A Technophobes Story
To get an understanding of the irony of our new project, I will give you a bit of insight. I am a technophobe and I barely know how to use my mobile phone, David my partner is most definitely not. He learnt how to 'code' so he could turn our new build extension into a smart home; living in rural Bulgaria it's not just a case of going to the shop and buying these things. He has turned a basic wood burner into a touch screen and voice activated heating system. You may ask why this is relevant, well as he regularly buys electronic parts, and uses Arduino micro controllers and I.O.T (internet of things, I know a silly name) he gets a lot of those 'things that might interest you' notifications. One of these notifications was about Helium and mining a token called HNT.
That is how this started, he liked the look of it and started researching, it took him 2 weeks before he told me about it, he wanted to be sure he understood and knew a bit about it before asking me what I thought. I also liked the sound of it but had to do my own research too, so I started reading everything I could find, we watched videos together about it and had many conversations about if it would be viable, in the mornings we would talk about what new things each of us had found out. We decided let’s do this.
What is the project?
Ok so the project is about building a network for IOT devices that will not cost as much to use as mobile networks do. There are many sensors that need a network to share data and this is what the Helium network (also known as the peoples network) aims to achieve. If people buy the miners or hotspots they create coverage and build a network for the transfer of data. The people that buy hotspots get rewarded by POC or proof of coverage in the form of a token (crypto currency) called HNT. For us in rural Bulgaria the data transfers will probably not get a lot of traffic but we are still going to give it a try.
Buying a miner
So you think this will be the easy bit. Well no, but this is where the fun begins. There were four manufactures available to us Rak, Nebra, Syncrobit or Bobcat and as we have done our research the ones that have good reviews and are delivering on time are Bobcat, so that’s the ones we will go for even though they are slightly more expensive.
How do you even buy one of these, well not with a Visa card! So first things first, we need to open an account with Binance or an exchange that turns pounds (in the crypto world normal currency is known as FIAT) into a crypto currency. So we follow the steps, take a selfie whilst blinking......... I have never taken a selfie but I find the button on the phone and on we go and eventually the account is set up. Then we have to wait a few days to be verified and should be good to go. This is where 'wait and be patient' starts and will be a common theme throughout this project.
Now we have to transfer our money into the new account, then convert it, then calculate the fees, then transfer it to the Bobcat account(wallet) and it has to be exact or you can lose the money completely!
That makes us nervous to start with, we must have checked the maths at least 6 times my heart is pounding and my hands are sweaty. We have the order on one page; we switch tabs on the computer to pay on another. Then we have to have a crypto wallet to send the money to. We then check a QR code with a long string of letters and numbers that has to be exact also. This is all new to us but we press send anyway. We now have to wait for a confirmation email that can take up to an hour. We don’t move we just anxiously wait, looking at the screen in front of us, it seems to take an eternity, but then it arrives and it all looks good. I then write down the order number and details on a piece of paper obviously!
We now have a 12 - 20 week wait for our 2 miners to arrive. Wait and be patient again.
