Troubleshooting

Basically you should sit and wait. Sometimes a restart may work. But basically it’s not stable now since the Validator and Hotsopt are still upgrading. Be patient. Read https://engineering.helium.com/ to get to know the latest status. In the first several weeks, your hotspot will continue syncing from the blockchain. Once the upgrade is totally done, your hotspot will become a real light gateway.

bobcat / miner

(1). Download Bobber App. Create a Bobber account in the App using your email and password.

(2). Link to your Helium App account.

(3). Click “hotspots” Tab, wait for the message “Synced your hotspots to dashboard!“, if it failed, quit the Bobber App and try again.

(4). Click Web Dashboard in your App, or login directly from web browser: https://bobber.cloud.

There are 2 types: Helium OTA – it will update the Helium Miner which is a node in the blockchain. Maker OTA – it will update the settings outside Helium Miner.

The OTA will happen automatically after your hotspot started. If you just got your hotspot, please connect to internet and leave it there until it’s upgraded to the latest version firmware. Or you may have bluetooth connection issue, onboarding issue, etc since it may restart during your operations.

If it’s a message in your Helium App try https://onboarding.dewi.org/api/v2/hotspots/{your_key}, if your hotspot not found, then “CONATCT YOUR HOTSPOT MAKER”.

If it’s a message in your Diagnoser and the light is RED/YELLOW and your miner has started longer than 1 hour. It can be Network issue, ECC issue, EMMC issue or some other miner issues. Try reboot, if not work, try RESET -> FAST SYNC.

Maybe there are something wrong in it. You can try RESET (wait for 30 minutes) and then FASTSYNC (wait for 30 minutes) your miner. Make sure you are using Ethernet and don’t loose power when doing this. The username and password is: bobcat/miner. In the future, you don’t have to sync to the blockchain anymore.

Use Bobcat Diagnoser to see the Miner status in your hotspot.

RED light means your Miner isn’t started. Miner is a docker process in your Bobcat machine. If it has been less than 10 minutes, it’s OK because maybe it was caused by a restart after an OTA update. If it lasts several hours, maybe it got stuck during the OTA, you can try to restart it. If the light is still RED, you need to contact your hotspot maker to get support. See Why Offline / Syncing.

Use Bobcat Diagnoser to see the Network status in your hotspot.

YELLOW light means that Miner has been started but it can’t connected to the Internet. If you use RESET, RESYNC, or FASTSYNC in Diagnoser, it will also cause YELLOW light ( better to wait at least 1 hour if your saw a YELLOW light). Or sometimes the Autosync is running. You can wait in that case. If it’s only been several minutes, it can be caused by OTA update, Network disconnection or some other network issues. For network issues, please see Network.

When you see this, and the light is white or YELLOW , your hotspot is downloading and loading a snapshot! Don’t touch it, wait 1 hour to let it finish the process. It will come back. It it takes longer than 1 hour, you can power off and the power on your hotspot.

The Firmware is being automatically updated. This can take several minutes and will go back to Green once it completes.

BLUE light means the bluetooth is in match mode. You can connect to Bluetooth and do a diagnosis. If it doesn’t disappear, restart the Miner.

Investigating. The only information found: https://github.com/helium/blockchain-core/blob/9011de7537ecfd737074b85b7b16e7d8e1ceef00/test/blockchain_hex_SUITE.erl#L343 . It was said that the bluetooth is still in Pair mode but some miners entered CYAN color directly right after miner restarted. Basically you should contact your hotspot maker for RMA.

There are 4 screws in the back of the box. You can lift the cover after 4 screws removed. (Nothing else need to be removed, try hard, it’s a little bit tight.)

See Network to solve the Relay. The Helium Explorer has a big delay. The relayed status in Explorer can have several hours deday. If your Diagnoser shows nat type “none”, it should be OK. After light gateway released, there will be no p2p_status.

The Helium Explorer has a big delay. It has a delay. If your Miner’s light is green, you can just wait, the status will change to “syncing/synced” later. Use your Diagnoser to see the latest status.

The “Needs Attention” warning is basically “Relay”/”Offline”/”Not Syncing”/”Syncing”. But it’s a delayed status. You can use Helium Hotspot Utility App to diagnose it to get latest status of your Miner.

For Bobcat, you can also use the Web Diagnoser.

Use Bobcat Diagnoser to see the Temperature & Network in your hotspot.

A sample report:

After light gateway, no relayed. You can skip below.

1. Your blockchain.db is reset

If the blockchain.db is too big (over 40G for bobcat), the blockchain.db will be deleted and resynced from the latest snapshot. Sometimes, your blockchain database will be broken, in that case, the miner will try to fix it by deleting the old database and start to sync from the scratch.

