US - Utah

[void iris]

The antenna should also be 1/2 wave (or 1/4, i dont remember) from the ground to allow the RF waves to form properly

[hallow dagger]

Very cool.

https://tenor.com/view/earth-is-flat-matty-matheson-cookin'-somethin'-taco-bell's-crunchwrap-supreme-flat-earth-gif-12845690149116655477

They even have a flat earth option!

[void iris]

hahahaa

[vital hemlock]

@hallow dagger any time we are dealing with the mqtt spam I'd expect that the performance would be terrible. I dont love moving to medium fast, but if we do then that node would likely take over what we use Lake Mountain for now. If you want to test the next time you can get up there let me know. You can of course do it remotely, if you have the admin channel up, but I would hate to mess up a config and then have it inaccessible. I always test with nodes I have in hand before I push a config to my roof. 😄

[mental grove]

It's an interesting dilemma to put mesh nodes on a mountain top. In a way, it defeats the purpose--unless you're going purely for distance, and not bandwidth. They don't put cell towers on top of mountains in dense populations as they don't want every radio (or in that case, phone) activated by one site. It might be worth designing these sites to be directional to a node (or a few nodes) instead of the whole valley. Your node, even though it may be miles away from me, could become a better hop to my neighbor just blocks away. Now multiply that out as the network grows. Definitely worth doing some experimenting and testing.

[vital hemlock]

You're not wrong, it's something I brought up a lot when the node count started to explode. I dont assume it'll be an issue for a while though, and we dont have good mesh coverage right now without nodes like this or Lake Mountain

These well placed nodes are a major reason the MQTT issue is such and issue, it's a double-edged sword.

Meshtastic is also, by design, low bandwidth. I dont think we'll ever seen meshing successfully with these above 30 miles or so. I could be wrong, but I doubt it from what we've seen.

There have also been a lot of suggested routing changes to 3.x, which isnt coming any time soon I believe. And that would alleviate some of these concerns. Flood routing is all that is used now, but the neighbor info might come into play sooner rather than later

[hallow dagger]

I see your point, and if I remember correctly the Meshtastic broadcast algorithm actually prioritizes distance making more distant radio retransmit messages sooner than closer ones. I would expect that the actual node being addressed, if its direct would respond sooner than a router, but I could be wrong.

[vital hemlock]

Neighbor info is great for stationary nodes, but we need these well placed nodes for hand helds moving around the valley's.

[void iris]

It prioritizes lower quality connections, meaning a mountaintop node with LOS could be prioritized over a node a block away through buildings

[hallow dagger]

I'm happy to test new settings anytime. I have to go back there up there soon anyway with new mounting hardware so if I screw anything up administering remotely it won't be long before I can reset it.

[vital hemlock]

Is that actually bad? Honest question.

[void iris]

it pushes more traffic onto routers which retransmit it to many more nodes than may be necessary, thus taking airtime away from traffic that may actually need to jump over the well placed router

If the traffic can jump localy, it would lessen the strain on the mountaintop nodes. This would require a more robust routing protocol however

[mental grove]

I'm not advocating against putting stations high above terrain--we're all at the stage at one time or another where we want to see how far our reach can be, and that may be what draws people into the project more than anything (like what I think is going on in the UK). I don't think any of us right now would rely exclusively on this project for our emergency communications. It'll be fun to see how this develops out. I spent the eclipse down in Austin/San Antonio, and had a couple radios along with me, and they are putting nodes up on some of the tall (like 600'+) towers, and it seems to work fairly well, but there were fewer participants that I saw on, at least during that 10 days.

EDIT: I take that back, I bet there are some around here in Utah who have carefully designed their network and would rely on it exclusively for a disaster. I'm not there yet.

[mental grove]

Totally agree with this, I saw this in San Antonio. All I had was a couple Heltec V3's (with the smallest antennas), but due to their tower sites, I had surpirisingly decent coverage. I knew it was unlikely that there would be so many people there for the eclipse that their 4G/5G networks would get swamped, but I really felt like I could have used MT if that had been the case.

[wild rivet]

It seems as though ham radio repeater mountaintop mentality is less valuable than many somewhat prominent locations and let the mesh do the lifting. Thoughts?

[vital hemlock]

Because of @dim bay 's Lake Mountain location we have the two valleys bridged essentially. If that makes the mesh too busy we could make changes. Early on I thought we could shoot for Farnsworth peak to reach Tooele, but when I brought my radio over there this month there were no others. If the mqtt spam stops at some point we can actually look at airtime usage over time. It's been a big concern, it's busy right now.

We have talked about putting a second node at Lake Mountain that is running medium/fast, it's like 3 times more bandwidth, and helps "a lot". But we'd still want a handful of default long/fast radios for new folks to rely on to help mesh. If a few of us in the Salt Lake valley move to medium fast on these well placed nodes we'd lose the chatter from the Provo valley and have bandwidth to spare.

[chilly sparrow]

There are very few nodes down in Utah County. I'm struggling with why I can communicate with nodes across the valley but not to my own home node that is a couple of miles away. Are the mountaintop nodes sucking up what could have been little local hops?

[vital hemlock]

If you dont have decent line of sight to the local nodes, you still likely do to the Lake Mountain node. That's most likely the case

"Most" of the time the well placed nodes on the benches facilitate talking to nodes that are a few miles away. It's all about line of sight.

If your hop count is set to 3 try raising it to 4 or 5, see if that eliminates the issue. You can also trace route to nodes and see what route it's taking.

[lilac shadow]

correct me if im wrong - but doesnt traceroute also sorta turn on the radio , ive noticed that after I traceroute a bunch of nodes will come online and i can get around a little easier...

also i noticed in the Android app Radio Config - LoRa - "Ignore MQTT" option. i know this was buggy before but i flipped it on and havent seen any offending nodes...

[main stag]

Someone saw an airliner a few weeks back. This is a fun youtube video who was having a convo with someone on a plane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0b3bqPgRw

[vital hemlock]

@native frost

[storm onyx]

Dang, finally found this Utah channel. I've got what I think is a decent roof router node in west Layton. My node is MACG_RTR.

Spoke with a "Connor" from South Ogden on a GMRS radio net last night about the challenges of getting between Ogden and Davis County due to HAFB topology.

[lilac shadow]

Hey, i also know that guy 😄 , im one of the people trying to work on a jump over that "HILL" though were getting a fair amount of nodes (listed and unlisted) in ogden that we might end up having a mesh down the I-15 corridor. so if we suddenly jump on the SLC/Utah Valley net, someone was the keystone to that bridge

Which i did see a radio test and message from a node near the ogden waterfowl management area. that might (if that guy has a good Ant) reach down to some nodes in layton or SLC .

[vital hemlock]

Hey @storm onyx 👋🏼
I'm in Taylorsville's southern border with West Jordan. I wont be able to see you directly because of a hill in our way, but I have seen your nodes through the mesh. 👍

I cant traceroute to them right now, but when I can I'll see what path they are taking

When I think to I send this channel's url out about once every other week or so, hoping folks will find their way here

[misty nebula]

Keep me in the loop. I'm trying to get a node on the Kaysville and Centerville bench. It would be great if they can see Antelope. Then perhaps use Antelope to airport to get around the bend.

[hallow dagger]

I sense POTM is feeling a little vulnerable with all the rumbling. God speed little guy.

[delicate zinc]

Oooh

Where is that node?

[tired urchin]

Is that the knob on the north end of steep? I've toplanded my paraglider there many times. New obstacle to avoid. Why not go for the summit where the old weather station and other existing stakes are?

[real estuary]

Want to introduce myself. I built my first node over 2 years ago. When I first turned it on it didn’t find any other nodes. I played with them for a couple months then shut them off. Turned them back on a couple of months ago and found a map full of color. I have 2 units one in Riverton and one in Draper at my shop. They are the CJP nodes. I’m not a ham operator but really want to get my license. Would love to be a part of building out this network of nodes. I’m still trying to learn about settings and antennas. So any help would be appreciated.

[vital hemlock]

Welcome Cody! You probably missed my nodes coming online by weeks 😕
We have a few well placed nodes right now, so the build-out phase is in a good place honestly. At some point we need a good north east and north west node, but we are "mostly" covered.
As for the antenna, everyone hates on the supplied antennas but the range records have almost all been set with them, because Lora is so tolerant of poor connections. If you want to upgrade your antenna there are a handful of good options. I would say that if it's a handheld I go with the 5dbi's, if it's a highly placed nodes I favor the 3dbi's. Again, we have recommendations there as well.

[dim bay]

And as far as a ham license, I recommend using hamstudy.org.
The site is ran by Richard Bateman, kd7bbc. He builds ham antennas and uses the proceeds to pay for the hamstudy website to keep it free for everyone. And when he builds the antennas, he arranges an antenna build night, invites a bunch of local ham operators over, orders pizza and gives the volunteers either a hamstudy.com shirt, or free antenna. Anyway, with the site, you create an account and do a practice test... then when you do the test again, it won't ask you questions you got right before, so it will help you focus on the questions you got wrong. Anyway, I know alot of hams who use it, and I even used it when I upgraded to a general license.

[real estuary]

Thanks for the information. I’m super excited about our mesh community. It’s been a fun little hobby.

[misty nebula]

Which antennas do you recommend for 5db? Links would be awesome. I grabbed some that Tactical Comm linked to but found two of them were broken at the joint.

[vital hemlock]

I’ll give you three options. The first I like the most, but it’s the most expensive. It’s a 1-2db that is well tested. You can get it a few places.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/te-connectivity-linx/ANT-916-CW-HW-SMA/2694126

Cheap, actually tuned well. Go in and out of stock.

https://a.co/d/aE4ctyl

Make sure to choose the right one. Real Ziisor’s are also tuned well and are considered good.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801688016561.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa

Don’t choose an RP-SMA, that’s reverse polarity. 👎

[wild rivet]

2nd this👆!!! Couldn't have done my higher licenses without it!
If you're a cramming kind if guy, his father in-law NV7V is your man.

[hot oracle]

If anyone is looking for a mag mount option. This one is excellent, I measured the SWR to 1.2:1 at 915MHZ. Cable loss is almost unmeasurable.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325866896542?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=8TR3A27SRDS&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=kUlUOTYsQtS&var=514912936750&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

[vital hemlock]

Oh no, SMA out of stock! Did you get an SMA or just use a converter?

[pale moat]

I am new (like 3 days new) to this. I'm in Saratoga Springs and my line of sight to, well, anything but my neighbors, is not great. I am seeing some messages come through, but all of my responses say, "Max retransmission reached."

It is a Heltec v3 with the stubby antenna that came with it. Am I just not getting a strong enough connection?

[vital hemlock]

Line of sight is definitely key a lot of times. Getting at least one antenna up higher to relay helps a lot. You “might” be able to reach Lake Mountain from there.

[pale moat]

Thank you! I’ll see what I can do.

[hallow dagger]

Yeah near the North East end of Steep Mtn. The orphaned pole was already there and I just piggybacked it, so not a new obstacle but a slightly bigger one now. I'd love to be able to attach it to the top of the existing weather station if UHGPGA would allow it. I don't have any association with that org though. If you do or know of somebody who does, maybe they could propose it. Don't know how extensively gliders are using Meshtastic but it could be an asset.

[dim bay]

I agree with what the other fellow said. Lake mountain is likely where you are getting those messages from, but if your antenna is not outside, or have a relay node outside, lake mountain won't hear you. That mountain top node hears alot of noise from Utah, salt lake and Davis counties. Think of all the other users of the 900mhz spectrum besides meshtastic. But since you are in your house out in "the sticks " you are not hearing any of the interference. It's perfectly clear as far as rf spectrum. So you may hear lake mountain fine, but it's going to take a little work on your end for lake mountain to hear you(if that's the only node you are hearing).

[toxic dragon]

Hey just getting the feet wet with meshtastic right now the node is the magna test node trying to figure where I can put nodes to bridge magna seems too far away.

[granite carbon]

Tried sending a message from West Jordan, let's see if the magna node gets it.

I don't trust the antenna that came with my TTGO to be really good for sending. Seems to work fine for recieving.

[dim bay]

I can reach it. Here is my path.

[toxic dragon]

So I am currently off California and bangerter at the moment

[toxic dragon]

Sounds like a good spot maybe link to park city as well

[granite carbon]

You could talk to the Utah VHF Society and see if they'd be willing to host a node up there with the ham radio repeaters that are already there.

[toxic dragon]

Doing some testing Sunday line of sight across the valley it was still a little hit or miss Direct messaging guessing I was still far away from the othere nodes. I was at usana and the other was at Pete's rock

That's a good idea I wonder if it would be worth while trying the same on Farnsworth peak

[granite carbon]

Never mind, I mixed up Francis peak with Hidden Peak. The ham repeaters are on top of the Snowbird tram house.

But they definitely have stuff at Farnsworth and elsewhere. Here's the list of the statewide repeater network they run. https://utahvhfs.org/snowlink.html

[granite carbon]

I really don't recommend putting random electronics on airport fences. It gets people angry.

[toxic dragon]

Ya they have a few I'm a ham as well

[hallow dagger]

Wow that's impressive!

That would be incredible. Just might be able to see the POTM node at the South end of the SL valley. Looks like there might be a very slight LoS.

A node at the North end of the SL valley would still be ideal... as a midway hop to valleys north.

[granite carbon]

I'm in West Jordan with a roof elevation of about 5100 feet. I'm planning on putting an antenna up there for meshtastic in the next year.

[void iris]

Does the POTM node not cover that area?

[hot oracle]

I was able to get SMA. I highly recommend throwing away most of the antennas that come with the Heltec and T-Beam radios.

[vital hemlock]

It’s tricky. We know that the supplied antennas suck, but as we’ve discussed before, almost all of the range records have been achieved with them.

[lilac shadow]

For the Ogden crowd , theres a node on the east bench which i cant find the operator to verify but is likely associated with the college. so aim for WSU with the long range Antenna if you get a chance

[lilac shadow]

@void iris were you driving north in the last few days?

[void iris]

Yeah, that's not my node though

[lilac shadow]

damnit

i swear i saw BP in salt lake ... thought it meant we had a brief connection to the SLC mesh (which makes sense with heavy cloud cover you could have a bounce )

[void iris]

Hahahah, I do see packets from the SLC side regularly from Saratoga Springs

[toxic dragon]

So if a packet gets sent to the public channel that should be trafficked to all nodes with public channel am I correct?

[vital hemlock]

That’s me 👋

[lilac shadow]

ahhhh

[vital hemlock]

I was down town at my office. I’m mostly remote these days, but I get up there from time to time.

Most of the bp_ nodes are mine. But there are a few others that have bp’s in their names. So popular

[lilac shadow]

okay... so maybe it was a faint , the node i saw you at is in ogden on a pretty good antenna in my garage but im going to think I got some kinda reflection off the clouds during the storm and OTAR blessed RF got to me up here

OTAR - God of Signal - welcome to the religion of 5/5 - may your bars be blessed - out

[mental grove]

That's probably one of my nodes, at family member's home above Ogden High. Right now it's indoors, but I will be improving it soon. But I have spoken with a faculty member at WSU (who is also a ham) about putting a node on the new HF antenna site they are designing for the engineering building, but I would not expect to reach Davis county at that location, even at 30' due to other obstructions on campus. He has mentioned they may investigate using Meshtastic in some of their coursework due to it's unlicensed nature.

