#US - Utah

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white field
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I'm going to try testing these out before the weekend.

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leaden crow
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This is the crux of buying all this aliexpress level stuff. You start reading the reviews and half of it doesn't work or has some weird quirks. At least you get 5. Hopefully 3 of them work. ๐Ÿ˜

burnt pagoda
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Anybody want a T114 (no screen)

vital hemlock
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Does it still experience issues on MF @burnt pagoda ? Cant make it work?

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I assume that long term the t114 no-screen will be a good competitor to the rak's for router nodes.

clever cipher
leaden isle
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Iโ€™ll hopefully be adding a home base node in PG soon. Looking at the map it doesnโ€™t look like there is a need for one.

white field
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Anyone here know anyone in SLC into weather Balloons?

There's group on the San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge that's planning to launch a weather balloon with a Meshtastic node sometime this fall.

If we launched one at the same time we could try to connect the meshes once both balloons are above ~20km. ๐Ÿ˜‚

image.png
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I'd be very interested in contributing to the effort/costs if anyone has experience with these.

burnt pagoda
vital hemlock
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I'll message you

leaden crow
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โ”‚ 3 โ”‚ Nelson Peak Router โ”‚ !084cf48d โ”‚ NPR โ”‚ RAK4631 โ”‚ UNSET โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ 9.00 dB โ”‚ 1 โ”‚ 0 โ”‚ 2024-10-16 16:21:09 โ”‚ 2 mins ago โ”‚

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Who placed that!?

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Sending traceroute request to !084cf48d on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !084cf48d (?dB)

leaden crow
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I could not reach POTM before. Now I can hop through NPR. I think this is going to be amazing for MF coverage in the valley.

โ”‚ 2 โ”‚ Point of the Mountain Router โ”‚ !77272d1f โ”‚ POTM โ”‚ RAK4631 โ”‚ UNSET โ”‚ 40.4722ยฐ โ”‚ -111.8825ยฐ โ”‚ 1877 m โ”‚ 98% โ”‚ 1.51% โ”‚ 0.35% โ”‚ 10.50 dB โ”‚ 5 โ”‚ 0 โ”‚ 2024-10-16 17:39:02 โ”‚ 1 min ago โ”‚
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !77272d1f on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !084cf48d (?dB) --> !67e2f2c2 (?dB) --> !77272d1f (?dB)

white field
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Wowowow NP?!

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Im praying itโ€™s got the direct link to my onaqui router. (Should be possible with general LOS)

white field
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Iโ€™m still a bit flaky with NP. Anyone currently seeing the onaqui router with NP up?

leaden crow
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Are you connecting through the new NPR router? Now my roof node in NSL is connecting to the rest of the Salt Lake Valley mesh through it. @hallow dagger is NPR yours?

hallow dagger
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I can neither confirm nor deny that NPR is mine, or that it's on private property on NP, or that it may be a temporary proof-of-concept placement that is not ideal.

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@white field I picked up your onaqui router from NPR at some point yesterday, but can't seem to see it now that it's in place on NP. Maybe picked it up from the Tooele valley or on the way up.

white field
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Yeah onaqui is covering Tooele, Faust, skull valley. Should have LOS to near Layton and associated mountains too

Iโ€™m a bit surprised to not see it linking with LM or NP

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My house has garbage los tho. So not too surprising

hallow dagger
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Yeah that's a real bummer. Can you PM me its location? Maybe NPR can be adjusted to see it. May not be until Spring now though.

white field
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Yeah thatโ€™s fine. My placement isnโ€™t perfect I donโ€™t mind doing a different slog to change positions to be more optimal.

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Thereโ€™s a few other regional peaks that are good for my goals of getting a Moab link established

hallow dagger
white field
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Technically it wonโ€™t cover Moab but it will get canyonlands and possibly Indian Creek (deserves it own node)

Itโ€™s a popular climbing area with zero cell service

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lol mostly an experiment tho. Itโ€™s gonna be 5-6 hops to SLC ๐Ÿ˜…

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My final low temp battery component arrives today. Iโ€™m gonna try to do the solar nodes this weekend with some Grouse hunting mixed in.

hallow dagger
white field
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Yeah thatโ€™s the plan. Moab to Indian Creek could be super convenient too if there was a router above town that could do Moab, Henryโ€™s, Creek

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Probably a lot less flaky with the smaller hop counts

hallow dagger
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I find it very strange that I often have to hop through some client node between routers that should have LOS. For example when I trace to NPR it first goes to POTM as expected, but then it hops through a client node (one time through bp_roof , another time through Jfirwin) before reaching NPR when POTM and NPR should have very good LOS. I saw this often tracing to the Lake Mountain router as well which should have direct LOS with POTM.

