US - Utah

[fiery sparrow]

but you'd have USB access to the node to do whatever you needed to

[vital hemlock]

All I really meant is that if it's on someone else's property, not state or blm, I dont want to have to bug them. But just update it from the car nearby.

There is a voice chat going on, where we are speaking about "how large should the mesh get". It's interesting

Guy in NZ they said with a short/fast link over 100km with the little tiny antennas

[leaden crow]

The Lake Mountain shack has power, doesn't it? If we got a second node out there, it might not be a bad idea to get an RPI node that we could remote update.

Cursory glance these 2 hats might work together:
https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/SIM7600X_4G_%26_LTE_Cat-1_HAT
https://www.waveshare.com/sx1262-lorawan-hat.htm

[vital hemlock]

🤔

[void iris]

If we had two different boards, and tied them together with I2C it should work

[leaden crow]

The only conflict I see is pins 8 & 10, but the 4G hat only uses them for GNSS, just don't use GNSS

[vital hemlock]

So, it sounds like we werent supposed to be on channel 20 for medium fast, we were supposed to be on 45

[leaden crow]

I'm still confused about that. I never change that setting and it's always default to '0' for me.

"frequencyOffset": 0.0,
"channelNum": 0,
"overrideDutyCycle": false,
"overrideFrequency": 0.0,

[vital hemlock]

0 uses the hash of the name of the channel to decide

If you are doing custom settings you need to set it

[leaden crow]

ok

that makes sense

[vital hemlock]

The suggestion is that I get a short domain name to set as a radio name, then host a simple page with the qr and url for the settings we are going to use.

[void iris]

You can put that in a message and we can pin it on this channel I believe

[vital hemlock]

Then move to medium fast. Bentern said our mesh is way too big for long fast. I told him we know, learned the hard way. 🙂

[leaden crow]

How short of a domain name? I have a short one, but it's hard to type.

[vital hemlock]

lol

[leaden crow]

not kidding

https://ӂ.net/

[void iris]

I have bcpratt.com, we can do a subdomain off of that

[leaden crow]

hah, it translated it from the unicode character

it's a single character, but I guess discord can't display it

[void iris]

What the heck I didn't even know you could do that

[leaden crow]

yeah, you can buy unicode domains, when I found out years ago, I got one of the only single char ones I could find. Would love to have got upside down question mark

that's way easier to type

[slate urchin]

I got my new Antenna! Can anyone see if you can ping Baird Base (BB) in Eagle Mt?

[vital hemlock]

checking

[leaden crow]

│ 76 │ Bairds Base │ !da55eb94 │ BB │ HELTEC_V3 │ 40.3528° │ -111.9922° │ 1533 m │ 101% │ 21.40% │ 5.17% │ 5.25 dB │ 0/unknown │ 0 │ 2024-09-10 12:38:25 │ 3 hours ago │
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !da55eb94 on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Aborting due to: Timed out waiting for traceroute

[slate urchin]

I am a noob at this, but that does not sound good

[leaden crow]

No it's fine. Most of my traceroutes to that far away fail

[slate urchin]

I am trying to pig Lake MT and I cant seems to get a pig back, but I am also using my Mesh local on my computer

[white field]

I wonder if we can get consensus about a few things and then make a some changes that push most people to new default network configs

• try to get a list of our best repeater/hilltop nodes and reach out to their owners (IE: Lake Mountain)
• have a vote about scheduling a date to start the cutover (presumably after firmware defaults have been updated)
• leave several nodes on LongFast that have names telling people to swap to MF, "SLC repeater now on MF"
• place some really nice repeaters that only operate on MF

[vital hemlock]

Okay, sounds like we need to set up a quick chat. We learned a few things in this chat with ben and garth.

[vital hemlock]

"Some" of this is done. We have most of the highly placed node owners in here. There is also a meshtastic bot we can use the push out a 4x daily message about the new channel on the default long/fast. We can do it.

They said we might be able to just push short fast, honestly with well placed nodes it would be so slick.

[white field]

Speaking of good placements. Has anyone talked to the Utah Amateur Radio Club about their Farnsworth Peak repeater?

Curious if that would be a site that could host a node.

https://www.utaharc.org/rptr/62rpt.html

[slate urchin]

Can anyone ping Lake Moutain?

[vital hemlock]

I can, but it’s lower than normal snr

[slate urchin]

I can't. Does not seem to be coming up for me

[void iris]

I can. Even though I can physically see it. It's routing through dragon mountain

[slate urchin]

Yeah I can see it as well

[void iris]

Interesting.

[slate urchin]

Well shit, I wonder why I am getting my but kicked. My supreme is also not seeing it.

[void iris]

I can't trace you either Micah, My last packet from you was 4 hours ago

[white field]

Speaking of Lake Mountain, does anyone happen to know how it's placed?

I was wanting to look at some topos and wanted to know what elevation it's sitting above the ground.

[void iris]

White antenna on the peak of the roof

[slate urchin]

I had it off for a long time, Made a new case, and put it all together. Just put it back in the window about an hr ago.

[void iris]

Just saw Baird Base

[slate urchin]

Just reset it

[void iris]

Interesting, I've never done direct before. From traverse outlets by the point of the mountain

[slate urchin]

Oh wow. Maybe the antenna is working, I just needed to reset it

Give it a second and let’s see if I start pinging other people.

have you guys had a problem with using the meshtactic.local? Sometimes it doesn’t work on my computer or it’s extremely slow.

[spring merlin]

its been a while since i tried it but it was always pretty finicky for me

[slate urchin]

Yeah not sure I love it!

[spring merlin]

looks like this panel actually has a 5v regulator as long as I connect through the USB port. which is not something that everyone seems to acknowledge about the soshine...

[slate urchin]

Well I know why its not working...this one is way better - https://client.meshtastic.org/

[spring merlin]

good to know, thanks 🙂 i'll give this a try soon

[void iris]

@main stag is your slcmesh site still up?

[main stag]

Yep, still up I just checked to make sure. It might have been down earlier today due to me filling up a disk on accident. Let me know if you can't get to it @void iris

[fiery sparrow]

Speaking of spicy meatballs... Just pulled this out of my backup meshtastic phone ..

no way to recycle this one... going to have to be detonated unless someone knows a place that has a containment box suitable for it

high praise to the ifixit kit... The battery did the hard work of removing the screen for me.. lol

[leaden crow]

Give it the viking funeral

[dry fox]

cccccbeukcvfjfljuhnirigrvefiblrrbed

[vital hemlock]

yubikey?

or cat

[storm onyx]

Someone touched their yubikey

[vital hemlock]

Happens to the best of us

[fiery sparrow]

PSA to replace your yubikeys with firmware older than 5.7 for your really important stuff.

[leaden crow]

https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1f8u8n3/your_yubikeys_are_vulnerable_but_it_probably/

Here's why you shouldn't care:

The attacker needs to already know your username/password, as well as the FIDO PIN if enabled, and have physical access to the key for a while.

That physical access to the key involves tearing it apart to gain direct access to the Infineon chip inside.

That physical access also requires about $11k worth of fancy science tools.

If you realize your key's been stolen, and you quickly change your credentials, the attack has been worthless.

...so in other words, don't bother trashing your old YubiKeys and buying new ones, unless you're legitimately vulnerable to nation-state-level attackers and can't ensure 100% control of the keys (and your other credentials).

[fiery sparrow]

yup. why I said super sensitive... but I work in that field, so...

[vital hemlock]

https://tenor.com/view/farm-rollers-farming-gif-11078904

[white field]

So Park City is a pretty sparse mesh. I just parked at the top of guardsman for about 30min and only got data from a few nodes.

My goal to sneak a link up via a bounce from Farthsworth or Goblers nob might be less justified for the payoff

(Tho still might be a fun exercise for a weekend of hiking)

[slate urchin]

That would be sweet to push a signal up that way

[leaden crow]

I got my NanoVNA today. Unfortunately it looks like all my “915MHz” Gizont antennas are tuned to 868MHz

[storm onyx]

Glad you were able to check them out first!

[leaden crow]

First? I have been using them for months. haha

Lets hope the Ziisor antennas in the mail are better

[storm onyx]

Ah well, just another example of how tolerant these little radios are

[leaden crow]

I am debating getting out the extension ladder to check my Starf roof node antenna tonight

[storm onyx]

That sucks, it's the first I have heard of mislabeled gizonts. Mine was almost flat 1 to 1 for 915mhz

[white field]

Also just got one of the testers

Pretty sure the one on the right was the same “gizont” model you posted.

Left was a “Raigen 5.8 dB” fiberglass antenna with a 5ft cable.

Actually I have no idea how this thing is actually working or if it can be trusted. I see a 30MHz shift from rotating the module 90degrees 😅

Holding the module vertically, its rock solid at 915MHz. Horizontally its floating around 870.

Gonna have to learn what’s going on here. 😅

[leaden crow]

My Starf antenna appears to be tuned low too. It has 1.2 SWR at about 879 Mhz. 1.4 SWR at 915MHz

[storm onyx]

1.4 is still great though.

[leaden crow]

Yeah, that is some consolation, the curve is pretty flat

[void iris]

@fiery sparrow if it's a quarter wave antenna, it doesn't have a ground and thus is very prone to changing SWR based on how it is held, and how close your hand is to it

[vital hemlock]

Test it with a ground plane that isnt you, curious to see what it does

https://paratusradio.com/2020/08/building-the-tiger-tail/

[white field]

When I placed it on a couch/table it was reading out the 915 MHz tuning. 🎉

[spring merlin]

here's my temporary cobbled solar rig 🙂 magnetized to a sheet of steel lol I just set it on top of the carport for now

[spring merlin]

what the heck

sorry to hear that. did anyone ever determine if it's a power related thing or is it completely unknown still?

dang. i guess that's better but in a way its not because doesn't that leave it open via bluetooth at that point

[burnt pagoda]

@slate urchin what is that antenna that you have on your window rig?

[vital hemlock]

I just got the message that there is a meshtastic meetup at 801 labs tonight

Who set that up?

I wont be able to make it, and that's pretty short notice

[void iris]

We have meetups? I'd like to meet y'all in person if I knew ahead of time

[vital hemlock]

We don’t, but we could. 😂

Well the guys at 801 labs do apparently

[spring merlin]

saw that and wondered the same 🙂

[vital hemlock]

I sent out this channel again, maybe one of them will join and talk to us about it

[white field]

The 801 discord and meetup.com said the 801 labs event was canceled.

Not sure that matters if enough people want to show up anyways. 😛

[vital hemlock]

Did anyone here mention it before today?

We've talked about meeting up before. I hope we can find the other groups that are thinking of doing it as well. Thanks @white field

[void iris]

Not that I saw, I've been monitoring this discord closely

[north nova]

The original class/event was cancelled but 801labs is still open tonight

[mighty pike]

HEK meetup cancelled tonight?

[granite carbon]

Yeah, I think the presenter had to cancel so we have other stuff running. However, we'd be more than happy to host a meetup in the future, especially in a Thursday night.

(I run 801Labs.)

[vital hemlock]

Excellent! Nice to meet you, glad we found out about this. 😄

[tired stirrup]

I'd be down for a meetup sometime if there's plenty of notice

[leaden crow]

Nice, I bet we'd have a good group with advance notice.

[granite carbon]

I'll post a note in here once we have it scheduled again.

[vital hemlock]

I spoke with Ben and Rick yesterday and they'd be willing to come in virtually as well, with enough notice.

[granite carbon]

Although we are open to the public every Thursday night.

[vital hemlock]

Thanks @granite carbon , we appreciate it!

[granite carbon]

And we do ham meetups every other Monday.

[vital hemlock]

Oh, interesting. @dim bay have you ever been?

[granite carbon]

Our current focus on ham nights is studying to take the exams at Saintcon in October, but we've got a neat setup and are working on some grant stuff. A satnogs station is on the to-do list, as well as a police scanner.

[vital hemlock]

@dim bay I believe is friends with the fellow that owns https://hamstudy.org/ , or made it himself.

[granite carbon]

I know the people that run it, I've made my fair share of signal sticks over the years.

[leaden crow]

Where you riding? Doing some BDR?

[fiery sparrow]

I need to make it to saintcon some day... work always gets in the way though

[vital hemlock]

A bunch of our folks go, I've never made it either. I used to go to Defcon and Blackhat, but they arent my scene any more. I should shoot for b-sides vegas next year

[fiery sparrow]

world is going to have to get a lot more boring before I'll have time to go... lol.

[granite carbon]

Saintcon is the best security conference to attend if you want to learn. Very different vibe than defcon. We also have bsides in salt lake, St George, and Logan was launched this last weekend.

[leaden crow]

I’m always kind of curious about this. I’ve hated conferences my work has sent me in the past, but I know they would pay for more if I asked. I regret not going to the early Defcons in the 90’s when all my friends were going. I understand it’s not the same now.

[hallow dagger]

Just returned from traveling and getting caught up here... No idea what happened to POTM while I was away. I'll try to get to it this weekend to check it out. I'll switch it to medium-fast as well. I don't think it's very effective anyway on long-fast up there where it sees both SL and UT valleys.

[vital hemlock]

Talking to Ric we believe the default channel for medium fast is 45. But, I’ll reset a node and confirm this weekend.

[hallow dagger]

I've been contemplating the same thing. Could do it with a little AVR board in between two MT radios relaying messages between them.

[vital hemlock]

Ping me before you head up, so we can make sure all our configs are the same and correct. 👍

[fiery sparrow]

so, have we officially switched over?

[vital hemlock]

Not yet. We need potm and others switched first

[fiery sparrow]

I've got so many of these things I could potentially run every signaling.. lol.

[leaden crow]

Assume we don’t touch this setting (leave value at ‘0’). The firmware should get this right, correct?

[remote current]

@vital hemlock It's been a while! I'm hoping to get my node set back up at home. What configs am I looking for to join the fun?

[vital hemlock]

Hey man! Welcome back! I'll get the config tonight or tomorrow and post the url here. 🤝

[vital hemlock]

Not really. If you wipe your config, choose medium/fast, and leave the default channel then "perhaps". It's supposed to hash the name of the channel and choose the correct lora channel based on that. But I will test to confirm.

