General Information
The gateway contains the Kerlink OS called KerOS, and on top of that the Helium software (composed of an
Erlang runtime package and the Miner for the full miner, or the Light Miner package).
The software is automatically and remotely managed, it is not user serviceable. You don't need to worry
about it.
The Full Miner communicates over a peer-to-peer (P2P) network and needs to connect to the remote port
44158. Hence, other miners must have this port forwarded to their miner IP address, and so should you.
Indeed, other miners will want to connect to your miner too.
This is explained in detail in the Helium documentation:
The behavior of the Full Miner is to keep the blockchain in sync, and mine HNT through the LoRa radio:
- This means that when cold started, the miner will download a snapshot (a package containing recent
blocks, the list of gateways on the network, etc) and ingest it. Once done, and at any point in
time, the miner will receive blocks over the P2P network and ingest them.
- In parallel, the LoRa radio is constantly listening to nearby packets and sends them to the Helium
network in two ways: either it's a paid packet, and your miner will try to sell it and get paid for
it; or it's a beacon transmitted by another miner, in which case your miner will try to know who
challenged it, try to contact it (and hope it's not relayed!) to tell it "I saw this beacon". Later,
a validator will process the transaction sent by the challenger and all parties will get rewards.
- Also in parallel (using both of the above), the miner may receive a challenge over the P2P network
and send a beacon to the LoRa radio. Any nearby miner may receive it and process it (see bullet 2).
Sources of information
Helium Explorer is an immensely useful tool to self-diagnose and troubleshoot your miner. However, it
comes with a few caveats:
- the sync state is not updated very often
- the relay state is not updated very often
- in general, the API height is not always accurate
So, if you want the best information, please use:
Helium Explorer for...
- Beacons: see if you challenged, get challenged, and witnessed challenges
- All activity: see more detailed beacons information
- Rewards: rolling 24h, 7d and 30d windows
- Rewards: see individual reward transactions
This onboarding dashboard for...
- The sync state
- The current miner height
- The last time the miner was seen alive
- The last block age
- The P2P status
- Any other online tool may be also as reliable as this dashboard or explorer (especially to ping,
detect relay/p2p status, etc). They are very good third party tools that can provide useful
insights.
Self diagnostic
Check the following on your dashboard (enter your public key
here):
- all values are updated every 15 minutes, so you should be able to have data less than 15 min old
- Connectivity must show a recent date
- Blockchain API height may be wrong, it is informative and safe to ignore
(it comes from the Helium Explorer API)
- Miner height is important, it shows what is the height of the last
ingested block
- Miner last block age is the most important KPI, it must be under 30
minutes
- P2P information is informative, and you should take action if the P2P NAT type is not "none"
- Software versions is informative only, you don't need to worry about it
Troubleshooting
OK, now when is it time to worry or relax? ๐
๐ Relax even if...
- Rewards change a lot from one day to another
- My miner "flatlined" for a couple of hours
- I have no witness in a couple of hours
- I have no challenges in a few hours
- I have no beacons in a couple of days
๐ฑ Get help if...๏ธ
- I have about 10 miners around me, and I have zero witnesses in over 24 hours
- I have not created a single challenge in over 24 hours
- I have not sent a single beacon in over 3 days
- The dashboard has shown a block age over 30 minutes for more than 12 hours in a row
Conclusion
If you fall in the ๐ list, please refrain from asking for support. You are obviously still free to
do so, but the likelihood of your problem being solved by itself in a few hours is very high; your
problem might be solved before anyone from support may even have time to look into it.
If you fall in the ๐ฑ list, please contact your reseller for support.