A Review of the Nebra Helium Miner

A Review of the Nebra Helium Miner

At the beginning of 2022, Helium miners everywhere, Nebra included, suffered from supply chain issues, leaving many interested parties out in the rain and left behind as their orders received delay after delay. Many buyers were left without their Helium miner for months when the original order was to ship in weeks. The details remain in the air, but it seems that many of the companies producing miners were treating their customers poorly at that time. 

Those delays and worrying responses did not, however, stop the growth of Helium’s network! Helium’s network has grown exponentially over the course of 2022, and they now have hundreds of thousands of hotspots active around the world. The big miner shortage that happened at the beginning of 2022 has leveled out by the latter part of the year, and they are up and running again! Nebra currently has a variety of miners available for purchase, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. 

Even now some of Nebra’s miners are out of stock while they deal with the back-orders of the year, but they are much more cognizant of their stock and they have practices in place to ensure that they don’t oversell as much as they did before. 

Nebra Helium Miners

Nebra currently has four models of HNT miners on their website. The technology in each of the miners is similar, in that they project a net of radio frequency that serves as a building block for Helium’s network. On their website, they have:

• Nebra HNT Indoor Hotspot Miner
• Nebra HNT Outdoor Hotspot Miner
• Nebra HNT Indoor Hotspot Miner (Rock Pi Version)
• Nebra HNT 5G Ready Hotspot Miner

Nebra HNT Indoor Hotspot Miner

Features Include: 

• Raspberry Pi Compute Module
• Supports concentrator modules for LoRa®
• Comes in three different frequency variants

• 470 MHz (CN470) - this is suitable for China.
• 868 MHz (EU868, IN865, RU864) - this is suitable for the EU, India, Russia, and a variety of other countries.
• 915 MHz (US915, AU915, KR920, AS923-1/2/3) - this is suitable for the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and lots of countries in South America and Asia.

• WAN Connectivity (Ethernet Port or Wi-Fi)
• Efficient Power Consumption (15W)
• RP-SMA Female Antenna Connector

The Nebra HNT Indoor Hotspot Miner costs $415 and is one of the best Helium miners, delivering a high-performance and reliable mining environment. The range of this miner depends on the location, but it generally reaches up to 10 miles in rural areas and one mile in dense areas. In general, hotspot miners earn more HNT when they are within range of other hotspots but not too close (closer than 300 m) and not too far (further than their effective range!). This hotspot comes with a 3dBi antenna, but an upgraded antenna as well as a lot of other odds and ends to improve its performance are available on Nebra’s website. 

Nebra HNT Outdoor Hotspot Miner

Features Include: 

• Raspberry Pi Compute Module
• Supports concentrator modules for LoRa®
• Comes in three different frequency variants (the same as above)
• WAN Connectivity (Ethernet Port or Wi-Fi)
• Efficient Power Consumption (15W)
• RP-SMA Female Antenna Connector

The Nebra HNT Outdoor Hotspot Model is around $520 and is the only one on this list that is weatherproofed enough to survive storms and other weather conditions in most areas around the globe. Its IP67-rated case allows it to output a consistent signal regardless of weather conditions as well as survive for the long term. It can operate in just about any temperature and it comes out to dimensions of 10 by 6 by 3 (in). 

Nebra HNT Indoor Hotspot Miner (Rock Pi Version)

Coming in at around $580, the Nebra HNT Indoor Hotspot Miner (Rock Pi Version) has the same general features as the other Nebra miners with one big upgrade — the Rock Pi. This processor, while retaining the small size of its cousins, packs a huge amount of power in it. At Nebra, users have the ability to manage their hotspots with the free software or opt-in for the advanced (paid) version, which is recommended for those who have more than a few hotspots set up around their area. 

Nebra HNT 5g Ready Hotspot Miner

• Intel J1900 Quad Core 2.4GHz
• 64GB mSATA SSD
• 8GB RAM
• TPM2.0 
• Semtech LoRa®
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet

Coming in just under one thousand dollars, the Nebra HNT 5g Ready Hotspot Miner is another beast entirely. It is an upgrade from their Rock Pi miner and is a response to Helium’s work on a 5G network. This device, in theory, brings in more revenue since it is also active on the 5G network. 

User Reviews

The customer reviews of Nebra’s miners are lackluster. A lot of this is a result of the poor way that Nebra handled the shortage of supply in the face of the tremendous demand of its customers. They were not, according to reviews, very communicative with everyone who was on the backlist. These comments are in response to the fact that the delays lost them money. People waited as long as a year for their shipments, and even if they were only able to make one dollar a day (which is a low estimate) that’s over $300 lost.

The reviews on Nebra’s website are similarly lacking in positive conviction. Their base model has an average rating of 2.3 stars out of five based on 26 reviews. People complain about the miner’s poor overall performance and reliability. With this small sample size, definitive conclusions cannot be reached, but the general consensus online is that it is eclipsed by other brands of Helium miners on the market. 

Performance

When it is working it works, reputably, pretty well. Judging the performance of a brand of Helium miners is challenging due to the nature of mining. The rewards, regardless of the machine’s performance, are based on the network and the antenna’s strength. If you decide to purchase a miner, you should first consult the Helium Explorer website. If your area is full of Helium miners then it is unlikely that you will mine a significant amount of HNT regardless of your miner’s model. You do not necessarily have to set up your miner in your home, although it is the most commonplace. If your hex on Helium explorer only has a few hotspots then your miner should operate pretty well. One of the best ways to check your miner’s performance is to compare it with other people in the area using either Helium Explorer or a website like Reddit. 

How Does Nebra Helium Miner Work? 

The Nebra Helium miners, and all Helium miners in general, act as nodes on Helium’s worldwide network. In a very general sense, Helium is attempting to create decentralized wireless networks that accomplish two goals.