[lilac shadow]

Neat also good to met the operator finally. I have intentions of putting a node at a family members house on the hill. it maybe the jump needed over hill so it will be good to have some other close by repeater nodes... I have this sick idea of moving to medium fast at some point

[vital hemlock]

They sent me an SMA even though I had ordered the RP-SMA because the others were out of stock. Nice. It's a bit smaller than I anticipated, but I'm eager to try it.

[lilac shadow]

I would be very happy about that, mostly cause morgan valley is easy to expand into if you make that jump...

[lilac shadow]

those "roads" are the new ski resort trails. its going to be private and they have the ridge line going south ... however its still under construction so you might be able to get up that way for a few months while its still being done ...

there are no public roads from the east sadly, if your willing to horse/walk in dm me and ill let you know which gates to go through

[lilac shadow]

from the east no, your going up FR60 or one of those other fireroads

[spring merlin]

wow, so much has happened here since i orignally joined. ya'll have been hard at work! i'll have to dig out my heltec and rak stuff and see if i can connect with someone soon

[spring merlin]

My original hope was to reach wvc from the avenues and from wvc to magna but it seems like as long as I can see one of yall's high placed routers it'll most likely repeat to just about anywhere in the valley. Does that seem more or less accurate?

[spring merlin]

wow! that's way better than i could have hoped! do you know if there is still the underlying issue with MQTT spam? i read almost this whole utah channel last night and it seems like that has become a huge problem lately. i know there was discussion of moving away from the current channel config, as well as pushing the meshtastic dev team to make changes. just kind of curious if there is any timeline on this?

#mqtt message

[spring merlin]

any update on this? i just found the harbor breeze light and it seems like a great base to build from. curious how it's holding up and how it ended up looking mounted with its antenna?

[solemn kraken]

Yeah I have one built like this and one built like the comms channel example. The harbor breeze one only has the single battery, the light is just there to hold it while testing. The comms channel one has 4- 18650s. Just doing some light testing in the backyard before I send one over to my parents house.

Here’s a better picture from the back where the antenna is mounted.

I also have a different base/mounting point I 3D printed for when I permanently install it.

[spring merlin]

this looks great! thanks for sharing! I'm definitely going to be grabbing one of these lights to play with

[solemn kraken]

There isn't a lot of room for batteries. So just be aware of that if you were planning on adding additional cells. I had a pouch style battery that had a higher capacity so I ended up cutting out the spot where the original cell was.

[spring merlin]

that makes sense, thanks for the heads up. i'm pretty excited to see so many active users around here. this is cool 🙂

i bought several rak starter kits and antennas back when they had a sale. kinda forgot about them when my 3d printer went wonky and my cat* chewed through my soldering iron cable... double defeat 😛 but seeing all this activity gives me motivation again

[vital hemlock]

@spring merlin the mqtt spam has definitely diminished. We never could narrow down who was doing it. It’s only popped up once in the past week or so and it was an accident, someone corrected it kinda quickly.

[spring merlin]

great news, thank you!

[spring merlin]

has there been any talk or consideration for a site similar to https://austinmesh.org/ for our local mesh? or is there any organization/discussion happening outside of the meshtastic discord here?

[brave mantle]

Hello

I made a 3D printable case for the heltec v3

Anyone interested?

[spring merlin]

looks good. what are the two holes at the top meant for?

[brave mantle]

Just another mounting option. Can put a string through those and hang it.

[storm onyx]

Attempt at a few more fars. Had it stop responding on Bluetooth and had to reflash the bootloader and factory erase before it stopped doing the "restart loop of death". Otherwise the solar and one 18650 has kept up. Will probably relocate when it starts getting hot. 18650 is rated to 122F and roof heat may destroy it or the radio.

[vital hemlock]

I made this to put it out over the side, helps keep the heat down
https://www.printables.com/model/305015-tbeam-outdoor-enclosure

I had planned on making an solar node, bought everything for it, then had enough success with this that I decided to call it "good enough for now"
That's my bp_roof node

That's on the south side of the house, because I have eave power just down from that. If I go solar I'll put it on the north side with only the panel and antenna above the roof line, keep the radio in the shadow of the eave to shield it from as much heat as possible. In winter you definitly need a larger cell count, mostly to slow charging when it's below freezing.

The "best" option is to use the LTO charger that keith made. The batteries are a little more expensive, but not terrible, and rated for very hot and very cold. Bonus, they dont go all explody when they die. 🙂

[spring merlin]

his charger sounds the nicest but it seems it's out of stock at the moment sadly

[vital hemlock]

Yeah, asking him about it myself

He’s trying to get more made

[spring merlin]

🙏

[spring merlin]

what mountain are you trying to get to? sure is soaked outside this morning

a while back i bought all the parts to do a couple rak solar nodes as well as 4 diy meshengers. finally gathered all my parts together again. got a new soldering iron and getting ready to start assembly on the meshengers 😄

nice! deploying a node in the mountains sounds like a blast, not gonna lie. i hope you have fun with it!

personally from what i've read i'd try to go with as much battery protection as possible and an oversized lifepo4 if you're hoping for minimal maintenance

I like that idea. I dont really see why it wouldn't work

[vital hemlock]

Pics of your build, when you get it done

[storm onyx]

Members of the Utah club, what is the most common RSSI you see for nodes in your list? Mttw and I were wondering why our equipment reports so many low performant RSSI numbers (IE -120 to -140 etc). Makes me wonder if my antenna sucks or I burned out my transceiver chip somehow. Or is that normal for LoRa?

A few improvements to see if giving some airflow underneath will stave off heatwave death this summer. I guess this will be my torture test. Also to see if this week's windageddon takes it away. 😀

[void iris]

the majority of radios I see are <-110db. The amount of radios you see should grow exponentially with distance, so it should make sense that the majority of them are at the edge of your range

[vital hemlock]

Lora can handle obscenely bad RSSI and SNR. It’s part of what makes it cool 😎

[mental grove]

Anyone else get a Heltec Capsule? This thing is tiny!

[void iris]

What's the battery life like on it?

[mental grove]

Just got it today, so not sure, but it claims: "The Capsule Sensor V3 is positioned as a portable LoRa/LoRaWAN device, with a 250mAh rechargeable battery. However, the capsule sensor V3 have a good low-power design, ~15uA in deep sleep mode. As our test, it can transmit about 6000 times LoRa packet when it is fully charged.

For example, if the data is sent every hour, it can continue to work for more than 6 months."

With the meshtastic firmware, I'm sure all that goes out the window.

[mental grove]

Well, the capsule was charged to 70% when I unpackaged it and configured it, I got about an hour out of it before the battery was depleted (but I was tracerouting everything I could find and driving around). During that time, it got pretty warm. I'm guessing it won't have the battery life of even a V3 when you consider it has a GPS...

I'll have to play with power savings.

[vital hemlock]

The gps is easy to remove, if you want to have your phone give the location

Some of the radios we have are able to switch the power to the gps modules. Let me check if they can with the capsule

If not, it's on a nice little press socket so it's easy to add/remove

None of the devs have mentioned it, so I'm guess you cant disable gps from software on it. sad

[mental grove]

So I don't have high hopes that the capsule will be very useful (and even less so with the GPS removed--but good to know that's an option), but on the other hand, I also received my 433Mhz radios, and anxious to deploy them. I can then feel how you early adopters felt when no one else was on 915.

[vital hemlock]

Just want to play with it on ham bands?

You might know better than I, but I thought the 900 band performed better. But I could be wrong 🙂

[mental grove]

433mhz is a mixed bag (up to 10W, better penetration of trees and buildings, can't run encryption, lots of non-LoRa devices to compete with). I'll play around with it, see if anyone else is out there--if not, I can say I did it and then convert it to a TinyGS ground station.

[storm onyx]

Well there's your problem! Ain't got no antenna wire innit! 😄

Be careful with those very thin antenna cables. They twist if the passthrough nut turns.

[mental grove]

No, because you can't transmit on the ISM band (433.050-434.790Mhz) with the power that Meshtastic uses, you're limited to only about 1mW. Hams are allowed to use 433Mhz at higher power since it's within their operating priviledges of 420-450mhz. (but with no encryption as you said, and with requirements to send their callsign, as with any ham operation).

But I would invite all Meshtastic users to look into getting an amateur radio license--not for Meshtastic, but just for the fact that you're likely a good candidate since you're already dabbling in this kind of stuff!

[vital hemlock]

I got my GMRS license, does that count? 😉

I've thought about doing the ham thing for about 20 years, havent followed through just yet

[granite carbon]

Hamstudy.org is a great free resource to learn with. It's run by a local ham in Utah county.

[tired urchin]

I have not tested for my license yet, but as far as prep goes the kb6nu No-Nonsense guide is a great resource as well:
https://www.kb6nu.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2022-no-nonsense-tech-study-guide-v2-20230204.pdf

[vital hemlock]

Yeah, it's the best. I've had an account on there for at least five years. I need to just make myself do it.

[void iris]

I feel like meahtastic is what ham radio should be. I'm not a fan of random contacts and "rag chews", but I enjoy doing targeted contacts on the lower frequencies, that's something that can't be replicated elseware

[granite carbon]

The local ham conference has been overshadowed by one called the Utah Digital Communications Conference. It's way more interesting to me as compared to the old hamventions. I find APRS, DMR, Lora, etc much more interesting than a 50w mobile car radio.

It's pretty cool what you can do with some modded 2.4Ghz access points. The SL valley had a wifi mesh running at a previous point.

[void iris]

Most of the non-meshtastic radio stuff I do now is DMR (not Internet linked). I'm actually planning to get a business band licence so I don't have to deal with the ham restrictions.

[storm onyx]

Nope, Matt and I in Layton can't connect to anyone either. Either we got EMP'ed by sun flare or a key node is off somewhere. My router node was already down with antenna problems as well.

You might attempt a reflash on your devices.

[void iris]

Is this the lake mountain repeater? I was off-roading and kind of just ended up up here

[dim bay]

Yup. That's exactly the spot.

The meshtastic antenna is the little black one on the middle of the roof. Next to it is a helium miner/thethingsnetwork node. Anyone who experiments with thethingsnetwork stack (it's free) can use it.

And looking closer at the picture, that antenna does not look straight.

[void iris]

It may not be perfectly perpendicular. But I don't think it was bent at all

[spring merlin]

Finally built my first Meshenger

[spring merlin]

Aint they cute together? 😛

[spring merlin]

these are rak based 🙂

yeah it is! https://www.printables.com/model/389311-meshenger-standalone-communicator-device-for-mesht

[dim bay]

Looking again, I think it's the antenna behind it that makes it look crooked.

[vital hemlock]

There are more compact kb options, but this arguably has the most versatility, and definitely the best battery life

[vital hemlock]

Did you build them, or get them pre-built?

[spring merlin]

I built these two. I've got parts for two more I'll be building soon as well

[vital hemlock]

I'm hoping to get a CO2 laser this year, so I can cut my own clear acrylic

[spring merlin]

Fingers crossed for you! Lasers are too cool. I actually bought the acrylic plates from Tropho directly for these cause I dont have any laser access of my own, but if I did it'd be running nonsense nonstop 🙂

[vital hemlock]

lol

I have three printers, I see you. 😂

[spring merlin]

oooh i picked up a node while i was out on a drive: KAT1 (GSKM1) 🙂

[spring merlin]

hahaha not me, but i was eyeing it too and also noticed it's gone

[storm onyx]

I don't care who got it as long as they make a solar node and stick it on flag rock in Centerville. 😄

[spring merlin]

get permission i'll help provide equipment

[storm onyx]

I'm more of an ask forgiveness type. I'm scheming up a way to drone drop a magnet bottom node on top of the roof of Layton IHC hospital to avoid the red tape. 🤣

[storm onyx]

New option coming in June for a pre-built mobile node:

https://store.rokland.com/products/wismesh-pocket?mc_cid=2549dbf539&mc_eid=9e7d97354b

[spring merlin]

Pretty awesome, looks like they're collabing with TonyG for his case design

[granite carbon]

I've got a T-echo and am pretty happy with it. Lasts about 3 days if I leave GPS off and don't connect to it via bluetooth.

[leaden crow]

Hey, just found this group.
I bought some Lilygo radios 03/23 and made a solar repeater on my garage, but the panel and battery pack would slowly drain over about a week. I abandoned it for more than a year. This month I replaced the T3S3 with a RAK and it seems to have solved my power problems. It's amazing how much Meshtastic has blown up in 1 year.

[spring merlin]

looks great! i agree, i also just returned after a year or so. it's totally blown up

[tired stirrup]

Just saw the message from bp_rak come through via the mesh. Figured I'd pop in and say hello.

[vital hemlock]

Hey, that’s me. Glad you made it. 👍

[vital hemlock]

You’re not wrong. A “lot” of new nodes in the last few months. We had a few years of loneliness, but it appears we’ve reached critical mass.

[vital hemlock]

Last time I talked to Tony he was actually the one printing them. Cool guy.

[spring merlin]

Even better! Agreed - he's a very cool guy. Super helpful and friendly

[vital hemlock]

He makes them all in tinkercad, blows my mind

[void iris]

I have reverse engineered a few in fusion just because I wanted some minor changes

[fiery sparrow]

I picked one up... more interested on the new stuff inside. once they get those stand alone modules, I might cottage something together. I'm literally flush in 18650 batteries I've recovered from ebike battery packs..

[storm onyx]

I'm jealous of your new T-shirt you'll get. 👍

[fiery sparrow]

I'd of preferred another $5 off. lol

[flat wasp]

Put my T-Deck together today. Unfortunately ended up with the wrong battery connectors, but I'm thrilled it works otherwise haha

[spring merlin]

looks great!

[fiery sparrow]

Just needs a new antenna and you're set.

[spring merlin]

I threw up a 3dbi outdoor antenna on a rak node inside my apartment last night and it seems tonight i found tons of nodes! I sent out a message and got a couple acks. This is pretty exciting as I don't have many options for mounting an outdoor antenna here, but now i have hope!

honestly kind of a trip, it's still just pulling in more radios lol

[leaden crow]

I bought some of the Gizont antennas recommended here:
https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/antennas/

They seem great, or least an order of magnitude better than Lilygo bundled antennas

[storm onyx]

Couple lessons learned about the rak nodes lately. Most of you saw my twisted off ipex to sma connector. That got fixed with a higher quality replacement. That happened after I discovered that what I thought was an awesome antenna had an SWR reading of 7.8!! Totally defective and from a reputable popular retailer.

All my other lora antennas were 2 or less as they should be. The seller accepted that and replaced it with one that now reads 1.03 swr. My wisblock core radio chip was fried, being very weak in transmit and horrible rssi and snr numbers.

Also be sure when swapping antennas you are certain the node is off and no power such as solar is still feeding it while changing antennas.

It's not a bad investment to have a Nano VNA device to test your stuff, or find your nearest ham enthusiast who can verify antenna and feedline performance before ruining your node. Might be rare but happens.

[spring merlin]

thanks for the heads up, this is great info to have

[hushed zealot]

Ham's love to be useful (and tell you how you're doing it wrong.)