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That would make sense, but I would expect it to be intermittent if that were the case. Granted the peak routers are much busier than clients, but I shouldn't be terribly busy right now on MF.

leaden crow
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If you look at utilization on MF, they are all extremely low. I see like 1% max.

I do see the same thing. I get direct traceroutes from my roof node in Holladay to NPR, but my traceroute to POTM went NPR > Jfirwin > POTM

hallow dagger
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Right, it's gotta be something else that I don't understand.

white field
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Same thing Iโ€™m seeing

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I kinda want to experiment with LF off the default frequency

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Or perhaps even LongSlow to see if this is a hardware or signal issue.

hallow dagger
white field
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Yeah if we get away from channel 0. LF might be best for our topology.

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If people are spamming, we can always go โ€œdiscord privateโ€ and make a club mesh thatโ€™s 100% reliable, but requires an invite.

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Could also be interesting to just experiment with various frequency bands to see what noise is like.

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Iโ€™ll try to check LM signal to my node this weekend and might try testing some link settings to test reliability

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With direct LOS, I failed most traces to NP this morning

hallow dagger
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Maybe I'll switch NPR to custom LF in a few days so we can run some tests for comparison. I am really suspect of MF atm.

leaden crow
hallow dagger
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@cursive stratus were you in Bates Canyon yesterday by chance? That goat in your avatar looks familiar ๐Ÿ˜†

cursive stratus
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@gdane No ๐Ÿ˜ that was taken on a hunting trip up ophir canyon a couple years ago, we have the goats pack for us. If you look close enough you can see the deer on the green pack.

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I'm going to be up there this weekend and won't be able to make any changes to the MF radios until after Sunday.๐Ÿป

hallow dagger
vital hemlock
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I wish they wouldnt use that "zero", and just show what it's actually set to. If you watch the boot log you can see the selected channel

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I really want MF to work, as the response times are much quicker. Remember, that the signal rate (air time usage) will always become a congestion issue on LF with a large mesh.

leaden crow
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I think if they are going to test between the mountaintop nodes on LF, they should test MS too. It might end up being a good compromise?

vital hemlock
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Let me find the signal rate table

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Sometimes the juice isnt worth the squeeze. One of these will be "best", but it will take some scientific method approach with testing to confirm, not just anecdotal. Right?

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It'll likely be easier to stick to either LF or LS, as those are the tried and true for almost all use-cases so far. But far be it from me to tell anyone what to do. I'd say do what makes you happy and hopefully we all learn something along the way

leaden crow
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To be clear, I am not trying to steer the ship away from MF. I just think it's a good idea to test.
We have some momentum towards MF. For me I think it is working acceptably well.

vital hemlock
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I'm with ya. I also do believe there is value considering LF off the main channel. Makes sense

white field
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I've been really struggling to hit routers from across the valley on MF. I was using my node from in my car, but from near Ensign Peak I was only getting 1 in 5 traceroutes landing to NP.

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ohhh, we might have some LOS issues on nelson atm.

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I was just looking at some shadows based on the current position. (node is off screen to the left)

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^this explains part of it

leaden crow
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I don't think that's accurate. I would be dead in the middle of where there is no LOS, but I've had good service to it. Have run probably 4 traceroutes from home and I think only 1 didn't return

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Traceroutes have always been spotty for me. I feel like they are 50/50 even when messages pretty reliably get delivered. Maybe someone else has different experience than me?

white field
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I will sometimes have them reliably return, but only in ideal circumstances. I also tested similar counts of DMs since they have retries.

white field
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It also sounds like my node on the backside of the next range isn't in LOS of NPR.

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Yeah, if anyone is planning to place new router nodes in the future let me know. I'm running a private spreadsheet.

I can suggest routers that people can check for LOS when positioning their own.

lilac shadow
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Just flipped my little house top repeater in ogden to MF , see if anything comes up

humble vector
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I see more on MF in the Valley but still nothing up North.

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hallow dagger
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FYI, the coords that NPR is publishing are not accurate. Here's the actual positioning.

hallow dagger
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Yeah great for SL valley, not as good as I'd hoped for Tooele. Can't have both unfortunately without a much taller pole. The topology at the top blocks one or the other valley as you move east to west along a small ridge at the top.