2. Your network has an issue

Take a look at the light of your Miner. If it’s RED, restart the Miner. If it’s YELLOW, test the WiFi it’s using. If it’s connecting to a Cable, connect the Cable to another device to test the Internet. If internet is OK, restart the Miner and wait until it’s back to GREEN. All these operations should be after you reserved your miner’s IP address.

The issue can also be a laggy WiFi connection.

Some have low latency, some have high.

{
  "DownloadSpeed": "5 Mbit/s",
  "UploadSpeed": "9 Mbit/s",
  "Latency": "24.621771ms"
}
{
  "DownloadSpeed": "55 Mbit/s",
  "UploadSpeed": "20 Mbit/s",
  "Latency": "85.234333ms"
}

3. The Explorer status is wrong

Too many hotspots are joining everyday. The Helium API servers kept scaling out but sometimes it can’t catch up the speed of hotspots adding speed. In this case, it’s possible the API shows laggy height and wrong status.

4. Blockchain goes too fast

This often happens after a chain halt. The fastest speed of producing blocks is 50 seconds. The expected block time is 60 seconds. After a chain halt, the blockchain will try to run as it’s fastest speed when possible to produce blocks. In this case, some miners may not able to catch up the speed. But the blockchain will finally back to 60s so your hotspot will also back to synced.

The Region of your miner is decided by asserted location. If you can’t assert location, it will be undefined. Sometimes it will take some time, just wait. If your country can’t be found in https://github.com/helium/miner/blob/master/priv/countries_reg_domains.csv, it will be “Undefined”. The region is defined on chain..

Use Bobcat Diagnoser to get the newest Firmware version in your hotspot.

Sometimes OTA can take up to 24 hours. If the firmware version still shows old version after OTA finished, there are two possiblities. For the first time, I suggest your plug in your ethernet cable, leave it there 1 day to let it sync and finish the OTA.

Using very long cable is a bad idea. There is a calculator to calculate the loss. See Antenna. LMR400 – LMR600 cable has very little loss, but is much thicker and less flexible than RG58 or LMR240 cable, making it harder to work with. SNR too clear will also cause lower HNT, so it should be combination with your Antenna, the height of your Antenna and the Location.

There is an issue with the App constantly showing syncing, but the explorer is more accurate according to the Helium web page.

NO. Only Synced hotspots can do beacon / witness. The API / explorer is behind. Sometimes you can see a Syncing hotspot beaconing / witnessing, but it is actually fully synced. For acurate status, only by using the app diagnostics for a hotspot you own. Otherwise everything is sort of laggy.

Restart your miner and try again. Sometimes it has latency.

You can also Use Bobcat Diagnoser to diagnose your Bobcatminer.

Restart your miner and wait for several minutes. When the light changed to YELLOW or GREEN, try pair mode again.

If you have multiple Bobcats, it always find the first one, try to switch your phone’s Bluetooth off and on between pairings.

Contact your hotspot maker to get a new one or buy 1 if you don’t want to wait. For Bobcat, you can buy a replacement on Amazon. The type is 12V 1A. Sample:

These errors may include:

You already own this Hotspot.

I guess you are very RICH because you are adding many Miners in a row 😆 . It’s a good thing but the App is not as stable as you think 🙁 . After you finished adding the first Miner, the bluetooth is still enabled and you started to add the second one. Maybe the App will show you the first one which you’ve already added. Acutually you are trying to add the first one again. You can power off the first one after it was added OR wait for several minutes before adding the second one.

Unable to find Hotspot in the Onboarding Server.

I guess you are a Helium Network Pioneer or the hotspot miner support team was trying their best to process your order in a very high priority. In this case, maybe your Miner wasn’t from the factory product line directly. It’s from a special channel to give fastest delivery. But in that case, some onboarding MISS may happen because it’s a manual work. Bascially you need to contact your Miner support team and tell them your Mac Address, they can fix this issue.

Hotspot miner is waiting to start. Please try again in a few minutes.

After your Miner connected to the internet, it will try to get the latest update and install it. Keep it online and wait until the light becomes green. Then maye you will see the light switches between RED and GREEN several times which the Miner is restarting by itself. If you are trying to add your miner during the restarting , you will get this error.

Unable to Add Hotspot for reason: {invalid, gateway_already_active}

This is a blockchain transaction error. You Miner won’t be add to the blockchain right way. The CG/Validator need to approve the transaction which needs some time. If the Miner has already been added, you will see this error in the transaction log.

Device xxxx-xxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx was disconnected.

This is because the Miner isn’t started. You can wait for several minutes to try again. If it’s not working after several times, maybe you need support from your Hotspot maker.

