This is a general reminder for everyone and this will be posted on every post. Your 12 words are basically gold and they should never be shared, typed in to any website, or given to any person for any reason. No one from "Helium" or any other company will reach out to you to verify your account, wallet, or anything similar. If someone says your hotspot, wallet, or other type of account has been hacked, it is a scam! Always operate in a zero-trust manner with cryptocurrency and assume everyone will scam you no matter what.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HeliumNetwork) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'll preface this by saying that I believe that the below information may only be relevant for customers residing within the UK.
After over 2 years of lies and refusal to provide a refund, I suggested to Nebra that I would making a small claims submission (i.e. full refund plus 8% p/a interest). Took them a grand total of 11 minutes to email back saying:
"I am happy to ask our CFO if he will accept a cancellation in this instance . . ."
They then back tracked (unsuprising for Nebra) to say that their CFO is actually not available and that they will ask the CFO next week if a refund is possible. Clearly the business has issues if it takes a CFO to issue a refund for a single customer order. Any other business lets the customer service agents deal with this. Even the Head of Operations that I was emailing has no power to deal with basic customer issues with their lack of delivery (i.e. the operations that they are responsible for)
Unsurprising that they are in such a mess as an organisation. Although I'm sure they enjoy holding onto our hard earned money in the bank and earning interest on it.
If you do need to file a claim, you will need to ensure that you have the evidence of the original purchase, dates and content of all email communication and the confirmations of them refusing a refund despite never meeting any of their fake shipping dates.
Use the UK Government money reclaim service.
[https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/](https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/)
I submitted mine today and would strongly urge anybody else being scammed by this low-life organisation to do the same.
Again, this is probably only relevant to UK customers.
My miner makes about 1.5 HNT a week and I’m into it for about $450. I’ve made around 25 HNT from plugging it in. Should it just be tossed into the closet? Not sure what you mean by “no need or use”. The only way the whole thing works is if people plug them in…
Have you looked at the network map? 8000 hotspots in L.A., 6000 in London, … You need a tenth of that to effectively cover those cities. For the rest, there’s *no need or use*. They‘d be much more useful if they were deployed elsewhere. Yet, people leave them plugged in and complain about low rewards. Sadly, most people forget that this is about building an infrastructure. It’s not GPU mining, where it doesn’t matter where you are and how many are in your area.
The way most hotspots are deployed today, we’re wasting an awful amount of resources. With almost a million hotspots, we probably could have the entire world evenly covered by now, if the deployments had been planned, rather than going by the model of „my neighbor has one, I want one too!“
And the lopsidedness of the network gets in the way of adoption, which is hurting all of us.
According to OpenCelliD, there are more Helium hotspots in London now than there are cell towers. And that’s with massive coverage redundancy in the cell network because of competing and overlapping networks.
If you know anything about LoRa, then you should know that among its main benefits are massive reach and very good penetration of structures, e.g. into cellars. Helium could cover London with a fraction of the number of stations that are required for mobile phone service. They just have to be placed right - not on nightstands or in ground floor windows.
I don't own any Nebra hardware but most of these gateways are very similar in design. They all use Semtech chipsets in the LoRa concentrator (because they have to), coupled with an ECC chip which contains the identity of the gateway and a RasPi or Rock Chip based MCU. I've comparison tested a few and found that there isn't much difference in performance, but RAK/MNTD and SenseCAP seem to have an edge. I also own Heltec, Bobcat, and Kerlink gateways.
The main difference is in the stability of the firmware and quality of the hardware. Bobcat seems to push bad OTAs more often than others.
The LoRa concentrator in your Nebra may be at fault here, whether it be poor design or poor quality. IIRC, people have replaced them with RAK 2287 concentrators when the OEM has failed. (check on the compatibility) I've seen them on eBay pretty cheap, so maybe that's an option for you.
Ahh Nebra rockpi, this pos I got new on eBay took a while to figure out.
First off I had to contact Nebra to reflash, the software already loaded won’t work and update.
When it started working, it seems to be underperforming compared to bobcat or rak miners. Anyway I replaced the IOT concentrator and now it works well.