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Would really like to get a link from NPR to Onaqui to extend coverage to Tooele and the West Desert.

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Here's coverage zoomed out a bit to show extents. Ideally should be visible from high ground North to Brigham City and South to Nephi.

white field
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Got my cold weather batteries done. Driving out for an adventure to place a node tomorrow

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Snow was very thin driving by parleyโ€™s. Hopeful the drive and hike are ez

hallow dagger
leaden crow
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I have cold weather batteries arriving this weekend. It's the last thing I need. With any lucky this storm doesn't shut down the Crest for the year. I think a node at Desolation Peak should have LOS to Nelson Peak.

Screenshot_2024-10-18_at_10.40.41_AM.png
hallow dagger
leaden crow
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It would have better coverage around Kimball Junction. I'm more hoping for service on the Crest and in Millcreek. That may eventually require more nodes, but this would be a good start. I'd love to place it before winter, so I know how the batteries & solar do.

Screenshot_2024-10-18_at_10.54.59_AM.png
hallow dagger
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I hope to make NPR permanent before winter as well. The path up the Oquirrh back was brutal even when dry so hoping for at least one more dry day. I have two antennas to choose from. Wondering if anybody has experience with either. I don't have a VNA unfortunately so can't vet them myself.
https://store.rokland.com/products/4-dbi-helium-hotspot-fiberglass-outdoor-antenna-bracket-mount-for-rak-bobcat-nebra-sensecap?srsltid=AfmBOoqswVaSpoXYILwchyOnsXhTWEA3um5s5_BGDeo_0r1IkIeVhIZY
https://store.rokland.com/products/alfa-aoa-915-5acm-5-dbi-omni-outdoor-915mhz-802-11ah-mini-antenna-for-lora-halow-application?srsltid=AfmBOoptLFR7IEFWaL5A6k8Gd9ulqhRVum52LefUe7amQ9q_daPr3Qzt

Rokland
4 dBi N-Male Helium Hotspot Fiberglass Outdoor Antenna & Bracket Mount

This is an outdoor fiberglass encased omni-directional 915 MHz N-Male antenna with 4 dBi gain. Also included isย an outdoor bracket designed for mounting to a pole or PVC pipe.ย THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE RAK MINER ITSELF. Thisย antenna isย compatible with the RAK V2, Bobcat 300, Nebra Indoor, SenseCAP M1, Kerlink, Linxdot,

Rokland
ALFA AOA-915-5ACM 5 dbi Omni Outdoor 915MHz 802.11ah Mini LoRa Antenna

ALFA Network AOA-915-5ACM is the original dipole small form factor antenna for the People's Network (Helium) and IoT.ย  Are you an ISP or installer looking to print your company's name on the antenna, contact us for bulk/OEM order options.Thisย antenna isย compatible with the RAK V2, Bobcat 300, Nebra Indoor, SenseCAP M1,

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The former is what's currently installed on POTM.

void iris
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I believe the owner of LF lake mountain said that you can't go too high of gain or else everybody on the valley floor won't get a good connection. If I remember he went down to 2/3 dB. That may be the problem we have seen at the MF lake mountain repeater as well

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I'd put my vote in for the 4dbi

leaden crow
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You're welcome to borrow my VNA if you'd like to test them out. I think both of those are excellent antennas.

hallow dagger
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Right. I did some analysis for POTM's 4dbi and it hit the valley floor pretty close to the base of Steep Mtn.

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NP isn't nearly as steep to the valley floor so I think either would work. I know the 4dbi works though so I'll probably go with that.

cursive stratus
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I'm running Roklands 6dbi antennas on both MF Lake and West Mountain routers. I'm using my lake Mountain node to feed Nephi and a signal plus 12dbi antenna to get signal to Leamington I'm shooting a pretty small gap through a canyon. I have good signal to where I need it but I haven't thoroughly checked for dead spots. The broadcasted positions of my nodes are not precise but are close, the elevations are correct ๐Ÿป

void iris
vital hemlock
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Off topic, saw this and it's a good piece of info to remember:
#firmware message

vital hemlock
cursive stratus
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From my house off pioneer crossing and the maverick in Lehi. Same 6dbi antenna on my roof.

image_123650291.jpg
vital hemlock
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That's great SNR ๐Ÿ‘

burnt pagoda
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Question: How often do you clear your node database?

vital hemlock
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Any time I make major changes to the radio settings, or any time I'm testing anything specific. Are you having issues with yours filling up?

burnt pagoda
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No, just curious. I've been doing it often just to see who I'm actually reaching

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.

vital hemlock
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Both Android and Apple apps sort by last heard, and "should" tell you when you last saw that node. ๐Ÿคž

white field
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Those models of Alpha antennas are tuned perfectly. Wayyyy better than anything else I tested. (All others had huge variance) Perfectly centered at 915.

