elcome back to another blog post. After three months of long waiting, I have finally received my Bobcat Miner 300. For those who don't know, this is a helium miner that mines HNT tokens with your home WiFi network.
In this post, let's talk about pretty much everything to do with this miner, the shipment, what's included in the package, how to set it up, what kind of issues you might face down the road. Most importantly, is it still worth ordering and waiting and receiving it by the second half of this year, and how long it might take you to earn back your initial investments and how much profit you might be able to earn on a monthly basis. We're going to cover all these good stuff! And do me a favor guys. If you enjoy this post and find it valuable, make sure you share it to your friends or subscribe to my YouTube channel for future content, and that would be much appreciated without further ado. Let's get into it.
Shipment & Waiting Time
I ordered my helium miners through Bobcat back in April, I received my package around July 12, so that's just at the 12 weeks of shipping time. When I ordered it. They claimed the waiting time is at 6 to 12 weeks. As many of you already know, the current waiting time is at 12 to 20 weeks.
Bobcat recently sent out a newsletter. They mentioned that they're moving their manufacturing location from Wuhan, China to Shinzen, China. For those who don't know, Shinzen, China is actually the powerhouse of old electronic devices. So many of the North American or European electronic devices are actually produced to ancients in China because the helium miner demand is very high. Hopefully this is actually a good news for Bobcat to scale up their business.
They shipped the units through DHL and it took me literally around three days to receive the package. I did pay import tax. However, it's not something crazy amounts, definitely something acceptable. Just be aware that DHL might ask you for import tax.
Bobcat Miner 300 Unboxing
Now let's talk about packaging. When you open the box, the first thing you're going to see is a quick troubleshoot guide. Just in case you face some sort of connection issue. Give it a quick read can always be helpful. I will take you through the set up process just in a moment.
The next Item this is a warranty card and certification to prove this unit has been certified. It comes with a 12 volt power adapter. The end of the antenna base cable connector type is RPSMA female connector.
The package also comes with a few screws just in case you want to mount the miner on a wall. The stock antenna that comes with a Bobcat miner is a 4dBi antenna. This is definitely powerful enough to give you better reach comparing with one of the older generation of the Miner. That comes with a 2.3 DBI antenna. Bobcat also comes with a pin as well. This is really handy if you want to turn on your Miner into Bluetooth mode for pairing or diagnostic report.
Last but not least, let's talk about the miner itself. The miner is super light. It's because inside of it is actually a raspberry Pi. On top of the unit you're going to see Bobcat logo as well as an indicator light. At the back of the unit you are going to see six different ports. The first Port is going to be where you connect your antenna to. (This is an SMA Port.)
Moving on to the next one you're going to see a Bluetooth button (BT). This is where you're going to use the ping mentioned early in here for 5 to 10 seconds to turn on the Bluetooth mode. Move on to the next two: TF car slot and a Co emport these two ports, you are not going to use them at all. The bobcat helium miner can also be connected with Ethernet Port, just in case you want to run your unit with the Ethernet instead of WiFi. Last item in the package is a 12 volt powered Port.
This is where you're going to connect your power adapter onto it and power your units. The assembling process is super easy. All it takes is less than a minute. Basically, you screw your four DBI antenna onto the base, take out the little protection cover with your fingers. You can easily screw the antenna cable onto the unit, make sure you get it nice and tight not to lose.
And you can move on to the power adapter. And that's pretty much it. It's that easy and simple. And now you're ready to power the unit and get it connected to the Helium network and start earning HNT tokens.
How to Setup & Connect with APP
Now let's talk about how we can connect this unit to the Helium network. The first thing you need is a Helium app. You can download it straight from App Store as well as your Google Play. It depends on what phone and brand that you use. First time using the app is going to direct you and create a Helium Wallet.
Basically it's going to generate twelve word phrase. This is your wallet backup phrase. There are some methods you can keep these twelve word phrase nice and safe. You can either take a screenshot or you can write it down on a piece of paper. You can store them in two different locations just in case one location breaks down.
Or you can write them down on a. Txt file and store it on a USB device. And you can encrypt your USB stick with a password just in case you lose it. One day at least you have a password to protect the USB stick so no one else is able to have access to a USB stick. If the Helium app is asking you to create a password, definitely go ahead and do so because it's really important to set up a password.
This is basically a Helium wallet, just in case if you lose your phone or anybody have access to your phone, they will also be able to access to the Helium app unless you set up a password with it. When your wallet is all set at the bottom, the first icon is all your miners on the top right corner. You're going to see a plus sign. Just give it a click. This will allow you to choose your hotspot and start connecting process depends on what miner that you have.
In our case, we have a Bobcat Miner 300. It's the first option and now it's going to give you a few tips on how to place your hotspot. First of all, you want to make sure your miner is maybe close to the window if possible. The plain and open side is definitely one of the considerations for a better connection. And second of all, you definitely don't want to hide it under your bed or in your cabinet.
Any building may block the signals from traveling through and connecting and communicating with other hotspots or miners. Last but not least, these miners really hate bug screens or metal mesh, so we definitely want to avoid them and you want to click on I understand the next option is going to ask you, have you powered your unit? Make sure you power your unit first before you want to move on to the Bluetooth connection option. And now you want to take out the pin that comes in the package we mentioned earlier. You want to stick to the second Port.
Hold on to five to 10 seconds until you see the unit has a blue light turned on. That means we're in the Bluetooth mode. This mode is specifically for pairing or diagnostics. When you're done with that process, just click on Scan for my Hotspot. This is going to basically do a scan in your network to find this Bobcat Miner.