If you have a custom channel as primary, as many of us do, then it wont work. If you are clean defaults then it should work, you are correct. I shouldnt have said "no".

[vital hemlock]

Man, 2.4.3 feels like what I'd suggest. my raks havent had issues with it. Sorry your having so many issues. 😦

Is it just one radio that's doing it, or more than one?

[fiery sparrow]

2.4.1 has taken more than a week to jam up on any of my devices

[spring merlin]

I'm definitely curious to try medium/fast as well

[void iris]

I haven't had an issue since I've started being intentional with leaving Bluetooth range. If I expect my device to reconnect to my phone, I just disconnect from it in the app. I went from resets a couple times a week, to none in over a month

[void iris]

From the schematic it looks like the USB and solar input are directly connected together through a diode. Does it charge slowly from USB as well?

[white field]

Anyone know if there’s any mesh infra around Manti?

I’m thinking about putting up some repeaters along skyline for the weeks of the Elk hunting season.

I don’t see anything on Mesh Map, but that doesn’t preclude nodes

[burnt pagoda]

Updated to 2.5 and I see nobody. I've switched from mediumfast to long fast .... Anybody have optimum settings. I am using the wismesh pocket as my primary.

[leaden crow]

Were you seeing nodes prior to 2.5 upgrade? I don't think the coordinated move to medium fast has happened yet. I'm waiting for word from BP before I switch all my nodes again. Maybe make sure you're not on channel 45 for long fast?

[burnt pagoda]

Channel 45?

On a different topic. I have a number of nodes however looking to buy a premade one to stock on a family members in Herriman. Anybody selling premade nodes yet? I have bought a few units on Etsy however I would rather buy locally.

[leaden crow]

I would think you'd see a bunch of nodes from Herriman. Take your radio outside. Maybe walk/drive to the top of a hill with some elevation. If you're still not seeing anything you might have a config or antenna problem.

[white field]

Isn't longfast on channel 0 (default overrides it to 20) or explicitly 20?

[burnt pagoda]

It's 20, now that I factor reset. Not presently in Herriman. I work at the U and my goal is to hit my home in Herriman.

[white field]

want to coordinate a quick test? I can also enable medium fast on one of my nodes might have LOS to the U.

(just flipped my node over, not seeing any acks on global channel)

My placement is very sub-optional tho.

[spring merlin]

I don't have any made currently but would love to help you out if you want to chat about what you need

[burnt pagoda]

KMM on long fast

[leaden crow]

It is, but if he had it configured for medium fast it may have been on 45. If it was still on 45 after switching to long fast, that could be one reason he wasn't seeing any other nodes.

[leaden crow]

There are a couple of nodes close to the U. I would still do the walk around with your WisMesh pocket, see if you pick up some nodes. Federal Heights Router appears to be around 2nd Ave and Laurel Street. If you can get to a building roof or hill that has line of sight over that residential area, you'll have much greater chance of connecting to it.

Maybe get a Gizont or Ziisor antenna next?
https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/antennas/

[burnt pagoda]

I bought an ANT-915 Antenna. I've so far grabbed a few nodes in the area

[burnt pagoda]

On LF I see a number of nodes, however on the map only two of us are visible

[vital hemlock]

Channel 20 for long fast, 45 for medium fast

They’ll start to populate. The newer firmware’s don’t advertise location as much when the mesh is busy, and ours is always busy. 🤦‍♂️

[slate urchin]

Are we making the switch to MF, or staying with LF?

[white field]

I really want to place my 2x solar routers within the next 1-2 months. (whenever I have time for some hiking/exploring)

If it's on the later side, I might plan to configure them for MF.

I was tenatively thinking about testing this spot for one of them. (covers Tooele, Lake Mountain repeater, Wendover)

[storm onyx]

Don't forget to post your opposition to the nextnav thing with the fcc this week.

https://store.rokland.com/blogs/news/help-us-protect-meshtastic

[white field]

Does anyone have any contacts about who might be the operator of the Nelson Peak Summit site?

That placement enables some crazy hops and signal expansion.

[fiery sparrow]

Found a doc listing WA7GIE. worth a shot.

probably rents space based on what I'm seeing on a separate page that talks about site, but no owner info.

[white field]

SLC is a great spot to test code changes for the map!

Sooo many nodes

[tired stirrup]

https://youtu.be/htjwtnjQkkE?si=SRAu4EOt10hEJyzF

This video dropped yesterday. I think most could benefit from watching it. I did.

[vital hemlock]

Yeah, it was well done.

They’ve talked about making the default mode client_mute

[white field]

oh that's a good point. I'm gonna swap all of my nodes that aren't in great locations to client_mute.

I really want to take the opportunity when we migrate to MF to collectively shame people into not using ROUTER or CLIENT_ROUTER.

I'm gonna be like, KEEP THAT SHIT ON LF A**HOLE.

I've been chatting in the #contributor-lounge about adding huge red warnings to all of the applications. Anytime someonet tries to set ROUTER* it should tell people, NEVER USE THIS UNLESS THIS NODE IS ON THE TOP OF RADIO-TOWER/SKYSCRAPER, OR YOU ARE ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN WITH FULL PANORAMIC VIEWS.

• [ ] I confirm that my node's placement looks like one of these photos
  (mountain top)
  (tall building)
  (radio tower)

16 nodes in the SLC mesh are routers. 😠

[vital hemlock]

The router count is an issue, no question. I would say though that the number of non-muted clients is probably making it worse. Fixing either would help us a lot.

We might not get folks to turn off their routers, but we can hopefully convince them that handhelds make poor "clients" while in the valley

[white field]

Hmm, I wonder if we could make it so firmware updates wipes router configs. 😛

Update radio configs, auto-downgrade ROUTERS -> CLIENTs.

so they have to explicitly re-enable router mode.

[tired stirrup]

I'm guilty of both... 😞

[white field]

(I just CLIENT_MUTED my new solar node until it gets a good placement.)

[tired stirrup]

I switched my housetop roof node to client and I'm working on muting the rest.

[vital hemlock]

We have a few BP's and DP's on our mesh, but the bp_roof node is mine. It's the best router we had for almost 2 years. I've moved it to client as well, and my inside nodes are client_mute. I have an RPi that is client inside, but the antenna is high and it's set to reboadcast local only.

[white field]

lol, I'm gonna send a 5 hop group message to ask people to swap their routers to clients.

[vital hemlock]

I have too many radios as it is. 😄

Only a few are on, but I think I have 10 🤦‍♂️

[white field]

I recently learned that hops are only resitrcted by the sender.

[vital hemlock]

Correct, though they've talked about making the change so a router or repeater could knock that down. Not sure where that conversation ended up.

I think we've left the "get it working" stage and are firmly into "scaling properly" stage.

[white field]

Yeah, I saw someone talking about making the change to config it on a per node basis to start.

Ideally we should have something were we reduce both the hop_limit and the hop_start value. (so we still track the final number of hops_away, but we dont spam the mesh)

[vital hemlock]

With our current situation mine are set to 5 hops. It's the only way for me to reach @main stag without our mqtt backhaul.

Before we had bench and mountain nodes to route we had to use a private mqtt channel to get messages around the valley. We still have it, it's a nice fallback.

[white field]

TBH, I'd love to see MQTT disabled by default.

[vital hemlock]

Oh man, the mqtt issue was a shit show

[white field]

I feel like for anything but sharing positions it should be disabled on public channels.

I don't like it at all.

[vital hemlock]

mqtt has a place, but it's not the public channel being forwarded

[white field]

oh the interesting problem is that we have to disable MQTT on the default radio configs.

Since it's all still getting rebroadcast on private channels.

I really understand why my friends used frequency band 39 for Burning Man. (far away from default configs, custom locked down firmware)

I suspect long term that MQTT support might have to be disallowed on default radio configs for Meshtastic to scale properly.

[vital hemlock]

Well, the history makes it clear why it was there. These hadnt reached the popularity they have now. Many of the devs were testing talking to each other, and what it looked like to have larger networks by using the MQTT and forwarding it out.

Now we've reached critical mass and it's only a hinderance from the public channel perspective. If you are going to run on your own channel like we do, and dont forward it to the general mesh, it allows a backhaul to locations you cannot reach by broadcast but wish to re-broadcast.

[white field]

I wonder if we could patch the firmware to test track radio congestion. If the traffic is above a very low threshold, mute all MQTT publish traffic.

[vital hemlock]

Honestly it's been a while (knock on wood) since we've had the problem. I have my roof node ignoring mqtt, and other routers have as well. That took care of a bunch of it.

[white field]

MQTT traffic is probably a more local issue.

The firmware is configured so that it shouldn't be forwarded past hop = 0

[vital hemlock]

yes, but that was recent

I doubt we'll see the mqtt issue again. I feel like they've made enough changes to prevent it

[white field]

I kinda wish there was a way to force firmware upgrades around the time we radio config change.

[vital hemlock]

If I forward messages from a neighbor to Nate's tracker over mqtt it doesnt make any more traffic for anyone else, so I see it as absolutely benign.

[white field]

New versions of the firmware could be setup to ignore traffic from older nodes. If people want their traffic forwarded, they must update.

[vital hemlock]

They've talked about moving the next major release to medium/fast default. That kind of change forces it. They did this a year or so ago when we moved default to long/fast from long/slow

[white field]

Yeah, I think a breaking change would be really helpful to reset things.

[leaden crow]

I’m happy to switch my roof node from router to client. It might not be necessary after we switch to medium fast. Also the coverage around me isn’t like the west side of the valley and I have line of sight to almost the whole valley where it’s placed.

[white field]

At one point I worked on a fleet of 5000 cell connected rpis and the only way to actually update all of them was to force it by mailing out 1000s of SD cards with new firmware. (OTA updates fails very frequenyl)

[leaden crow]

If I solved the RAK reset problem. I would move it (or build another) up the mountain

[vital hemlock]

The idea is that the client still forwards @leaden crow, it just waits that extra second to do so. No other differences than a router. It just waits a bit longer so routers can respond first

[white field]

How do you currently detect that failure today?

[leaden crow]

the clients (in my house / basement) stop communicating with the rest of the mesh. So I bluetooth to the roof node and recreate the settings

[white field]

Okay, sent a message on blast with hops = 5. No clue if I'm receivable. 😛

[granite carbon]

I'd love if the Meshtastic app had a "getting started" or "config for dummies" section that has best practices in it for when people first get set up. I've had to go to Youtube and watch videos to learn that stuff, and I prefer reading something instead.

[white field]

Want to help contribute to writing some of it?

We have this ticket on one of the githubs. It needs a write-up/plan.

[vital hemlock]

So you know, that specific idea "has" been discussed by the devs, just never implemented

[granite carbon]

Sadly I'm already committed to too many other projects, so I'm spread thin enough as is.

[leaden crow]

I’m getting a new LMR400 cable for my roof node today or tomorrow. I’ll update the firmware and make it a client at the same time.

[burnt pagoda]

@white field did you send it via LF?

[white field]

https://github.com/meshtastic/web/issues/282

[white field]

yeah, sent from near downtown. Not sure how far it got.

[void iris]

Didn't get it in lehi

[white field]

max_hops = 10? 😛

I might update the config and blast again tomorrow.

[burnt pagoda]

No go for herriman

[white field]

I suspect even if we get 25% reduction in routers it will have a positive impact.

[vital hemlock]

I wouldnt go above 7 hops, for what it's worth

[void iris]

Does client_mute repeat any packets?

[vital hemlock]

It does not

Sends its own messages and meta data only

@white field can you trace to any hosts at all?

[white field]

I'd love to see us setup regional infra and then discourage residential ones. These options are really nice.

• Lake Mountain (exists as CLIENT)
• Little Cottonwood (maybe CLIENT)
• Big Cottonwood (maybe CLIENT)
• POTM (exists, not sure of status)
• Bountiful overlook (public land up there with lots of junk, probably wouldn't be noticed) - Is it possible to get line-of-sight from POTM/Lake Mountain? There's a shooting range here with power we might be able to ask nicely. They like things for being prepared.
• Neslon Peak (likely hard/impossible to get approval, but would be the best possible node in the region)

[void iris]

That presents an issue for me then, I have a few devices with limited antennas, setting any of my radios to client_mute would greatly reduce their chance of Getting out. If a node repeats a packet with a low hop count, then sees the same packet with a higher hop count, will it then re-repeat that packet?

[white field]

I think the deal with client_mute is that it's good to use if your nodes are always inside.

To the floor routing logic, they look far away so it tries to use them, but they are actually in a basement and basically cannot transmit.

[vital hemlock]

I believe it wont, but one of the devs would have to tell you for sure. I would say that it's generally "okay" to have a few clients at home (if they are stationary). When it comes to mobile nodes in vehicles (that stay in the valley) or walk around the neighborhood, they should likely be client_mute.

[white field]

I have a client node on my roof and my inside nodes are client_mute. (So my roof node will forward to/from my basement)

I don't want my basement node ever attempting to re-transmit.

[vital hemlock]

same

[burnt pagoda]

Any thoughts on a simple meetup? It would we be waiting for some input from other non discord groups/hams/other

[void iris]

I would love to all meetup at a park or something, maybe do burgers. I don't have time to coordinate though

[vital hemlock]

I'm interested. A meet-up and a meeting probably fill two different roles. I think we're to the point that I'd prefer we have an agenda, as well as an open discussion portion, if we have a coordination meeting. Only because I know we can talk about this stuff for days, which I'd definitely do given the opportunity. 😄

@main stag and I have been the most active in our group of colleagues, they assume whatever we tell them is what they should do. But I dont feel like I have the right to tell anyone else "how this should work is X". I like when the ham folks are involved, like @dim bay , beacuse they have lots of experience with "this is a best practice, but folks are also just going to do what they want", and how they navigate that.

But if we just want to meet up and eat burgers, easy yes for me.

[white field]

I'd really like to do a Meshtastic Meetup at 801 sometime. (been meaning to visit that space)

I wonder if we can highjack one of their open nights.

[leaden crow]

How large is that place, and how much parking do they have? They might not be happy if a whole bunch of us hijack an “open night”

[granite carbon]

How about doing it next week on the 26th?

(I run 801Labs)

We have an open slot that night, and it would work great.