(I VNA tested 4 of em)

void iris
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You're right, that's really interesting and weird

white field
white field
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Hmm, I might be screwed on access for tomorrow. ๐Ÿ˜‚

I drove up to ~10k vert near Strawberry today and it was 12" of snow on the dirt roads.

Here's to hoping these didn't get as much near where I want to place here in Salina. (might have to abort and come back when some of it melts out next week)

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If this works tho, I'll acheive a 113 mile hop to NPR and 98 miles to OR

white field
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Bahaha thereโ€™s no way to do this without an atv.. the mud is the problem. Gonna retry before the next snow ๐Ÿซ .

views are pretty above the clouds tho ๐Ÿ˜‡

IMG_5098.jpg
vital hemlock
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Weโ€™re lucky to live in such a beautiful place.

vital hemlock
white field
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I think range record is 215mi. Still gonna be awesome if this eventually works.

My end goal is reliable communication between SLC and Indian Creek, which might be challenging.

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Im hoping next weekend I can finish the high elevation nodes after the melt we are gonna have this week

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That zone is fairly unique in that it has a lot of traffic, but no cell service. (Indian creek, but also Manti)

If the router nodes pan out, I think the challenge will be that a specific router has to retransmit in/out of our mesh.

Iโ€™m thinking if things end up a flaky with egress I might put it on longslow and have it be kinda dedicated for getting in/out of town.

white field
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For anyone else needing to plan mountain access. (Here's forecast for Brighton for the next 10 days)

It looks like we should have some melt-out until next Monday, 2024-10-28. (Temperatures drop and precipitation chances go up)

image.png
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If low temp batteries are a blocking anyone from deploying any nodes; I have some extras on-hand if you're waiting on delivery. (21700 form factor, 3.7v, 4.5 Ah, -40 C min discharge temp, -20 C min charge temp)

leaden crow
void iris
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I'm at traverse mountain right now and can't seem to ping lake mountain from any of my nodes Even though I have direct line of sight. Does anyone know why that would be? I know we're on the correct channel because I do see packets on occasion

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vital hemlock
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I cant reach Lake Mountain either, and I have line of sight also

void iris
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I just received a telemetry packet from it but I still can't trace root or message

vital hemlock
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Yeah, my last packet was 7 mins ago for LMTS

void iris
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Same

vital hemlock
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Just saw it beacon again

white field
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I have the same issues with LM.

Does anyone know what hardware/firmware itโ€™s running?

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Anyone know if Ophir can see LM?

I was trying to trace route LM from onaqui -> Ophir, but it wasnโ€™t making the second half the link. Tho presumably onaqui should be able to direct ping LM.

void iris
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It looks like a RAK running <2.5

white field
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Yeah, I think something is up with the reliability of the traces from that node.

First image: "๐Ÿ•Š๏ธ Ophir" -> "Lake Mountain"
Second image is "38fb onaqui router" -> "๐Ÿ•Š๏ธ Ophir"
Third image is "38fb onaqui router" -> "Lake Mountain"

I was able to establish a a traceroute from my node on i-80 -> "38fb onaqui router" -> "๐Ÿ•Š๏ธ Ophir". However, neither node was getting a response from Lake Mountain.

This is a bit surprising since both Ophir and onaqui should have direct LOS to LM.

image.png image.png image.png
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I think my next course of action is likely to drive out to LM and just test the reverse link to see if there's my nodes can connect the opposite direction. (maybe there's an antenna or TX issue with LM ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ )

leaden crow
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@white field I don't know what changed, but I started seeing your router overnight.
โ”‚ 13 โ”‚ 38fb onaqui router โ”‚ !d36b38fb โ”‚ 38fb โ”‚ RAK4631 โ”‚ UNSET โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ 96% โ”‚ 0.84% โ”‚ 0.25% โ”‚ 10.75 dB โ”‚ 2 โ”‚ 0 โ”‚ 2024-10-22 09:02:32 โ”‚ 28 mins ago โ”‚

hallow dagger
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Sounds like the Alpha is a really good antenna. It's 5dbi though, and my other is 4dbi. Is the consensus still the 4dbi for NPR? It will be swapped out with a permanent node on Saturday.

primal topaz
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For anyone at the saintcon infosec conference in Provo this week, there is a Meshtastic channel in use with the config info posted to the saintcon discord general channel.

white field
white field
vital hemlock
white field
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I think Ophir is possibly getting a link into the valley.