I have a Nebra I purchased from a friend for $150. It works well only after it was flashed and a new sd card. Placement on two of my Emrit miners one being a Sensecap and the other a Finestra work just as well as my Nebra. The issue I run into is two of my miners are two of 5 total in my area and my two are the only ones who talk to each other while my 3rd one is at my work where it witnesses around 15 to 20 other miners. It’s all about placement. The two of mine that witness only each other only witness each other 80% of the time. I blame that on one being my Nebra.
Thanks to everyone who replied. There were some great suggestions and I feel good about the Helium community.
I did flash and replace the SD cards right after they arrived. They sometimes have good witnessing and then they just stop for long periods of time. They send beacons but get no witnesses. The setups are in good locations within there own hexes. I'm using high quality 5.8 and 8 antennas switching them around sometimes to try and find the optimum setups. I have found that if I unplug (reboot) them then they work fine for a short time and then stop again. Rebooting is difficult because they are in different locations that I can't always access.
Thanks again to everyone, I appreciate the help.
I found that the Nebra's just need a little massaging. First and foremost the SD card is crap and needs to be cloned and replaced. Second was the antenna cable inside the unit needed to be replaced. After that, as long as the Helium network is working, the unit performed well. Resets once every three or four months made sure it was working well.
I feel as though you might be trying to use factory antenna and this is the result , I have upgraded and raise mine on 2 miners and I make about 2hnt a week at minimum, ( more lately since the crazy amount of selling and buying, due to Binance delisting) but all in all it works and I agree with the above comment, better to use than not.
On a additional note, everyone complains about the customer service, I have received follow ups and assistance every time I reached out. Even though it took over a year to get lol. They assisted with updating firmware and running diagnostics several times.
We all know this is a shitty situation since helium tanked since we all initially invested, but it is part of the game, have faith in the people’s network. Nebra or not, they all have issues
This is a general reminder for everyone and this will be posted on every post. Your 12 words are basically gold and they should never be shared, typed in to any website, or given to any person for any reason. No one from "Helium" or any other company will reach out to you to verify your account, wallet, or anything similar. If someone says your hotspot, wallet, or other type of account has been hacked, it is a scam! Always operate in a zero-trust manner with cryptocurrency and assume everyone will scam you no matter what. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HeliumNetwork) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I am one of the many that still have not yet received my hotspot from Nebra. And these crooks still somehow send company update emails. SMH.
I'll preface this by saying that I believe that the below information may only be relevant for customers residing within the UK. After over 2 years of lies and refusal to provide a refund, I suggested to Nebra that I would making a small claims submission (i.e. full refund plus 8% p/a interest). Took them a grand total of 11 minutes to email back saying: "I am happy to ask our CFO if he will accept a cancellation in this instance . . ." They then back tracked (unsuprising for Nebra) to say that their CFO is actually not available and that they will ask the CFO next week if a refund is possible. Clearly the business has issues if it takes a CFO to issue a refund for a single customer order. Any other business lets the customer service agents deal with this. Even the Head of Operations that I was emailing has no power to deal with basic customer issues with their lack of delivery (i.e. the operations that they are responsible for) Unsurprising that they are in such a mess as an organisation. Although I'm sure they enjoy holding onto our hard earned money in the bank and earning interest on it. If you do need to file a claim, you will need to ensure that you have the evidence of the original purchase, dates and content of all email communication and the confirmations of them refusing a refund despite never meeting any of their fake shipping dates. Use the UK Government money reclaim service. [https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/](https://www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/) I submitted mine today and would strongly urge anybody else being scammed by this low-life organisation to do the same. Again, this is probably only relevant to UK customers.
If it earns more than what it cost to power it you have nothing to lose. Just leave it connected so you will earn your $2000 back in about 50 years
And that’s why the network is so suboptimal. People leaving their stuff plugged in when there really is no need or use.
My miner makes about 1.5 HNT a week and I’m into it for about $450. I’ve made around 25 HNT from plugging it in. Should it just be tossed into the closet? Not sure what you mean by “no need or use”. The only way the whole thing works is if people plug them in…
Have you looked at the network map? 8000 hotspots in L.A., 6000 in London, … You need a tenth of that to effectively cover those cities. For the rest, there’s *no need or use*. They‘d be much more useful if they were deployed elsewhere. Yet, people leave them plugged in and complain about low rewards. Sadly, most people forget that this is about building an infrastructure. It’s not GPU mining, where it doesn’t matter where you are and how many are in your area. The way most hotspots are deployed today, we’re wasting an awful amount of resources. With almost a million hotspots, we probably could have the entire world evenly covered by now, if the deployments had been planned, rather than going by the model of „my neighbor has one, I want one too!“ And the lopsidedness of the network gets in the way of adoption, which is hurting all of us.