Bobcat & Rak is using RP SMA Female Connector (1).

You need a RP SMA Male adapter to connect to it.

You may also need to choose N type connector to connect to your Non-stock Antenna.

There are several possibilities.

1. No other hotspots in your Antenna’s coverage.

If there are only several Miners in your area, it’s possible they don’t talk with each other depending on their Antenna types. For example, in the image below, there are only 3 miners in this area. Hotspot 3 is Offline, maybe Hotspot 2 is using a Panel Antenna which only talks to futher Hotspots. In this case, Hotspot 1 will be of NO WITNESSES.

2. Your Antenna is broken.

In this case, your miner also has NO WITNESSES. See Bobcat Antenna Repair

Look at the image below, I have a hotspot worked well but it suddenly stopped beacon and witness after 5:19pm. In this case, I can still see “Packets Transferred”, but it’s not from Antenna, it’s for some contribution to the transaction operations. In the next several days, I totally lost all witnesses and all beacons were 0. I went to the roof, and noticed the Antenna cable connecting to Bobcat totally disconnected maybe caused by the wind.

3. Your Network has a very strict Firewall.

If your Network has a very strict firewall, your Miner won’t be able to sent out a witness receipt. Understanding Witnesses and Relayed Hotspots

Relay maybe caused by strict Firewall but not all the Relays. Some relayed hotspots can also sent out receipt but with low efficiency.

4. Maybe your Network is too slow.

I have seen some hotspots only have several kb/s speed. In this case, it can’t catch up the speed of blockchain and the activities will become strange. Some hotspots have a good download and upload speed in the test but with very big latency. The latency can be caused by your Router, ISP, etc. You can search for what can cause latency.

Use Bobcat Diagnoser to diagnose your Bobcatminer.

Sometimes it’s not your side, it’s the Blockchain.

If your beacons looks like the image below, that means your Miner tried PoC but failed. Basically in this case, your miner should be relayed or behind a strict firewall.

If you have had Beacons before but it disappeared recently although you still have a lot of Witnesses, it may caused by the Network Firewall even you opened port 44158. It is possible that your hotspot starts to send out beacons again after restarting / reseting your ISP modem / router, or rebooting your router.

If it disappears again after rebooting/reseting, it may caused by Packet Filter Rules which filters the packets from/to your Miner. Try to add pass rules or disable deny rules to make packets pass. See Network.

It’s also possible that your ISP company banned traffic from/to your Miner from their side. In this case, you need to change your IP address but that’s not easy. Also some routers have port forwarding issues can also cause this problem.

If your Miner has good network settings but didn’t sent out a Beacon from the beginning, maybe your Antenna / Pigtail is broken. See Bobcat Antenna Repair.

Your hotspot is not sending out beacons but you still have a lot of Witnesses. It is very hot and it has been connected by too many Miners. Basically in this case, I think you can give up, your witness income will be Good Enough. 😀

Discovery Mode isn’t a real simulation of beacon and witness. Sometimes it won’t work as expected. It can help you do troubleshooting but don’t rely on it.

You can try Discovery Mode at night. There is little noise at night which may give you a good result. If the Disco Mode is working and you haven’t received any response, check points below. Discovery Mode only work for Helium OG miners.

1. Your network doesn’t allow incoming / outgoing connections.

Look into your router, open 44158, change packet rules, etc. Sometimes restarting your router / your Miner may fix it too. See Network.

2. Your Antenna is broken, your cable isn’t connected well orthe Antenna Signal is too weak.

Try to use a “Digital Multimeter” to test your Antenna Cable & Pigtail if you have one. See Antenna.

3. All the hotspots nearby are Offline / Syncing / Relayed / Weak Signal / Using Directional Antenna. 😆

Buy more Bobcats, then build your own Online / Synced / Non-Relayed / Strong Signal / 360°C Antenna miner network.

Order NOW

See Bobcat Antenna Repair.

The stock bobcat antenna is outdoor rated & waterproof.

See Antenna.

Good Location / High Enough / Online / Synced / Non-Relay / Strong Signal / Good Network / Lucky. That’s it. After light hotspot released. You don’t have to care about the syncing status anymore.

See Tuning Your Hotspot.

Take care of your Cash Cow!

Don’t put it in high humidity / temperature environment. To be continued.

Sorry I never use it. I always put Paperclips in my wallet. 😆

Please see detailed instruction: https://docs.helium.com/wallets/app-wallet/transfer-hotspot/

The Hotspot must be fully synced with the location asserted, and have recent network activity for the transaction to succeed. Recent Activity is described as witness, beacon, or challenger activity in the past 1200 blocks.