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TBH, my temptation is to move it somewhere with more functional router links available. It does has great coverage for Faust and the areas south of Tooele, but it's a kinda small area to cover compared to mountains to if i could get a ridgeline placement to it's south.

I did some driving around central Utah this weekend in the deserts and was kinda inspired to see if we could link to a different mesh to the south.

hallow dagger
white field
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Ah yeah, Indian Creek is already sorted assuming I can place the Skyline/Henry nodes. Two of the new SLC routers could service that hop and they are closer to my house than onaqui ๐Ÿ˜‚ . (when I started the plan NPR + Ophir didn't exist. Now they have direct LOS to the Skyline node that gets messages above the Wasatch to the Henry's.)

I personally think the Canyonlands + Indian Creek + Moab link will be really cool, but the number of raw users will likely be kinda small at first.

One thing I've been noticing about the layouts is that it's really hard to get messages West <-> East due to the orientation of the mountain ranges. (we are kinda limited in max hop size) I could potentially setup a series of realllllly far hops North <-> South if I placed them carefully.

There's an East/West mountain range south of Onaqui that I'm considering moving it to. This will give it much longer larger coverage area and also enable it to potentially link to the mesh in Cedar City.

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TBH, it would kinda fun to "one-up" other region's mesh sizes using our otherwise difficult to work with geography.

hallow dagger
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Not clear from above whether Skyline is in place already or not. Also you planning on configuring all your long-distance routers LF to start?

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Reaching Cedar City from the West Desert would be really impressive.

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I was tempted to make the run down to the Henrys last weekend and place that node. Not exactly a short trip though ๐Ÿซค

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Anybody following firmware developments know if the RAK4630 config-loss issue has been completely resolved yet?

leaden crow
white field
white field
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I'll be putting everything on public MF 45 so other people can use the link too. ๐Ÿ˜„

clever cipher
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ok so, I'm gonna get a node up this weekend as the weather looks like its turning really quick. Unfortunately it will not be 'The' Ogden one I'll plant at a later time. It'll (for now) be a private node to do some testing with. My question is about remote access. What do I need to do to ensure I have remote access to this node. Under the Security settings it looks like I probably want 'Managed' set, I assume I want to keep the Private Key, Public Key documented somehwhere. There is also the Admin key, I assume I want to make one and definitely keep that one as well.

clever cipher
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ahh ok

vital hemlock
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Yeah, you just want to configure the admin channel. Managed prevents folks from breaking the node settings by accident

clever cipher
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So just set the name to like "admin" give it a key and thats it? So if I wanted to change settings on it, I would connect another node to my computer and just run commands to it through the kernel, so long as the node im using to communicate with it has that key?

bright gazelle
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Sounds like you're running 2.5 where legacy admin has been deprecated. Can toggle it back on if you want but there are better ways now. Basically take the public key(s) (up to 3) of the nodes you want to be able to manage from, and paste those into the admin key field on your remote node.

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No admin channel needed

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All nodes have to be on 2.5

white field
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Also good to screenshot all your private/public keys from all your nodes.

If you lose one you can recover from that

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Update: Iโ€™m ready for my next outing.

Rak19003, temp sensors, low temp batteries, with battery protection units from that Etsy vendor

IMG_5144.jpg
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Currently all of them are charging under my desk lamp. ๐Ÿ˜น

leaden isle
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What solar panel and case is that?

white field
leaden crow
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Me too, just charging the batteries now.

IMG_2830.jpg IMG_2831.jpg
leaden crow
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It's polycarbonate sheet bent to 30 degrees. Riveted and glued to the front of the nema box. That solar panel I scavenged from something a while back. It happened to be about the same width as the nema box (I have soshine panels, but they seem too large for this). The device I got it from; the solar panel sat in a rubber backing and has that metal flange that holds it down. I just tapped the polycarbonate and screwed it down using existing holes.

