Heltec Hotspot FAQ Page

About FAQ

If you have any questions about Heltec Indoor/Outdoor/Light Hotspot, you can get the official reply from Heltec in the following 4 ways:

  1. Recommended – Submit a PR to this project. When we approve your PR, we will also answer your questions and will be shown on this page.

  2. Send your question to Heltec support email: support@Heltec.cn

  3. Reply this topic in Heltec Community

  4. Talk in Heltec Discord Channel

FAQ submit formart example

#### Question: [Your question 1 here]? [If you have more than one question, here are your other questions]?
Answer:

===========================================================

 

Heltec Hotspot Relevant FAQ

Question: Will Heltec Indoor Hotspot have Australian version support?

Answer: Yes. There will be a version supporting AU915 in the 902~923 MHz frequency band. We have obtained New Zealand and Australia certification.

 

Question: Does Heltec have agents or distributors now?

Answer: Before becoming a third-party manufacturer certified by Helium, we have many well-cooperative agents around the world, but these agents only represent the regular products produced by Heltec Automation. Do not include Heltec Indoor/Outdoor/Light Hotspot. As of August 26, 2021, we have not identified any distributors.

Future Hotspot agents approved by Heltec will be announced on https://heltec.org.

 

Question: What type of power plug does the indoor have? Barrel Jack 5.5x2.1mm or 5.5x2.5mm?

Answer: 5.5 x 2.1 mm

_images/01.png

Question: What’s the weight of box with 1 miner antenna and power adapter and default antenna?

Answer: ~ 850g

 

Question: What’s packing list of 1 miner parcel?

Answer:

  • Heltec Indoor Hotspot x 1

  • 12V / 3A DC adapter x 1;

  • DC adapter 220V power cable x 1;

  • SMA LoRa antenna with 1.5m cable x 1;

 

Question: What’s the SMA socket type of Heltec Indoor Hotspot?

Answer: We call it inner needle and outer thread. The FCC clearly stipulates that the SMA connector of this interface must be used on the device side.

_images/02.png

 

Question: What’s the SMA socket type of the default antenna?

Answer: We call it inner hole inner thread. Can be used directly with Heltec Indoor Hotspot.

 

Question: Does the Heltec Indoor Hotspot has PoE features?

Answer: The device itself does not have the PoE function, but it can be realized through a PoE splitter.

_images/03.png

Question: What is the material of the Heltec Indoor Hotspot shell?

Answer: The body is made of 6063 aluminum alloy, which has good mechanical strength and thermal conductivity. And the top panel is tempered glass.

 

Question: Does Heltec Indoor Hotspot support remote modification of the working frequency band?

From the feedback of our customers, we often encounter such situations:

  1. I purchased the Heltec Indoor Hotspot with the AU915 frequency band, but Australia is about to use the AS923 frequency band for Helium network.

  2. I am on a business trip or studying in the United States, and now I am going back home (such as Thailand, Singapore and some other Southeast Asian countries). Heltec Indoor Hotspot is my property. I hope I can take it home with me.

What should I do when a similar scenario above happens to you? You may want ask can I switch the working frequency band through the remote page?

The hardware configuration in the frequency range of 902~928MHz is the same, and the hardware configuration in the frequency range of 863~870MHz is the same. The working frequency band is realized through software configuration. So the answer is YES. We have implemented this feature, but it is not yet open. Before we open this function, please contact us and we will assist you to complete the remote modification.

 

Question: There is a small hole marked with R on the back of the machine. What is the purpose? Is it the reset button?

_images/04.png

Answer: No, it’s not reset button. The reset button is the power button on the front of the Heltec Indoor Hotspot. Press once to reset, long press than 4 seconds to shut down.

The button marked with “R” is used to manually flash the system firmware. The usage method will be introduced in the follow-up document.

Question: Why is my machine status is Relayed?

Answer: The main reason is because the network that your miner connected does not have a public IP address. In the relayed state, miner connecting to the blockchain network via another device through the P2P network. Due to network delays and other reasons, the success rate of challenges and witnesses will decrease.

 

Question: How can I make my miner not on the Relayed status?

Answer:

Two points:

  1. You need have an public IP address, this can be applied to the local operator department to change your network’s IP address into a public IP, or it can be achieved through a VPN solution;

  2. On the the router, mapping the 44158 port to miner.

Note

The VPN configuration method is not within the scope of our technical support.

 

Question: How many HNT can be dig every day?

Answer: As of November 11, 2021, there are a total of ~305,000 hotspots on the Helium . Excluding some offline and invalid devices, there are a total of about 280,000 valid hotspots.

_images/06.png

At present, the total number of HNT that can be mined every day is ~50,000, so on average, each machine can currently dig 0.18 coins per day.

_images/05.png

But this does not mean that if your miner is plugged in and connected to the network, it can generate 0.18 HNT. This is related to the network status, the number of surrounding devices, the number of challenges, and the number of witnesses. For more detail rule please refer to Helium offical documents.

 

Question: There are many hotspots near by, why my hotspot has very little witness rewards?

Answer: First of all, is your miner in the relayed state?

If it is in the relayed state, your miner connected to the main network via other devices through P2P forwarding. This is a probability problem, it is possible that the network of the device you are connected to is very poor, causing the signal from your device to fail to relay.

Now let us analyze a specific situation we encountered:

The miner received other devices’ PoC signal, and send back the witness LoRa signal normal.

_images/07.png

But many witness didn’t send out via the network success.

_images/08.png

Why does this happen? We checked its network connection. The equipment is in Europe, but its P2P network is connected to far away in the United States. The network delay caused the unsuccessful sending of witness.

_images/09.png

The above situation can also explain why the miner near me has a lot of successful witness rewards, but my miner has very few witness rewards. Just because the device with more rewards may be connected to the device closer to you through the P2P network, the network delay is smaller.

 

Question: How to use external filters?

Answer: Connect the filters directly between the antenna and the hotspot. We recommend using the two filters together, you can choose to use one or two filters depending on the noise around the hotspot. You can check the LoRa logs through the diagnosis page, and judge the noise level through SNR and RSSI.

_images/10.png

 

Question: How to enter the local diagnosis page?

Answer: Enter the LAN IP address of Heltec Indoor Hotspot in the browser to open the local diagnostic page.

Default user name: HT-M2808

Default password: The last six digits of your devices’ ETH Mac address, in lowercase. For example, your ETH address is 11:22:33:AA:BB:CC, then your default password is aabbcc.

The ETH address can be found on the back label of the fuselage. If the label is broken, Plug the network cable into the device, you can see the Mac address in the router’s management page.

_images/11.png

 

Question: Why is the hotspot firmware not updated to the latest firmware version in the Helium APP hotspot diagnostic report?

_images/12.png

Answer: The Helium APP does not read the same file as the local diagnostics page, please refer to the firmware version in the local diagnostics page.

_images/13.png

 

Question: Why can’t hotspot be activated successfully after power on?

Answer: The hotspot will load the corresponding miner firmware and snapshot when it is powered on for the first time. If the firmware and snapshot are not loaded, the relevant activation commands cannot be executed, resulting in the failure of hotspot activation. You can log in to the diagnostics page via the LAN IP after the hotspot is powered on and connected to the internet, and activate it after the “block height” and “miner release” are loaded. The loading time of “block height” and “miner release” depends on the network condition of the hotspot.

_images/14.png