Ok, event is scheduled. https://discord.com/events/690230523615772736/1285694604460560477

[tired stirrup]

Heard that...

[void iris]

I'm in as long as I get to go through the tunnel

What time? I can't open the link

[granite carbon]

Meetup is 7PM on Sep 26th at 801Labs. You can find more info at 801labs.org. or at https://www.meetup.com/801labs/events/303491315/

[burnt pagoda]

I won't be able to make the 26th however I am interested in what will be discussed and hammered out for a game plan. Someone please post notes on here.

[leaden crow]

I upgraded my roof node from 1 meter RG-58 cable to a 50cm LMR400 cable.

RG-58:
SNR: 5.25db/76.25%

LMR400:
SNR: 6db/80%

The LMR400 measured about 0.6db loss at 915MHz. Unfortunately I don't have the adapter I would need to test the RG-58 cable (terminated in RP-SMA)

Anyway, that seems like a good gain for a $5 cable to me?

[distant steppe]

I just had the T114 on 2.5 corrupt in some way. It just goes into a boot loop. The screen only turns on in dfu mode and you have to wipe it clean and then you can flash again. Seems to be the same issue I have run into on my rak node as well

[vital hemlock]

It may be an n52 issue. But that's crazy when you consider how many things use that chip.

[distant steppe]

Yeah... with how many there are it seems to point more at a firmware issue

I just checked the other rak node and it was in a bootloop too. So that makes 3 in the last 3 days on 3 different devices, 2 different models. All n52

[delicate zinc]

I have gone in circles on the RAK bootloop issue. Tried different firmware, client modes, and channels.

So far, the only thing that has made some difference for me is not connecting to it via BT. It seems that being on the fringe of BT range and constantly reconnecting to it may have something to do with this.

Now my node stays up for week's instead of hrs or days.

*it's particularly frustrating if this is the case because RAK BT range is really good. I'd prefer connect to it directly rather than using a node in my house to "hop out"

[white field]

Have you connected the device to a serial debugger while its in those broken states?

[void iris]

I noticed this as well a few weeks back, I have not yet done any debugging

[white field]

Looks like our router count is down from 17 -> 14. 😄

That's good progress.

[spring merlin]

I switched from client to client-mute myself

[white field]

ROUTER node operators! Consider operating in CLIENT mode to reduce the number of routers in the mesh. There are currently 14 routers (too many) and they are likely causing performance issues.

CLIENT node operators! If your node is mobile or frequently indoors, consider operating in CLIENT_MUTE mode to reduce traffic on the mesh. You'll still get signal, but you'll help reduce congestion for everyone.

[leaden crow]

I got my router switched to client. Are you sending that notice on the Primary / Public channel? I am not seeing it. Maybe you should get someone with better broadcast strength to send it?

[white field]

hahaha, yeah would love it if someone could send this out.

[leaden crow]

I also don't see it on slcmesh.rem-labs.dev so I'm not the only one it isn't reaching

[white field]

bahaha, checks out.

[spring merlin]

idk how great mine is tbh. i can reach most of the mesh via traceroutes but not all of it

[vital hemlock]

Can one of you experiencing the rak loop issue try the format firmware and try reloading from scratch?

[spring merlin]

ooh is this an mqtt dump of our local mesh?

[vital hemlock]

It’s a local python script he’s running on an RPi

That pulls it into grafana

[white field]

I'm gonna rebroadcast from a different node. I had assumed this one was okay.

[spring merlin]

nice. is access available to folks here by chance? that would be neat to see

[leaden crow]

I can do this, but I'm not getting out the extension ladder to pull my RAK down tonight, my legs are shot.

[leaden crow]

he posted the username and password waaaay up in the chat, I'll see if I can find it.

[white field]

Hmm, I think my nodes are not able to TX to the mesh. I'm not getting ACKs.

Anyone able to send those PSAs out?

[spring merlin]

e3bf?

[white field]

oh wait, I think I see it acked. Strange that my device didn't record the traffci tho.

yup

I tried from d968, then e3bf

[spring merlin]

well i'm struggling to send out messages this long

[white field]

oh, i got an ack from 3 hops away. I guess it's maybe working.

[spring merlin]

nice

maybe it just says it doesn't send succesfully but does

[white field]

yeah, I think that's what happened.

I'm gonna try to buy a telescoping antenna pole soon.

[vital hemlock]

Username and password are “slcmesh” I believe

[spring merlin]

ty

[leaden crow]

#1197577977781821541 message

[vital hemlock]

I’ve been with the project for a long time but I’m not an admin, so I can’t pin that post. I’ll message one of them and see if they can pin it for us.

[leaden crow]

I hope he leaves it up for a while. It's extremely useful. Also, I don't know where rem is located, but I can't see any of his nodes in my node list (he does see mine)

[vital hemlock]

He’s in the Millcreek area. But he also gets an mqtt feed from my roof node. And we’ll likely also run the script on my RPi when we get around to it.

Thanks @snow tide !

[leaden crow]

Huh, that's strange. I am really close to Millcreek and have a ton of Millcreek nodes on my map. His nodes are all named Rem-0?, right?

[spring merlin]

has anyone here played with the BBS code yet?

[leaden crow]

meshtastic --nodes | grep -i "rem"
only match is this:
WA7OBM Remote

[vital hemlock]

My coworker had it running. I can ask him

[vital hemlock]

I’ll see if his nodes are up

The RPi is in the sun, it was overheating 😂

I don’t see them either

[leaden crow]

I got that TC2-BBS Server 0 to respond a couple of times

Is that your coworker?

[vital hemlock]

No, p0lar, in American Fork

I told him to come join the discord. 😂

He’s at a grandkids soccer game, he’ll get on later.

[distant steppe]

I've done it to 1 rak and 1 t114. The t114 reset itself again

[vital hemlock]

Dang 😕

Thanks for trying

[distant steppe]

Although... It was different. How sensitive are these to USB c chargers?

[leaden crow]

I'll try tomorrow. My RAK reset itself again today, and that's after upgrading the firmware yesterday to 2.4.2.5b45303

[distant steppe]

How is your RAK powered?

[vital hemlock]

The one I use daily for 18 months is powered by a 2008 cellphone battery 😂

It’s only lost its mind once

[distant steppe]

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/4184

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/pull/4397

These two are the same issue. interesting... However they were released in 2.4.2.5b45303
. Maybe they weren't really fixed

I believe these are on the right track, but still missing what is triggering it for us

[leaden crow]

Mine is powered by this:
https://voltaicsystems.com/v25/
I've never seen it drop below full charge (4 bars) when used with the RAK. I don't think it's low voltage / power issue in my case.

[vital hemlock]

Love those battery packs

@cunning snow are you still running the BBS code?

[cunning snow]

Hey. YES I am

[vital hemlock]

@leaden crow did you find someone else that was as well?

[cunning snow]

my pi running it is offline today. the case I printed melted in the heat of the garage. 🙂

ill have it back up by lunch

[snow tide]

I printed my case in ASA because I keep it in a window sill and since I'm in AZ, it's quite possible it gets hot there lol.

[leaden crow]

│ 84 │ TC2-BBS Server 0 │ !441f2b7b │ BBS0 │ RAK4631 │ UNSET │ 40.3911° │ -111.9124° │ 1388 m │ 101% │ 12.00% │ 2.56% │ 5.50 dB │ 0/unknown │ 0 │ 2024-09-18 22:01:07 │ 12 hours ago │

That node is running TC2. It’s kind of far away from me. I got it to respond a couple of times, but not reliably

[void iris]

I can't get a consistent response when I'm 1km away

[spring merlin]

I can't get any response from it, though my message sends successfully. i saw someone on reddit mention BBS wouldn't be very well suited for longfast. i wonder if the switch to medium ya'll are talking about might help

[void iris]

It should work just fine if it's low traffic like this is right now. I just think it's not placed well

[main stag]

Thanks, as long as it continues to run well with little maintenance I'll keep it up. It's a mostly completed pet project based heavily off what the Ukraine meshtastic group is doing.

[burnt pagoda]

What type of channels other that stock have people created?

[main stag]

I've got 4 total:
0: (default) Small channel among friends
1: Admin channel - manage remote node
2: Default long fast meshtastic channel
3: Personal channel for just radios I own.

[hallow dagger]

Retrieved POTM today and brought back to troubleshoot. It was alive but had lost its config. Oddly it still had its node DB, but lost all radio settings. Wondering what's the consensus on best firmware rev to run on RAK4631?

[leaden crow]

I don't have an answer except that I'm having terrible luck with firmware-2.4.2.5b45303. I flashed one of my nodes 3 days ago and it's had the RAK reset twice in that time.

I did this and reflashed it last night:
https://meshtastic.org/docs/getting-started/flashing-firmware/nrf52/nrf52-erase/
we'll see if that makes any difference.

[hallow dagger]

POTM is back and is now on medium-fast. A little concerned though by the radio silence. Literally no other nodes. Is anybody else on medium-fast atm?

[snow tide]

https://tenor.com/view/field-of-dreams-baseball-if-you-build-it-they-will-come-gif-17965185

[hallow dagger]

Aint nobody got that kind of patience.

[snow tide]

Forget about FOMO, the best way to get people to switch over is to start doing.

[hallow dagger]

Well if anyone shows up, lmk if you can see POTM. I think the radio settings are correct but would like confirmation.

[snow tide]

Best way to really get everyone to change is to convince all the folks with the really well placed nodes to switch. Once they do, pretty much everyone has to lol

[vital hemlock]

I’ll be home tomorrow and move my roof node over to medium fast again. Yours is my bridge to north salt lake @hallow dagger I’m over camping in east canyon last night and tonight

Hopefully you’re on channel 45 💪

[snow tide]

https://tenor.com/view/oh-my-god-its-happening-ok-stay-calm-the-office-gif-6091046

[vital hemlock]

As you know, I have two rak nodes that don’t suffer from the lost config situation. Im sorry you are.

Both currently on 2.4.3 @hallow dagger

[tired stirrup]

I haven't had a single reset on my RAK. I'm running 2.3.12.24458a7

[leaden crow]

I switched my roof node and rpi node to medium fast and cleared my nodedb. I'll see if I can traceroute to POTM Router.

[snow tide]

You should really be running 2.4.1+ for the security patch.

[tired stirrup]

Probably a good idea

[leaden crow]

OK, well I'm clearly not good at this yet. I got my Ziisor antennas in the mail today. They were measuring like they were tuned low just like the Gizont antennas. I moved the NanoVNA with antenna attached off my desk for better lighting to take a photo and it now measures perfectly!

I re-tested my Gizont antennas and they are the same. If they are sitting in the middle of the room on a footrest, they measure much better.

[spring merlin]

strange

[leaden crow]

yeah. re-calibrated several times, results are the same. I don't get it, but I think my antennas are all good.

[leaden crow]

I am seeing your other node GDane Echo 2 │ !1048d6fc but not POTM yet

[white field]

Just moved one my my nodes over to MF + client. Not great LOS from here near Liberty Park. Hope to some traffic cutting over soon.

[spring merlin]

I cut over as well in the aves. I have a poorly placed 3dbi antenna, not seeing anything just yet

[white field]

I'll post this one up with my other roof node sometime tomorrow.

[granite carbon]

If anyone has good 915mhz antennas or other equipment they'd like to sell or swap, bring them to the Meshtastic meetup at 801labs. Bring any projects you'd like to show and tell too!

If the meetup goes well, we'd be happy to host one quarterly.

[hallow dagger]

Odd. I still don’t see anyone. Did you try to trace route to GDE2 by chance?

[hallow dagger]

Nice. I’m running the same and performed the pre-install lfs format too 🤞. I did not override the default channel number because I’m not running any kind of private channel so I hope that’s ok.

[main stag]

I set my roof node to medium fast. I think I did it correctly but will have to check when I get home today. This will also affect the slc mesh website for the time being so if you see no nodes on the dashboard that’s why.

[delicate zinc]

I switched yo Medium Fast but im in the valley. Let's hope we get enough people with high-elevation nodes to switch...

[leaden crow]

I had a problem with my roof node overnight. It's fixed now, I'm seeing more nodes on medium fast:

3 │ GDane Echo 2 │ !1048d6fc │ GDE2
4 │ Arrow3 │ !6311106e │ Arr3
5 │ Point of the Mountain Router │ !77272d1f │ POTM
6 │ smth 2507 │ !2d792507 │ 2507
7 │ unsung 199a │ !4c9a199a │ 199a

This is the only traceroute that did't timeout
Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> c370af4b (0.5dB) --> !2d792507 (10.25dB)

[delicate zinc]

I'm not seeing anyone's location on med fast.
Not sure if it's a problem with my app or node. Did a DB reset.

[leaden crow]

A lot of nodes do not have GPS. I had fixed position set on my roof node, but not my client on Medium Fast. I just added a fixed position. These are the nodes in my list that are reporting location:

[spring merlin]

glad to hear others are switching and you're able to see some folks! i'm still not seeing anyone on medium fast yet but i'm hopeful 🤞

[vital hemlock]

About to move mine to medium fast. Make sure you are on channel 45. I have both the LongFast and MediumFast channel configured with the default key

[vital hemlock]

I did a factory reset on my e-ink radio, confirmed the channel is 45

INFO | ??:??:?? 8 Radio freq=913.125, config.lora.frequency_offset=0.000
INFO | ??:??:?? 8 Set radio: region=US, name=MediumFast, config=4, ch=44, power=30
INFO | ??:??:?? 8 Radio myRegion->freqStart -> myRegion->freqEnd: 902.000000 -> 928.000000 (26.000000 MHz)
INFO | ??:??:?? 8 Radio myRegion->numChannels: 104 x 250.000kHz
INFO | ??:??:?? 8 Radio channel_num: 45
INFO | ??:??:?? 8 Radio frequency: 913.125000

@hallow dagger I see your POTM router on MediumFast 💪

[leaden crow]

│ 7 │ Point of the Mountain Router │ !77272d1f │ POTM │ RAK4631 │ UNSET │ 40.4722° │ -111.8825° │ 1877 m │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ 10.50 dB │ 2 │ 0 │ 2024-09-21 13:40:56 │ 21 mins ago │

Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !77272d1f (?dB)

[leaden crow]

What are your node(s) named? I am seeing 11 nodes on medium fast now

[spring merlin]

right now the only node i have up is "ad10"

[vital hemlock]

I have a few on MediumFast now, mostly client_mute. All can see POTM router, and slowly finding two others.