[hushed zealot]

(I'd be shocked if less than 75% of us were hams.)

[spring merlin]

i'll be first to admit i'm no ham 🙂

i'm a guy with a soldering iron and enough information to be dangerous (to myself) lol

[storm onyx]

I stopped at GMRS. The needs were met for adventuring. 😄 Maybe someday.

[leaden crow]

I think my ham license expired around 20 years ago

[vital hemlock]

You're going to be shocked then, we've talked about it a lot. Very few hams from what I can tell 😄

[tired stirrup]

I'm a general class ham

[hushed zealot]

Interesting, I'm a technician. Missed general by two questions.

If you bought the Heltec V3 with the tiny antenna and are getting nodes and messages but no one seems to be responding, I can vouch for even a basic antenna upgrade.

[void iris]

I have technician, working on getting general soon. I feel like meshtastic is what a lot of people want out of ham radio

[tired stirrup]

I agree. It's something that takes a little knowledge to set up. But, you can toss it to your kid or wife and use it (without training or licensing) to stay in touch if necessary.

[vivid solstice]

So... I'm one of the new radios that showed up in the valley last week and learning still.

Why is it when I get home from work and my phone connects to the radio I get a download of some of the messages that queued up in the day but not all of them (obvious gaps in the conversation)?

[leaden crow]

Maybe somebody has a better answer, but I see the same thing. It also occurs in realtime (not just historic messages). I assume I'm missing messages because of number of hops to reach me or something.

[vital hemlock]

Some of this is because a lot of the chat is from the Provo valley, they dont all have a high enough hop count to make it to you

that's the easy answer, but some of these are still a mystery.

[hallow dagger]

Anybody else running a RAK 4631 with GPS? I was floored by the pathetic battery life. It's as bad as a ESP32. Had much higher expectations for this unit. This is with a 1100 mAh battery.

That's only like 14 hours

[void iris]

It lasts me 2-3 days with a 2000mah battery

[void iris]

Do you guys have powersaving on? Is smart beaconing enabled?

If you set your GPS update interval to 900, it will only turn the GPS every 15 minutes, rather than the default 2 minutes. If Smart Position is disabled, there is no reason to check the GPS more than once every 15 minutes.

[hallow dagger]

I get mich better performance out of my T-Echo BTW. Usually 2-3 days on a charge with the stock 850 mAh battery. Should last a whole week with a 2000 mAH.

[spring merlin]

Vernal??

[vital hemlock]

This seems wrong. I got at least 26 to 30 hours with gps on. But it also depends on how much you are moving, and how busy the network is.

[delicate zinc]

Yes I was in vernal earlier in the day. Now back to west valley at time you took screenshot. No mqqt or anything. But I think it's a delay in sending GPS location.

I'm having trouble with 2 t-echo's that can send each other messages but not seeing their location. Did factory resets and using latest firmware.

[storm onyx]

So a router is prioritized in the packet sending algorithm, so your most prominent high gain device should be router_client or router (I choose router_client for the bluetooth convenience and the option to use it when my mobile node is off). Your other non prominent node can be regular client. If you choose router just beware not to turn off bluetooth as there is a bug currently where the nodes deep sleep and don't wake up without hard reset if BT is off) also you can set up an "admin" channel and configure your t-beam from another node if you want to remotely administer it. Just have to share the psk on another node.

Good explanation of the traffic routing algorithm: https://youtu.be/7v6UbC5blJU?si=rqoUwM-VqTRvNAQj

I'm all for redundancy as the algorithm will figure out the best path in the moment. Case in point, while my roof node is asleep I've seen my neighbor's take over the traceroute depending on the timing. The mesh needs some redundancy for reliability IMHO.

Sure, but if you have several folks with high gain, high mounted antennas, I say go for it. The algorithm will route how it will route. It's not like ham or gmrs repeaters where there will be interference.

[storm onyx]

Probably a good scenario question for the developers over on the official channel

That's a first world problem when we finally have enough nodes that we argue over who gets to be a router. 😄

To your point, it would be nice to know what other ranking criteria is used other than device type to determine how the nodes get chosen for packet routing. Is it rssi, snr, or channel util etc. We do know from the video I posted that distance is a factor.

I'm just waiting for you to hike that solar node up to Thurston so I can turn mine back to client. 👍The problem will be if it can survive up there for the winter. These devices are too fickle and unreliable for that type of deployment. They need too frequent handling to fix issues. Maybe dirt road access bench is high enough.

The ham dudes that manage the repeaters on shepard peak next to francis have their antennas blown over and crushed by drifting snow all the time. So you will need to have it high and protected if at the tippy top.

I'm not trying to discourage you at all, I'm rooting for it for science. 🤘

[tired stirrup]

A mountain top repeater in the Ogden area would be sweet.

I'm in a hole here in West Haven that my regular devices won't get out of.

Rooftop antenna equipment is currently inbound. We'll see if it makes a difference.

[storm onyx]

We need more west siders for that pathing around HAFB to get SLC, Davis and Weber linked up! 👍

[tired stirrup]

I'm kind of blazing that trail now 😂.

If I had the time, I'd try to gain some traction with the Ogden Amateur Radio Club and try to get something put on up at a repeater site. I'm not a very active member of the club.

Too many hobbies, too little time...

[void iris]

https://github.com/Murturtle/MeshLink

[fiery sparrow]

Right combo of equipment would make a mountain top node manageable from LOS near base... lot more 802.11ah equipment out there now days.

[dim bay]

I would partially disagree. I run the lake mountain node, and it's worked flawless, other than power issues onsite unrelated meshtastic. And that's been there for at least a year. It might also depend on alot of things like how many modules you are using, what version of firmware you have installed and model of device. My heltec v3 at home needs a reboot every so often, but the lake mountain node is a t-beam, and seems rock solid..... knock on wood.

[dim bay]

Yeah, on lake mountain, it's snowy from about December 1 till about March or may. And above 5 feet, I bet it's only that deep for a month or two, so I imagine you are more than fine with 140 days worth.

[storm onyx]

The west side mountains and the ridgeline of the east mountains above Farmington are completely different environments. 😄 Just talk to Greg the repeater owner about keeping those running up there.

The other logistical challenge will be the known reset issues on the current rak nrf52 devices. It makes sense that a T-beam is working better remotely.

[dim bay]

Fair enough. I guess it also makes a difference if the node is outside on the tower, or inside the building fed with lmr400 or something similar like lake mountain.

[storm onyx]

Negative. I have been rocking the latest alphas since then and still get device reset as well as the boot loop problem periodically. It's a real PITA.

I asked about it on nrf52 channel here and no root cause found yet.

You might consider an esp32 device for your experiment unless it gets solved soon.

[fiery sparrow]

If anyone needs loose 18650s for a repeater project, let me know. I'm flush with them.

[pallid isle]

Are there anyone in northern Utah

SLC area is killing it great job 👍

[storm onyx]

There are Ogden and Logan area nodes but no connectivity between them and Davis county south yet.

[pallid isle]

ok thanks I guess i have to some driving around

[tired stirrup]

I've found that everything north of Layton from the I-15 west is a dead zone...

Except for my house...

I'm in West Haven trying to bring the mesh to the people 🤣.

I leave one running at work in Draper, I have one that stays on in my car as a Repeater for the commute, and I keep one in the tacti-cool pocket of my water bottle (Plus a few others here and there...).

I bought the components for a rooftop repeater node for the house. They're currently lost in the UPS system somewhere.

It would be really nice if some other folks would pop up to fill in the mesh.

[slate urchin]

I have a question for the group, when I had my Android, I connected to my mesh, and it already put me on the local network, when I switched to an iPhone, I never received any of the messages from the local mesh, I do from my wife though. What is different between the android and iPhone?

[tired stirrup]

I'm a noob... But I had a similar problem that I solved yesterday.

Check that long/fast is set as channel 0 and your private group is set to channel 1. If it's not, go ahead and set it up that way.

If it's currently that way, try copying the encryption key from your private group then delete both channels and set them up again the way you just had them...

Doing that refreshed everything for me and the long/fast traffic immediately came pouring in.

[vital hemlock]

If you use a custom channel on index 0 then the default long/fast needs to be on channel 20. 👍

If you don’t have a custom channel on index 0, or one at all, just reset the radio to defaults.

All the settings are on the radio, the Bluetooth client shouldn’t matter. But sometimes when the behavior is weird it’s a pain in the neck to track down, so it’s best to just default the radio and change a few settings. 🫤

[mental grove]

On nodes where I want to track, but don't want to make my location public, I put my private channel on 0 and LongFast on 1. GPS goes out on 0 only.

[fluid hull]

You can actually toggle location precision on a per channel basis now as of FW v2.3.0 +

[chrome cove]

I run the W5SAT-1 node in Logan area and there is more and more users which is great but I don't see how we will ever get connected out of Cache Valley???

[storm onyx]

Not without some serious high elevation infrastructure, like unto Mt. Ogden towers. Even then, environment and transmit power limitations might prove difficult.

[fiery sparrow]

a Thurston router would solve quite a bit of that... I'd almost say put two, one with an omni, and one with a yagi pointed towards SL valley.

[slate urchin]

Holy crap, sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. Work has been an absolute nightmare. That being said this is what I’m seeing on my Zero channel that set to primary, is this the same for everyone else?

[storm onyx]

I'm less familiar with the i-phone version but it appears your channel name is missing. Should be LongFast (case sensitive) I believe.

[slate urchin]

Okay let me try that.

I believe you were right

[storm onyx]

@slate urchin Hey, it worked! Just got your test.

[slate urchin]

Dude, thank you so much, I’ve been getting my ass kicked with this

[storm onyx]

No worries! I discovered the channel name thing when trying to set up private channels. Even with the same PSK on 2 devices if the channel name didn't match exactly, it was no good.

[slate urchin]

That would probably help me out of time with my families little network

Nice to see you have another one out here in Eagle Mountain

[vivid solstice]

China? What the heck?

[vivid solstice]

👍

[delicate zinc]

Does anyone see a node called SMHB in west Jordan? I setup a node on a friend's house but I can't seem to ping it from west valley despite seeing his neighbors

Should be south east of a node called mnba

[hushed zealot]

Not seeing it in Taylorsville. I am seeing mnba direct, but weak.

[orchid umbra]

I do not see it, but I'm also in Lehi, I do see mnba though

[delicate zinc]

I corrected node name . You are right

[mental grove]

I created a temporary MQTT tunnel from a node in Ogden to a node in Layton to connect the two until a mesh link can be established.

if someone up in Logan wants to link in as well get with me.

[hushed zealot]

Anyone see a new node Edvr? Should be around Layton, but might not have GPS coords.

[storm onyx]

Not yet

[hushed zealot]

Anyone else lose maps recently?

[hushed zealot]

Thanks. Should we be on slot 20 or 19? I'm seeing conflicting info.

It's not the map, all of my previously mapped nodes are no longer on the map. I've even deleted all my local data and reset and nodes are not showing up on the map.

I was wrong. They're there, the app isn't focusing on it by default anymore. Mapping is working.

[orchid umbra]

I'm on 20 (the default) and don't seem to have any issues

[vital hemlock]

Definitely 20

https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/tips/#default-primary-frequency-slots-by-region

[lilac shadow]

UNK(nown) in ogden , we saw ya

[lilac shadow]

Looks like there's still snow... Likely Dirt bike able but Im not sure how to get in with the new ski resort lined

[storm onyx]

That backside of Francis likely has snow drift blocking it just based on how it was last year. But it's a hot one this week and a lot can change. They usually don't open the upper gate until end of June.

[granite carbon]

Here's a satellite picture of Francis Peak from yesterday.

Looks like the road is likely covered.

[granite carbon]

Ping me in a week if you'd like an updated aerial photo.

[vital hemlock]

Hey @maiden wraith , I've been at this a few years now. Here are my suggestions:

1. Set "ignore mqtt" on your router nodes. That way if we get someone downlinking it again it wont propagate as far. It's a disaster when it does.
   a. If you meant for MQTT to be enabled on the router node, it wouldnt be able to use it anyway without wifi or a bluetooth client connected.
2. You can manage a repeater if you have the admin channel set up, and it doesnt use bluetooth so it saves power. It also rebroadcasts everything.
3. Unless the mesh is "too" busy then this is the courteous thing to do, but not required by any means.
4. If it's an nRF52 radio (RAK), ignore the power savings. If it sees other radios it wont sleep too much anyway.
5. No idea. 🧐
6. If it's a remote node I'd disable store and forward. More modules enabled means more possible issues.
   a. I have a node here at my house on wifi that has store and forward, as well as wifi for mqtt (personal server, not the meshtastic pub). If a local powered node at your house can see the remote radio, enable store and forward there instead. 👍

[vital hemlock]

Honestly, nice work. The only thing I'd change is the db of the antenna. If you are going up high you'll likely need a lower db, somewhere in the 3-5 range.

I'd say shoot for it, and if it doesnt work then swap. Right?

We've had a few higher gain antenna, at high altitude, definitely overshoot valleys. But I would not discourage you from trying. If it works, then the higher gain would obviously be better.

@maiden wraith are you using the green power module?
https://store.rakwireless.com/products/wisblock-green-power-module-rak19004

[vital hemlock]

I was looking for the range that the solar input accepts, but it's always best to use the green power module to keep it at a steady 5v. It's not a requirement, unless your panel pushes more than the max voltage in direct sunlight.

[granite carbon]

Give me a couple hours and I'll get back to you.

[granite carbon]

Can you get me the coordinates for the center of each of those red boxes?

[granite carbon]

All of these images were taken yesterday.

First image has no snow, second and third images have some snow. Here's some snow index imagery that shows the snow in better contrast.

[vital hemlock]

What’s the node name for that radio?

[storm onyx]

Is there really a node near Malan's peak now? I'm seeing 2 Ogden East bench nodes on the map now. If it's true and not spoofed coordinates, the RF line of site is good to Layton.

[storm onyx]

Got direct traceroute to mine here in west Layton so the concern over antenna gain seems unfounded.

Current position seems pretty good. Great work!

Looks pretty low profile, probably be fine.

[storm onyx]

RF path to my place from FPR

[fiery sparrow]

@maiden wraith FPR yours? You need additional batteries?

They are quite literally like stray kittens... free to a good home..

[storm onyx]

Did you pull all those out of bad tool packs from the recycle bin at home depot? 😄👍

[mental grove]

I saw the Malan's node, I believe it was from something airborne, the altitude was like 20,000 feet.

[fiery sparrow]

Ebike packs that failed for one reason or another. I separate them, toss the bad cells.

[storm onyx]

That's awesome. Not all cells in a pack fail so might as well rescue them.

[hushed zealot]

That's not something that I would want to keep near my home, or even a neighbor's home.

[fiery sparrow]

I take all the strips off as soon as I get them, so they pretty inert. I don't test the cells unattended so I can catch them if there is a heater among them.

[slate urchin]

lol I’m in Bear Lake someone ping me!

[slate urchin]

https://tenor.com/view/sad-walk-of-shame-shame-shameful-head-down-gif-16299271

lol

[hushed zealot]

You didn't bring two units? Rookie.

