Best Helium Miners to Maximize HNT Earnings

Helium is a decentralized wireless provider that’s been around for a number of years. Are you interested in earning some money on the side with no effort at all? Helium mining is, unfortunately, not a little-known money hack, but it does allow you to get a stake in a groundbreaking company and earn a little passive income on the side. Helium wants to challenge the telecommunication giants in the country by creating a decentralized network that is owned and operated by its users! 

Most importantly, when users buy a hotspot and connect to their network they start earning HNT, a cryptocurrency that they can add to their portfolio. Read on for information about Helium mining, Helium’s network, and the best Helium miners!

Helium Mining

So, you’re into Helium mining? This is a great and simple way to connect with Helium’s network and their overall project. The upfront cost of a miner is a few hundred dollars, and after that the only cost is electricity, and that’s pretty small! In essence, you are buying into this company when you get one of their miners and start contributing to their decentralized network. 

Mining HNT is exciting because it is contributing to a practical application. Helium’s network is trying to become an effective alternative to current centralized networks and shake up the telecommunications industry, providing cheap and reliable service across the country. Every Helium miner that’s up and running contributes to that goal!

“Mining” in a Crypto Context

When you are talking about crypto, mining has a distinct definition from the way we extract usable materials from the earth! Cryptocurrencies are received in three ways (most of the time). 

• You can purchase cryptocurrency on various exchanges. Helium’s coin can be bought and sold on just about any exchange. 
• You can receive cryptocurrency as a payment for certain services. In a way, Helium gives users HNT as a payment!
• Cryptocurrency can be mined, which is the most common way it is produced and distributed. 

Helium mining is a mixture of the second and third ways because you are acting as a node on their wireless network, and they are paying you for that service. The devices are generally referred to as “miners” so for the rest of the article we will keep calling it Helium mining. Mining was very popular back in the early days of Bitcoin when anyone with a fair computer could hook it up and start generating serious income. The problem with bitcoin mining is that the profits were pretty much proportional to the processing power you commanded. Nowadays, Bitcoin is getting mined by huge databases of processors being managed by specialized groups and companies. The average joe with a gaming rig is unlikely to make more money than the cost of electricity!

Helium does not work the same way as a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, leaving room for the layperson to make some passive income with their miner! 

How do the Best Helium Miners Work?

Helium miners use radio frequencies to create a network, and miners receive HNT (Helium Network Tokens) in return. Good news! Helium mining does not require the biggest, baddest processor as crypto mining has in the past. This also means that HNT mining does not drive up your energy bill as other mining may do. Helium mining, on average, adds around one dollar to your energy bill each month. 

So, how does it work? Helium miners earn tokens when they pass Proof-of-Coverage tests as well as their hotspot’s traffic. If you set up a hotspot in an area that is flush with them you will earn fewer tokens, as the earnings are divided up among all of the hotspots nearby. This is counteracted somewhat by the traffic an area receives. If there is more traffic then there are more rewards distributed among the miners. There is a lot of push and pull in the equation that determines how profitable your Helium mining is, and it varies from person to person. 

The best Helium miners generate passive income for their owners by constantly generating HNT. This generation happens every day, so you are constantly earning money! If you have a Helium miner you are also contributing to a decentralized wireless network, the first of its kind. Helium’s miners project their wireless network into the internet of things, allowing devices to connect and transfer data just like they do on networks like Verizon and T-Mobile. As we will see later in this article, there are a variety of factors that go into how effective your Helium miner is. The best Helium miners combine excellent technology with an excellent location.

Return on Investment of Helium Mining

The major reason why people are interested in Helium Mining is to get a return on their investment. The best Helium miners let you put in money at the start and, over the course of time, make your money back and start earning money on top of it. Unfortunately, this is no secret way to get rich. Helium’s return on investment varies tremendously based on where you are located and how efficient your miner is working, but even the best Helium miners only make a few hundred dollars a year. 

Helium’s return on investment is better than most crypto mining because, with a buy-in of, say, $700 your work is basically done. You can hook up your miner to any outlet, plug in the antennae and other cords and it will sit there mining HNT every single day without any extra input from you. 

How to Maximize Earnings as a Helium Miner

There are a few factors that combine to output your Helium Miner’s productivity. Put very simply, it is the coverage it provides and the traffic it drives through the network. Rewards are driven by the traffic generated in a current area, and the proof-of-coverage that verifies network strength and coverage. An area with more traffic (say, New York), generates more rewards than a rural area (say, Idaho). The rewards in a given area are split among all of the miners present in that area. 

If you live in an area that has dozens of miners then the rewards are split among all those miners. Rewards being, of course, HNT! Your area will drive the profitability of the best Helium miners. The density of traffic versus miners works together with one other factor — the area covered by your miner. Miners work with radio frequency, and their reach also plays a role in how much HNT they earn. This one, at least, has a pretty simple effect on earnings. The larger your miner’s reach, the more interactions they can do, and the more HNT they make. You want to get the best Helium miner and put it in the best position in order to maximize its range and, through that, maximize its earnings. 

Most miners come with or require, an antenna to operate. You want to place that antenna as high as possible to cover the most area. Another plus for earning HNT is that more miners clustered together do not correlate to more earnings. You can operate as many hotspots as you want, but they should be at least 400 or so meters apart or their efficiency will go way down. 

How does the Helium Network, well, Work?

Helium works by connecting a lot of nodes all throughout the country using radio waves. Their decentralized network rests in the hands of their consumers. Anyone can buy a Helium miner, and they are incentivized to buy a Helium miner because it allows them to earn HNT! The idea is that their HNT earnings will return their investment and then they will begin to make passive income every day through their miner. While that miner is active it is functioning as a sort of mini cell tower, projecting Helium’s network in the surrounding area. 