"smth 2507" and "DSC2_RPI"

Also seeing D6FC

[main stag]

I moved mine to MediumFast, including roof node. Again, if you use the slcmesh site I posted it will be blank until we get more people on medfast that I can see.

[white field]

So, I used to spend a lot of time at a Hackerspace in San Francisco called Noisebridge. I'm starting to look for something similar near SLC.

Seems like 801 Labs is more of a space for classes/meetups and less fabrication?

Noisebridge operated as 1/3 social club and 1/3 workshop and 1/3 education space. Anyone know if there's anything matching that description around here?

[granite carbon]

801labs is a hacker space that also does classes. We have 3d printers and a laser cutter, embroidery machine, and a stupidly huge vinyl cutter. Also lots of electronics work stuff- meters, scopes, soldering, electrical engineers, etc.

If you want more of a makerspace, there is Make Salt Lake. They have welding and woodworking equipment.

People are welcome to bring projects every Thursday to work on. Classes are in a separate room from the main hangout/project space.

We also have a room with some nice ham radio equipment we got from a grant. We have a radio meetup every other Monday.

[white field]

Yeah, sounds like a kinda pick-and-choose to get what I want. (events at 801, workspace at Make Salt Lake?)

Noisbridge had 24hr access (if you were doing recurring donations or were contributing enough to the community), so when I was between jobs I'd go there to work on projects and hang with friends until 4am.

[granite carbon]

If it's big stuff, make SLC is better. If it's electronics etc, we've got you covered.

We don't have 24 hour access anymore because our lawyers said that as a nonprofit we can't sell access. It's a long story.

[white field]

Ah, laywers, taxes, yup. Checks out

[void iris]

Okay, All of my nodes are MediumFast now

Is POTM working?

[white field]

Is it 2D1F?

I'm seeing one on POTM with great signal on MF@45. 😄

[leaden crow]

It's working for me, even got a traceroute back:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !77272d1f (?dB)

[void iris]

Don't think so. I'm in Saratoga springs and i only got one packet from Gdane an hour ago

usually when im at the park with my dog, the SNR to my house is ~0, for some reason on MediumFast it's -15 (if at all), I can't figure out why. There should only be a 5dB loss according to the wiki

Any thoughts?

[vital hemlock]

My only thought is “that seems like too much”. But that much you covered already. Who do you normally route through?

[void iris]

Direct, it's about 300m through a couple houses

[vital hemlock]

Oh, I misunderstood. I see now. 🤔

[void iris]

I'll tear the Pocket node apart when I get back home and make sure all the connections are good

[void iris]

It's good. I dont know what the problem is. I've tried a couple different ratios

[vital hemlock]

😕

[leaden crow]

Medium fast seems to be working pretty well for me. I got a traceroute back to GDane after his message this morning:
Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !c370af4b (?dB) --> !8487cea8 (?dB) --> !77272d1f (?dB) --> !1048d6fc (?dB)

Also, I think the Ziisor antennas bp recommended are better than Gizont. I left one client on Long Fast in my basement, and it's still getting messages / node discovery. Historically I would get nothing from my basement without my roof node.

[vital hemlock]

I got some new Gizont’s yesterday that are 1.40 SWR at 913mhz. I’ll test one of my Ziisor’s. 🫡

My roof node to POTM (clear line of sight) went down to -4 SNR from +1 on LongFast. Still getting consistent quick replies from it though.

[leaden crow]

I have a node list from before I switched to Medium Fast. It lists my SNR to your roof node as 5.25 dB. Currently it's listed 10.50 dB

[tired stirrup]

My roof node has been on med/fast for almost 24 hours. I haven't seen anyone else yet.

Although FPR is roughly 20 miles away, I was able to manage a pretty good connection with it via long/fast.

[leaden crow]

I'm confused by the SNR going up too. I did switch to the Ziisor antenna on my client, and the LMR400 cable on my roof node.

[vital hemlock]

Your old cable wasn’t that bad, was it?

[leaden crow]

I don't know if you caught BW's message yesterday, but I think he said he'll be switching his nodes (I'm guessing that means FPR too) to Medium Fast when he returns from his BDR.

It's an RG58 that came with my antenna. I did find an adapter and measured it. The loss was 1.41 dB, new cable was 0.6 dB loss.

[tired stirrup]

Sorry, I was dropped on my head as a child 😅...

I misread gdane's message about the POTM repeater and thought he was talking about having swapped the FPR repeater to med/fast. I figured maybe he got it back up since BW is out of town...

There's far too many things to keep track of in this busy life of mine...

[distant steppe]

Medium/Fast silent in the south end of Utah county

[leaden crow]

Happy valley needs to step up their game

[distant steppe]

Just trying to connect the Jell-O belt from north to south 😉

[spring merlin]

I still don't see anybody in medfast... 🤞

[humble vector]

Moved to MF as well, not getting any responses. I'm in Farmington though. Not sure if anyone in Southern Davis County has switched.

[snow tide]

https://tenor.com/view/some-things-just-take-time-patience-wait-good-things-come-to-those-who-wait-gif-15775999

[distant steppe]

Did you make sure the frequency slot is set to 45?

[white field]

Tested an airborne RX node yesterday.

No signals from nodes between West Valley and Reno. (on LF)

Apparently Sacramento -> Bay Area links are possible. (Tho maybe that was just temporarily from the air link)

I’m excited to check out router infrastructure in a new place.

[humble vector]

Crap forgot I didn't wipe so it wasn't set auto. Got it now. I see one other node now.

[void iris]

Who do you see?

[humble vector]

smth af4b

[distant steppe]

I can see smth, sent a message on med/fast

[void iris]

https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/s/hjgbc7Uk9C

They're temporary removing the T114 from the flasher due to hardware issues

[distant steppe]

Does this t114 issue include forwarding messages over 47 characters?

[void iris]

Not sure but if it's a power issue, it's possible. They say a potential fix is lowering your power output.

Dropping by 3 dB should half your transmit power requirements (In theory)

This might be a big fail on Heltec's part

[vital hemlock]

From their github post:

Issue description

When T114 works as a Meshtastic device and tries to send long strings (>50 chars) ONLY in Long-Fast mode (SF11, 250K BW), sometimes sending messages may fail. Yes, not every time will fail, and not every device has this issue. This explains why some people do not encounter this problem.

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/4723#issuecomment-2369336696

Weird, I cant wait to read the rest of this

[void iris]

That's an oddly specific issue

[vital hemlock]

Saw this, looking through the issue comments, it's interesting

https://github.com/Affirmatech/MeshSense

https://affirmatech.com/meshsense

[void iris]

I've used it. It works pretty well but it's route visualiser i've heard uses a lot of bandwidth

[vital hemlock]

It's rate limited now

You can configure it, but it's defaulting to one traceroute per host per 15 minutes

[leaden crow]

I think I'm going to install a node at work in NSL. I have line of sight really far north and south, but not sure I want to put it on the roof yet. I'll probably just put it in the drop ceiling on the top floor and see how that works out. I ordered a NEMA box and POE > USB power supply today, so maybe in a week I'll have it up.

[vital hemlock]

Nate and I did a lot of test messages today on MediumFast, so if you are coming home to one of those radios...sorry. 😄

But his dashboard is pretty good now, we have my rpi reporting in as well

[leaden crow]

The only message I got today on the Primary / Public channel was from unsung at 8:32am.

I'm still confused that I don't see any of Rem's nodes in my list. If he is R04 on his map, he is really close to me.

Maybe my regular client node is one too many hops? I connected to my roof node and it had a ton of messages.

[main stag]

I've been messing with the dashboard in grafana including a lot of different test messages as well. I have another node in the valley who is logging to the dashboard now as well. All the nodes on the map (12) are medium fast that we can see. Nice!

[slate urchin]

Nooooo I will be in Dallas :-(.

[vital hemlock]

I wont be able to make Thusdays meeting either. Perhaps another time. 👎

[leaden crow]

My work node in NSL is up. The placement is not the best atm, but I’m still picking up 8 other nodes. Nothing to the North yet on Medium Fast.

I’m about 50/50 if I’ll make it on Thurs. Unfortunately I am traveling early the following morning. If it works out, I will bring any extra antennas I have and my nanovna.

[tired stirrup]

Welp, that looks like about half of the active members in this group may not attend on Thursday.

[leaden crow]

Not good. I'm not out for sure. I just have work obligations that come first.

Has anyone sent messages about the meeting on Long Fast? I don't really want to switch my nodes at this point.

[void iris]

I moved some of my devices back to long fast, I can send it

Message sent (from Lehi, 7 hop). Let me know if it has been received

This would be a great usage for a working BBS /s

[vital hemlock]

I can see about throwing it up on RPi

[void iris]

I plan to set one up but right now I don't have any nodes in locations that have good reachability

There's one by my house as well that has the same issue

[vital hemlock]

I got the BBS code running, it's kind of fun. You can message "hello" directly to bp_bbs and it will reply with a menu. If you watch his youtube video it shows how to send mail to specific users, pretty cool.

https://youtu.be/d6LhY4HoimU?si=LEAgfBIgt301n-Zo&t=156

@cunning snow once we can reach each other again (on mediumfast) I will sync with yours. Cool feature

[leaden crow]

https://tenor.com/view/hello-angry-answer-me-gif-26651824

[delicate zinc]

Anyone see 98B4?

[vital hemlock]

On LongFast or MediumFast?

[leaden crow]

Yes
│ 12 │ Meshtastic 98b4 │ !f71e98b4 │ 98b4 │ UNSET │ UNSET │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ 10.50 dB │ 2 │ 0 │ 2024-09-24 20:18:33 │ 50 mins ago │

[leaden crow]

What antenna(s) are you using? Your devices are almost always the first that pop up for me. My work node with poor placement (atm) was even showing the best signal strength to you.

[distant steppe]

Is POTM right where the map says on the ridge seeing both Utah and salt lake counties?

[vital hemlock]

@hallow dagger I always forget, POTM is yours right?

[void iris]

I don't have a good line of sight to the rest of the network right now, I plan to put up a rooftop node soon™

[leaden crow]

Made a huge difference for me. I need to revisit my mount and get the antenna completely above the roofline. Then maybe a better antenna.

[hallow dagger]

Yeah POTM is mine. It's not exactly where it claims to be but it's close. It is on the ridge and has full view of SL valley but only partial view of UT valley. Has LOS to Lake Mountain though if it moves over to MF.

[granite carbon]

Hey all, as a reminder we have a regional Meshtastic meetup tomorrow night (Thursday) at 7PM at 801Labs in Salt Lake city. If you can't make it in person, we will have a Discord voice/video chat open in the #radio-room chanel on the 801Labs discord. More details here: https://www.meetup.com/801labs/events/303491315
Need an invite to the 801Labs discord? There's one near the bottom of the page at https://www.801labs.org/

[delicate zinc]

I have a rak 4631 in a solar node on a flag pole, and the rockland fiberglass antenna. It's the same as the build from The Comms Channel

[distant steppe]

Thanks, do you know if it has los to West mountain? That should be really close to exactly south from the spot on the map

[distant steppe]

I do see issues with the t114 not transmitting above 230 characters on mediumfast, but dropping tx power didn't help

[humble vector]

Anybody bought one of the SenseCAD T1000? https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Card-Tracker-T1000-E-for-Meshtastic-p-5913.html

Just got the two I ordered a month ago. Wondering what results others might have had. I've been trying medium-fast up north with no luck at my usual spots reaching my roof node. Debating moving everything back to LF for now for testing.

[granite carbon]

I have the non-meshtastic version of it and it works ok on helium or TTN.

[humble vector]

They seem pretty cool other than i haven't found a way to turn off the boot sound

[granite carbon]

Hoping they'll release a firmware that lets me convert it to meshtastic.

[vital hemlock]

I have one ordered that should be here "soon"

[humble vector]

Which batch did you order from? I got in at the 9/15 one and mine just came usps yesterday

[vital hemlock]

Order Date: August 31, 2024

2024-09-19 20:50:00
Customs clearance agent received the shipment in destnation country.

USPS doesnt have it yet

[humble vector]

I ordered mine the same day. I think it was after your post lol

[vital hemlock]

Ah, USPS does have it:

Moving Through Network

In Transit to Next Facility, Arriving Late

September 25, 2024

bummer

[humble vector]

Customs sucks

[vital hemlock]

https://tenor.com/view/thumbs-down-lame-dumb-no-gif-21452086

[humble vector]

But should be anyday. Lmk what you think. Portability, they're nice. I could give one to my kid and not be too worried. I got the clip attachment too which is nice for a belt loop.

I'll see what I can reach on LF this week

[vital hemlock]

I should have ordered the clip and an extra charge cable. I know now for next time

If anyone else orders one lmk and I'll pay you to add an extra charge cable to your order

[leaden crow]

Finished my work obligations. I'll be there tonight.

[leaden crow]

MF in Salt Lake seems to be getting a few more nodes every day. I have 24 in my nodes list rn, slcmesh has 28. Hopefully once BW switches his stuff up north, you'll have peers to test with.

[void iris]

I'll be there tonight

[distant steppe]

I tried to join on discord when I could but unfortunately it was a bit too late. Anything good?

[leaden crow]

Nothing formal, just a casual meetup. It would've been difficult to participate over discord with that one.. Just a lot of separate conversations and people showing their projects. It was nice meeting people. We'll have to do it again.

[void iris]

we talked about doing it quarterly

[leaden crow]

Somebody asked; this is a node list from my rpi from a few weeks ago before I switched to MF -- 290 nodes.

[outer fern]

It was cool meeting people doing meshtastic in person. My node was b51c.

[vital hemlock]

Got my T1000-E today, on MF. I’ll test later at FanX with my kiddo

[void iris]

I will expect a full report haha, I want to get one of those soon

[delicate zinc]

Anyone having GPS issues with 2.5?