[delicate zinc]

At least you don't have network congestion 🙂

[main stag]

For anyone that wants fresh sat images I've been fond of https://explore.skywatch.com/ and https://eos.com/landviewer. Skywatch is great as you can select smaller areas and purchase more detailed imagery. Both offer the standard free sat imagery updated frequently depending on where you are looking.

[vivid solstice]

I assume the mesh looks normal to every one else today? I'm having one of those days where my app says only 1/100 online. I reboot the radio and it will tick up nodes for a few mins then drop back to 1.

[storm onyx]

Current view from my node

[hushed zealot]

I haven't noticed less than 40 connected.

Current View

[mental grove]

I'm impressed...I'm camping at Antelope Island for the weekend, seeing lots of nodes via the Francis peak router.

[vital hemlock]

#960633667749822564 message

😂

[cloud lodge]

I wonder if we can "organize" which nodes should be routers in our mesh?

If you go to https://meshtastic.liamcottle.net/# you can select layers to show routers, then refresh to see where our current routers are.

I notice when I do the occasional traceroute that I am preferentially sent through nodes that I have a weak connection to, randomly located in low lying areas.

I have a suspicion that people think they are being helpful making their node a router without realizing that it may be doing more harm than good. Thanks...

[cloud lodge]

Maybe my antenna gain is too narrow (8 dBi), but my best SNRs are often with nodes 25 miles away, and worst much closer.

[orchid umbra]

I will be going to Hawaii at some point... Would it be bad form to setup a (private) MQTT UL/DL link between my mobile node and my home node (thus providing a transient UT-HI bridge)?

Or are such things frowned upon?

[orchid umbra]

Yeah, I know better than to connect through high traffic shared channels

[vital hemlock]

Private mqtt servers are not a problem if they don’t bridge to a large mesh. Go for it

We have a private mqtt for a specific channel, partially because when radios are inside buildings that’s the only way they’ll see the other messages. In an emergency we know that portion may not be available. It’s a “nice to have”.

As to the “who should be a router” discussion, it’s tough. It’d honestly be best if the very well placed radios were the only routers. But, best is highly subjective. Best at what? There are lots of aspects of mesh networks to choose from.

What’s best is for folks to not make routers out of nodes inside buildings, IMO. I won’t shame you for doing it though.

We have enough well placed nodes that anything routing for others should be highly placed and outside. But that’s just one man’s opinion. I also set my nodes to client mute when I don’t need them to extend the mesh.

[vivid solstice]

For all you dying of curiosity I reset my radio back to factory and this cleared up. No idea what went wrong, hadn't made any <intentional> changes.

[primal topaz]

I've got a better spot for it than on the roof of Noorda. We can put it here: https://aprs.fi/info/a/WEBER

I can also put a node at one of the buildings at the WSU Davis campus

[tired stirrup]

I'm heavily considering this. Or, a small 12v AGM motorcycle battery with the proper RAK power module.

[vital hemlock]

Both are good options. LTO is just the new hotness.

[mental grove]

Did you happen to see one of these overhead? (EC-37B)

[tired urchin]

Nah that's probably from the CIA's geosynchronous spy satellites 😜

[lilac shadow]

Airshow was today, lot extra RF noise in the valley today

[primal topaz]

VPOTUS was also in the state on Friday, not sure about Saturday; but I’ve heard that there is lots of extra RF for VIP protection.

https://youtu.be/bn7dNO0XWMM

Check out the suburban at 1:10, and I swear that I’ve seen a picture of a vehicle with even more antennas than that participating in such a motorcade.

[tired stirrup]

Reset how? To default settings?

Maybe a firmware issue?

Are you using an unstable version?

Ok. I dunno. I just got my first Rak temporarily slapped on the roof a few days ago.

Is your repeater still up an operating?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2RH6Y9G?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

[storm onyx]

Roger that, both myself and another mesher have experienced the periodic reset of rak nrf52 devices. The behavior is loss of bluetooth connectivity, then if you plug in usb it just loops connecting and disconnecting. You have to hit reset twice to get it to stop in DFU mode, then you must factory erase and reflash firmware.

I have used the CLI command as well as the flasher website by dropping the erase file followed by opening the serial monitor which executes a command to complete the full erase process. Then the firmware finally sticks.

And yes backed up config is a must with these devices.
.

Instructions for both methods:
https://meshtastic.org/docs/getting-started/flashing-firmware/nrf52/nrf52-erase/

[void iris]

I have had the same issue, usually after the battery completely dies

[storm onyx]

I have wondered if it's a power stability issue on solar and if the green power add on module would help.

[tired stirrup]

Yeah, the solar aspect has me all wrapped around the axle... I got a soshine 5-6 watt panel, a cheap BMS and a plan for how to mount everything... But then read into it a bit more on here and that Keith guy from Voltaic Enclosures says that it won't wont work well.

Yet that's what I see quite a few people running.

I may buy his MPPT charger/regulator, some LTO batteries (if I can find some) and a different panel.

Or just send it with what I've got 🤣.

I think he says that the operating voltage of the panel that I have is too low, some other technical solar stuff..., and the extreme temps we have here going to be an issue for 18650's

[storm onyx]

Yes not exclusively solar, one of my small lithium powered mobile nodes has reset as well but less frequently.

[void iris]

Neither of mine are solar. Anecdotally, the 250mah battery has seemed to reset 2-3 times where the 3000mah battery has only reset once

[storm onyx]

Now I'm the one at bear lake all alone LOL! Gonna keep my T-echo running in case any more mesh tourists arrive this week. 🤣

[tired stirrup]

https://docs.rakwireless.com/Product-Categories/WisBlock/RAK19016/Overview/

I have a couple of those power modules ☝️.

I think I'll get a small 12v panel and see how it works out.

The MPPT is probably a better idea. I didn't even know what MPPT was.. I just looked it up.

If I go with a new MPPT. I suppose I may as well go with the Voltaic Enclosures version that is kinda designed for these setups.

Oh, ok. That's not bad at all.

But then there's the topic of the outdoor temps ranging from 0-115° while charging 18650s from the solar a panel..

[lilac shadow]

Oh those things? yeah good luck with ANYTHING RF near em ... fun when your cell phone quality starts reverting mid call

[vital hemlock]

Keith really knows his stuff. Anyone who has been with the project long can vouch for him and his advice. 👍

Are we seeing mqtt spam again?

[hushed zealot]

That would be an adventure.

[vivid osprey]

Can someone help me understand what I’m missing about how these work? I have family ~6 miles away—Lehi to Alpine—and we can see each other’s nodes, locations, signal strength, even the number of hops we are are away (2), but no messages go through. If we are truly seeing each other’s active nodes, why wouldn’t our messages get delivered?

[vivid osprey]

Both direct and private channel—same exact config works for someone closer to me

Short messages—I didn’t try a trace route

[vivid osprey]

Just did a trace route — no response. How do I see so much info about them, then?

[storm onyx]

If the channel name is not exact, like case, underscores, etc, even if you have the same PSK, messages won't go through FYI. But that may not be the issue.

[vital hemlock]

Are you using the default primary channel? If you have a custom primary channel I think I know what it is.

[delicate zinc]

Make sure all devices are properly set to US (not Unset).

[vital hemlock]

If you have a custom primary channel, this get unset and changes to 0. Move it back to 20.

[vivid solstice]

Has there been any LongFast traffic in the SL valley in the last 24hrs? My radio seems to have gone dark. Again.

[fiery sparrow]

I sent a message from a new device 14ish hours ago... my local stuff got it, but i've not seen anything from anyone else

[storm onyx]

It's busy vacation month, the analog radio repeaters have also been pretty quiet.

[vivid solstice]

Are there periods of high emi that makes propagation harder than at other times? My app is saying I've been connected to a few to couple dozen nodes out of 100+ in the db but all my test sends are slash and i haven't received anything.

[void iris]

Yes, but it generally does not effect this band too much

The sun's emi is pretty low right now

[fiery sparrow]

send something... if I see it, I'll chime back.

[misty nebula]

I'll be there in a couple of weeks 🤣

[tired stirrup]

I just shot a test from my RSX node

[vivid solstice]

Just sent fifth or sixth query today. App says i have 23 of 96 nodes.

Still slashed cloud for my outgoing messages. Haven't made any configuration changes. Tried restarting app and radio between tests. This happened to my first V3 and I never did get it talking again, even after erase and reflashing multiple times.

[vivid solstice]

I did just receive MM ack to RSX and a couple after. That's good. I can't seem to ack back out though.

[tired stirrup]

Yup. I sent it from Draper. I got three ACKs so far. One from the mouth of Parley's, one from Taylorsville and on from downtown area SLC.

Maybe try deleting your long/fast channel and recreate it?

[vivid solstice]

How do nodes fall off the DB list under normal conditions? How often should a user manually clear it out?

I am seeing a good bit of traffic now.

[void iris]

The firmware only stores the most recently heard 100 nodes

[vivid solstice]

It's supposed to help with congestion if nodes with weaker signals change roles to CLIENT_MUTE?

[vivid solstice]

Hmm. Maybe I didn't understand that mode. I thought all it did was prevent the node from forwarding hops but otherwise acted the same as CLIENT?

[fiery sparrow]

so, looks like people just giving the mesh a rest, or were "activities" in the area causing issues?

[vivid solstice]

Once it woke up, I was able to see a fair bit of traffic so I think just resting?

[vivid solstice]

Back to the EMI hypothesis...perhaps there are times of day when everyone is streaming their 5G and it buries the weaker LoRa signals under too much noise? Still chewing on why at some seemingly random times it works for me better than others.

[silent jasper]

Whoever sent out the discord invite instructions, thank you

[normal drift]

Ditto that. Thanks for sharing, from Layton

[hushed zealot]

Welcome new people!

[vital hemlock]

👋

[vital hemlock]

It’s configurable, we’ve asked for expiring nodes for a long time. Hopefully someday.

[vital hemlock]

Lora can handles insanely bad signal to noise ratios. I don’t think 5G is affecting us, but I can’t prove otherwise. 😁

[vivid solstice]

What is the floor for acceptable SNR for reliable comm?

[vital hemlock]

@shut gulch do you know by chance?

I’ve seen it talked about, but I don’t have the data anywhere I can find it.

[shut gulch]

Depends a bit on modem preset. LongFast minimum is like -20dB, but reliable is more in the -15dB ballpark in my experience.

Here's a table for different spreading factors.

[cloud lodge]

It may be temperature related... I doubt that the oscillators on these small boards have elaborate frequency stabilization. I have noticed that my Heltec v3 seems to fluctuate most against different vendors (RAKs, Lillygo's, etc...) Each design may respond differently vs. temperature.

Since my setup is on the roof (shaded), it faces large temperature swings. Performance seems best when outdoor temperatures drop to ~70, better matching units in climate controlled locations. Just an idea...

[vital hemlock]

My tbeam on the roof has been a rockstar. The only time it has issues is when folks are spamming the public mqtt server and there are 300+ nodes.

[vivid solstice]

Maybe so. The temperature thing also correlates to my perception that afternoons seem to be harder to get messages through.

[vivid osprey]

Don’t know how I missed your response—this was the issue—thank you!

Well, that allowed me to receive one message from him, but trace route still shows “no response” and no more comms between us. Perhaps we’re just too far away. Thanks for your help.

[agile summit]

Anyone in Cache Valley? I just recently got a node and I'm putting together a solar-powered node to be deployed... somewhere. I detected a couple other nodes when I first booted it up a couple weeks ago, but have since lost contact with everyone.

Very cool, thank you! Is your mountain router actually capable of reaching 75-ish km? If so, how did you extend Tx that far? I've been wanting to deploy a mountain router myself with an LNA amplifier and high gain antenna.

I'm very new to radio and Meshtastic though, forgive me if that's unrealistic lol

[primal topaz]

Paging @frosty crane

[agile summit]

Ope, I switched from VLong/Slow to Long/Fast and picked up 4 other nodes

One more question: On Meshmap, I don't see my node or a node that is 1.1km away. Is there some location setting I ought to turn on? Idk where Meshmap gets its info from

[frosty crane]

oh, hey! Yeah, I've got a couple devices I was playing with, was waiting for batteries and reprinting some cases on the 3D printer. I need to start playing with them again. @pseudo bolt also has a node here in CV.

[brazen sable]

just sending a message to more easily access
howdy everyone

[fiery sparrow]

what antenna and placement you using... I'm picking up direct connections up to 40km away with just a 3db antenna

[vital hemlock]

Yes, please don’t use the public mqtt. It drowns us.

[vital hemlock]

Agreed. Remember that basically all of the most insane range records were set with default crappy antennas.

[main stag]

Hey all Utah mesh peps. I've made my grafana dashboard public that I'm using to monitor the mesh. There are many projects like it, but this one is mine, please be nice. I'm sharing it as long as everything goes smoothly with hosting and so long as no one has issues with it being semi-public.

I've recently switched my Meshtastic nodes over to MediumFast as there is a concerted effort in Salt Lake and the surrounding areas to move to a faster preset and to get off of the noisy LongFast channel. With that comes some level of coordination on how we plan the Mesh so that we have good routing and a lower channel utilization. If you'd like to join in on the MediumFast effort please see the below recommendations and reach out in Discord if you are unsure what mode to set your radios to (client, router, etc), there are some very smart people in this group.

General consensus is that ROUTER nodes should be reserved for those with long line of sight and high up, generally the ones we have on mountains or ridge lines. Most clients should be CLIENT_MUTE as they don't often contribute to good mesh communication. Places where it makes more sense to have a CLIENT along with multiple CLIENT_MUTE nodes would be at home if you have multiple nodes around your house or neighborhood. It doesn't make sense to have all of your nodes to be CLIENTS, not everything needs to re-broadcast messages. This is one of our issues on LongFast, we have so many nodes that are ROUTER, ROUTER_CLIENT, or CLIENT that the routing is never optimal. This video has a great description of different deployment scenarios: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htjwtnjQkkE

Dashboard access:

Url: http://slcmesh.rem-labs.dev/public-dashboards/2ac9038d55c84f57a2dd44603168af58
User: slcmesh
Pass: same as user

If you have a prominent ROUTER node or CLIENT node and want to show up on the neighborhood map please enable the neighborhood info module. https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/module/neighbor-info/

[vital hemlock]

I love nicer antennas though, don’t get me wrong. Lora is just suuuuuper forgiving

[main stag]

Thanks, it works for the most part.

[vivid solstice]

I'm not having a "super forgiving" LoRa experience. I really struggle to get DMs to work between a node at work and a node at home (about 10 miles LOS across the SL valley).

Both nodes are V3s, kept up on the firmware updates, and sporting upgraded 3db antennas, verified with a pocket VNA.

I'm waiting for a pair of Wisblocks to come in the mail to see if they work better.

[vital hemlock]

A few of us have been at this for a couple of years, we have occasionally seen this. Sometimes it's software, a specific release that's an issue or incompatbile versions, sometimes it really is a bad antenna (which you've ruled out), and of course it could be interference if there was a very powerful 900mhz source near one of your radios it could drown it out. DM me your node ID's, we can do some testing today. Depending on where you are in the valley we likely have a line of sight, or just a hop or two.

