I received the Helium network miner yesterday and got it installed (see below).
The helium network map looks pretty saturated with hotspot nodes:
But in my (new) neighborhood, not so much; there are my new one and two more visible.
I may be able to get more range by moving my miner up ... we do live near the bottom of a pretty steep hill, which may be blocking some signals, I guess ...
Payments are determined by the number of nodes you can reach and how capable/powerful those nodes are. So I am motivated to increase my node's visibility on the network if I can do that without too much trouble.
Helium apparently uses '3 words' addressing ... my node's ID is quite festive:
Bubbly Beige Ant
Helium is based on blockchain technology, which is the basic idea behind bitcoin. My node is still "syncing" with the blockchain so hasn't started earning money yet.
Anonymity reigns ... I of course had to give my name and address for shipment and payment of the miner, but Helium doesn't ask for any of that to register you on its network. It has a 12-word password scheme that's generated when you log in that's like a Bitcoin password but more easily readable. Make sure you keep a record of it!
And make sure that your local node is up and listening before you assume it's registered. I goofed on this to start with ... it connects with your phone via bluetooth to start, but bluetooth is only active for the first 10 minutes it's up. So I had to press the pairing button to wake it up and then I got the node set up as Bubbly Beige Ant.
So: still down the $587.87 capital cost of this box, plus a smidgen of electricity.
More next week!
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