[vital hemlock]

the T1000-E is getting GPS lock in 6 seconds on 2.5.2. I just so happened to be watching it

INFO | 13:12:26 5076 [GPS] GPS power state moving from HARDSLEEP to ACTIVE

DEBUG | 13:12:32 5083 [GPS] Took 6s to get lock

DEBUG | 13:12:32 5083 [GPS] Predicting 5s to get next lock

DEBUG | 13:12:32 5083 [GPS] 114s until next search

DEBUG | 13:12:32 5083 [GPS] gps_update_interval >= 19s needed to justify hardsleep

INFO | 13:12:32 5083 [GPS] GPS power state moving from ACTIVE to HARDSLEEP

[main stag]

This was a pretty good video from The Comms Channel on routing issues. I'm sure we ran into some of this on LongFast with as many routers as we had a few months back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htjwtnjQkkE

[vital hemlock]

His stuff is so well done. This one was definitely worth the watch.

[leaden crow]

It's been almost 2 weeks since I did this and haven't had a RAK reset. So far so good. 🤞

[vital hemlock]

Is it also on MF now, or still on LF?

[leaden crow]

Yes, all my nodes are on MF

[vital hemlock]

I wonder if it's related to some heavy utilization issue. Total speculation though.

[leaden crow]

Possible? I also had that RAK configured as a router. Utilization was often over 25% on LF.

I wish they would rename the roles, or have some description in the App by the selector. I sent that Comms Channel video to my coworker today. He had a bunch of clients that should all be client_mute

[main stag]

I set a radio to Longfast with a name of like change-2-medfast haha. There are so many long fast clients along with client_router mode.

[storm onyx]

I haven't checked in here for awhile. What is the current status of the Francis Peak Router node?

Cool, I was just talking to Rob KR1P of the Layton parkway node and mentioned everyone switching over to MF with the problem of newbs not knowing about it and staying on LF. He talked about making a LF to MF bridge.

[vital hemlock]

I wouldnt, honestly. I have a private MQTT server that anyone is welcome to use. If you put longfast nodes on there you can still see them with mqtt connected nodes but everyone else wont.

Bridging LF to MF would just duplicate the load and raise the noise floor without any benefit I can imagine. But I'm definitely open to having my mind changed.

[void iris]

I made a feature request a few days ago that could accomplish this (albeit for a slightly different end goal). Maybe if we give it some love it will be implemended. It would have to route more intelligently (maybe only messages & node announcements) as to not overload the networks though: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/discussions/4841

[vital hemlock]

If the new folks are happy on LF and dont care that everyone craps up the routing I say leave them. 🤷‍♂️

[storm onyx]

I'm still one of those on LF since most of the layton folks are too.

But I am willing to change LOL

[vital hemlock]

Very few of us are on MF, but pretty much everyone that is understand that we need very few routers, and most clients should be client_mute

I sound grumpy, I'm not I promise. 😁

[void iris]

I feel like the all of the routing issues we have are fundamental routing issue in meshtastic with flood protocol, the move to MF is just a bandaid for us. In reference to the TC2 video, it shouldn't be possible for a poorly placed router (or a lot of clients) to damage the network, the firmware needs a way to figure out on it's own how to better route packets.

It looks like they are working on better routing in 3.0, starting with a "next-hop" system. Hopefully this gets implemented well as I feel that this is the largest issue right now.

https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/projects/20

[vital hemlock]

I agree with you, MF is a stopgap. I think it also represents a way for those of us trying to make it work better to get away from the randos that dont care. I want the randos to have something that works, then when they figure out what's wrong to find a soft place to land where we've worked out some of the issues for our environment.

[void iris]

I can agree with that. However the only reason that I am still on LF is because I can see literally nobody on MF, even with the node on a drone

[vital hemlock]

yeesh, sorry 😦

Because you're up north?

[void iris]

In saratoga springs, but I can't get a connection to POTM reliabily (for some reason)

[vital hemlock]

well crap

[void iris]

I am designing a case for 3 radios right now (mostly for a personal use case, VLS, LF, MF), I wonder if we can get some more routers to put a second node up at the same position.

[vital hemlock]

@dim bay have you been following our MF discussion? If we got you a second node for MF could you place it at Lake Mountain?

[void iris]

Lake mountain has LOS to my house, that should work well. I can donate a T-Beam as i believe that's what he has up there now

[vital hemlock]

do you know if it's a 1262 or a 1276 tbeam?

[void iris]

I think it's a 76 but i might be wrong

The USB connector is damaged but i havent taken the time to fix it yet because I much prefer the RAKs

[vital hemlock]

kk, I have my roof node that's a 1262 I could donate if he'd place it for us. If I keep remote admin I could make the changes we need when neccessary. That way he could leave his on LF.

[void iris]

If i remember correctly, his is the 1276 model as well (or was at some point)

[vital hemlock]

What I like about my roof node is that it has a strong track record of reliability. It would just be relocation. I worry if we buy something new it could encounter an issue and then we'd have to find a way/time to deal with it

[void iris]

Curse us and our full time jobs

[vital hemlock]

for real, screws up hobby and family time

[void iris]

@dim bay I could manage a node as well up there (I live really close)

[distant steppe]

On MF did you set frequency slot to 45? I am about 35 miles south of you and can see about 20 other nodes but nobody else can hear me

[vital hemlock]

On iPhone I do believe it's labeled frequency slot, and 45 is correct for MF.

[humble vector]

I'm in Farmington and have been on MF for the last week. I saw one mobile node for about 30 mins. So I switched back for now so I can atleast use my own private channel outside of Davis. If anyone North of me makes the switch @ me and I'll switch back.

[tired stirrup]

I'm trying to help coordinate a switch for the Ogden Valley nodes to Med-Fast this Saturday evening. So far I have the "ECTO" node and myself..

[void iris]

Yes I was, I have some more nodes coming and plan to put one on MF soon

[humble vector]

You were the one person I saw lol. Since there's a push up here i just moved my roof node back to MF.

[distant steppe]

This is my favorite case so far

https://www.printables.com/model/983527-benchy-enclosure-for-heltec-v3-meshtastic

[vital hemlock]

Gold

[tired stirrup]

I made one for my wife's desk at her office

[main stag]

It might be a good idea to have a node high up that just has a name of change to medium fast or something. Or a link to a page where we could put reccommended settings to keep the mesh healthy (get rid of all the client_routers)

[white field]

I wonder if we can tempt people into the new mesh if we show how far the reach is.

If we get a few really long range repeaters on MF, people will swap.

I'd love to try to get repeaters that can stretch signal into the National Forests.

[main stag]

I agree, my hope is with some higher nodes switching we could soon see good coverage on MF. It would be nice to have connections to Utah Valley and Ogden like we do on LF.

[white field]

I'm kinda leaning towards more remote areas that lack cell service.

It would be absolutely wild to do a long term project to get a ~7 hop trace out to the Las Sal Mountains.

I'm currently in Oakland and I see a mesh that spans from Gillroy (30mi south of the bay) to Auburn (50mi east of the bay at the base of the sierras)

I'd love to see us build some networks that really stretch the edges of our mesh out.

(We already know we can cover the valleys with the repeaters we have today.)

let's 4x the size of the "hull"

or add nodes that make them useful for certain activities. I'd love to see people chatting about ATV/offroad stuff from ridgeline links to Manti and the Uintas.

I have a vague plan for a 2-3 hop link to the Uintas, but it currently requires a node placed on Nelson peak. (with a second near the Wasatch Crest)

Would love to figure out an alternative routing that does it without needing to get permission from a telecom for Nelson.

[vital hemlock]

Help my understand the very large mesh desire. I'm not saying it's bad, but I dont know why it's good. The default is 3 hops, if those are routers to make the distance then the packet is dead. 😦

If we make the time-to-live high, then we have a broadcast storm. It makes more sense to me that there are a few distinct meshes that you move through.

When I go into a canyon I assume I join a mesh there, with other hikers. That makes more sense to me. Are we just wanting a really long chain so that it can be used as a disaster radio situation?

[white field]

Can't repeaters be configured to not decrement the hop_limit?

[vital hemlock]

no

[white field]

I can fork the firmware and put them on the interlink nodes. 😛

[vital hemlock]

haha

you could

[white field]

lol, I'm seeing the bay area run hop_limit 7 for a lot of nodes.

or I should say, only far away nodes set hop_limit 7

I'm pretty sure there's nobody dropping too many hop packets. It's all on the sender with the current firmware unless I'm mistaken.

There's some github issues specifically about allowing routers to drop "too many hop" requests. However, it's not implemented yet.

hop_limit config for the firmware is only a limit for messages you originate.

So if you go out to the Uintas, up the hop limit by 2-3 and you'd have links to SLC. (presuming we built the linkup)

[vital hemlock]

I want to have this discussion at some point, and probably in person. I think voice inflection and tone are important so folks know you're curious and open not just challenging their ideas.

Use-case matters, what the devs envision the product for drives how it's created. Someone using it outside their anticipated design either frustrates them, or makes them want to grow in that direction. We've seen cool additions because someone used the tech in a way that it wasn't imagined for.

Right now it's designed for area mesh's, mostly line of sight, but not a hard requirement. The current implementation feels more like text GMRS handhelds. If a repeater constantly moved that noise between the valleys it would be unusable. I feel like folks are imagining them as out-of-band cell phones, or pagers.

So there is my question; what niche do you see Meshtastic filling? Because of my experience with the project and interface time with the devs I think they are more like a text-based, reliable, area GMRS use (with the potential for repeaters). What I do not think they are like is a state or region wide pager.

If you do, help me see it, if you're willing. ❤️

[white field]

Ah interesting, so the intended system design is more about "talk to eachother in the field" rather than, "reach back to someone at home".

[vital hemlock]

At least so far. When camping or hiking there are lots of places that dont have cell service. Folks us GMRS or ham handhelds, I'm a nerd so I like this better. It can also reach around a corner well if there is a mesh of folks moving around.

I dont think the emergency radio idea is wrong, not at all. But we are firmly in the beta stages, and no one believes it's reliable enough for that I think. If it truly were, I'd have a private mesh just for that so I could rely on it.

What if you didnt bridge the "default" channel between valley's? Say, a specific channel just for that. Or private channels only?

That way the folks that dont know and dont care dont make it worse again?

[white field]

Interesting, yeah I'd have to consider the implications of what I'd want from it.

The repeaters would ideally be placed in spots that are good for local mesh too.

• ??? link to Crest - would necessarily link to SLC valley - there's not a ton of good spots for this - this would have to be a particularly good client placement for it to strategically function well as a repeater and a link in the chain
• Wasatch Crest - covers BCC ski resorts + Heber - would also need to be really well placed to function properly in repeater mode

If people were operating with hop_limit=3 it would probably not negatively impact the mesh very much. (I was a bit joking about forking the firmware - running hop_limit > 3 is only recommended when explicitly using a chain of repeaters to reach a destination)

[vital hemlock]

I do think you're right, regardless of what we see deployed, if most people keep a hop limit around 3-4 it would likely limit their impact.

Mine have been on five for a long time, because of all the routers. On MF I could move back to 3 and proabably should

[white field]

I'd probably place one client node at the edge of the mesh with hop_limit=6 and 10mi GPS pin to show people it's present.

I kinda want to have it be a things that's like: "The mesh is all the way out here, come play with it too"

The more I have been thinking about this, the more important it would be that any intermediate link in the chain NEEDs to be a repeater to ensure the signal spans the whole path.

This also means that 100% of those placements need to be exceptional so we don't flood the mesh from a mid vantage point.

TBH, engineering link nodes could be really cool that are aware of the direction of traffic so they only rebroadcast in the direction the message was already propagating.

(not gonna be able to stealth place a double Yagi node on the Crest Trail tho. 😂

[void iris]

engineering link?

[white field]

custom engineered*

• message received from SLC (from Yagi antenna pointing to the West)
• retransmit to Uintas (using Yagi pointing East)

This retransmits the messages to the desired location and allows the clients in the valley to try their own retransmit.

maybe retransmit on a diff frequency between repeaters so they don't interfere with the mesh. Then at each terminus in the remote area have an AP node that's running a uni-directional antenna.

so you can bridge between two meshes far apart without long-range repeaters mucking with local mesh traffic.

[void iris]

I would just like to again point out that i made a feature request that would allow this functionality, Please give it some love if you want it to happen: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/discussions/4841

[white field]

oh yeah, love this.

[vital hemlock]

The other thing to consider is mqtt, which was originally implemented as a way to bridge two meshes that are separated, say by a mountain.

You can argue that in an emergency the network might not be up, but if you take out the emergency portion of the use-case then it's a reasonable fix.

(Not public mqtt, private)

The picture in the docs even used to show that very use-case

[leaden crow]

I ride Wasatch Crest almost weekly when it’s open and could maintain a node. I’ve actually scouted a bit, but my goals were different than yours. I wanted a node with good LOS of Millcreek canyon and the SL valley, because Millcreek has poor or no cell service. If I were only looking for LOS to a summit in the Uquirrhs and Wasatch back, that would be trivial.

[white field]

Nice, I'd love to help support Millcreek coverage, Cottonwoods already have cell service so it provides less value.

[white field]

ridgeline could even do Uintas + Millcreek with a single node.

oh this one is quite enticing.

[void iris]

What tool is this?

[vital hemlock]

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/

[void iris]

You can do multiple nodes in heywhatsthat?

[vital hemlock]

Unless I'm mistaken 😄

[leaden crow]

I will look at this after work and see if I can find some spots to scout this weekend. These are the routes I commonly take:

One spot that would have good LOS of the wasatch back is: 40°40'06.2"N 111°36'15.8"W

[vital hemlock]

that looks like a bitchen ride

[leaden crow]

It is. I can catch the shuttle to guardsman really close to home and then ride all the way back. Takes me about 2 hours.

So this is right on the Wasatch Crest, you can see those trees in the background. I would try to find a tree with good LOS. Climb it and place a discreet solar node.

[main stag]

It's also a fantastic run, might be my favorite. 😂

[white field]

Ubitquiti ISP design tool, it's free. https://ispdesign.ui.com/#

You have to change a few setting to get AP points to behave like we normally configure mesh nodes. (5dB, 360degree antennas + 900MHz radio)

[void iris]

of course it's Ubiquiti

[white field]

This set of placements could establish a link between POTM and Canyonlands in 4 hops. (requires 3 new nodes, minimal hiking - lotta driving tho)

Hop limit 5 would be required if you could see POTM.