It's also possible you have a loose/bad uFL connector, which I have seen on one of my v3's

Sorry about rubbing salt in your wound with the very forgiving comment. That wasnt intentional

[void iris]

If both nodes are well placed, could it be that the channel utilization is too high and so either your packets don't get transmitted timely or there's collisions after the transmission happens and it never arrives?

You could test that by going to a different Lora channel and seeing if the problem is still there

[vital hemlock]

When in doubt, go medium/fast. That will remove the rest of us from your test. My roof node does see high utilization, sometimes 35+%, which is not great.

But I'm sure Lake Mountain and POTM router are both that high, at least.

And they reply to my traceroutes all the time, rarely fail

[void iris]

I believe anything above 25% your radio will start holding packets back. Reference: https://youtu.be/m_Po4SJ2XNM?t=70

[void iris]

Even if you are on medium fast, you'll still be on the same frequency unless you explicitly change that

[vital hemlock]

Correct, but the higher data rate (tighter timing) gets messages through better. It's not a perfect solution to be sure.

If utilization is an issue. If it's interference then you are right it most likely wont help.

Also, great price on this:

https://www.amazon.com/RAKwireless-WisBlock-Meshtastic-Starter-RAK19007/dp/B0CHKZJK9C

[vital hemlock]

Confirmed on my rpi node

Jul 16 10:09:18 rpi3 meshtasticd[910]: Channel utilization is >25 percent. Skipping this opportunity to send.

But that might just be for Position only

Each time I've seen it it has been for that one module

Jul 16 10:12:31 rpi3 meshtasticd[910]: WARN | 16:12:27 585 [PositionModule]
Jul 16 10:12:31 rpi3 meshtasticd[910]: Channel utilization is >25 percent. Skipping this opportunity to send.

[void iris]

above 25 it holds back telemetry and neighbour info, above 40 it holds back position reports : https://youtu.be/m_Po4SJ2XNM?t=70

[main stag]

Looking at the dashboard (url linked a few messages above) there are a lot of nodes sitting in the 15-23% channel utilization range. On average I'd say we're well within 20%

[lilac shadow]

Who ever Xmission Router is you got a very hearty chuckle from me today

[leaden crow]

I assume that actually is Xmission. They have a history of employees building stuff like this:
https://xmission.com/blog/2014/05/28/building-a-stratum-1-ntp-server-with-a-raspberry-pi

[delicate zinc]

Anyone else having issues with Raks or Techos losing their settings? Sometimes they reset to default (unset). Sometimes I have to erase and reinstall firmware.

My only guess is heat. One is in car (shaded). Other is in a solar enclosure.

[delicate zinc]

Ok glad it's not just me

[vital hemlock]

I would downgrade very common to not uncommon. And I agree it feels related to very low batteries most of the time, but not every time.

[delicate zinc]

What kind of batteries are those with remote nodes using? I can't imagine having to reflash them every time it gets hot

[vital hemlock]

If you have a remote node ideally you have at least a few cells, not a single cell. Most of that is because of charge rate when it’s below freezing. It’s a major issue for solar remote nodes. You need something that will charge it slowly. Usually that’s accomplished via a charge circuit with multiple cells.

The rak config issue is known, but it’s not something that happens all the time. That’s what I wanted to communicate. If you have a few rak radios it’ll usually happen once or twice in a year. More often and you are just very unlucky for have a defective radio, in a way that we can not yet pinpoint.

If you have a rak radio that does this it’s not your fault. You aren’t doing nothing wrong.

Unless it turns out it’s battery related and you let the battery go down well below operating voltages regularly, which some suspect.

The only time I myself have had a rak wipe its own config was once when the battery ran until dead after like seven days.

But even at that, we all agree it shouldn’t happen. It’s a defect that appears to strike randomly, but most often with overly discharged batteries.

[cloud lodge]

My ChUtil is usually ~40% (fluctuates between 30-50%). I have MQTT disabled, running in CLIENT_MODE. I am on the bench so probably see an above average number of nodes, but this still seems high. Is there anything I should do?

p.s. My RAK froze for no reason last night, full battery + USB power, indoors. It must be a problem in the code base, perhaps a buffer overrun that corrupts flash memory. I had to wipe the flash and reinstall. If anyone else has this problem, look at the Meshtastic site about clearing flash memory. Nothing was working until I discovered the CLI command that rebuilds Meshtastic's file system.

[vivid solstice]

The flash memory wipe just saved me too. I got two wiz blocks over the weekend. One of them would cycle power every time I sent an xmit for the first hour or two then just froze up. I just woke it back up with this method.

[primal topaz]

Channel utilization is:

time transmitting + time receiving Lora / time of the sample

It doesn’t matter if the node is participating with the lora packets or not; it could be helium crap nearby. Switching to a lower gain antenna would be a better fix vs. adding another node.

https://youtu.be/m_Po4SJ2XNM

[abstract heart]

XMission Router is XMission. Meshtastic is mounted on the corner of 400 S & State. You can see our antennas from the street.

[storm onyx]

Appreciate you guys, best ISP in Utah!

[leaden crow]

You should write a post about it on Transmission.

[primal topaz]

Pashdown!

[misty nebula]

Thanks for putting up a node!

Anyone at Bear Lake this weekend?

[lilac shadow]

Meshview look from a node placed near KSLC

[delicate zinc]

same issue here. Cann you expand on how ya fixed it or point me to documentation?

[cloud lodge]

https://meshtastic.org/docs/getting-started/flashing-firmware/nrf52/nrf52-erase/

[delicate zinc]

Oh, that is what I have been doing already. Using the NRF erase, then reflashing with firmware.

My RAK's still shut down in a couple days, sometimes in a couple hours.

The one theory that I thought was interesting was the high node volume in the area. I am using a high-gain antenna as well so I am reaching many.

Maybe I should try switching to Medium-Fast to see if that makes an improvement?

[storm onyx]

Interesting take on the traffic volume overwhelming these somehow. I have a 6db gain antenna and when my unit was on the roof it was very frequently resetting and boot looping. Now that it has been moved down to my fence line, it has run much more reliably. Just an anecdote.

[delicate zinc]

Interesting

[lilac shadow]

Node name of the Week Nomination:

[slate urchin]

Check out what came today. Just printing and setting it up!

The new UI that they are working on look sick !!!

[cloud lodge]

Nate, can you explain how the neighbor map is calculated, or what it means? Is it possible to show this map from the viewpoint of another node, or does that require admin privileges?

[main stag]

It's just based on neighbor node packets that I receive on my one roof node. https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/module/neighbor-info/. Devices will send out a neighbor info packet saying who their direct neighbors are along with an SNR (most of the time? Sometimes I don't see an SNR and it's not due to mqtt). Neighbor info is a module that people need to enable as it's off by default and can cause increased network utilization. There was some info on that when people were talking about burning man last year. Anyway, I just map the neighbor info packets I receive to known positions of the nodes received from the node position packets. I then have the little arrows drawn on the line to indicate which node saw the other node. I also colorized it as a rough estimate of link quality ie green=good, red=no snr, grey=less than ideal SNR.

It would probably be more fleshed out if I had more nodes actually sending data to the database in different locations but that's not really something I was planning on doing yet. Or if others turned on neighbor info I'd probably see some more.

Also to answer your question there isn't really a way to see it from another nodes perspective. It's only what my logging node can see either via the mesh network or via a local MQTT instance. Public MQTT doesn't allow the neighbor info packets anymore.

[storm onyx]

Interestingly, mine lost settings last night in the same manner. I knew because my phone started prompting me for bluetooth pairing. So it wasn't the typical no response boot loop.

My second node stayed on ok. So perhaps it's not a collective issue.

[vivid solstice]

I had "rak reset" on Tuesday. I'm still leaning towards it being a BTE connect/disconnect issue. On battery 90-something % charged. I was trying very hard to disconnect from the radio every time I went out of range. But I had someone come to the door and a short while after that I noticed it asking for a Bluetooth PIN to connect.

There is definitely some hardware dependency because my other RAK, bought at the same time, has never done this.

[vivid solstice]

That's true for me and my non-resetting one too.

[storm onyx]

Ah, I know that shack. Hope nobody yoinks it.

Good spot for LOS

Fun steep climb to get to that peak

[void iris]

I am becoming convinced that this RAK reset bug is Bluetooth related. I left my radio in my truck this morning, I walked past it and saw that it connected to my phone. I walked out of range and when I got close to the radio 10 minutes ago later, it was reset.

My dog-tracker hasn't reset since the last time I connected directly to configure it.

Has anybody had a RAK node reset that was not using Bluetooth?

How long has FPR been up

What is the role of rak that you had reset

Not the firmware role, is it just a node you carry in your pocket?

[void iris]

Same with me, it has never happened when Bluetooth is connected

[delicate zinc]

I mentioned I'm having same RAK issues. But also with multiple T-echos.

I frequently switch my phone between devices. I wonder if that has something to do with it...

[vital hemlock]

Intermittent issues are so hard to troubleshoot. 😕

I have three RAKs, ~18 months old, only one has ever had this happen. And it’s only happened once. It’s the radio I carried daily for over a year, and it happened when the battery ran way way down.

[delicate zinc]

Would logs from the app right before failure help?

[slate urchin]

Is this correct?

Seems like I’m not able to send a receipt on the main channel

[slate urchin]

It says, I think, but I’m not getting anything in return or I don’t see anyone else talking on it

[slate urchin]

Yeah nothing 😦

I remember last time, on my supreme, we had to have the spelling or spacing just perfect or else it wouldn’t have worked. I’m just not quite sure if that’s correct or not.

[storm onyx]

Looks correct to me compared to my LF channel.

[slate urchin]

So I just did a test with one right next to the other, and that worked on LongFast. So I know I can receive them. I'm just not sure why I am not. Do we know if Lake Mountain can be traced? I tried with both, and I am not getting a ping off of it.

[slate urchin]

I just changed it out for a better one. But how do reset the nodes on my map?

Might be why I am trying to ping things not there

[slate urchin]

Okay that looks better

[slate urchin]

I think where I am at, Lake MT help me reach the rest of Utah. With that one out, we are kind of stuck in a whole. Also when we move into the new house its even deeper in Eagle MT up on hill, and then we are really screwed.

[slate urchin]

Holy crap!

So I am here. Without the lake mt one I should still be able to talk to the valley

https://maps.apple.com/?ll=40.352646,-111.992313&q=MICAH BAIRD’s Location&t=h

I just need to get the right antenna and stick it on the outside of the house I believe

[vital hemlock]

What's the node name?

[slate urchin]

Mine or his 😉

[vital hemlock]

Sorry, lol. @maiden wraith's node.

[slate urchin]

What antenna is everyone running on their homes or in the mountains? I’m assuming the ones we mount to the outside of the home are the same ones we put on top of the mountains.

[dim bay]

The power seems to be out to the rack. I need to make a trip up there and find out why it's not up. The last time was because of a blown breaker, and I offered to pay for an upgrade on all the aging electrical system, and I was told "it works fine for us, so we are not worried about it". So the reason it's been down for a day or so is because I am hoping other systems in the shack will be affected long enough for the emergency power to run out... then maybe they will give me permission to upgrade. I think I will be making a trip up there in the next couple of days. I'd like to see about making a solar powered unit that is unaffected by the power situation inside the shack.

[slate urchin]

@dim bay and @maiden wraith - What antennas and Cables do you guys have on your house and the top of the MT. I need to get something for my house

[slate urchin]

Something like this - https://store.rokland.com/collections/802-11ah-wi-fi-halow/products/5-8-dbi-n-male-omni-outdoor-915-mhz-antenna-large-profile-32-height-for-helium-rak-miner-2-nebra-indoor-bobcat

[dim bay]

Yup. And feed it with lmr400 feedline. That's what if used on the mountain. As far as antenna, I didn't go too high on the gain on the mountain node because then all the signal gets focused towards the other mountains, and not much signal goes down into the valley. But when you are in the valley, mostly trying to reach users NOT on top of the mountains, I would go with a higher gain antenna at your house to focus all the energy to the horizon rather than upwards.

One time I was up on the mountain, and a scat team member asked me to swap out a repeater antenna with one that was twice the length, and twice the gain. He was super excited to see how much better it was going to work. Once I got it mounted, we tried some signal reports with users in the valley. We found that only a couple people could hit the repeater, and those that could, it was a very scratchy signal. After I swapped it back, the problem went away. So the lesson learned is that the higher gain is not always better. It depends on your terrain, but I'd say lower gain antenna for repeaters, and higher gain antenna for devices accessing these repeaters so they will mostly work ok with repeaters, and will work awesome with simplex as well. That's just my take on it.

Yeah, they are hit and miss...

[slate urchin]

When you talk about the LMR400 feedline, do you have one that you recommend? Also, the longer the cable, the more it will lose in output...or something like that?

[dim bay]

Yeah, there is a calculation on how much loss per foot. If you keep it fairly short, lmr400 is pretty good. The brand "Times Microwave" is the industry standard.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=times+microwave+lmr-400&crid=4BSK24Y6FIPP&sprefix=times+micrlwave%2Caps%2C149&ref=nb_sb_ss_pltr-sample-20_1_15

[slate urchin]

Thank you!

[vital hemlock]

My solution was to keep the antenna close to the radio, and make the power line longer. Solar being the idea solution.

https://www.printables.com/model/305015-tbeam-outdoor-enclosure

[slate urchin]

How cool!

[slate urchin]

Since the Antanna is inside, does it hurt the distance being enclosed like that?

[vital hemlock]

I can see the lake mountain node, and the point of the mountain router very very well. It’s just thin plastic, about as thick as the plastic covering the antenna currently.

And since the antenna is inside the housing you could really take the plastic housing off of the current antenna if you wanted to

[slate urchin]

Do you have it plugged in to keep it charged? I was thinking of printing this off, but the only other thing that I have is either a T-beam supreme or heltec V3.

would it be hard to change the inside to hold one of those?

[vital hemlock]

I have power in my eave for Christmas lights. I bought a long flat usb cord. If you want to actually use it I can buy a heltec v3 and change the inside to hold it. Should be fairly easy.

[slate urchin]

Hell yeah, or if you are close, I can give you mine so you don't need to buy one.

Or if you buy one, ill buy it from you

[vital hemlock]

Tomorrow I’ll see if someone has the reference model, I can base it off that. Once I have the portion done that holds the board I can print a test for you.

Or do you also have a printer? I’m up to three. It’s an addiction 😆

[slate urchin]

Lol, I just got a new one as well. I just got the FLSUN T1, and I have the V400. I love both of them.

[vital hemlock]

I've got 2 MK3S's, one with an MMU, and an XL with 2 heads

[dim bay]

Heading up to lake mountain here in a few minutes to see if I can get to the tower site from the south end. Wish me luck.

[dim bay]

A good rule of 👍 is that generally speaking, if you can put it in a microwave, and it does not generate much heat when microwaved by its self, it's safe to say it won't block much. So plastic and glass are a fore sure thing that shouldn't block the signal. When in doubt, nuke it and see if it gets warm... or setup a swr meter(if you can and if you have one)

[vital hemlock]

I've never heard of that approach, and I love it. Good luck at the tower!

[slate urchin]

Wow i am with you, I would have never thought of doing something like that. One of the reasons why I love this group.

