Use the options for hex overlays in HeliumVision or just zoom in and out on your Hotspot with Hotspotty. If you need to visualize things, use HeliumVision or Hotspotty. If you’ve ever read about Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, you’ll have an understanding of hotspot density: Not too dense, not dense enough, but just right. It looks complicated at first, but it’s actually straightforward. If you read HIP17 until you understand it, you’ll be in the 1% of Helium Hotspot owners who don’t really have questions about optimum density. If you want to know if your location will be good, you’ll need to study HIP17. Red is the worst they’re basically on top of each other and providing duplicate (or triplicate or worse) coverage, which isn’t useful to the network. Notice the green hotspots don’t have other hotspot as close to them as the orange and red ones. Here’s a screenshot map of San Francisco (pulled from the HIP 17 Visualizer) to give another perspective. It was made this way in order to programmatically account for density differences between cities, suburbs, and rural areas. The details are in HIP 17, look for “Proposed Chain Variables.”
Go ahead, read that sentence again a few times.
It is determined by a base rate of hotspots per hex plus the number of hotspots in surrounding hexes. Here’s a quick screenshot:Īt each “res” there is an optimal number of hotspots per hexagon. Green means good density, red indicates too dense. Here is a dated interactive map (it stopped being updated in late fall of 2020) of density and hotspot placements. Each hex size has an appropriate density for its resolution. Each size is called a “resolution” or “res” for short. The map uses (mostly) hexagons to form grids of different sizes. At the high end, hotspots can “witness” other hotspots 50 km out.īack to the Uber map. At the low end, hotspots won’t earn from other hotspots less than 300 meters away. HOTSPOT DENSITY: Optimum density is determined using Uber’s H3 map. MINIMIZED & HIGH QUALITY CONNECTION LENGTH/CABLES.All are driven by just one goal over the long term: ADD VALUE TO THE NETWORK Some of them will change over time, some of them are fundamental. There are only a few things that really matter when it comes to your hotspot placement. You haven’t read every last post and thread on the internet about maximizing a hotspot placement.You have, or have ordered, or are thinking about ordering, a Helium hotspot.Hotspots record all transactions on a blockchain and reward owners for providing coverage with HNT, a cryptocurrency token. In general, the more signals a given hotspot receives, the more HNT it earns. You know that Helium is a network of Hotspots that transmit and receive radio signals, then pass those signals onto the internet.Third, if you don’t want or have the time to figure out Helium on your own, you can take a course or hire me.
The whole thing (Helium, antennas, optimum hotspot placement) will take about an hour to digest and understand. Second, if you follow and read through every link in this article you’ll be ready to make excellent decisions about the best possible hotspot placement. There are four fundamental aspects of an optimal Helium hotspot placement antennas and cables are at the bottom of the list for importance.īefore we get there (relax, it’s only a few paragraphs away), let’s get a few important points out of the way:įirst, while I think everyone reading this should buy at least one hotspot and place it as optimally as you can, over the long run you’ll earn far more by figuring out a way to actually use the network and not just provide coverage. The only way you could make a less efficient improvement at the start is to focus on what cables to buy. Most start with their antenna, which is (almost completely) the wrong approach for maximizing earnings. This is written for folks curious about optimizing a Helium Hotspot placement.