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My thinking is that snow/ice can bend the solar panel basically flat and just slide off. Polycarbonate isn't supposed to turn brittle until -40 degrees.

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I hope so. We'll see if it actually works. Part of the reason I really want to get this up in the mountains before it's too late. If it survives a winter at 10,000' I think the idea is gtg.

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Couple more photos; Lexan definitely springy enough to sit flat.

IMG_2832.jpg
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All I used to bend it.

E839A340-0684-4BA2-99E6-DC3791E5E55A.jpg
vital hemlock
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Gold

distant steppe
# white field Anyone know if Ophir can see LM? I was trying to trace route LM from onaqui -> ...

I am late to the party but I agree that the lake mountain MF node is just a black hole right now. It was working for maybe a day after I first saw it but the nothing.

I currently have 4 nodes between Lehi and southern Utah county and none of them can make it far since LM is a router. None of my nodes have been shown up on the dashboard where before I could ping some nodes up in SLC area

dim bay
# distant steppe I am late to the party but I agree that the lake mountain MF node is just a blac...

I believe it's a client/ router mode. I have not made any changes to that node for at least a year(I manage that site on Lake Mountain). I am happy to make changes to the settings as needed, but if I take it off line, alot of people will lose mesh altogether as it's location can reach some of those hard to reach spots.
I am open to switching it to a different channel if folks are thinking it's causing problems.

void iris
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Yours is working great (thank you, by the way), somebody put another node up there on the Medium Fast preset that is having issues.

void iris
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I've had the same experience. I can't even ping a device in my neighborhood that's a quarter mile away. At the same distance on longfast I was getting positive SNR

vital hemlock
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I wish I knew more about what may be causing the issues. Mine seem to be fine, I had the expected drop of 5db and everything else is nice and quick.

If we need to move back to LF on a different channel we should do so before winter gets into full swing.

Iโ€™ll leave that up to you all that have the remote, hard to reach, nodes.

void iris
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The only thing I can think of is because the Lora chirps are tighter together the reflections are causing destructive interference, whereas previously they would have not have had any effect

white field
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What frequency are we using for channel 45?

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I'm wondering if we could just run multiple frequency channels of LF configs if that makes sense.

It could be that we simply cannot get reasonable perf from MF and LF cannot handle enough nodes per channel.

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MF is closer to 915 (@ 913.125), which seemed veryyy noisy when I looked at it on an SDR.

One alternative I'd like to test is shopping around the frequency slots to see if we find better performance on any of them with our hardware/environment.

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Oh no, that's exactly what I'm implying we test.

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MF is about improving our bandwidth, but we can run it on any frequency band we want.

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For reference, MF defines the LoRa encoding and bandwidth, but not the carrier frequency.

image.png
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theoretically per this chart we should only be losing 5 dB from our link budget. This is obviously not the case.

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I'm gonna test this out to see what the difference in SNR is with a group of radios I own. Gonna step through the frequency ranges and see what SNR I can get.

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(writing some scripts to try to do this now)

primal topaz
#

Remember that dB is logarithmic. 5dB is a ~70% loss

white field
#

Yeah, but our link budget is supposed to be 150.

#

Our devices can detect signal at mannnny orders of magnitude less power.

dim bay
#

I'll try my best to pay attention to this thread. I am pretty busy lately, and don't do much with hobby stuff lately, but I am happy to change channels, or speed on the lake mountain node. I do need to go up and do a firmware update before the gate gets locked for the year, so I'm happy to make changes. Keep in mind that the reason many of you are able to teach nodes in Layton(from Utah county) is because that node can hear far away. I think it's helped make everyone see the value in meshtastic because of the distance achieved. With that being said, when you have enough nodes in the valley, it might make sense to stop repeating signals from the mountain, or at least go to a different channel. The reason is that you get "hidden node" effect where one node in slc can't hear a node in orem, and they transmit at the same time, thus making the signal compete from on top of the mountain. This is why messages don't get through. A guy in Layton with a good antenna might be "walking on" a weaker node in orem. So in that sense, it might make sense to stop repeating messages so far away (from lake mountain) and let the "hops" take care of it....
The only issue I see is that the lake mountain node helps those in eagle mountain and Saratoga springs where they might not get anyone else...

leaden crow
white field
#

150db is ~15 orders of magnitude

#

Maybe the second order reflective link budget is far lower. ๐Ÿ˜•

#

and we rely on that.

#

5db lower is 70% ratio lower, but our link budget could theoretically function down to 99.999999999999% lower if it's actually 150db.