@dim bay Seem like you got it up and running. I just pinged it from my house.

[slate urchin]

I’m thrilled to see how much this is growing. Maybe one of these days, we could have one of the OG members organize a Discord meeting to discuss a few important topics: the valley, where the repeaters are located, the reasoning behind certain decisions, what works well and what doesn’t, and how we can help the group grow in a smart way.

I know this is fun for many of us, but there’s also a practical side to consider when things get tough.

Just a thought—if anyone’s interested in making this happen, I think it could be really beneficial.

Even if we go live on Discord one day a month, ask questions and get to know the group

[vital hemlock]

I'm not against that. Much easier than a physical meet-up.

I've felt for a while that we'd eventually move to medium/fast due to the node count

[delicate zinc]

Well my rak just reset itself to factory settings after about 8hrs using the 2.4.2 firmware on longfast...

Anyone else having reset issues?

[storm onyx]

Yes it happens and the developers know of it but haven't been able to determine root cause. It's strangely random. Sometimes I can go more than a month with no issues and then get hit with a bunch close together. Keep your config backed up for quick restore of settings and channels.

[slate urchin]

Oh dang

[storm onyx]

What the heck? Vandalism?

[tired stirrup]

Not cool

[storm onyx]

I hate to say it but maybe that location is a bit too conspicuous and maybe it's better off in the weeds somewhere instead of on top of the structure. Structures attract people.

[lilac shadow]

USAF / FAA control that site, SF guys said "its not us, there not inside the perimeter and there a few weather stations up here from schools" more likely Destructive Teenagers / Hiker type

[vital hemlock]

Humans are just the worst

[dim bay]

It might be one of those folks who think it's a helium miner, and are upset that someone might make some extra change without paying the fed thousands of dollars for the privilege. I wonder if leaving a meshtastic label might deter folks from being a hero. This way they know that no one is making money off of it, and they could actually make free use of it just being there.

[delicate zinc]

Someone was trying to decrease Channel Utilization

[radiant wasp]

Salt bois would any of you like to try connecting to boise? Because with proper locations giving relays los. It’s possible to connect our cities under the max hop Limit of 7.

[tired stirrup]

Not today Ivan... 😅🤔

[radiant wasp]

Don’t worry kgb friendly we replace you with near perfect copy

[vivid solstice]

I'm wondering if it is heat related. I moved mine (that was resetting every 3-5 days) from a window where it would get p.m. sun to an interior location with better climate control and I'm about a week without a reset.

Moving away from the BTE hypothesis.

[storm onyx]

I thought the same thing initially as I experienced a bunch in the hot summer with my roof node, but I've had it occur a few times inside climate control too.

[delicate zinc]

I was thinking heat too, but even in cooler temps it's happening. I moved to medium fast for about 2 weeks with zero failures, even 8n high heat. That said I couldn't see any other nodes and there was no traffic.

My theory is this has something to do with the high traffic on long-fast in our area.

(Also was hopeful that 2.4.3 would fix it but still failed after 8hrs on long fast)

[storm onyx]

I think so too regarding high traffic, when I moved my node off the high roof to a less prominent lower spot it seemed to work more reliably.

[delicate zinc]

Yup. Mine is on a high pole with a high gain antenna. I could reduce that but then I can't reach my friends nodes.

...I wonder if I should try some of the other user settings such as client_mute?

[delicate zinc]

I am testing "ignore mqtt" setting on my RAK to see if that fixes issue with traffic leading to reset.

[opal igloo]

Has anyone seen the node that is labeled Base Unit in the NW corner of Nevada on the map?

[opal igloo]

He must have been in a plane because his speed was 192mph which checks out for a small general aviation aircraft. But I was shocked to pick up a position in Nevada

[vital hemlock]

With the nodes we have placed on surrounding peaks and benches we should definitely consider moving to medium/fast

Our mesh is getting pretty large and chatty (not message traffic, just telemetry)

My tbeam on the roof deals with the heat no issue. When folks would bridge the public mqtt it would always crash though, the extra traffic nuked it.

Medium fast might eliminate the issue.

We’d just want to set up a node somewhere with some range sending out a daily “move to medium/fast” message on long/fast

[mental grove]

That node in NV is publishing to msh/US/UT. I think we should have something like "No-MQQT Mondays" or something, where everyone shuts it off for a day or two and we see the true state of the network.

[delicate zinc]

Same

[slate urchin]

I'm down to try

[tired stirrup]

I just made the switch on my T-echo mobile node JSXe and shot out a message from Draper.

MQTT should be outlawed btw... Don't internet my radio 😆

[delicate zinc]

Done. Med fast, ignoring mqtt . See yanapl there!

[main stag]

Same, just don't downlink if someone is on the public mqtt.

[slate urchin]

For mine to work, I think I would need Lake Mountain to make the switch or I dont think I can reach you guys.

[tired stirrup]

Well, thanks for all of your efforts on that.

Your node up there seems to be the only way that my rooftop node at home can make it out to anyone.

[tired stirrup]

I live in West Haven.

My node has been up and down a lot lately due to tinkering, and the fact that it doesn't have a charging method other than climbing on the roof to swap out the 18650s.

I can only assume that your node is what did the trick.

Before you put it up, I would only occasionally see one or two others.

Once, it was installed, I saw a ton of traffic. It all died off again when FPR went down.

I'll have to do some more testing, traceroutes and whatnot once they are both up again to be sure.

[lilac shadow]

Was out in Morgan a few weeks ago but couldn't get FPR

[lilac shadow]

prior to that but reminds me i need to get a node up in morgan for people to try and ping

[opal igloo]

new to the whole mesh world is all the traffic on channel zero the seq messages I keep getting ?

and what would be the optimal settings to not clog long fast?

[delicate zinc]

I don't see any nodes on medium fast 😦 anyone see 199a in West Valley?

[leaden crow]

I just switched my router in Holladay to medium fast

[opal igloo]

perfect glad to know i wasnt part of the problem haha

[tired stirrup]

My rooftop node in West Haven is up on MediumFast. It's lonely so far.

[opal igloo]

im on medium fast in orem

[delicate zinc]

Samesies

[opal igloo]

If I had one node on long fast and one on medium fast right next to each other would that cause issues?

[leaden crow]

I see your node on medfast !4c9a199a
I also see af4b and can traceroute to that node

[delicate zinc]

Anyone trying 2.5?

[opal igloo]

maybe this weekend when I finish a build I'm working on

[opal igloo]

Couldn’t wait I ghetto rigged the build im waiting on a battery holder for and flashed 2.5 on it. It seems to be working but it’s only been on for maybe 10 min

[delicate zinc]

What channel are u on. Long Fast or medium fast.

I just flash 2.5 on my rak and on medium fast. Still seeing no nodes

[opal igloo]

long fast so far ive seen 11 but i dont see myself on the map and my other node at home wont display it either

[vital hemlock]

Moving my roof node to medium fast as well

I kept the LongFast channel, and made a MediumFast channel with the default LF key as well. I don’t see anyone else yet. Confirmed still channel 20.

I confirmed two of my radios see each other on mediumfast

We’ll need a few more nodes with decent height on medium fast to see the benefits. But I’m patient, I can wait. It’ll just be like old times, quiet, for a while. 😂

[leaden crow]

I've never touched the frequency offset, according to the documentation: After factory reset the radio will be set to frequency slot 20 with a center frequency of 906.875 MHz.

Mine is set to 0. I wonder if I should change it?
"frequencyOffset": 0.0,

I see, offset is different than frequency slot. Still my default is 0, should it not be 20?
"channelNum": 0,

[vital hemlock]

@hallow dagger Is POTM yours?

[orchid umbra]

I put one of mine onto MF slot 20... Nothing showing up yet though

[vital hemlock]

We need at least one node to get some altitude to relay. My roof node sees the south end of the salt lake valley very well, but that wont help most of you.

[leaden crow]

If my RAK were more reliable, I’d consider hiking it some distance up olympus and installing it on a tree. unfortunately it loses it’s settings every week or two.

[void iris]

It seems like losing and reconnecting Bluetooth is what kills the RAKs. All of my base station and tracker nodes haven't died

I can almost guarantee that if I'm sitting at the edge of Bluetooth range it will kill it

[tired stirrup]

Sweeeeet!!!!

[leaden crow]

I slept on it and have some ideas to test. I also think I have almost all the hardware I need for a second solar powered node.

[vital hemlock]

I need to deploy a west side bench node. We have plent of east side and that doesnt help them reach each other

I am going to leave my roof node on medium fast for the foreseeable future, I dont have a need not to.

[delicate zinc]

Tdeck plus arrived!

[slate urchin]

No way. I ordered one, but not sure when it will ship!

So cool

[opal igloo]

What all extra can that do compared to the normal one?

[delicate zinc]

Will use it and report back. Looks like it shipped with plain meshtastic 2.3.0. Need to figure out how to get the fancy UI.

I'm just happy it has a centered screen and not 3d printed case.

[tired stirrup]

Hey @maiden wraith, do you still have a connection with FPR?

My house node says it's been over 30 hours since it's seen it.

[tired stirrup]

Welp, that sucks..

Hopefully nobody messed with it over the weekend

Also, I think I'm off of the Med/Fast bandwagon.

Up here in the Ogden area there's less traffic and and it doesn't really fit the intent of my SHTF mission plan.

Maybe, if traffic high becomes and issue for me, or if the Med/fast net gains some traction, I'll jump back into it.

[storm onyx]

Batman, did you ever move it off the shack onto the other peak or is it still on the roof?

[vital hemlock]

I didnt even hear about this. I guess I need to go see what the new features are

[void iris]

As far as I know the fancy UI is not released yet and you would need to build the correct branch from source in order to use it

[vital hemlock]

Wait, it's the same as the tdeck board, just a case and battery?

Until we have more folks using medium fast it isnt tenable

[tired stirrup]

@maiden wraith sweet.

Also, why don't you set up the FPR as a Router_client to priotize it and better utilize its potential?

[delicate zinc]

Medium fast not working for me either, I can't reach anyone.

Alternatively I'm trying 2.5.0 on my rak and seems to be better. Will see.

[opal igloo]

i couldnt see anyone around orem, im probably to far away

[delicate zinc]

Features are it looks like a BB from 15 yrs ago. Trade off is it has the capability of a PDA 25 yrs ago 😉

[slate urchin]

I got the fancy UI for you if you want it

[vital hemlock]

What firmware version is the fancy UI based on?

[slate urchin]

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/actions/runs/10554039713

Make sure you download the T-deck one

[slate urchin]

2.5 I believe

[vital hemlock]

Oh, 2.5.0

Nice

[fiery sparrow]

how many you need?

[delicate zinc]

Working on it thank you!

[delicate zinc]

Well I got it working. Thanks for sharing thr files Micah.

For anyone considering this, the T Deck plus itself feels nice. Trackball is a bit funky, but nostalgic. New Fancy Ui is still very early development.

[vital hemlock]

I loaded it on the tdeck I’m building for my brother.

[slate urchin]

@delicate zinc @vital hemlock Yeah, I have it on my T-Deck as well and love it! The last couple of builds have been a little buggy, but it's getting so sweet! I can't wait to try out the new T-Deck, but it's hard to beat the old one with an 8000 mAh

[opal igloo]

Does it have a spot for an external antenna or is it built in?

[vital hemlock]

The one I’m building for my brother is the 8k mah as well. You’re not wrong.

[vital hemlock]

The tdeck plus has a place for an external, if you remove a piece of plastic meant to break away. But it comes with the internal

[opal igloo]

I kinda want one now. Has anyone ever had trouble flashing a newer firmware version on a heltec v3? I can’t seem to get either of my computers to recognize it being plugged in and I’ve tried several different cables.

[vital hemlock]

So often it’s cables. Glad you already tried others, and other computers. Have you taken a close look at the usb plug to make sure it’s not broken?

[opal igloo]

Good thought I’ll have to open the case up and take a look. I may be stuck on 2.4.0 forever lol

[vital hemlock]

Or until they finally sort out esp32 flashing via Bluetooth.

I myself have one waiting for just that.

[opal igloo]

Ya the plug looks fine guess I’ll just wait. I was hoping a update would fix my iPad from disconnecting from it periodically

[tired stirrup]

I had 2 T-echos take a crap on me yesterday.

One reset/lost all the settings.

The other is now in some weird semi-frozen state where it constantly has the "Screen Paused" banner.

It still transmits and does everything on the app side from my phone.

It'll reboot, it says meshtastic and whatnot at startup and it let's me cycle through a two or three screens.

I tried reflashing the 2.5 firmware twice, tried the alpha and stable version but the "Screen Paused" banner won't go away and it won't cycle through all of the screens.

[opal igloo]

How long were they running for? I had a heltec v3 running for 2 weeks straight and it has now started acting weird

[tired stirrup]

Roughly a week

[opal igloo]

That’s odd I kinda thought mine hanging in a window may have something to do with it but I haven’t found anything to back that. Do those have the option to erase and re flash like the heltec’s do?

[storm onyx]

Doing the nrf52 factory erase from the flash webpage before doing firmware would be my suggestion, assuming it works like it does for the raks.

[tired stirrup]

That's good idea

[vital hemlock]

Defintily post this stuff in the respective channels. If they devs arent aware of issues they wont be able to work to resolve them.

That said, I'm sorry to hear you're having problems. I am one of the folks that havent run into these issues; I have techos and raks, and I've only had the lost-config issue once on one radio when I let it drain the battery waaay too low.

I think the nrf wipe is a good suggestion.

[vital hemlock]

I went ahead and preordered one of these puppies

https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Card-Tracker-T1000-E-for-Meshtastic-p-5913.html

[delicate zinc]

I'm in bear lake on long fast

[slate urchin]

Lol I say that all the time lol. Always alone

[tired stirrup]

Yo!, I'm at bear lake too! I just set a long fast node in the window. I haven't picked anyone up yet.

[delicate zinc]

I'm using 8cd0. Msg me if u see my node

[pliant fjord]

I was looking at pre-ordering this also... but I could not see what frequency this is on and if it will work in North America. Do you have any insight into this?

[vital hemlock]

Fine question actually. 🧐

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/sensecap_t1000_e/

Mentions what the US frequency is, so I assume it can. It might be tuned better for 869, but I’ll bet it works okay at 906~

[granite carbon]

I have the t1000-a and it supports 915. It will actually use it's GPS to see where it's at and automatically change frequencies to the country it's in. I wonder if they'll push a firmware update that supports meshtastic to it.

[humble vector]

Pre-ordered two. Going to make my daughter carry one at all times lol

[vital hemlock]

Thanks. I know that there were reasons for the new hardware to support meshtastic, but I didn’t read up on what they were.

[storm onyx]

Ran into batman on the way up to the FPR node to take a look. Total coincidence he was working on it today. Gave him a 50 yard lift up the hill in the SXS.

