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Anyone Helium mining?

I ordered a Bobcat miner just over a month ago but its going to be 2-3 more months till it ships probably. The lead time on the Nebra miner seemed like it was much longer and after Bobcat started accepting USDC it was much easier for me to order it.
Edit: At the time that I purchased it (June 19) Bobcat was saying 12-20 weeks before shipping but we shall see how things are doing with global shortages and what not.
 
Asic manufacturers premining some with the hardware?

Is it profitable on a fpga or cpu? Do many parties already have asics running?
 
motqalden said:
I ordered a Bobcat miner just over a month ago but its going to be 2-3 more months till it ships probably. The lead time on the Nebra miner seemed like it was much longer and after Bobcat started accepting USDC it was much easier for me to order it.
Edit: At the time that I purchased it (June 19) Bobcat was saying 12-20 weeks before shipping but we shall see how things are doing with global shortages and what not.
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How did you catch it in stock?
 
cdabc123 said:
Asic manufacturers premining some with the hardware?

Is it profitable on a fpga or cpu? Do many parties already have asics running?
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You dont really mine it like other coins. The miner creates a type of wireless network and its all about the devices you are communicating with and their proximity. Having more in an area can reduce rewards and anything closer than 500 meters is too close so a manufacturer cant exactly pre mine. You should read up on it its a very interesting idea with a lot of utility.
 
Yes there are lots of devices out there already and you can plug in your address on helium.place and see them and get an idea of where you would fit in to the map. An ideal setup would have other peoples devices all around you in a hex of sorts.
 
motqalden said:
Yes there are lots of devices out there already and you can plug in your address on helium.place and see them and get an idea of where you would fit in to the map. An ideal setup would have other peoples devices all around you in a hex of sorts.
Click to expand...

I may take a look in abit but if anyone has answers to the questions.

What is special about these "asics" can I not setup what is essentially an access point with my own hardware.

Is this "open sourse" at all? Decently documented?
 
cdabc123 said:
I may take a look in abit but if anyone has answers to the questions.

What is special about these "asics" can I not setup what is essentially an access point with my own hardware.

Is this "open sourse" at all? Decently documented?
Click to expand...

I think you can actually build your own miner yes and there is documentation on how to go about doing that if you want to . It doesn't use standard wifi though its LoRaWAN (Low power wide area). I wouldn't really consider this an ASIC per say and this is really Proof of coverage you are being rewarded for on the network which is why you can't just buy a bunch of devices and make more token. I don't know enough to answer the rest of your question.
 
VoskCoin on YouTube is where I heard of it. He’s got a few videos on it comparing the different iterations of hardware. I think the DIY options were discontinued, at least that’s what I read. You get paid for network coverage using token HNT. For a few months there people were making like $1K a day in HNT on a $500 device.
The miners only use about 5 watts and have coverage of a couple miles. You have to share your internet with them on some of the devices - but it’s very low KB type use. It’s meant to make an IoT wireless network with very broad coverage. There’s no point in doubling up, your HNT payment goes way down if there’s already coverage in your area, or if you tried to run multiple devices from the same house.
 
motqalden said:
I think you can actually build your own miner yes and there is documentation on how to go about doing that if you want to . It doesn't use standard wifi though its LoRaWAN (Low power wide area). I wouldn't really consider this an ASIC per say and this is really Proof of coverage you are being rewarded for on the network which is why you can't just buy a bunch of devices and make more token. I don't know enough to answer the rest of your question.
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Interesting. I'll have to do some reading. In our area there aren't any devices, but I read you need three for validation. I have a local buddy who has three on order for this very reason, didn't think about how far apart they needed to be etc
 
So what I'm hearing is find LoRaWAN transmitter, hope its documented well enough to emulate the algo on a fpga or microcontroller and make little devices with 4g internet and a Lipo pack. Stash around as needed.
 
auntjemima said:
Interesting. I'll have to do some reading. In our area there aren't any devices, but I read you need three for validation. I have a local buddy who has three on order for this very reason, didn't think about how far apart they needed to be etc
Click to expand...

