So is this worth your own investment? I am not sure. The underlying technology generating money is a cryptocurrency that fluctuates the same way as all the others surging and tanking in unpredictable patterns. For now, I am happy that I just recovered my initial investment.
Andreas Spiess did an interesting analysis of the Helium cryptocurrency to which you can draw your own conclusions.
But the way I see it is a method of incentivizing the rollout of wireless infrastructure for IoT devices. The big test will be the ultimate utilization and adoption of the data passing part of the network. Because if no one decides to use the network the incentives of HNT will dry up. Then again there is a lot about cryptocurrency that is unpredictable.