[storm onyx]

Notice I took the picture so as not to reveal Bruce Wayne's identity 🤣

My intent was to deliver proof of life pictures to him but turns out that wasn't necessary 🤘

[slate urchin]

What do you guys think of the Heltec T114v

[slate urchin]

What antennas are you all running? Does something like this work better than the stock one? https://www.taoglas.com/product/meteor-fw-95-915mhz-flexible-whip-smam/

[opal igloo]

I have this on one of mine it’s a little big but it seems to work pretty good

https://store.rokland.com/products/meshtac-gooseneck-tactical-antenna-4-dbi-gain-sma-male-915-mhz-flexible-for-meshtastic-lora

[vital hemlock]

You mean for handheld nodes, not stationary, right?

[vital hemlock]

https://tenor.com/view/kramer-seinfeld-whoa-shocked-gif-13186047

[opal igloo]

In my defense I thought it would be a lot smaller until I got it

It was one of those well I have it I might as well use it

[slate urchin]

Correct.

[bright gazelle]

What is everyone recommending for a fiberglass antenna for a stationary node on a mountain peak? Been eyeing the Gizont 35cm 5.8dBi on AE but seeing mixed opinions on them.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806241790045.html

[storm onyx]

Whatever you get, check the swr on a nanoVNA or other analyzer first. I got a bad antenna from Rokland of all places and provided them my results after burning up a rak chip. They sent another quick. SWR was off the charts for the 915mhz range. Like it had a short in it.

[bright gazelle]

I don’t have access to a VNA at the moment so I know it’s kind of a crapshoot. I know with AE, even if the SWR is bad, I’ll pretty much be on my own anyways.

Trying to avoid the 10dB+ because of the narrow beam width. Just found it interesting that one of the antennas for the official distance record was a no-name one from Amazon similar to what I’m looking at.

[storm onyx]

There is a list of known good tested antennas on the Meshtastic blog somewhere. Some are the cheapos too.

[bright gazelle]

I’m aware of the antenna reports GitHub but the list of stationaries is a bit slim. This will be the for the first mountain top node that I’m aware of in So. Utah. Gotta get it up before the snow flies.

[storm onyx]

Roger that, yeah that list might be getting stale and not keeping up with the china-mart offerings continually coming out.

[bright gazelle]

Yeah, that is true.

[storm onyx]

I was taking a risk assuming it was you and not some random guy. But then I realized no professional enduro rider would leave his bike at the bottom of such a hill unless he had a different mission in mind.

[storm onyx]

And that's not a dig, I would never attempt that hill on 2 wheels. My kids hate it even with 4 locked wheels. Seems less steep on the descent.

[pliant fjord]

Awesome. I actually emailed the company yesterday as well and received a response that confirms this: Hello Kevin,

The Region is configurable, check here for more details: https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/sensecap_t1000_e/#parameters-configuration

[vital hemlock]

Thanks!

[tired stirrup]

I've got FPR2 direct from West Haven. I also picked up a ton of new nodes. Thanks Batman!

The battery life is reporting 45% though 😬

That's awesome. Thank you for doing all of that

[void iris]

Lake mountain is just on the other side of that building (behind the antenna, no LOS). What do you think? Should I be able to get a good signal with it?

Doesn't have to go through earth, just a couple layer of plywood and 2x4

[slate urchin]

What antenna is that?

[void iris]

It's a cheapo from ebay I got from a friend, I have a 5.8 dbi from Rokland on it's way

This one can't reliably hit Lake Mountain. I hope the antenna from Rokland can

[granite carbon]

Looks like companies want to steal more of the ISM and ham bands for their own use. Article discussing it: Article summarizing that companies want to steal and repurpose the ISM bands. https://www.lightreading.com/private-networks/nextnav-anterix-ondas-join-rush-toward-900mhz-opportunities

[vital hemlock]

NextNav's use-case for having that much of the band is crazy, considering that our (and other) use-cases wouldnt likely interfere with their product.

[storm onyx]

Sorry man. Sounds like maybe the battery drained. Perhaps look at the direction of the solar panels and make sure they are south facing as much as you can for optimal sun.

Or maybe it's just a bad luck reset. Hopefully no hooliganism this time.

[slate urchin]

What stand are you using? I was trying to find something that I could 3D print.

[void iris]

I designed it. It fits both RAK boards. I'll send STL files when I get into work

[void iris]

@slate urchin https://www.printables.com/model/996576-rak-meshtastic-base-station-v1

I have a bunch of those M2 plastic screws that it requires if any of you want some

[slate urchin]

This is perfect!

Oh wait, what connector do I need if I am going from - https://store.rokland.com/collections/all-helium-antennnas/products/alfa-aoa-915-5acm-5-dbi-omni-outdoor-915mhz-802-11ah-mini-antenna-for-lora-halow-application

[void iris]

It looks like that needs the N-Female adapter

Hold on, the adapter i linked in the post might be the wrong one Comments on Amazon say its correct

[vital hemlock]

I can confirm, I have one. It's the N-type (I think that's the correct name)

[slate urchin]

So I know they make these,

https://store.rokland.com/products/uflipex-ipx-mini-pci-to-n-female-bulkhead-pigtail-cable-extension-rg178?variant=42068689977427

[void iris]

Thats the one

[slate urchin]

But what if I want to go to this

or is the other option better?

[void iris]

The N-type is more durable, but less portable.

Most of your outdoor antennas are N-Type

[slate urchin]

Okay. I will order the two of those that I posted.

You think that would be an okay antenna ?

[void iris]

In theory yes. I just ordered a very similar antenna from them

[slate urchin]

I guess we will give it a shot

[void iris]

This is the one i have coming today: https://store.rokland.com/products/low-profile-6-dbi-n-female-omni-outdoor-915-mhz-antenna-for-helium-rak-miner-2-nebra-indoor-syncrob-it-bobcat?_pos=1&_psq=6+dBi+Low+Profile+N-Female+Omni+Outdoor+915+MHz+Antenna+for+Helium+RAK+Miner+Bobcat+%26+Meshtastic&_ss=e&_v=1.0

[slate urchin]

I like that one. I want to put something like that on the new house.

[distant steppe]

Is there a node on West Mountain (South end of Utah lake 👇 )? Are we switching to medium fast?

[void iris]

As far as i can see, there is not a node down that far. I don't think the medium-fast switch got much traction

[slate urchin]

Starting the print. Thanks again

[storm onyx]

That's a wild looking printer!

[slate urchin]

Thats the new T1

https://flsun3d.com/pages/t1

Crazy fast, had some trouble before the updates, but love it now

[void iris]

Of course! I have a handful of cases I've designed, so I'm glad that it's useful

[tired stirrup]

I got the 8db 25 incher. It works great

[void iris]

Awesome! The antenna in my picture is an unmarked cheapo I got from a friend. It does not work well.

[tired stirrup]

I hear ya. It's say it's definitely worth the $35 Rokland charges

[slate urchin]

I like this!

What case is that?

[slate urchin]

Do you have them posted anywhere?

[void iris]

No but i can

This is probably my favorite, RAK 19007 and a 3000 mah battery flat in the style of TonyG's cases

[slate urchin]

Oh dang

With the new T114 that came out, I want to build something that will sit on the top of my house. I wish I knew how to design something like that...or at all lol

[tired stirrup]

AIRTAK Electrical Waterproof... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2RH6Y9G?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

[tired stirrup]

The Comms Channel on YT turned me onto it. I'm going a different route than what's in the video series but here's what sparked the process.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLshzThxhw4O76SNR2Og4-bNSQke46jlov&si=S4RpXmrYY0QnioAZ

[void iris]

I want one too. I can design with you if you want, and i model it

[tired stirrup]

I'm going with a voltaic systems 6w panel and the voltaic Enclosures LTO battery solar charging kit

[slate urchin]

Im down!

[void iris]

Now on Printables: https://www.printables.com/model/996756-rak-meshtastic-flat-portable-3000mah-battery

[slate urchin]

That is amazing! Could you take this and build a case around it? Since I am new to this, would this be its place holder?

I like that!

[void iris]

I can design 95% of it with this model he created

[slate urchin]

I need to learn how to do this!

[void iris]

Fusion 360 (what i use) is free to hobbyists, you can find a bunch of tutorials online as well

[slate urchin]

So just download the free version?

[void iris]

https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/personal

Let me know if you need any help, I have taught a few people at my work already

[slate urchin]

Just downloaded and installed.

[void iris]

For all you with RAK solar nodes, How much solar panel do you have? And what panels did you buy?

[slate urchin]

I will take you up on this offer.

[void iris]

Awesome, DM me

[leaden crow]

I have these, and the battery pack never seems to drop below full (4 led) whenever I check it. *it's been running with the RAK since Spring, so I don't know how it will hold out over winter yet.
https://voltaicsystems.com/3-5-watt-panel/
https://voltaicsystems.com/v25/

[void iris]

in theory a RAK consumes ~.04W idle. A 30ma, 5v panel outputs .15W. that should be about break even, no?

[distant steppe]

Ok I'm just south of Payson and not picking up any other nodes. I assume maybe a better antenna? Any suggestions?

I've got a rak4631

[leaden crow]

https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/antennas/

[vital hemlock]

A nice antenna is nice, just know that all the longest range records have been set with the terrible little bastard it came with. 😁

[leaden crow]

Get a roof node? or better, line of sight to a router with some serious elevation.

[vital hemlock]

This one is popular right now, for handhelds.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804421300249.html

Make sure to select “915MHz SMA”

[leaden crow]

or RP-SMA depending on what hardware he's got.

[vital hemlock]

Is there any Lora hardware we use for meshtastic that’s RP? I don’t know of any. 🧐

[leaden crow]

Somehow I have a bunch of IPEX cables that are RP and needed the RP-SMA Gozont antennas

[vital hemlock]

Fair

[distant steppe]

Currently I've got it on my roof but not super high. Currently facing north and can see much of orem / pg / Springville / AF / highland from my backyard but quite a ways away

[leaden crow]

I'm surprised you're not seeing anything. You on the default long fast, right?

[opal igloo]

There used to be a node on west mountain and I was able to pick up a few in the Payson area

[vital hemlock]

Good/cheap roof antenna. Lots of folks on this Discord have vouched for:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801688016561.html

Choose the “TX915-JKS-20 SMA” variant.

[leaden crow]

Wow that is cheap

[vital hemlock]

The nano vna’s have shown it to be well tuned, at least former batches. You never know what you’ll get.

3.5db is good spread for roof nodes though. Assuming it’s anywhere near what it’s advertised as. 😁

[distant steppe]

As a bird flies about 20 miles from Orem. I'll order a good antenna or two though

[vital hemlock]

I have three of them an all report better rssi/snr than stock

[distant steppe]

I thought I saw someone had a node on west mountain but I definitely havent picked it up

[leaden crow]

I need to buy a Nano VNA before I add to my antenna collection. I have some idea when performance is better than the stock rubber duckies, but that's about it.

[opal igloo]

It was maybe a week or two ago eventually I’d like to put one up there and hopefully leave it

[vital hemlock]

Honestly, checking the reception on the radio itself has been sufficient. So many factors affect antennas. You’d for instance never hold one in your hand to test it, but that’s how we use it.

Folks make ground planes, make a big difference

Not my photo

Lora in general is “very” forgiving with low low snr and weak signals

[leaden crow]

Has anyone seen POTM node in a while? I last saw it 15 days ago:

│ 188 │ POTM Router │ !77272d1f │ POTM │ RAK4631 │ 40.4714° │ -111.8836° │ 1879 m │ 101% │ 34.52% │ 7.69% │ -13.00 dB │ 0/unknown │ 0 │ 2024-08-20 18:39:49 │ 15 days ago │

[vital hemlock]

Let me check my other radio. My roof is going to stay on medium/fast

[leaden crow]

It seems like anytime I had successful traceroutes to nodes that were several hops away, they were going through POTM for me

[vital hemlock]

You are correct, I don’t see potm. Dang

Which is your node dagron

[leaden crow]

I still intend to switch to medium fast at some point, but I see nothing rn. I would really like to get a nano VNA and check the starf antenna on my roof node.

I probably need to get a better cable for that too

[vital hemlock]

I have some lm400 and a good antenna ready for a rak solar node. I’m in Taylorsville/West Jordan on the hill. It would be a great mid-valley node

[leaden crow]

DSR1 is my roof node

DSC2 is the only client I have on right now

[distant steppe]

I think it would be good if we could have one up on west mountain. It might open up locations further south too

[vital hemlock]

Tracing now

[opal igloo]

I tried med fast the last time it was brought up and never saw anyone I don’t think it will reach up north from my neck of the woods

[vital hemlock]

Agreed, fully

[opal igloo]

I plan on trying to get one up there but it will be about a month because of a three week work trip

[vital hemlock]

It will definitely reach, but we need a node with better line of sight. We’ve done over 30 miles on medium fast without issue. But none of our highly placed nodes are on medium fast right now

Long fast on Lora is for like 50+ miles. The UK folks can hit the satellite with long/slow. We all wish we had a 900mhz satellite

[vital hemlock]

I’ll swap the roof back to long fast and test if I can reach you. I was the hub for a lot of valley side traffic. Just assumed we didn’t need mine. But if potm is down I’ll move back

bp_roof should start showing up again in a few minutes here.

Channel utilization is over 40% for me. Man that’s ugly.

47%!

I see Layton parkway node

[tired stirrup]

I have 4 inbound right now 🤣

[vital hemlock]

Haha, nice. To give you an idea. I have one of these in my roof, I’m 27~ miles to Lake Mountain and I usually have 2-3 snr. I’m happy with that.

DSR1 is two hops away, -14 snr!

How Lora works at these numbers is insane

[leaden crow]

Sending traceroute request to !8487cea8 on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 --> !faa10070 --> !8487cea8

[vital hemlock]

I’m bouncing through 55c81364, but it doesn’t have a name yet. @leaden crow

Interesting, 0070 is a friend that doesn’t often see my roof from near the large West Jordan park.

Man, two years ago there were like four of us, trying like hell to link up. We’re glad you’re all here. 😂

It’s honestly been like the last six months, it’s changed everything

[leaden crow]

I don't know why, but I love watching the traceroutes when they go some wonky path

[opal igloo]

You can thank a YouTube rabbit hole that got me to get one off Etsy

[leaden crow]

I'm pretty sure Federal Heights Router is one of Pete Ashdown's nodes, my traceroute to that a while ago would hit POTM, Cali Ave, then Federal Heights Router

Which makes sense, I don't have line of sight to Federal Heights from Holladay

[tired stirrup]

Same here

[distant steppe]

No idea why, but moved my node back inside and now I see some nodes including bp_roof

[vital hemlock]

If you trace to my roof, what path does it take?

[distant steppe]

I don't seem to be getting any response back from traceroute. My node is Grub

[vital hemlock]

Checking now

Nope, nothing yet. Do you know what the last four of the MAC address is?

[leaden crow]

I just ordered a LiteVNA, 4 more antennas and an LMR400 cable to replace my RG58

[distant steppe]

No how do you find the mac? Dumb question I know

[vital hemlock]

Not dumb. You can check with command line if you have it, or the web interface. If you have only the phone client it depends. Are you using android or iPhone?

[distant steppe]

Android, just the phone app but I'll setup the cli tomorrow

[vital hemlock]

Touch the three vertical dots on the top right corner in the app , choose radio configuration, then user. Under user config it will have the node ID, should start with a ! and be 8 characters longs.