Might be possible to get signal from Telluride if someone there was very motivated and had a Yagi.

I can now see why there isn't coverage in the deserts. It's lots of rolling hills/pleateaus starting in Canyonlands that disrupt signal. (only way this works is that the node has a prominence of 3-4k vert)

😂

that curvature of the eath showing up on the plots is hillarious. (also this requires going to a 13k ft summit to send/receive for the final node)

[vital hemlock]

That's amazing Toshi. I think I've been feeling the same way you have about MF vs LF. I assume that we'll just let the new or uncaring folks play on LF and coordinate for MF whenever/wherever possible.

[leaden crow]

I think it's pretty clear when we can't get 90% of LF to communicate and change router, client, client_mute roles, that we're better off trying to build a reliable network w/o them. LF is basically Eternal September.

[void iris]

Just throwing this out there. Since we have less nodes that are better planned, what if we stayed on long fast and just changed channels?

We do lose about five decibels of on medium fast

And antetotally it's barrier penetration and reflections aren't as good

[vital hemlock]

Good points. I think the main issue is that he noise floor will continue to grow there as well, so eventually (maybe now) it's six's. Lora can work with such terrible SNR it's a miracle.

But if it's not working for folks we can definitly talk about changing it.

[void iris]

If we change the channel number, we will avoid all of the other LF traffic.

[leaden crow]

I just joined the Meshtastic Bay Area Group to see what they're doing (they have a dedicated discord server). It seems like they have some push to move to MS.

"There's some momentum now to do MS. It was brought up at this usergroup meeting past Sunday. BIt better range than MF so we might hear you too on it and we'd still leave the badly behaving misconfigured nodes behind. Agree that multiple freqs is best but that's going to take some different kind of effort.

BTW happy to hear you left that one node up for MF all this time, most folks try for an hour and go back to LF."

[leaden crow]

Not that we need to follow suit. I'm just curious what they're doing with a more crowded mesh.

[white field]

One of the plans for that MF or MS mesh was that it's private. There's a youtube recording on their meeting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD1LfW2uM1Q

"nodes should appear in a spreadsheet before showing up on the mesh"

Yeah, this mesh is kinda crazy. I've seen up to 180 nodes on LF default and gotten traceroutes to complete to 100 miles away.

Reliability is not great tho unless you have direct LOS to one of the good routers.

I would be interested in contributing to a more managed mesh with ownership of all the nodes accounted for. (So a administrator can at least send an email to the owners of misconfigured nodes)

[granite carbon]

I went to Denver this last weekend. Didn't see a single other node on LongFast while I was in town.

[leaden crow]

Good point. I don't want to be a radio stonemason with required goofy hat.

[void iris]

160 meter antenna on top of your tinfoil hat, absurd and completely ruining the point

[vital hemlock]

It reminds me of the Gear Score addon response World of Warcraft did for April fools in 2010.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Equipment_Potency_EquivalencE_Number

truly a classic

The best part being that as your gear score got high enough, the lower gear score players would no longer be visible. I suddenly feel a little aware of how I'm thinking of the LF folks. 🤦‍♂️

[leaden crow]

EPEEN? 🤣

[hallow dagger]

Very cool. Curious what your experience was with the dual radios/antennas. Was it just interference with them being so close?

[hallow dagger]

I'm firmly in the large mesh camp myself. LOS and meshing only with those in my own vicinity isn't very interesting IMO. I think it would be incredible to be able to send a message from the La Sal or Henry mountains or somewhere out in the West Desert with no cell service, and have that message received in the SLC valley. That's actually useful! I know that Meshtastic isn't appropriate for that today, but that's where I'd like to see it go. Hopefully the routing enhancements in 3.0 will get us closer to that.

[white field]

Routing is gonna be interesting/hard. I wouldn't expect too too much.

I think the biggest things will be making it harder to misconfigure nodes as routers when they shouldn't be.

making there bit a littttle bit of involvement required to join the local mesh. ("I agree to not place a router unless approved by the local community" would go far)

all of this is something we could do today. 🙂

[hallow dagger]

I'm envisioning routers capable of actual routing, store & forward (for the unfortunate "basement router"), and some concept of "segmentation" that would allow routers to effectively pass messages along only to other routers (maybe without incrementing the hop count) in the general direction of the ultimate destination without unnecessarily congesting the intermediate mesh "segments" along the way.

A big ask I know, but a guy can dream. If I can find the spare time maybe I'll contribute it.

[cursive stratus]

The antennas are only 3 inches apart

[hallow dagger]

Good to know. Will be interested to hear how much you end up having to separate them to avoid the interference sinc eI want to do something similar.

I was thinking of building a bridge between radios with different modem settings so I would want them close enough to have a serial connection between them.

[void iris]

In theory you would only lose ~3db of interference

How separated are they frequency-wise?

[leaden crow]

I am either impressed that you bothered to whip that up in paint, or disappointed that's the best google images can do. 😁

[cursive stratus]

Around 5 MHz

[leaden crow]

One question I have is how the 18650 with liquid electrolyte will handle winter on a summit? Would a lipo pouch be better? I guess I need to go down the rabbit hole of battery specs.

[cursive stratus]

I'm going to soon find out😂

I have 2 with 4 lion 18650s and 2 with 2x 10000 mAh (20000mah) flat batteries. I'll see which ones hold up best
I was also thinking about trying some super capacitors

[leaden crow]

Quick google, at least you have options if your batteries don't make it over winter:
https://www.grepow.com/low-temperature-battery/lt-lipo-battery-50.html

[cursive stratus]

finally picked up a node on MF POTM! The node isn't on the mountain yet ... soon

One more bp_T1000e 2 hops

[vital hemlock]

😁

[hallow dagger]

29 nodes on MF by my count. Probably more though cause my radio has been dead for a day or two.

[vital hemlock]

Check the pinned messages, should have Nate's dashboard in there

You can see what he and I see

[main stag]

I need to edit that message too since it's only monitoring medium fast. Maybe add in something about configuring nodes properly in case someone reads it.

[void iris]

I just put two nodes on MF

[distant steppe]

Another idea, could we block specific routers?

[vital hemlock]

Yes, add them to the ignore list. True

[vital hemlock]

Fun stats from the bbs

https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/radio/bluetooth/

at the bottom

meshtastic --set bluetooth.mode FIXED_PIN
meshtastic --set bluetooth.fixed_pin 111111

[leaden crow]

If it reset, you should do the factory erase and flash 2.4.2.5b45303
https://meshtastic.org/docs/getting-started/flashing-firmware/nrf52/nrf52-erase/

[vital hemlock]

That’s just a guess by the way, I haven’t seen the devs taking about it.

The reason I suggested it is because 18 months ago when my rak lost its config I did this and it never lost it again.

It’s not a very scientific approach, I know, but it’s easy to try. 😀

[cursive stratus]

I probably left out some important details about the radios I doubled up. I also decided to shield and ground them so the antennas are also sharing the same groundplane. I'm not a radio guy, I'm just winging it 😂 I like building things and love the mountains. I want to be able to reach family members in an emergency and deploy them when hunting.
I currently have about 15 radios on the network all RAK and now adding some Techos to the mix. We haven't had a single reset yet🤞 (a couple months running) every radio was erased and flashed with current stable all are now on 2.4.2

[void iris]

Are they dipoles?

[void iris]

It's recommended that the antennas be one wavelength, so 13 in apart. You could probably get away with a quarter wave apart. So about 4 in

[leaden crow]

Hey I was looking at antennas on Rokland and noticed this:
https://store.rokland.com/collections/batteries/products/molicel-21700-p42a-4200mah-45a-battery
Rated -40C

[void iris]

From everything I have read a shared groundplane is okay. Those antennas should be balanced (dipoles) so the ground plane won't be doing that much

Many MIMO antennas are bolted to metal enclosures, so it can't be that bad

[cursive stratus]

https://liionwholesale.com/products/cold-weather-protected-3500mah-10a-18650-button-top-battery-wholesale-discount?variant=40574021992517
These are the 18650s I'm running in some of them (4 in each)

[hallow dagger]

I’ve done some work involving LittleFS and even fixed a couple bugs in the nRF52 implementation, so it makes perfect sense to me that this RAK config reset issue is related to a full file system (due to nodedb and the shear volume of nodes on our mesh), and potentially remnants of that overrun lingering. Firmware upgrades don’t reformat the FS, so unless you intentionally reformat you’ll probably keep having issues. Hopefully they fixed the underlying issue with LittleFS that leads to corruption in the first place so it doesn’t happen any more.

[leaden crow]

That sucks. Can you still see the node from home with the RAK antenna?

[floral charm]

Looks like these are being pulled within minutes of being published.

[void iris]

Is POTM up on medium fast? I've been in the traverse mountain area yesterday and Saratoga Springs today and it hasn't popped up on my node list. I can see BP and GDane occasionally

[distant steppe]

This really is quite the offer, thanks! What do we think would be best? Medium/fast would be my vote. What/where do we want set as routers?

[leaden crow]

I last saw POTM router on MF 13 hours ago.

I just checked slcmesh and it last saw POTM 2024-10-05 14:37:46

so it was up and running at least 2 hours ago

[white field]

Just put a router in the onaqui mountains. Covers skull valley, Vernon, SLC, lake mountain.

I couldn’t hit any nodes on MF so I used LF

I did the analysis and theoretically this could get LOS from skyline

I also now know the incorrect way to bush scramble to the top

[white field]

Fuuuuck that was even less optimal way down.

I suspect not too many people will fuck with that one.

[slate urchin]

Yeah, I just watched a video about how you need to contact the main developer if you want to test it out.

I am building a new house in Eagle Moutain up on the hill. I was thinking of putting a Node on my home. The house would overlook most of the Eagle Mountain area, but I also want to put one on the top of the mountain if that would help connect the two valleys. I'm not sure if that would help out MF.

[floral charm]

I was able to successfully build it yesterday from one of the tags and git repo so I’m all set, but it’s missing a lot of functionality that the main firmware already has

[slate urchin]

Dang.

[slate urchin]

I am not sure if the position will help, but the new house is here at 2766 Jojo Rd
Eagle Mountain, UT 84005
United States

The next one would be directly behind the house at the top of the Mountain.

[slate urchin]

I guess if you ask the developer he will give you the full build. I will do that tonight and see what happens.

[remote current]

Waking up after a couple years away 😬

Just set up two of my devices in Lehi. One on LF and one on MF. Lots of LF traffic, very jarring from my experience a couple years ago haha.

No one on MF…yet. I imagine I’ll hit some Saratoga/eagle mountain folks if they have them on.

[vital hemlock]

Welcome back man 😀

One of the OG’s has returned!

[white field]

Yeah I’m gonna do some range tests next time I place a node. I should have been able to get LOS from the summit last night, but I couldn’t reach the mesh on MF. 🥲

It seems like there’s definitely real impact from range implications if we wanted a long range links.

[white field]

Discussing this in #help. It sounds like it's almost 100% a LOS issue.

Do we have any spreadsheets tracking router ownership/configuration/location?

I kinda want to make a private one that's "for router owners only" so we can include exact locations for off-grid ones.

[vital hemlock]

I have gone over 26 miles on MF with line of sight, only saw a 5db drop.

I dont know what you're running into, can you give more info about your settings?

I guess the better question is, did it work at home with other MF nodes before you brought it out?

I know you're a smart guy, so I'm just walking backwards through what might have been an oversight. It's like when I tighten all the screws on an enclosure, then half way through think "should I do this before I test", but then decide to finish the screws knowing full well I'll be taking them all back out when this fails in five minutes. 🫤

[white field]

Yeah, I had been testing it on the MF network for 2 weeks before.

I removed it from a tree in my yard and put on a tree on the mountain.

On the hike up, I didn't get any nodes showing up so I switched to LF and the mesh exploded with traffic.

It's in remote admin mode, so I would feel safe switching LORA modes remotely.

[leaden crow]

I scouted around today. I don't think I'm going to find my magical christmasland location right off wasatch crest. The best I could find is this. It's on a ridge about a mile east of little water peak.
40.670611
-111.609694
9411'

That LOS window to the valley is pretty narrow. It might reach nodes in Herriman.

[white field]

My new router wont be able to hit that one. I was looking at East Tinic, but wound up with a different placement instead.

[leaden crow]

I think Gobbler's Knob or Mt. Raymond would be ideal, but I'm probably not hiking those again in my lifetime, and I'm definitely not maintaining a node there. I may try and hike to little water peak, but I don't think it's going to be much better.

[remote current]

Thanks, after we did lunch way back when my radio fell and I busted the Bluetooth pcb antenna clean off, I just ordered a new one and it works well. I should be installing that one in Bluffdale again this week on MF.

[white field]

If we get Farnsworth all this stuff gets simplified

[vital hemlock]

Truly

[white field]

This is the coverage I added yesterday.

One thing I haven't really looked into is a repeater North West of SLC on the far side of the lake.

mountaintop there might be able to hit 3 routers.

wasatch crest - SLC - onaqui

acting as bridge in all the northern mesh traffic

[leaden crow]

This spot is slightly more promising
40.665300
-111.606200
9,700'

[white field]

Does anyone know much about how ACK routing functions? Is it using the same flood protocol or is it at all aware of the OG path it took?

Assuming it's the same flood routing, the more like an ISP our mesh becomes with routers, the more complicated things get to optimize traffic reaching everyone.

[white field]

I'm starting to get the intuition that our optimal router layout will be such that it's a ring around the valley where the nodes on the edge can only see two other routers.

[void iris]

I feel like that's reasonable until routing changes happen

As far as I know right now. All routing is flood routing

[white field]

This node would have great coverage to the Uintas.

[leaden crow]

I'm pretty committed to doing this node on Wasatch Crest, but I think I need to change my plan. If the goal is to reach Summit County and the Uintah's, I should be looking at the East side of the Crest. Probably around Desolation Peak. Hopefully this warm weather keeps up for a while. Normally this is close to the time that Guardsman pass closes for the year. I could place something this year, but I have aliexpress hardware arriving 10/18. Might be too late.