• Connect the internet of things, which consists of every device that can connect to the internet
• Create a mobile network that becomes a cheap and reliable alternative to networks as we know them today. 

They still have a long way to go on both of these goals, but Helium has grown a lot over the last few years. They decided to create a cryptocurrency that their miners “mine” as they go about their daily business. Through the regular course of the day, Helium miners communicate with one another (which generates HNT) and transfer data along the network (which also generates HNT). Unlike conventional crypto mining, Nebra Helium miners do not draw a tremendous amount of power to mine. Instead, they tap into your Wi-Fi network and only dip a tad into electricity. The electrical cost of running a Nebra Helium miner falls to around one dollar a month!

Third-Party Helium Miners

Helium allows a variety of third-party companies to produce and distribute their miners. A lot of the hotspots on the market are very similar in their capabilities because the hotspot is not the major item responsible for the speed at which it mines HNT. Take, for instance, Bitcoin. It has been mined for many years and Bitcoin miners are basically colossal processing units. The more processing invested into the miner the higher the mining output. Helium doesn’t work that way! The processor isn’t the bottleneck for the mining rate, it’s the network, which is, to a certain extent, out of the control of each individual miner. 

Nebra Helium Mining as an Economic Investment

Buying a Nebra Helium miner is, purely from an economic sense, not the best investment. The cheapest Nebra model is around $500, and with that money you could, instead, purchase a number of HNT and go for a similar reward, or spend it in another kind of investment. Helium has had periods of great success as well as times of struggle, but there is no guarantee that your Helium miner will return your investment. For every story of someone making five to 10 dollars a day there are people making cents. 

Fortunately, the risk can be inspected to some degree by looking at the area surrounding you. It could be that your area is in serious need of a Helium miner and you will make some nice passive income for the foreseeable future. One big bonus with Nebra Helium miners is that they are entirely passive. Once you set it up, you are free to sit back and relax while it contributes to the network and mines you a bit of HNT! On that note, there are more reasons to purchase a Nebra Helium miner than economic ones. 

Nebra Helium Mining as a Non-Economic Investment

Nebra Helium miners are a part of Helium’s worldwide network. Helium is trying to do something new in its creation of a decentralized wireless network. They rely on people like you to purchase their routers and contribute to the network. One of the big reasons why Helium is so economically risky is that there are so many variables that decide whether your miner will be economically profitable or not. Regardless, Helium has grown immensely over the course of 2022. People are interested in this new way to transfer all the data we need to go through our daily lives. 

When you buy a Nebra Helium miner, or any miner for that matter, you are contributing to Helium’s network and investing in their success. If Helium as a network succeeds and stays around for, say, the next decade, it needs people to keep purchasing the hotspots and bolstering the network in all areas of the world. They plan on taking the fight to cellular providers, and to do that their network will need to be very, very, strong. Your miner would play a small part in the process, but it is an important part, nonetheless. 

How to Maximize HNT Earnings

Fortunately, the way to maximize your HNT earnings is not to buy up dozens of miners. There are people who have a lot of miners, but in order to use them effectively they need to be fairly far apart. This is to say that the barrier of entry for Helium mining is much lower than other crypto mining. Five hundred dollars is a lot to buy a Nebra Helium Miner, but it is more affordable than miners for other cryptocurrencies. For a lot of other cryptocurrencies, the mining happens by using up a lot of processing power and electricity. The more power you put in, the more mining gets done. Helium mining does it differently! 

The fact that stacking miners doesn’t increase HNT earnings means that big corporations cannot buy a warehouse and fill it with miners. Big corporations can buy a lot of miners, but it is logistically much more challenging to place them, as they need to cover a bigger and bigger area if they want their miners to mine efficiently. And that, in some ways, helps out the layperson too! As more and more miners get added to the network it will drive more traffic and, thus, create more HNT rewards. 

The Helium Network

Helium is a decentralized wireless network provider that has recently gained a lot of popularity. Their upswing in popularity began when they introduced crypto mining in their incentives to get people to purchase their hotspots. That tactic has, quite evidently, worked very well! Recently, Helium has gotten under flack about their distribution of mining rewards, but one thing to keep in mind with a company like this is that it is all so new that a lot of regulatory bodies are still figuring out how to handle all of the new applications and possibilities of blockchain technology.

Placement and Density

While the tech inside the miners is all relatively similar, the placement of their antenna makes all the difference in the world. You want your miner’s antenna to have as much of an unobstructed view of the horizon as possible. This could be as simple as placing your miner in an upstairs window or running an antenna outside to the roof. 

One area that is outside of your control, however, is the density of miners in your general vicinity. If there are an abundance of miners within your hex it will be difficult for you to gain any traction and mine any HNT because of how their network distributes the rewards. 

Nebra Helium Miner’s Proof of Coverage

Helium is a network where all of their miners act as nodes to spread the signal, but the company has no control over which nodes are active and which are taken down. Due to this, they dish out a lot of rewards for nodes to talk to one another and keep track of which ones are up and running and how strong the network is at the present. This system, called proof of coverage, allows users to mine HNT when they are in contact with other nodes, which all happens autonomously. This is, in essence, Helium’s way of paying their customers for owning and operating one of their hotspots. 

Key Takeaways

Whew, that was a lot! We hope that you’ve gotten all of your questions answered about Nebra Helium miners! Before you go, here are a few of the main points of the article.

• Nebra Helium miners are not well-reviewed by those who use them
• The major complaints are about bad customer service and a lack of reliability
• There are a lot of Helium miners on the market

Helium mining varies a lot in its profitability, but there are more reasons than money to hop on the Helium train and see where it takes you!