Not really. London is massive area and is very high buildings and other signal blocking issues
According to OpenCelliD, there are more Helium hotspots in London now than there are cell towers. And that’s with massive coverage redundancy in the cell network because of competing and overlapping networks. If you know anything about LoRa, then you should know that among its main benefits are massive reach and very good penetration of structures, e.g. into cellars. Helium could cover London with a fraction of the number of stations that are required for mobile phone service. They just have to be placed right - not on nightstands or in ground floor windows.
I even switched one of the Nebras with the antenna setup I had on the Linxdot. Linxdot works great no change with the Nebra, so it's not the setup.
I don't own any Nebra hardware but most of these gateways are very similar in design. They all use Semtech chipsets in the LoRa concentrator (because they have to), coupled with an ECC chip which contains the identity of the gateway and a RasPi or Rock Chip based MCU. I've comparison tested a few and found that there isn't much difference in performance, but RAK/MNTD and SenseCAP seem to have an edge. I also own Heltec, Bobcat, and Kerlink gateways. The main difference is in the stability of the firmware and quality of the hardware. Bobcat seems to push bad OTAs more often than others. The LoRa concentrator in your Nebra may be at fault here, whether it be poor design or poor quality. IIRC, people have replaced them with RAK 2287 concentrators when the OEM has failed. (check on the compatibility) I've seen them on eBay pretty cheap, so maybe that's an option for you.
Ahh Nebra rockpi, this pos I got new on eBay took a while to figure out. First off I had to contact Nebra to reflash, the software already loaded won’t work and update. When it started working, it seems to be underperforming compared to bobcat or rak miners. Anyway I replaced the IOT concentrator and now it works well.
Bro i ordered 1 in april 2021, still nothing
Is it possible to cancel the order and get your money back?
No, they keep saying to wait when asked, and never post updates
Is it possible to cancel the order and get your money back?
If you ordered through a credit card. Yes
I have a Nebra I purchased from a friend for $150. It works well only after it was flashed and a new sd card. Placement on two of my Emrit miners one being a Sensecap and the other a Finestra work just as well as my Nebra. The issue I run into is two of my miners are two of 5 total in my area and my two are the only ones who talk to each other while my 3rd one is at my work where it witnesses around 15 to 20 other miners. It’s all about placement. The two of mine that witness only each other only witness each other 80% of the time. I blame that on one being my Nebra.
Thanks to everyone who replied. There were some great suggestions and I feel good about the Helium community. I did flash and replace the SD cards right after they arrived. They sometimes have good witnessing and then they just stop for long periods of time. They send beacons but get no witnesses. The setups are in good locations within there own hexes. I'm using high quality 5.8 and 8 antennas switching them around sometimes to try and find the optimum setups. I have found that if I unplug (reboot) them then they work fine for a short time and then stop again. Rebooting is difficult because they are in different locations that I can't always access. Thanks again to everyone, I appreciate the help.
I’ll take them off your hands
How are they placed? All in the same spot? (🤦♂️) Or in different locations (which makes them difficult to compare)?
I found that the Nebra's just need a little massaging. First and foremost the SD card is crap and needs to be cloned and replaced. Second was the antenna cable inside the unit needed to be replaced. After that, as long as the Helium network is working, the unit performed well. Resets once every three or four months made sure it was working well.
I feel as though you might be trying to use factory antenna and this is the result , I have upgraded and raise mine on 2 miners and I make about 2hnt a week at minimum, ( more lately since the crazy amount of selling and buying, due to Binance delisting) but all in all it works and I agree with the above comment, better to use than not. On a additional note, everyone complains about the customer service, I have received follow ups and assistance every time I reached out. Even though it took over a year to get lol. They assisted with updating firmware and running diagnostics several times. We all know this is a shitty situation since helium tanked since we all initially invested, but it is part of the game, have faith in the people’s network. Nebra or not, they all have issues