When you turn on the Bluetooth mode on a Bobcat 300, within a few seconds of the scan, you should be able to see your Bobcat Miner 300. Simply click on this option and it will go ahead and connect this unit with your Helium app. And now the next stage is WiFi configuration. Basically, you just need to select the WiFi you want to go with. Unless you don't want to use WiFi, you want to go with the Ethernet cable, then you want to go with the options at the bottom says use Ethernet instead.
If you want to go with WiFi, simply go with your local available network options and it's going to show you connecting to the network and give it a few seconds. And last but not least, we want to set the hotspot location, simply click on Ask for permission and you want to allow the Helium app to have access to your location. Then you're going to see two different pins. One of them is white, the other one is light purple. Then you want to drag around this white paint and bring it close to the purple one until two of them are match.
When you're done with it, click on Set Location button and you should be good to go. Last stage this is going to be antenna setup. The default is going to show you Bobcat Miner 300 and the default antenna again is going to be for DBI. You don't have to do anything. What you want to type in is your height.
I've asked some people in Helium Discord group. Basically this measurement is not a strict measurement. I did some basic Google search. Average residential building floor height is around 14ft so that's 4.3 meters. You want to enter the meter number.
If you're on the ground floor, live at zero. If you're on the first floor, leave it 4.3 or 4 meters and then when you're done with that, click on next. In terms of location fee for this Hotspot setup, normally the cost is $10 because you purchased this miner brand new. It's being prepaid so you don't have to worry about anything. When you're done with that, just click on Register Hotspot.
Now it's registering your Hotspot. Sometimes just in case you have a disconnection here or any error message, just start over again and you should be good to go. Now the last process this is going to register this hot spot under your Helium app as well as a Helium network. Just be patient with it and you may want to just close this window by clicking on Go to Wallet. And now when you come into your wallet you should be able to see your hotspot has a unique name registered to it and the current status is going to show start sync.
All you need to do is be patient with it. The syncing process may take up to a few days. You may want to visit this app once a day to keep an eye on the syncing process.
How to Fix Relayed Status
So when I set up my first Helium Miner, I woke up the next day. I opened my app. My miner was showing relayed issue. So this is a common issue for hearing a miner. I went on this journey of finding how to fix this type of issue.
So basically you need to log into your WiFi router. You want to do a Port forwarding as well as reserve a static IP address for your Miner. The good news is that I've made an in depth tutorial video on this topic, so the link is in the description. You can go there and find it or I'm going to link it in this corner somewhere. So if your miner is having the same issue.
Hopefully by following the step by step instructions mentioned in this post, you can fix your related issue just like how I did.
Profits & Earning Potential
And now I'd like to share with you a little bit on the profit side of things. I've been mining for about one week or so. So I'd like to share with you how much profit or H and T tokens that I minded and earned. So you get to decide if this is something profitable or you should invest into it. So as you can see, I have logged into my Helium app.
Right now I have 3 bars of data. That's seven days of profit earnings. So I've earned so far about 35 point 94 HT tokens. So many of you probably already know the crypto had a little dip.
H and T today is around ten to $11. Peak of HNC tokens this year is at about $20 to $23. That's literally double the current price. Maybe hang on to these tokens, sell it when you reach back to $20. Might be a better idea.
Keep that in mind. I have a three miner set up. So this is a profit coming from the three miners. If you only have one miner, then profit definitely will be much less. So keep that in mind.
Back in February this year, we had probably 20,000 miners globally. And now we're reaching out 100,000 miners. So the more miners are setting up globally, that means we need to split the profits to all these miners. So the more we have, the less everybody gets to earn. And plus, on top of it, August 1 is having for HNT or Helium network.
So that means all the profits were cut in half. So you can see here, first day I earned about seven point 64. Day two, six point 94. Day three, five point 47. You see a little bit declined on day four, five, six.
That's because I woke up one. Day one of the miners went offline. Discord is definitely one of the best places to go to. So I went on Discord. Ask a whole bunch of people.
So that wasn't just my miner. So a lot of newer Bobcat miner had a similar network. They call it P two piss. We did a power recycle, a reboot on the miner, unplug the miner, wait for a few minutes and plug it back. Lucky enough, one more day later, the hotspot went back online.
It started to earn tokens again. Day seven, that's when the third miner came back online. You can see it starts to earn a little bit more hit and tea on the day seven. Now let's talk about if this is something you should do as well. My answer to that is it has to do with your location.
Should You Get One
If you're in a city urban area, there's a lot of hot spots around you, even though you don't earn much H and T tokens. As we have many more miners coming onto the Helium network end of the day it's too passive right? You can pay $450 and set it up and then just leave it there for a year or two. I'm sure within the first few months you're going to earn back your initial investments. However, if you're in the middle of nowhere somewhere really far away from the urban or the city area then you need to think carefully so your earnings will be much less than what I showed you here.
That might take you for a very long time to earn back the initial investments. Unless you want to upgrade your antenna to higher DBI antenna such as eight or ten or twelve depends on your location. You might be able to reach a little bit further to some other hot spots that's really far away from you. As long as you can connect to other hotspots around you. That is when you're going to see the shift and increase on H and T tokens you earn on a daily basis.
Final Thoughts
And last but not least I just wanted to say thank you guys for watching this video all the way through to this point. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, definitely go ahead and do so. If you really enjoy this video drop some comments below and give it a like that would be really appreciated and I do personally read through all of your comments and I do my very best to answer all of them. So this is Tario Sultan hope this post helped you to make a better decision on whether or not you want to get a helium miner and I'll see you guys in the next one cheers.
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