Looking at the devices around me in Vancouver they are all like small mom and pop coffee shops and things like that. I would guess that someone went around to find people willing to "host" devices for them. Since its low power and what not it wouldn't be inconvenient for someone to plug in and just let it go and you could either pay them a fee per month or maybe work out a percentage cut. I happen to be in a good spot where me adding a device will sort of "bridge" some of my neighbors.
 
My other thoughts on this are I appreciate the idea of a network that is not controlled by big telecom and the cost was low enough that I won't really care even If it never pays for itself.
 
motqalden said:
Looking at the devices around me in Vancouver they are all like small mom and pop coffee shops and things like that. I would guess that someone went around to find people willing to "host" devices for them. Since its low power and what not it wouldn't be inconvenient for someone to plug in and just let it go and you could either pay them a fee per month or maybe work out a percentage cut. I happen to be in a good spot where me adding a device will sort of "bridge" some of my neighbors.
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yea ive seen multiple facebook marketplace posts saying they would give hosts 20%
 
For this to work you need to have at least some overlap, right? So like if you're in a deadzone with no other users to validate that you're providing coverage you can't just set on up can you? It seems interesting but it looks like my area is a total deadzone.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
For this to work you need to have at least some overlap, right? So like if you're in a deadzone with no other users to validate that you're providing coverage you can't just set on up can you? It seems interesting but it looks like my area is a total deadzone.
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it's only a percentage of the helium you'd mine - but yes to get full profitability you'd prefer not to be in a deadzone. However - unless you live on a bunch of private acreage - chances are something will spring up sooner or later in your area.
 
about a week where i live gonna leave it here for a bit then look to put on my roof. i think currently its like 12-20weeks to get a bobcat
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It seems kind of ridiculous that they don't allow you to build your own device any more. Does anybody here have one of these up and running? My home is in a total deadspot, but I'm sure I could find people that would let me place them at their house that is not in a deadspot. Waiting a couple months for the device seems like an issue though with how quickly things can change with this kind of stuff.

They're for sale on eBay for $2000+ for ones that are actually in hand.
 
Icecold said:
It seems kind of ridiculous that they don't allow you to build your own device any more. Does anybody here have one of these up and running? My home is in a total deadspot, but I'm sure I could find people that would let me place them at their house that is not in a deadspot. Waiting a couple months for the device seems like an issue though with how quickly things can change with this kind of stuff.

They're for sale on eBay for $2000+ for ones that are actually in hand.
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Too bad the company cannot produce them fast enough. They are 3 times the cost on eBay. These things ROI in no time compared to GPUs.
 
Archaea said:
I’ve been trying to buy a helium miner for a few months. No luck on the waiting lists. Who here is mining and what is your experience, profitability?
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I have ordered Helium miner in Auguest paid premium for fast shipment, and got delivered last week, today's yield 3 HNT, ROI sounds good
 
Gary123 said:
I have ordered Helium miner in Auguest paid premium for fast shipment, and got delivered last week, today's yield 3 HNT, ROI sounds good
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Wow. One day? 3HNT? Where’d you order from?
 
I've been looking around my area using hotspotty.net and most of the nodes near me aren't earning enough to pay for the miner quickly (6 months+ ROI). Doesn't seem worth it to me right now.
 
My friend ordered 2 Bobcats in May and they finally arrived last week. He ordered another miner from another company (can't recall the brand of miner) in June or July and they were supposed to be shipped shortly after he ordered it and it still hasn't arrived.
There are very few hotspots in our general area though.
 
