How to prepare Dragino LPS8  (Helium Data-Only Hotspot) to earn $HNT (Windows PC)

This article is about preparing an LPS8 Dragino helium hotspot as a Data-Only Helium gateway to mining $HNT at a later time as part of Milestone 2.

1. Upgrade your LPS8 Dragino helium hotspot to the latest firmware

Make sure your gateway has the latest firmware installed. The link below will help you do this. (Please proceed to step 5 ONLY. you won’t need to install the Helium gate_rs using SSH anymore. Dragino has made it easy by adding this option in the device admin panel (GUI))
https://www.choovio.com/dragino-lorawan-gateway-to-helium-hotspot/

– Log in to your router panel and navigate to LoRaWAN –> Helium IoT

– Click on “Download_Helium_Server”, once done, click on “Install_Helium_Server”. Lastly hit the Save&Apply button.

2. Setup a Helium CLI Wallet to link the LPS8 Dragino helium hotspot

– Download the most recent Wallet release from here: https://github.com/helium/helium-wallet-rs/tags.
Unzip the file and copy the helium-wallet binary in your $PATH directory. To keep it simple we copy the file to C:\ in this example. The result will be a directory in C:\ containing 3 files:

– Now we are going to add this path to the Windows System Environment Variables. Type and search for “envi” and the link to a pop-up window will appear. Click on “Edit Environment variables for your system” to go to the pop-up window.

– Create a New User Variable by entering the name (anything) and value (which in our case is a directory in C: containing Helium Wallet files)

– Open Windows PowerShell
Option A: Creating a new Helium Wallet. If you already have a Helium mobile Wallet, please ignore the following steps and follow Option B that is much easier.- enter helium-wallet create basic

Option B: Importing a mobile wallet that is already generated– enter:

helium-wallet create basic --seed mobile --force

– You will be prompted to enter your mobile wallet seed words

– Enter helium-wallet info

– Copy the Wallet Address. In our case it is 13fdtPtvDynaqiF6u8Jq9gPoZydMyH9qpXKDz4t54y64uodR1D– Please keep Windows PowerShell open, because we will use it again soon.

– Make sure you have sufficient funds to cover the fees below:* add data only hotspot: 1000000 DC ($10)* assert location: 500000 DC ($5)

To get Data Credits please follow the instructions below:

1. Open an account with an online crypto exchange platform.
   – make sure it supports HNT and will not freeze your assets for a long time (like 15 days)
2. Charge your account with FIAT, e.g., $50
3. Buy HNT (minimum of one HNT to cover the total cost of adding and asserting hotspot, which is $15 / 1500000 DC)
4. Send HNT to your CLI or Mobile wallet (if it’s already synced with your CLI wallet)
5. Burn HNT to make sufficient DC available using the following command:

   helium-wallet burn --amount 0.64420305 --payee 146pUwqFRfPQ17tbUBhCFanW4nGGme34VZ6oYjQNt76esVu9fHb --commit

   – 0.64420305 is the amount of HNT you want to burn. Please do the math yourself. You may also want to burn all HNT you have to DC to spend for other hotspots in the future.

Please use the following command to burn HNT to DC:

helium-wallet burn --amount THE_AMOUNT --payee YOUR Wallet_Address --commit

** Please be aware some crypto exchange platforms may freeze your asset for up to 15 days after purchase.

3. Adding Hotspot to your wallet:

We need to Connect to the Dragino over SSH.

• Choose the SSH client of your choice. In this example, we will use Putty.
• Enter LPS8 IP address and change the port from 22 to 2222 and then click open.
• There will be a security pop-up alert; click yes.
• Login as root with password “dragino” (or your password in case you have changed it before)
• Run cd/tmp
• Enter the command below (Don’t forget to replace WALLET_ADDRESS with the address that you copied from the Windows PowerShell:

/etc/init.d/helium_gateway add --owner WALLET_ADDRESS --payer WALLET_ADDRESS

Or use this command instead in case the command above doesn't work:

helium_gateway add --owner WALLET_ADDRESS --payer WALLET_ADDRESS

• Hit enter
• The output has a field named “txn”. Copy the value, since we need to use it as the input to a wallet command.
• Switch back to your Windows PowerShell window and enter the following command:

  helium-wallet hotspots add YOUR_txn_VALUE --commit

   
• At this point please make sure you backup the data only hotspot’s keypair here to somewhere safe. The Key can be found here:

/etc/helium_gateway/gateway_key.bin

4. Assert Your LPS8 Dragino Helium Hotspot:

Use the Windows PowerShell and the following command to assert your hotspot.

 helium-wallet hotspots assert --gateway DATA_ONLY_HOTSPOT_PUBKEY --lat=37.7806295 --lon=-122.4008481 --mode dataonly --commit

Notes:
– lat & lon (latitude & longitude) values MUST match your Hotspot’s location
– This site helps you find GPS coordinates: https://gps-coordinates.org/
– To find your Hotspot public key, use Putty to make an SSH connection to your gateway and enter the following command:
helium_gateway key info

We update this post whenever there are official changes from Helium or Dragino. or a new firmware is released.

Here is also another useful link by the Dragino team:

https://wiki.dragino.com/index.php?title=Notes_for_Helium#Use_Dragino_Gateways.2FHotspots_with_Helium