All 8 are used to identify the node, but a number of logs and visual aids just use the last four. My roof for instance is CEA8

[distant steppe]

The last 4 are 2BDA

[distant steppe]

Another basic question, where one is showing hops away, that seems obviously reached over a hop. The other ones with rssi/smr suggests it is directly receiving packets correct?

[void iris]

That is correct

[distant steppe]

Thanks. I have only seen 2 devices with at least 1 hop. The other 50+ are direct. I assume that means I am barely hearing these nodes. Hopefully a new antenna arriving tonight will help

[slate urchin]

Just a heads up. Anyone loading the new fancy T-deck, don't. It does not work.

[opal igloo]

Good to know I’ll hold off on getting one. Has anyone had random app crashes with nodes that have 2.5 on them?

[slate urchin]

Just the T-deck

[opal igloo]

I’ve noticed a few times over the last few days every once in a while the app will crash when clicking on a node on the list. Isn’t there a way to send a bug report in?

[vital hemlock]

How’s yours working @delicate zinc ?

[void iris]

I have a heltec v3 on 2.4.2 that reboots every few minutes lately

[vital hemlock]

I built a tdeck for my brother. It has occasional boot loops on 2.5.0. Otherwise it lasts like 4 days with the 8k mah battery

[delicate zinc]

Buggy

I haven't tried the latest, which firmware do you have Micah

[slate urchin]

I just tried the latest firmware as of yesterday, and it blacks out your screen

so right now, my T. deck is dead

[delicate zinc]

Sent you message to get your tdeck back up and runnjng.

[vital hemlock]

You flashing the older firmware on it?

[delicate zinc]

Yup

Do you need it?

[slate urchin]

How far back do you go?

[vital hemlock]

No I know where to find it. What version did you find to be fairly stable?

[delicate zinc]

I am using the 2.5.0 firmware that Micah linked me to 11 days ago. I noticed the touchscreen didn't work . Another user had an update file that seemed to fix touch, he sent it to me directly. I can send you them if needed

[vital hemlock]

Oh, in that case, sure 🙂

Thanks

[delicate zinc]

Trying to send but exceeded my file limit. Perhaps Micah can try

[slate urchin]

I got you

Sent

[distant steppe]

Is traceroute actually working? I'm on the lastest stable and I've probably tried 100 times and I've never seen anything after selecting traceroute on a node that is x hops away

[vital hemlock]

On android you just want to wait for a pop up that says what route it took, if you get an answer. On iphone there is a node datafield that keeps track of past traceroutes

[distant steppe]

Thanks, I'll try waiting longer and see if anything shows up

[leaden crow]

traceroute works for me, but less than 50% of the time. I just got this one back from Lake Mountain:
Sending traceroute request to !f71efb74 on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 --> !da6572b8 --> !1b9b491a --> !fce60c73 --> !f71efb74

What's interesting to me is that Lake Mountain reports as "Direct" (no hops). I'm assuming that means Lake Mountain's broadcast signal is much better than mine and reaches me directly, while my outbound is going through several hops to reach it?

[storm onyx]

Traceroute tip. Patience is the key, there is a lot of latency with multiple hop routes. Wait for a minute keeping the app active and don't click somewhere else while waiting. Eventually the hop returns. YMMV.

[slate urchin]

So it will just drain the battery?

[distant steppe]

Do you liket the t114? I have one on the slow boat

[vital hemlock]

I dig it

[vital hemlock]

I assume that with a gps that that solar panel might be under sized. How's it been?

Nice work, we wish you every success and cant wait to hear back 🙂

I did watch a short video online about the efficiency of their solar charge circuit. If you are willing to make it "slightly" large you might be able to squeeze more juice out of the panel. Have you put it on a meter to see if it's charging at what you expect, or just trial-by-application?

[white field]

Anyone try setting up links into neighboring valleys from SLC yet?

I was looking at this as one possible linkup:

• Onaqui - Cap Peak - remote location - very isolated and rugged location
• Nelson Peak - would need permission from KUTV or some operator to colocate at their facility (telephone pole might be enough)
• Wasatch Crest - theres a lot of outdoor use here so I wouldn't want to leave it on a tree, but theres a few candidate radio facilities basically ON the ridgeline (TBD what permissions would be needed)
• Uintas - location TBD - vast forest - lots of options

hahahaha

TBH, I was just looking at something i left out of this.

Onaqui - Cap Peak - has direct LOS to Wendover and doubles the span size.

[delicate zinc]

Rak?

[white field]

Looking at the Cap Peak location, I think there's actually already a repeater at Eagle Mountain that has LOS for it.

[orchid umbra]

That's fantastic, it would cover most of the salt flats... Might make for a very busy node

[fiery sparrow]

Not sure this was a gift or a curse.....

[white field]

Quality #notabomb . Where’s that one node live?

[leaden crow]

Are you the fence for a Lime scooter theft ring or something? 😁

[fiery sparrow]

buddy works at a e-bike repair joint. Time is growing short for getting "loose" batteries from packs since law says they all have to be completely potted now days.

[leaden crow]

• Wasatch Crest - theres a lot of outdoor use here so I wouldn't want to leave it on a tree, but theres a few candidate radio facilities basically ON the ridgeline (TBD what permissions would be needed)

I am usually up on Crest every week in the summer. I'll scout around in the next couple of weeks. I think it would actually be trivial to inconspicuous mount a solar node on a tree.

Does anyone know if the RAK reset problem is specific to RAK? Or does it happen with all nRF52840 based devices? I would order some T114, but not if it has the same problem. I already have RAKs I am not using because of the reset.

[leaden crow]

Did not know that. Does potting actually solve battery fire problems? I would assume not. My first guess is that they would be more likely to overheat.

[fiery sparrow]

It marginally helps in cases of impact damage and maybe helping thermals, but it's going to present problems for recyclers, even the pro ones.

[leaden crow]

Wow, yeah, didn't even think about that. Hopefully they invent some new potting resin. Otherwise we'll have landfills full of encased batteries.

[fiery sparrow]

That said, going to need to pipeline moving these things out as I liberate them from their faulty BMS..

[vital hemlock]

The RAK issue is intermittent, which sucks. I've had RAKs for over two years and one radio has experienced it once. Most folks encounter it when the battery runs down below operating voltage, but others have had it happen without that specific scenario. My take is that if you are going to make a remote router node then I'd set it up for weeks in your current location and confirm it's good to go before deploying.

[white field]

Hmm, I'm hopeful the low-voltage battery issues can be mitigated by using oversized batteries.

I'm currently running a RAK 4631 with a 2000mA-h. This one drains at about 15% per day or about ~12.5 mA utilization which is within 50% of spec sheet values. (300 mA-h utilization per day)

For my first solar node, planning to run a RAK4631 with a 5000 mA-h battery and a solar panel with max amperage of ~350mA.

Ideal worst case steady state conditions would be winter solstice (7.5 day, 16.5hr dark). 207mH-A drained overnight, 96% battery capacity.

Real conditions, I could see it not getting solar for a few days especially if covered in snow/ice. (7 days would still be 58% capacity)

Not sure how optimistic I'm being about solar charing uptime tho. 🤣

TBH, one solution might be to put a low power auto-restart system in place.

I have done this with raspberry pis before when they had issues with LED hardware. I would just tell the system to do a power-down reboot every 24hrs to fix any internal crashes.

[spring merlin]

So I'm setting up my first solar node and I'm trying to go very simple. It will sit outside of my apartment so i will have access in case anything goes south....

I'm planning on using a single 18650 with a Rak unit. I plan to just connect the battery and solar panel (Soshine 6w directly to the rak with no additional solar controller. I understand many warn against this but others seem to have had no problems? Any insight on that?

My question is, the case I want to use (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6602076) uses a rocker power switch, presumably to cut power to the battery - but when I study the wiring in these pictures it makes zero sense to me. Also, my rocker switch has 3 pins instead of two... is anybody aware of a build guide or video that might be relevant at all to the build i'm describing?

[vital hemlock]

I do wish the firmware had an “auto reboot every x” or on schedule. Just in case. But with v2.5 that will mean generating new keys each time too. But that’s all subject to change. Not finalized.

[void iris]

For the rocker switch, just connect the center pin, and either of the outside pins. One position connects the left pin to center, and the other position connects the right pin to center.

And based on how I think it's wired, just know that shutting off power will also stop the battery charging. If it were my node I would probably just not use the switch

The reason that people don't like panels like that is because the voltage can go higher in direct sunlight than the rated voltage of the charge controller. It is possible to get around that using a zener diode to limit voltage if you're comfortable with that

[tired stirrup]

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1421193059/li-ion-battery-protection-modules-pcm?click_key=8afa1f278afd71654468ea7c88c2dbebb46ae954%3A1421193059&click_sum=dbe8360b&ref=shop_home_active_4&frs=1&crt=1&sts=1

https://www.adafruit.com/product/4755

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-bq24074-universal-usb-dc-solar-charger-breakout

https://www.adafruit.com/product/372

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804374789171.html?spm=a2g0o.order_detail.order_detail_item.2.69e5f19cF9STTy&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa

Sorry to spam you all. After doing a bit of homework (having no prior experience) here's the list of things that I cobbled together for my solar node.

Keith at Voltaic Enclosures doesn't recommend the soshine panel. He recommended the one linked above.

[spring merlin]

thank you! the thingiverse link for the enclosure i printed did mention changing the zener on the rak board, but are you saying i could maybe put one in series with the output of the solar panel before connecting the rak to limit the voltage? and if so what value would i be after, or can you direct me to a resource that can help me determine the value?

[spring merlin]

thank you for sharing this! it seems the BQ24074 would help in my case as well, do you agree?

[void iris]

@spring merlin You would just use a 5.1V zener in parallel. Solder the side with the black line to the + of the panel, and the other side to the -. That will make it so that the voltage to the RAK will never be greater than 5.1V, and all of the extra energy from the panel will be converted to heat in the Zener. I wouldn't go less than a 1W zener for this solar panel.

Use the 5.1V from this set: https://a.co/d/dCltw5n

A separate solar charge controller would also work (and waste less energy), it would just be more money and size

[spring merlin]

perfect, thank you so much for taking the time to clarify this for me!!! And the example to boot 🙂

[leaden crow]

If you wanted to do it with a single cheap component, wouldn't a 7805 be way more ideal than a zener diode?

I guess you've got to worry about the overhead voltage if you're using an actual 7805, but if your panel is typically putting out 7V+ it's going to be way more efficient

[void iris]

A 7805 is a lot less efficient (depends on the voltage drop required), a lot more expensive (still pretty cheap of a 1-off unit), and would also require a 7V+ input in order to keep 5V on the output

a zener diode will not waste any electricity unless the panel voltage is above the threshold. a 7805 will

[spring merlin]

i think this is the biggest consideration. my panel likely won't maintain 7V+ unless i get a new more powerful panel. so zener will likely be the winning option given my current components

[void iris]

you could also get a DC-DC converter that can take in a wide range, and output a solid 5v with a 90%+ efficiency, they are more money/size still though

[spring merlin]

yeah. this is likely going to be pretty temporary. i'm just anxious to get something up and live tbh. i'll probably order one of Kieth's controllers eventually

[void iris]

Zener is probably simplest/smallest/most efficient for you then

[spring merlin]

thanks a ton 🙂

[void iris]

any time!

[leaden crow]

I haven't used an actual 7805 in forever. The switching replacements are cheap enough now, but it looks like most of those have the same 7v minimum input voltage
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/580-OKI78SR5-1.5W36C

[void iris]

a 7805 is guaranteed to waste (2*Amps) watts reguardless of what it is doing. A diode will only waste what is not being used to actively charge the battery, which isn't really waste because the battery charging circuit isn't using that power anyways

The switching regulators do use a lot less brain power to design around though

[leaden crow]

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Monolithic-Power-Systems-MPS/mEZD72401A-G?qs=%252BdQmOuGyFcHc%252BOIzZX0lvg%3D%3D

That one would probably do it, though questionable to spend $6 on a regulator over the $14 adafruit charge controller

[spring merlin]

good point...

[fiery sparrow]

Got a bunch of 21700s in this drop as well if someone is looking for extra mah's.

[white field]

Ohh, I finally got my node built! About to put it outside somewhere to test solar charging. 😄

e3bf solar:1 online!

These cases are so overengineered for what I probably needed. 😄

Btw, is there any sentiment in Utah to swap from LongFast -> MediumFast once the new firmware swaps?

I wonder if we could have Meshtastic collectively schedule a, "Let's all switch defaults holiday".

[leaden crow]

yes, we tried once, but didn't get enough momentum.

with channel utilization where it's at now, and the amount of new nodes popping up, the change will have to be sooner rather than later

[vital hemlock]

I agree. But we need Lake Mountain or POTM on m/f for the southern half of the valley and provo, one or two of the north valley routers as well.

[void iris]

Could we put a second node up at those locations

[vital hemlock]

Absolutely

[void iris]

I was also thinking there should be a firmware feature that lets you tie multiple nodes together and share messages between them. That way we could have one node with multiple radios for different speeds

Over i2c or somthing

[vital hemlock]

You're mad, but I like it

[tired stirrup]

For the price, the fact that it can be used with a variety of input voltages and the option to use a thermistor to cut off the charging if it's too hot or too cold, I figured it fit was worth a try.

I have an LTO battery kit from Voltaic Enclosures that I'm going to install and use throughout the winter for my roof node.

The LTO kit was fairly expensive and i still needed a few things to complete the build, so I got all the currently installed solar charging components to tinker with for now and maybe use on a node later on down the rode.

[void iris]

That way you could do a single node with a Yagi to connect to the mesh, and a lower gain antenna to spread the signal locally, without adding an extra hop

[vital hemlock]

The "only" reason I dont have a solar node up is the state of updates. Until I can reliably update the repeater/router standing nearby with a phone I am holding off

typos, on mobile

The RAKs mostly work updating over bluetooth, but from medium distance it's a no. And now they have the router/repeater set to disable bluetooth. So I would never make mine a router, even if it were placed to be one.

If it were on one of the mountains I can see having wired-only updates

Another thing we should consider is the if/where/why of connecting all the valley's on the common channel. That will always always create a lot of broadcast traffic in a flood routing mesh.

Most of the folks I would want to reach out of band from home are in the valley, one in Saratoga. I am one hop with Lake Mountain to Saratoga Springs. But if I see someone saying hello in Roy, now we are treating them like hams, but unlike hams they hamper each other but having that ability.

That sounds like wet blanket, I know, not my intention. Just want to start a converstation about use-case

[fiery sparrow]

well, there's a way, but you'd have to spend way more than you want to unless it can be secured

[vital hemlock]

What are you referring to Panda?

[fiery sparrow]

being able to update OTA..

[vital hemlock]

Can you explain, or is this the wrong place for it?

[leaden crow]

Generator with PC and Starlink at solar node location? 😆

[vital hemlock]

haha, fair

[leaden crow]

idk, maybe Panda has a better idea than me? I have a Waveshare SIM7600X 4G HAT doing nothing rn

An RPI node with that hat is going to need a TON of power though

[vital hemlock]

pi-zero go go go

[fiery sparrow]

yeah, would be power intensive... I prefer pi pico tbh.... solar gen, some network equipment, and a digi USB endpoint. network to work remote can be however you want to deal with it