Desolation peak is:
40.65811°N
111.59534°W
9990 ft

The spot below that I was looking at earlier is:
40.668400
-111.604300
9,649'

[white field]

Would that be on one of the trees here? 40.658567, -111.596110 (per google maps)

I kinda feel like the mesh in the Cottonwoods + Millcreek might be best serviced by some clients that can see whatever router you place.

[leaden crow]

Yeah, something like that. One of the reasons that I like 40.668400, -111.604300 or 40.670611, -111.609694 is that I know I could hide a node reasonably well and not much trail traffic. Desolation Peak itself is going to be more difficult to hide.

[white field]

Winter access would be possible tho which is nice.

One thing I worry about is that my current node is only about 8ft from the ground. It's gonna be snowed in and totally impossible to service in winter.

[leaden crow]

It would be amazing to find someone that works at the commercial radio towers above mickey mouse rock. They have power and fire roads to reach them.
40.62305524383675, -111.56901045470127
40.62922273419622, -111.56870566557345

[leaden crow]

One nice thing about Desolation Peak.. It's right above the PCMR lift named 9990. My friend will hike up to the spine in the winter and try to steal the KOM on his snowboard. 😀

[main stag]

I've done that hike up and that is an absolute brutal idea 🤣...now I know how to get KOTM for running up there.

[white field]

Yeah, those look excellent for a local router. I really struggled to get links in Park City the last time I was there.

A crest router would be a bust without a link to the west.

[clever cipher]

Hey dudes. I'm new to the discord and new to meshtastic and got a few question. Figured I'd ask here as you guys have probably dealt with some of the things I'm looking to combat. I'm a bit of an alpinist/mountaineer and want to place some nodes on some mountains in the northern areas (Farmington to north Ogden) obviously snow is a big deal and solar panels will get packed in, batteries will get cold, etc. I got some electronics experience and have made a basic circuit with heaters and big ol batteries in the case, to keep everything ice free and warm. I've got a dozen rak boards to start getting this project going. I'm using a 19003 with a 4630. I'm looking to utilize the "Detection Sensor Module Usage" feature. I'd like to add basically an SOS function to notify me if the case gets opened. I've asked the guys over in the RAK forums if GPIO usage is available on the 19003 and they have stated that as long as no other module is being used that the header pins can be used, specifically the RX pin in J7 Header. My problem comes down to this; in the "Detection Sensor Module Usage" you need to state the GPIO used as the detection sensor. I cannot find what this pin is. The datasheet shows RXD1 (pin34) under UART1, my understanding is that the board pins and the software pins are not the same due to some Arduino translation. So my question is how do I find out what this pin is?

[white field]

Have you started toying around with UISP design yet?

[clever cipher]

idk what that is so no

[white field]

Here's me toying around with trying to find the best placement for this mountain.

I was just able to discover we need to, "Ask someone very nicely about this communications site at Nelson Peak".

[white field]

For the questions about hardware. I'd probably ask in #help if you want more eyes on it.

heaters and big ol batteries
How large of an enclosure/panel are you planning? Just want to make sure you know about this Helium Mining kerflulffle. (want to make sure ya don't get caught up in the same issue of "nodes too obvious")

I think the general sentiment in the community about public land nodes is, "unobtrusive nodes, hidden in places where not many people go".

Given that it sounds like you have the budget for it. There's one person on Etsy who sells really nice low temperature batteries and charge controllers that are safe for 3.7v output. (It's annoying to get right bc low temp batteries aren't produced with voltages don't match what our hardware needs)

I hear really good things about these and they will fit within a small enclosure.

[white field]

https://ispdesign.ui.com/#

[clever cipher]

Yeah so I've been aware of the Helium incident since the week that was reported, this is what has driven the need for an "SOS" when the case is opened. I've also got most of the location planning all set out. Size wise its a 25Ah battery paired to a 10W panel. Rough calculations tell me the battery should last like 90+ days without a charge; or like 30 days if the heater is running, but the idea is that the panel will be kept clear. The heater also bumps up the temps either to 34F or 42F depending on programming of the heater controller.

[white field]

25AH battery won't need to be charged all winter with a RAK unit if you get low temp batteries. 😛

that's 166 days of usage per what I have been seeing.

[clever cipher]

Ideal life on the unit is closer to 140 days

yeah basically

[white field]

10w panel is huge. I've been keeping mine topped off with 2W.

[clever cipher]

It's gonna be quite the unit

[white field]

Yeah, that's my concern.

I don't want our nodes getting pulled if people start complaining about giant mystery boxes on mountains.

[clever cipher]

I'm 99% sure it will never be found

It'll take me 2 days to plant it so I doubt anyone is gonna walk up on it and yank it

[white field]

sent ya some DMs about coordinating node placement if you're planning to push them on the public mesh. (trying to keep final remote node locations non-public to prevent tampering)

[vital hemlock]

Another good option when placing nodes to help keep folks away from them

https://www.printables.com/model/890830-meshtastic-birdhouse-node

[leaden crow]

haha, that is a pretty great idea. I doubt anyone would touch it once birds are living inside.

[clever cipher]

@maiden wraith yeah I'm down for that

[void iris]

I'm down for that too

[void iris]

Off channel rejection is pretty good for the SX1262. If they are 5Mhz apart, I would doubt they are really interfering radio-wise

5Mhz should be about 95 dBm attenuation (95 dB Lower than the actual receive strength if it was on channel)

[hallow dagger]

This is very cool. Curious how you implemented it.

@white field Are the LAKE and WEST nodes yours?

[white field]

Nope, I'm just running 38fb onaqui router, but I'm planning to setup 1-2 more.

[hallow dagger]

I don't see onaqui. Is it on MF?

[white field]

Speaking of that question, I'm trying to create a spreadsheet to track this kind of information if people are interested.

Could also add private fields for location + contact info if we want it published. (alternatively okay keeping it fully private to a few admins)

[white field]

LF at the moment, I wanted to make sure it was functioning and it was getting 2 router links on that setting.

I'm going to migrate onaqui to MF at some point when I have time to pester whoever owns Lake Mountain for an LOS test.

I'm thinking about dropping a client node out on a ridge on the West of Skull Valley at some point to get LOS to the full Salt Flats + i-80

[hallow dagger]

Lake Mountain I know is owned by @dim bay , at least the original one KLM

[white field]

More realistically be watching old dudes chasing elk in Manti near skyline while I find a winter accessible place to put a node up there. (while not being very dedicated to hunting this year. 😹 )

This would provide the hop from onaqui <-> manti <-> henry mountains <-> canyonlands/etc

My end goal is: Indian Creek or Moab -> SLC (with hop_limit=5)

There's a bunch of places out there with zero service. Would be really cool to get message from friends out there.

It also looks like there's some possible links to Price/Helper with minimal effort once the Manti node is up.

Does anyone know if any router networks this large exist yet? 😄

I have no idea if this will actually work or be desirable. Not sure if Moab actually wants to hear from SLC. 😛

[void iris]

I don't know why it wouldn't if we have LOS. As long as there is signal, I don't think it will care about distance. Honestly, it would work better than the LF network we have now

[white field]

Oh yeah, for sure.

TBH, I think we should maybe even future proof it and run on MS if that test turns out positive for the bay area.

[void iris]

Lake mountain is accessable in the non-winter, The owner of this node seems to be not very active on the discord (he hasnt replied to mentions recently). I or one of us can drive up there and test things with our own nodes

We would have to get permission to mount anything permanently

[white field]

Is it accessible without gate key access?

I'd just want to be on that mountain talking directly to my node on the LF mesh confirming LOS is 💯 before I swap configs.

[void iris]

no gate, just a bumpy drive

I've accidently wound up there exploring before

[distant steppe]

Realistically, how many well placed routers can we run and stay reliable?

[hallow dagger]

Where are you considering in the Henrys? That tower on South Summit Ridge? What about around Manti?

[distant steppe]

It sounds like at least 4, but if we have 7, will that usually eat up the max hop counts almost always?

[hallow dagger]

Hard to say; it's very dependent on topology and geography. What you need to avoid is multiple routers that are all effectively covering the same area. That's what eats up hops and congests the mesh. If on the other hand you had several well-placed routers on peaks along the Wasatch Front where each one effectively only sees nodes in its immediate area and its neighbor routers along the Front, then that would still be efficient and reliable with hop count set high enough.

[white field]

Yeah that’s why I think once we have @clever cipher northern mountain repeater I think the SLC side of the valleys will be covered.

We really just want one router per coverage area.

Router hops the signal in and then clients try to help each other for local area.

Tbh, a hillside node near Nelson could be overkill since it would overlap with the coverage of that northern node.

Yeah avoiding redundant cover is an interesting idea.

• something near farnsworth peak covering SLC downtown to POTM.
• Then another node around Provo which specifically doesn’t see SLC valley, but does see the farnsworth node.
• northern node for Ogden to bountiful

Basically the minimal number of routers, 1 per major valley region.

[white field]

Oh, one interesting thing is that we could optimize for would be limit the number of routers exiting the region and that any router exiting the region should be able to see 2 other routers within the region.

Say I put a node on top of Manti that's only visible to one other router. It's basically a black hole for the message if it lands on it.

If the Manti node can see two routers in the region, then it wouldn't actually be a blackhole. It would consume a hop and then bounce signal back to the second router.

[clever cipher]

I'll post up where you need it

I'm down to help test as well, only thing is winter is coming so some of the more reliable spots (well hidden and high up) are going to be really hard to get to soon

[slate urchin]

Got a new toy today!

Okay back to nodes that matter. Didn't mean to disrupt the discussion

[leaden crow]

Jealous. I ordered one last week. It's still about 10 days out.

[slate urchin]

I just can't wait to get the fancy build on it. But getting my butt kicked trying to find it. That being said, you will love it!

[vital hemlock]

I flashed my brothers, it’s rebooting when it receives messages. Fun!

[slate urchin]

Oh that does not sound fun!

[vital hemlock]

🤷‍♂️ the new ui is still pretty beta

[slate urchin]

I did back the project, so I hope he will let me test it. Watched a video where people liked the new build, but he is not releasing it yet.

[slate urchin]

I know this was discussed a little while ago, but I have a home Node that is just in my Window with a nice antenna. Do I need to change that one to Client Mute?

[leaden crow]

I think you make that decision yourself. If you have a well placed router in the area and it's utilization is over 25%, I'd probably put it on client_mute, otherwise leave it on client. Just my opinion..

[leaden crow]

Do you need permission to test it? Instructions were linked in this reddit thread yesterday. I can still get the builds, but it looks like mods are removing all links to them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1fwooz7/new_tdeck_plus_with_custom_antenna_and_firmware/lqogzug/

[slate urchin]

dang, I wish I knew where it was to test it

Question, I just received a message on LF where there is a green Lock Icon. I am guessing that is for Encryption, but how do you enable it?

[leaden crow]

I think if you have firmware 2.5+ it's enabled and you get the green lock icon. I have it on one of my nodes at work. I'll double check tomorrow morning.

[vital hemlock]

It’s when your app has seen a public key advertised for a radio that’s on 2.5.x.

The app forms the payload so it can send a direct encrypted message to that node

[slate urchin]

Oh okay, thank you! I can see it now that I have updated it.

Does anyone have a T-beam Supreme with the Ublox? I have been playing around with the GPS, but I am not sure when I turn it on, if everyone can see my moving around in my car lol.

[white field]

Wonderful news: I, in-fact, did not mess up the remote PKI configuration of my really hard to get to node.

Sometimes the controller node gets stuck and it needs a reboot.

[orchid umbra]

I'm seeing nodes on MF today, and even received a test message 😄

[leaden crow]

What's your node name?

[leaden crow]

This is all the traffic I saw on MF today

[slate urchin]

I am going to change my house Node to MF, but i am not sure if you guys would like me to keep it as a client, or mute it....not sure what would be the best.

[leaden crow]

Outdoor nema enclosures and soshine panels are on prime day sale.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KXVQ88B/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09ZL3F7CT/

I don't have any experience with the soshine panels, but they seem to be pretty popular in #solar-power
They are 5v regulated if you use the USB port.

[white field]

Someone please stash a solar node on a mountain over SLC. I can’t get service for MF from my house 🤪

I kinda wanna try mapping all the places I get signal to see where service to our routers becomes available atm

I’d love to add a recorder for while I’m in my car so we can see all the places nodes get detected

[leaden crow]

I am definitely doing this if someone else doesn't get better placed nodes first. I don't know if I'll figure out placement and have all the hardware before winter.

[white field]

I feel like the group collectively has hardware if we moved some LF nodes and then put them in superior spots.

[leaden crow]

I also bought the 40" rokland antenna for my roof node on the east bench, we'll see if that helps out at all.

[white field]

POTM's coverage today vs some random spot I picked most of the way up a mountain leg I selected at random.

If POTM is a solar node and someone was really motivated to hike

Service would be hell and it might die in the winter, but something like this would nicely supercede it.

Lake Mountain covers the same region POTM was getting south of the mountain.

For comparison, this is what a 15m (45' tall) placement in the valley does.

there's no comparison if we can get anything ~1000-3000 ft up.

[leaden crow]

What does it look like if I got a node just above BST. Around say here:
40.653804, -111.797423
(just picked a random tree that looks like a good spot on google maps)

[white field]

Missing a little to the north.

It's kinda tricky since ya gotta find spots where the LOS is available.

Ideally you want it on a tree exactly on a corner of a hill.

shifting it slightly, you could get this coverage.

actually looking really solid. nicely complements POTM without too much overlap. (we want routers that see each-other, but mostly see different coverage areas)

[vital hemlock]

Range test module. 👍

[white field]

Is it safe to use on our MF mesh?

I kinda get the sense I might need to write a data recorder script for this with a laptop or rpi recording the responses to an SD card.

Actually, is there anything like this available for node firmware? I have a Station G2 which has a builtin SD.

[white field]

amazing.

Gonna try using that with my G2 and do some war driving.

From looking at these mesh maps, I also think I might have coverage but it's SOOOO LOS dependent that I won't be able to get signal without a roof node given the current angles.

Anyone interested in doing a weather balloon node sometime?

I'd love to see if we can do something crazy like link between Vegas and SLC.

I wonder if we could coordinate with a few other regions to do a "balloon day" where each group launches a balloon repeater.

