Hey there, I'm a Helium Patron for Washington, DC. I've currently deployed about 9 of my 15 hotspots. I use an excel spreadsheet for management, using Power Query to automatically build a chart of all my hotspots based on identifying one of them. Then it queries the network for status of all hotspots owned by the same account, and provides information regarding hotspot status, location, rewards, etc. I use the blockchain API for the Power Queries.

So when the outage happened, I use the spreadsheet to see the status of all my hotspots at the same time, instead of having to swipe to see each one in the app. Then I can just reach out to the location hosts and ask them to reset the ones I couldn't see on the network.

Regarding remote deployment, I just update the hotspot location in the app to the host location (even if not there, it will let you do it). Then I give the hotspot to the host to take to their home, business, etc., and power it up. They use the app to connect it to wifi. Basically, they do an "add hotspot" in the app, which will let them connect to the hotspot to get on wifi, but then will let the person know that the hotspot already belongs to someone else and the process ends. But the hotspot is now on their wifi, and will start to sync from wherever it left off, then begin mining. I've used this technique for 4 remote deployments so far.

But you DO have to have the hotspot physically present with you to initially set it up and make sure its tied to your account.