Zepher said:
My friend ordered 2 Bobcats in May and they finally arrived last week. He ordered another miner from another company (can't recall the brand of miner) in June or July and they were supposed to be shipped shortly after he ordered it and it still hasn't arrived.
There are very few hotspots in our general area though.
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My understanding is that there is more involved than just whether or not there's a hotspot in your area. You actually need others "near" you to validate also.
 
kirbyrj said:
My understanding is that there is more involved than just whether or not there's a hotspot in your area. You actually need others "near" you to validate also.
Click to expand...
Ya, he may put one at a friends house 20 miles away since there are more in that area that can be witnesses.
He is also looking at getting stronger antenna's as well.
 
auntjemima said:
Buddy of mine ordered in June as well and his shipped last week. You're almost there!
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Yeah i am watching the batches... hopefully its still profitable when it gets here. Not sure how many hnt per day people are making but the price is more then double per coin what it was in june
 
Bobcat emailes me today that they are expecting a delay to 26 weeks which will mean my miner ships around the end of dec i think
 
following the batches and it looks like i am a week or so away from my order shipping which i ordered on June 19....
 
Yay my miner showed up today! Once i get everything up and running I will share some more of my experience.
 
Realized i never updated this. At the end of the day running it in a crowded city from my basement window I pretty much broke even.. I believe i payed roughly 1% of a BTC to buy this way back when and I ended up getting something like 25 HNT which I swapped around to roughly 3 SOL and then traded that back to BTC. Didn't really make a profit but didn't really lose anything either. Miner is still running and earns a very sad 1-2 dollars a month. The only upside is it only uses like 5w power lol. I will run it till it dies i guess. Had I not been mining in a Hex with 16 other people and or had a better antenna I might have done better.
 
Kinda a weird bump as mining hasn't been a goldmine for ages. I mined eth on r9 290s and other cards, made good money, would have been even more if I held it till today. But with crypto who can even get that. For cpu mining I had some powerful systems, the trick was to eventually convert to mainstream coins.

Crypto is thriving. Mineing is dead. Holdimg good cryptos is still a good investment, many alt minable coins do not hold the same value.
 
yes I know it's a weird bump but I have been meaning to bump it for awhile but couldn't find the thread.... Yeah I am not new to mining as I started doing gpu mining back in 2018 and also mined on some ryzens for awhile. after ETH went POS, Helium (now IOT) is the only thing I have been mining. Yeah I don't believe in holding shitcoins so everything i mined over the years including the HNT / SOL / GRC got swapped for BTC. I still make a pittance on GRC but its not profitable and I only do it because I love to run distributed computing anyways.
 
motqalden said:
yes I know it's a weird bump but I have been meaning to bump it for awhile but couldn't find the thread.... Yeah I am not new to mining as I started doing gpu mining back in 2018 and also mined on some ryzens for awhile. after ETH went POS, Helium (now IOT) is the only thing I have been mining. Yeah I don't believe in holding shitcoins so everything i mined over the years including the HNT / SOL / GRC got swapped for BTC. I still make a pittance on GRC but its not profitable and I only do it because I love to run distributed computing anyways.
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gpu mining was a fun time. Id love to see another era of that, all that separates gpu mining from llms and ai is fast networking and technical innovation. I havent had a place I can run 2kw+ of computers for abit now so dont do much active in dc or crypto.
 
I didn't do helium mining but I started earning GRC (gridcoin) coin on Jan 4, 2024 by supporting various CPU/GPU BOINC (distributed computing, DC) projects. So far, I've accumulated 156K of GRC. Right now, 1GRC is about 0.39 cents. As motqalden has pointed out ,GRC is not profitable if you factor in the power consumption. Anyway DC is one of my few hobbies.

I would probably have more GRC if I started many years ago. However during the crypto boom, we contributed a lot of gpu computing power to medical research (WCG) and earned OBYTE (another shitcoin by today's standard). At one point, the return in terms of USD per gpu watt is equal to or perhaps slightly higher than ETH mining during a few months when crypto was at its peak in 2021, iirc.
 
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