These maths aren't mathing.

#

magic ๐Ÿช„

leaden crow
#

@dim bay We have way too many router and client nodes on LF right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htjwtnjQkkE
With Nelson Peak, Ophir, Onaqui, POTM, West Mountain and Lake Mountains nodes on MF, we should have amazing coverage. I think it's pretty good, but Lake Mountains does not seem to be working right, and we're not reaching the nodes North of Salt Lake valley.

vital hemlock
#

SNR has been a more important indicator of whether or not I'm going to get a message through; all other measurements aside.

It would be great if someone with an SDR to get up higher and see what the clearest usable range would be.

white field
#

I was able to pickup chirps, but I have no idea how to do that type of analysis.

My idea was for something I could do at home to see if there's background noise or hardware issues.

  • loop through every frequency band
    • set every radio to that band using a cli script (gonna test with 9 radios)
    • run a traceroute from every radio to my collector node
    • record the SNR i got from each radio using the collector node
  • put it in a spreadsheet and plot performance vs frequency band
#

^ this will hopefully indicate if there's some radio configs that are garbage in our region or with the nrf52 chipsets I'm using.

vital hemlock
leaden crow
#

That seems like a good plan to me. I'll buy an SDR to play with, but I'm assuming I'll probably end up with the same experience: able to pickup chirps, but I have no idea how to do that type of analysis.

white field
leaden crow
#

lolol thats way nicer than the $40 RTL SDR I just bought. If I thought I could do any better than you, maybe I'd consider it. Let me see where I get with the cheap option.

white field
#

okay, script is nearly finished. Should be able to get some test results this afternoon with my radios.

#

it will at least show us what relative SNR performance is like for each frequency. (assuming everything is nearby ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ )

white field
#

Running these test cases. Might take a long time, each case is ~2-3 min bc BLE is so slow.

#

Having these was super helpful. I can probably trust these measurements since itโ€™s sampled between 5 of them. ๐Ÿ˜

IMG_5163.jpg
void iris
void iris
#

I have found it more useful to do my math based on SNR rather than the RSSI for that reason

white field
#

Yeah, I'm only measuring SNR for these test cases. I'm assuming that if there's any internal disruptiveness from MF vs LF or frequency band that this will tease that out.

#

I ended up restarting since some starting data was bogus. I'm running these test cases in random order.

image.png
white field
#

initial data isn't showing much of a trend yet.

broken down by radio spec + node

image.png image.png
#

This might be a good proof of concept for more realistic test.

I want to try testing this where the nodes I'm testing are all farther away. (this would require getting a second computer with BLE + ssh setup to issue the commands)

#

Still waiting on all this data to stream in tho. Maybe there's a few points that will be dramatically worse. (I don't have a measurement at MF:45 yet)

#

TBH, kinda interesting to see e3bf perform so much worse than it's twin on the same bookshelf.

I might swap the rak modules on it before I deploy it. ๐Ÿ˜‚

#

c1db on the left in the photo is getting SNR that's 2x better when being recieved by a node that's across the room.

void iris
#

What do you mean 2x? 3dB?

white field
#

SNR (not sure if that's measured in dB)

#

SNR: 12 for two identical nodes. One in this room and one in another room. One of the nodes is reading SNR: -2 to 4.

TBH, I'm actually really glad I did some sampling of these datapoints.

We don't have any ways to normally know if a bad SNR reading is temporary or permanent. This one looks permanently worse than my other identical nodes.

#

I'm a little bit tempted to add some features to the iOS app to track SNR/RSSI over time so people can get a more accurate sense of what their readings mean.

#

So far there's an initial trend that MF might be better in higher frequency carriers.

This really needs proper testing with a remote location at what is thought to be an unreliable distance for MF. The goal would be to see if we can make any delivery improvements given these settings. (Right now Iโ€™m just checking SNR when itโ€™s good. We need it when itโ€™s bad.)

image.png
leaden crow
white field
#

not too much of a trend at this scale, other than negative for that one node at the bottom.

