How to Pick a Helium Hotspot

Table of Contents

People might tell you that every Helium hotspot is the same, but this is not the case. Yes, all hotspots do the same thing, but, some are better suited for certain situations.

In this article, we will go over the best hotspot for hot climates, the best hotspot for ease of use, the cheapest and fasting shipping hotspot, the best hotspot for outdoor installation, as well as some honorable mentions.

Before you decide if this project is for you, we created a website to simulate your available locations in order to estimate weekly profitability. Check it out to see how profitable Helium mining is in your location.

If you decide to continue with this project based on your projected location earnings, check out our Master Guide to Helium Mining for answers to all of your questions regarding antennas, enclosures, cables, and more.

Best Helium Hotspot for Heat

SenseCAP

Retail: $519

The SenseCAP is a lot of people’s favorite Helium hotspot, it has a built-in fan for protection against the heat, a dashboard for remote access, and it features a turbo-sync option to get it online faster. 

Secured and Reliable – Built-in ECC608 crypto chip, high-security authentication, and reliable connectivity.

Automatic Online Upgrades – Automatic OTA upgrades, without manual operation.

Remote Diagnosis – Built-in remote diagnostics mechanism, efficient online support.

64GB Large Storage – 64GB MicroSD card large storage, extending the lifetime of the gateway, fulfilling the memory requirement of potential upgrade. 

Efficient Cooling Solution – Aluminum enclosure with a heatsink and cooling fan inside, ensuring long-term and stable operation.

SenseCAP

Best Hotspot for Ease of Use

RAK

Retail: $410

The RAK hotspot is a solid choice for several reasons. It’s small, sturdy, and updates on its own. This is a great hotspot to own because of its versatility. It does get hot due to its black metal shell so you might want to think about adding a fan in an outdoor enclosure if you live in areas where it gets hot.

2 GB on-board RAM

32 GB SD card

Based on the LoRa Concentrator Engine: Semtech® SX1302

Built-in Heat Sink for thermal heat dissipation management

Supports 5 V / 2.4 A power supply

IP30 housing

RAK

Cheapest and Fastest Shipping Hotspot

MNTD.

Retail: $399

MNTD. is a new brand created by RAKwireless (RAK) solely focused on making crypto-hardware accessible to everyday people. RAK is the same company that made the OG hotspots for Helium and has since manufactured the largest number of hotspots deployed to date.

Blackspot – 4gb RAM

Goldspot – 8gb RAM

MNTD.

With 48 hour shipping and $399 retail price, this is by far the cheapest and fastest hotspot you can get. Releases are limited and highly competitive so if you are looking to get one of these at retail we’d recommend turning on tweet notifications for MNTD so you don’t miss out.

Best Helium Hotspot for Outdoor Installation

Nebra, Pisces, and Milesight all have hotspots that are designed for outdoor use, making them the easiest and most surefire solution for outdoor setups. 

All of these outdoor hotspots are POE (power over ethernet) compatible and include remote dashboards, this makes wiring and management a lot easier.

Nebra Outdoor Miner

Retail: $882

Secured inside of our IP67 rated case, your HNT Hotspot Miner will withstand the toughest environments. Being NEMA-67 rated, it provides complete protection against ingress of dust as well as protection against immersion in water.

Supports WIFI as well as 48V PoE injectors & switches as well as regular Ethernet connections if you are powering over DC

Nebra

Pisces P100

Retail: $590 (only available in EU and AS frequencies)

Equipped with 2-4G RAM, 64G ROM, ATECC608 and ARM64CPU, so the device has high performance computing power.

Pisces

Milesight

Retail: $509

IP65 Rating

NXP Quad-Core Processor

Semtech SX1302 LoRa Chip

Multiple Backhaul Connectivities

Embedded Network Server

Milesight

Honorable Mentions

Bobcat

Retail: $429

This hotspot is unique because it doesn’t use an SD card for storage. Many hotspots over the months have had problems where SD cards get full then they automatically purge old files and re-sync to the blockchain, this can lead to a couple days of downtime per month.

Unlike all other HNT hotspot miners on the market that run on Raspberry Pi, Bobcat Miner 300 uses the industrial-grade Rockchip PX30, a high-performance quad-core application processor designed for high-end commercial applications. This offers unmatched reliability and direct manufacturer support especially when it comes to debugging.

Built-in 64GB eMMC flash for better data security and larger memory storage. Most other Helium HNT miners on the market either use 32GB flashes or external SD cards.

More memory means the miner is able to compute more at the same time, as well as longer device life expectancy (up to 10 years), because it allows 3000 write cycles, compared to 500 write cycles allowed by an SD card.

Enhanced 4dBi antenna provides wider network coverage, meaning better Proof of Coverage result for increased $HNT earnings. All other indoor Helium HNT miners on the market currently come with 2dBi antennas. In contrast, Bobcat Miner 300’s enhanced 4dBi antenna is able to provide 150% wider coverage.

Bobcat

SyncroBit

Retail: $650

This hotspot is nice because it comes with an option to TurboSync that gets you online at record speeds, this is nice to use especially when other hotspots are still syncing because the reward split will be higher for that short window.

Remote Management – Manage, diagnose or onboard your gateways through our dashboard.

Swappable Enclosure – Motherboard can be swapped between indoor and outdoor enclosure.

POE Support – Gateways support between 12 and 48 volts.

SyncroBit

Conclusion

All of these hotspots have their pros and cons, and you can definitely earn the same amount of HNT with any of these hotspots. But the most important aspect of Helium is location, check out our blog post on how to find a good location here. You can also visit our website to run your own simulations on different locations available to you in order to make sure this is a project that can be profitable for you.

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