The Players in Helium’s Network

Helium’s network is all based on its miners. Hotspot miners form into a web of connectivity, much like the way that a centralized network, like T-Mobile, operates. There are three major operations that happen in Helium’s network, and the best Helium miners take part in all three. 

• Miners serve as challengers, issuing a proof of coverage challenger to another hotspot
• Miners are challenged, becoming beaconers. These targets are responsible for transmitting packets to the challenger and other hotspot witnesses. 
• Miners serve as witnesses, receiving the transmission from the beaconers and verifying that they are contributing to the network. 

Rewards are given out to all of these activities, as well as miners when they transfer data. Challenges happen with organized randomness, and your hotspot can always be chosen to be a challenger, a beaconer, or a witness. On the grand scale, two-thirds of the rewards are given to the miners with the final third going to Helium, Inc. and its investors. All of the actions taken by your Helium miner happen autonomously. There are pros and cons to buying into Helium, and one major pro is that once you can set it and forget it. 

Since it is fully passive mining there is not too much you can do if your miner is not making much income. We recommend checking out Helium Explorer to see all of the hotspots in your area.

Helium Explorer

Helium explorer is software that documents and keeps track of all of Helium’s active miners. All of the best Helium miners are shown on Helium explorer, and on it you can see the density of Helium’s network in your location. If the hex grid where you are and those surrounding it are full of a double-digit number of hotspots, it is unlikely that you will mine any significant HNT over the next few years. 

Proof of Coverage Consensus

Proof of Coverage, in short, is how Helium keeps track of the health and strength of its network. Since it operates off of hundreds of thousands of miners, the network is bound to fluctuate as individual units break down, weather messes with the signals or people decide to take theirs down. Through these constant challenges, Helium is able to keep an up-to-date map of its coverage and the strength of its network. This is important for them as well as their customers who are planning to buy a miner. If you are one of those people, then looking on Helium explorer lets you see if your area could use a miner or if it is already pretty full. 

Helium devotes a lot of its rewards to this constant data stream of its proof of coverage challenges, beaconers, and witnesses. Of the rewards that go to their miners, around 60% of them are related to the proof of coverage data. That’s a lot! It is understandable because the success of Helium’s wireless network is on the back of all of its miners. 

How to Become a Helium Miner

Becoming a Helium miner is easy! All it takes are a few purchases, and some time to get everything set up, and then you are good to go! Due to Helium’s set-it-and-forget-it structure, you can get started with your mining in no time and it will constantly generate income from that point onward. Before you purchase your miner, keep in mind that rewards are not guaranteed. Something as simple as bad luck could result in your unit not generating a lot of HNT. We do not recommend getting a Helium miner if you are looking for easy cash. Its general return on investment takes a while, and the major variable is whether or not the company will succeed in the long run. 

You should get one of the best Helium miners if you want to support their company. At that point, any rewards you make are a plus! You are, in some way, buying a small stake of their company and helping them succeed in the long run. It’s an investment into the future of the company. The years are over when a Helium miner could pay for itself in a matter of months and then start piling up earnings from that point forward, but if the company has a big breakthrough you could find that all the HNT you’ve earned up to this point has skyrocketed in value! 

Best Helium Miners

Mimiq FinestraMiner

Features Include: 

• Raspberry Pi 4 Processor
• 4 GB Ram (or better!)
• Works in US915 and EU868 regions
• Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet connectivity
• Antenna Gain

• 2.6 dBi (US and Canada)
• 2.8 dBi (UK and EU)

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Mimiq’s FinestraMiner costs $500 and is one of the best Helium miners, delivering a high-performance and reliable mining environment. 

SenseCAP M1 LoRaWAN Indoor Gateway

Features Include: 

• Raspberry Pi 4 Processor
• 2, 4, or 8 GB RAM
• Works in US915, EU868, AU915, KR920, and AS923 regions
• Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet connectivity
• Antenna Gain

• 2.6 dBi (US and Canada)
• 2.8 dBi (UK and EU)

The SenseCAP M1 LoRaWAN Indoor Gateway costs $519 and is a ready-to-use LoRaWAN indoor gateway and it is one of the best Helium miners. Long-range devices can connect to these hotspots miles away from their points of origin.

Browan Merryiot Hotspot

Features Include: 

• Rockchip RK3566/Quad-core Cortex-A55
• 4 GB RAM
• Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi with built-in antenna

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The Browan Merryiot Hotspot costs $500 and is a great Helium miner. Once you set it up it will output its network and mine HNT as long as it receives power! 

Milesight IoT UG65 Helium Gateway

Features Include: 

• NXP quad-core processor
• 2 GB RAM
• Works in US915, EU868, AU915, KR920, and AS923 regions
• Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet connectivity
• 8/9 dBi antenna gain

The Milesight IoT UG65 Helium Gateway costs $500 and is one of the best Helium miners. Milesight has a good track record of producing high-quality products where you can set it up and rest assured that it will mine contentedly as long as the Helium network is up and running. 

Bobcat Miner 300

Features Include:    

• Quad-core Cortex-A35 CPU
• 2 GB RAM
• Works in EU868, AU915, CN470, and AS923 regions
• Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi

The Bobcat Miner 300 is one of several Bobcat miners. They have long produced some of the best Helium miners and they are all compatible with Helium LongFi. 

Nebra ROCK Pi Miner

Features Include:    

• Quad-core Cortex-A35 CPU
• 2 GB RAM
• Works in CN470, EU868, IN865, RU864, US915, AU915, KR920, and AS923-1/2/3 regions
• Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi
• 3 dBi

The Nebra ROCK Pi Miner is a solid companion for anyone who wants one of the best Helium miners! With a miner like this, you should expect to set it up in less than an hour and then you can sit back, relax, and earn some HNT!