[leaden crow]

I think you are optimistic about coordination. That is going to be like herding cats.

[solid elbow]

G2 has builtin SD? I never heard about that yet:)

[white field]

Yeah, I haven't tested it yet, but it's there along with some nicely exposed io pins.

Just did a little bit of plotting, 3 weather balloons could link SLC + Reno + SF. (assuming ~80,000 ft altitudes)

[solid elbow]

Yeah, you may add SD for sure

[hallow dagger]

I would jump at the chance to hike up to Nelson Peak or thereabouts to place a router. I just wouldn't welcome an encounter with Rio Tinto security, or whoever else polices trespassing up there. I understand there's a way up the West side of the range over mostly BLM land but haven't really explored that much.

[remote current]

👋👋👋

[white field]

1s, I'll link to a map of the public lands.

https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/documents/files/Utah_LandOwnership_PublicRoomMap.pdf

oh, wow I didn't realize RT owned everything east of the ridgeline. T_T

Does anyone have any friends/family working RT?

Feels like it might be easier to talk to someone working there and ask if it can be installe on a telephone pole near the summit with permission. (doesn't even need to be a prime location like a tower at a comms site)

[clever cipher]

I ran my home node on MF today and didn't pick up anything. I'm in Layton

I'll double check again tomorrow. I got a few other antennas I can check

I'll be busy this upcoming weekend but after that I should have some free time to do some testing/planting. If y'all are worried about specific locations permissability lmk where and I'll see if I can get something up there. Wouldn't be my first rodeo

What's wrong with it? A connector?

Aww rip, is it on a tower?

I see

[clever cipher]

Also big down for a Vegas hop. I'm from there and still have lots of friends there, so we could have so coordination with that potentially

Didn't grow up there but have spent my entire adult life there

[white field]

What's the name of that node? I'm gonna add it to a spreadsheet for tracking local ones

@clever cipher you might find this context helpful for when you want to decide where to install your northern area repeater.

awesome, added it to the spreadsheet and a Ubiquiti design sheet I have started.

Does anyone know how to render the full signal strength plots?

It's only rendering within a small radius around each node when we really want to see LOS out to 100+ km.

This software is amazing for figuring out LOS. I cannot fathom how it's free. (other than it helps you spend money on their hardware)

Btw, not publishing either the spreadsheet or this chart. Just want them to be available for reference incase anyone here asks or is thinking about putting up a new router. (could share with other routers owners, but I don't want any "lists" posted)

[clever cipher]

Probably a smart move

[humble vector]

I'm in Farmington and I'm not seeing anybody in Davis county on MF. I do see a few nodes in the Valley and beyond. I've randomly seen mobile nodes a couple of times.

[humble vector]

Ya im right off the eastside I-15. Node is S31. I saw everyone both directions on LF. But I know I'm in kind of a dip in the area so I don't reach far in some directions.

Ya it's wasn't me helping route lol. I'm kinda just here.

[leaden crow]

I'm not sure if it will help you, but I got an enclosure for my office node in NSL this week. I will place it in the suspended ceiling of our top floor this weekend on MF. I may try and get a roof node here in the future, but that will involve permission from the building HOA.

[lilac shadow]

remind me to switch mine by the airport to MF... .

[clever cipher]

I've had my node on and set to MF for almost 2 hours here in Layton and still haven't picked anything up. I'm right up against the 89 so I'm kinda in a bad spot

[slate urchin]

Is Lake Mountain only on LF? That’s like my key to the rest of the world lol

[leaden crow]

We haven't seen @dim bay in the discord for a while. I don't know if he would consider switching it to MF. We do have 🕊️Lake Mountains and 🕊️West Mountain on MF now I think they are @Toshi nodes

I see both of those as 3 hops away from the Salt Lake Valley

#1197577977781821541 message

[slate urchin]

Tonight, I will switch my home base with the nicer antenna and see if I can reach any one of you guys.

If I put that one on my roof, what type of client should I set that one as? I would keep one in my office that I can connect to as I’m not quite sure where I would have to be in the house to get any reception/Bluetooth from the one on the house

I would probably just use my T deck plus to be honest for the one I care around the house

[distant steppe]

My t114 definitely works "better" on MF but I still hit a limit of 230 characters. Any more and it doesn't send. It also seems to have a stability issue on transmit. Bluetooth tends to drop off and it seems like the board resets too. It has been causing me issues if I route through one @maiden wraith. Seems intermittent. I've seen a few people mention the board is browning out on transmit

[void iris]

Did you see the fix Heltec released?

Well, less of a fix but more an offer to send you a revised one

[white field]

Alright here goes nothing. Swapping my remote node from LF to MF. Wish me luck.

Phew it’s alive

[odd dragon]

I flew to SLC today for a quick trip work then headed back to DFW tonight. Yall have a pretty good set up in that area.

[slate urchin]

Does Dallas have a pretty good following? I fly to DFW every couple weeks.

[odd dragon]

I think we’re getting there. We have a discord now. You welcome to join, visitors are welcome, if you want to try and connect while in the Dallas area. I just got into Meshtastic a month or two ago but I think Austin has the best following and engagement based on their discord activity. DFW feels really spread out in terms of nodes. There are some good pockets of mesh coverage though

[white field]

Does anyone have an active trace to Lake Mountain on MF?

[distant steppe]

I just left my house but I was unable to traceroute to lake mountain about an hour ago

[slate urchin]

BB is going offline and then I'll be on MF

[slate urchin]

BB is on MF

Just plugged it in and put it in the window

On the main channel, what do I change that to, as mine still says LongFast?

[white field]

Delete the name of the channel. Default is empty.

If you set frequency band to 45 it should just work tho.

[white field]

I had to do this via web app once when it was stuck.

[slate urchin]

Like this?

[white field]

Yup

[slate urchin]

Send this to 45 and not zero

Or a different place

[white field]

Frequency slot 45

Oh Baird, once you swap, you might have direct connection the mountain node I setup.

lol I think I’m currently in a hole at my house for the moment tho. No links from my balcony on MF.

Gonna be moving at the end of the month. Will be installing a node on Capitol Hill if I don’t get service 🤣

[leaden crow]

You're moving to Capitol Hill? Depending on where exactly, you'll probably be able to reach my NSL node.

[white field]

I’ll be at the base of the hill unfortunately. (Tho still very happy about the area)

Gonna have sort out what my LOS options will be.

[leaden crow]

The Marmalade district or the South side?

[slate urchin]

Just sent out a test on MF. Anyone receiving?

[white field]

Marmalade

[leaden crow]

I placed my work node on MF. It wasn't seeing any other nodes when I left.

[hallow dagger]

I know that in theory MF is supposed to have close to the range of LF, but it's seeming like maybe that's not the case in practice?

[leaden crow]

I'm not that concerned about the coverage at my work. There is just not much at all around NSL. I'm just going to leave it and hopefully at some point more people will switch and the mesh will work. It is concerning if the mountaintop nodes lose a ton of range on MF.

[leaden crow]

Joined the club. @vital hemlock was not kidding about how buggy the fancy UI is, but it looks great!

[leaden crow]

Oh man, that would suck. Any way to test that? If you're going to ride up there to switch antennas, maybe put it on LF. Then if you can reach it from home, you've got remote admin..

[void iris]

Moving from LF to MF will reduce the link budget by 5 dB. To make the math easier, let's call it 6dB.

A 6dB drop will half the range, and is equivalent to 1/4 output power on LF (every 3dB is a doubling of power)

Additionally, the reflections will be different. A reflection that was previously not causing destructive interference could be interfering much more, because the bits are much closer together now. (This is not accounted for in link budget)

[leaden crow]

I wish I could. I bought several of these at one point:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806674842292.html

The 18650 pack I was planning on using, all the cells were too low voltage once I disassembled it.

[leaden crow]

I can't seem to find any for 21700 that have BMS like the 18650 ones I have. I will probably just buy these pouch cells when I'm ready. Can get them next day from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Battery-10000mAh-Lithium-Rechargeable-Raspberry/dp/B093WS6C66/

[white field]

Does anyone have the ability to regularly ping Lake Mountain with direct LOS?

This weekend I was trying to ping LM on MF from i-15 and couldn't get a response. At the same time window, I was able to successfully ping my mountain node near Faust that's 4x farther away.

Lake Mountain router - ~10 miles away - did not respond to traceroutes
38fb onaqui router - ~40 miles away - responded to traceroutes 100% of the time

I'm a bit worried this might be part of the reason why I cannot control my node remotely from town since it was intended to be the primary way to link back to the SLC mesh.

(tho FPR should also have great LOS to it once it's back online)

[leaden crow]

I can't get traceroute back from LMTS rn, but when I was on LF, I could regularly get traceroutes back from the other Lake Mountain node. It's probably not enought, but I'm getting this antenna for my roof node today:
https://store.rokland.com/collections/802-11ah-wi-fi-halow/products/8-dbi-n-male-omni-outdoor-helium-915-mhz-antenna-large-profile-40-for-rak-miner-2-nebra-sensecap-m1-bobcat-hotspots

If I can traceroute to it, I could make a cron job on my rpi node to try every hour or something.

[white field]

I haven't attempted it yet. TBH, my house is not connected to the Mesh at all. 😦

I might drive out to somewhere with LOS to FPR. I'm certain that if FPR is working it will have a 1-hop link to my router. (and I've already tested that my router cannot see LM)

[void iris]

Can't ping it on MF

[white field]

Phew, it's not just me.

Just gotta hike/ski it. 😛

Not horrible, not easy.

[leaden crow]

I don't really see the problem with doing that on a motorcycle. 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSN6EodbL1c&t=40s

[leaden crow]

2 wheels in snow and ice sucks. I hate riding my mountain bike through even small snowbanks on early season rides. I usually try to ride my street bikes until about Nov. Even when it's dry it can be sketchy. I run touring tires instead of supersport, but I still don't really trust their cold weather grip.

[white field]

I thought the music was a joke until the machine gun noises started.

[leaden crow]

haha, that is definitely disco era terrible movie music. The roger moore james bond movies are especially cheesy.

[leaden crow]

So far the new antenna is not the panacea I was hoping for.

Still can't traceroute LMTS

I am basically on the bench of the valley, so that's probably not terrible for me.

[vital hemlock]

I saw your test, just replied

[leaden crow]

I needed another antenna anyway. This one is going on a tree somewhere in the mountains. I wouldn’t mind using the rokland, but I don’t think this flimsy enclosure will support a 40” antenna mounted like this.

At minimum it is some improvement. slcmesh has never seen any test messages I broadcast in the past, but it saw my last test.

[white field]

Low temp batteries just arrived.

[clever cipher]

@white field what's the difference between these and just regular 21700's? They want like 3x the cost over typical unprotected cells

[white field]

They can be charged at -20 degrees C without being destroyed like a lipo.

Can discharge at down to -40 C.

TBH, I’m trying to figure out if a BCM system will be required given the charge controller systems on a RAK19007

[leaden crow]

You definitely still need a BMS. The ones BW linked here would work fine:
#1197577977781821541 message

[white field]

What’s reasoning for the BMS vs the charge circuit on the rak?

Not really finding details about the rak module other than the naive bloc diagrams

[leaden crow]

The BMS will prevent the battery from being overcharged or running so low it destroys the battery. RAK might prevent the overcharging, but would allow it to be completely drained

If you do that and then it start charging again later (solar back online)
BOOM

[leaden isle]

Where did you get those? What about high temps?

[leaden crow]

https://store.rokland.com/products/molicel-21700-p42a-4200mah-45a-battery

[leaden isle]

Thanks

What is the difference between medium fast and long fast? When would you use one over the other?

[white field]

This is the charge controller the rak uses

https://www.laskakit.cz/user/related_files/tp4054.pdf

[cursive stratus]

I purchased some from here they arrived a couple day ago!
https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/molicel-p42a

Great price for a cold rated battery! on sale now $3.95

[white field]

Tbh, I’m not seeing anything about low voltage cutoffs (stopping the rak from pulling amps with the battery drained), but the charge protection appears to be present.

Gonna read more. TBH, I’m oversized like hell so I expect this to not matter. 30-40 day life with medium sized solar to stop it from draining.

[cursive stratus]

https://youtu.be/V3f-Y3EfsBU?feature=shared

[leaden crow]

I hope most devices handle this gracefully. My understanding is the BMS is best practice. Where I am putting this in a tree somewhere that could cause a forest fire, I want the extra failsafe. I am not an expert, this is just my opinion and risk tolerance.

[white field]

Yup, I’m gonna validate it first. I just honestly don’t know that I trust the linked device based on reviews compared to the rak hardware.

I’m going to try to determine the differences.

I ordered a few BMS, but I want to understand exactly what the hardware is suplimenting.

[leaden crow]

The gist of this is that once your mesh gets too crowded, you decrease the broadcast strength of each node. The well placed routers on our LF were often over 25% channel utilization, which is bad. It means they are dropping messages. Switching to MF or MS will help with this problem. Our LF also has this problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htjwtnjQkkE
Too many routers and people that will not respond / change their roles. So switching to MF solves this problem (for the people on MF).

BP could probably give you a better explanation. I think he has in the chat, but you'd have to scroll waay back.

[white field]

okay, I'm did half the homework.

TP4054 present on the RAK parent boards is a charge controller for 3.7v lipo batteries. It determines when and how much current is sent to the battery. It will send a safe amount of current to the battery until the current going to the battery drops as it reaches the desired voltage.

It has some protections to ensure that the solar or USB voltage is safe to send to the battery. It also has some smarts about charging strategy (how to start, stop, retry) to be "kind" to the battery.

[white field]

I'm reading that there's some distinction for the protection that the RAK modules have.

I cannot find any datasheets about it specifically what components they are using, but they do callout that they want their batteries to cutoff supply at 2.7v.

The low voltage protection system people mention seems to be about if the battery cannot provide enough current and the voltage droops. (which won't trigger with the usecase of a trickle draining battery)

I ordered some $1 BMS boards from amazon, probably gonna install those.

I found some reddit threads linking to these boards as specifically designed for this usecase, but I'd prefer to avoid paying/waiting more.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1421193059/li-ion-battery-protection-modules-pcm