Feels like I need to run this test at distance and also include a "yes/no" connection tests to ensure it got ACKs.

image.png image.png image.png
void iris
#

I think the SNR is inaccurate when above 10. Two devices right next to each other should be closer to like 70 snr

#

In YouTube videos I have seen certain devices report in SNR of much higher than 10. Around 60 or 70 if it's right next to each other

#

I know this is going back and what I said yesterday but RSSI I don't think will suffer from that. Do you happen to have been tracking RSSI?

clever cipher
#

having a hard time with this admin stuff. If someone wants to DM me and help out whenever, that would be very cash money of them

slate urchin
#

I keep having a hard time with MF, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not ๐Ÿ˜ฆ on LF I was able to connect to my wife constantly from Eagle Mountain to Sandy. I think at this point I have to go back :-). That being said what are all the defaults for LF?

leaden crow
#

You can get your wife to use a meshtastic device? Mine just makes fun of me. or you just like hid a hardwired tracker in her car. ๐Ÿ˜

slate urchin
clever cipher
#

So when I try and change any setting I'm greeted by this

Screenshot_20241027_115910_Meshtastic.jpg
clever cipher
#

Like I'm not crazy right

Screenshot_20241027_122050_Meshtastic.jpg
fluid hull
# clever cipher Like I'm not crazy right

Correct, All that's needed to remote admin a node now is a controlling node's public key pasted into the controlled node's admin section.

(Also, Managed Mode isn't necessary for remote admin. In case someone else was also confused on that part for half a minute like me.)

It would be nice if the project documentation was updated to clarify that.

clever cipher
#

yeah im still getting the same error

#

Hmm I cant direct message the remote node either. Gives the same "No channel" error, but I can still route messages over the channels

#

...yep

#

that worked. Banging my head against the wall rn

real cedar
#

So router nodes cause congestion
Repeaters are cool but dont show up in the topology
7 node limit
Im aware that bringing up the hop limit can be contentious but I would love somewhat decent way around that limit that doesnt involve switching onto infrastructure that isnt off grid. What ideas have been tickled?

vital hemlock
# void iris I know this is going back and what I said yesterday but RSSI I don't think will ...

MC Hamster wrote this, look it over and see how you feel about it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vVpo7w66ENdBUBt4fXmBkfczqR0BLDoLGVH8tdf3FBI/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0

Google Docs
SNR vs RSSI

Why SNR is a Better Measure than RSSI for Meshtastic When working with Meshtastic, understanding the quality of your communication link is crucial. Meshtastic, built on top of LoRa (Long Range) technology, relies on efficient and reliable metrics to assess link performance. Two primary metrics o...

#

Also this:
#android message

real cedar
vital hemlock
#

Routers and repeaters both rebroadcast on the same shorter interval. They would cause the same issue if everyone was running them. Just an FYI.

real cedar
#

Im well aware of the issues they would present. Its why people should have very few of them and they should be in a high central location but thats not the f**ckery thats being thought up for giggles

My friends and I have figured out this

  1. Technically and from the RF link standpoint
  2. From the legal and public lands permitting point of view (easy to do. Just do the paperwork and work with the local authorities)
  3. Money and equipment and ruggedizing
  4. solar battery power

But what we realized we are up against now is the software and technical limitations of the protocol hop limit ๐Ÿ˜‘

f0944508f61582c215319de6a1ff9137d916e15a.png
#

Being an RF engineer as a day job helps when it comes to being able to understand what you need to technically achieve this but the pinch point was software.. bit by software again haha

#

it happens so now im asking and gathering more info on that part of the problem

vital hemlock
#

Store and forward is not what you want, you want to his a BBS. Message "hello" to bp_bbs, check that out. You can send mail, post to a board, etc.

real cedar
#

Explain a bit more. How does BBS work?

#

links if you got them

vital hemlock
#

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6LhY4HoimU

YouTube
The Comms Channel
BBS & Mail for Meshtastic!

Now available at
https://github.com/TheCommsChannel/TC2-BBS-mesh

๐Ÿ‘SUPPORT๐Ÿ‘
If you're finding the videos informative and useful, please consider supporting TCยฒ โ˜•
https://ko-fi.com/thecommschannel

๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ Join in on the conversation on Discord!
https://discord.gg/XGhftQw9Mt

๐ŸŒช๏ธ TCยณ Storm Chasing๐ŸŒช๏ธ
Want more Storm Chasing Videos? Check out the full ...

โ–ถ Play video
real cedar
#

Oh heck yeah man

vital hemlock
#

Just watch that last one. And I have one up, if you want to test

real cedar
#

let me dig into this after my lab report I gotta get written up

#

thank you. you have been very helpful ahha

vital hemlock
#

So far we've really like this. And if I send mail, when it sees that node it will message and say "hey, come read this"

white field
#

Anyone available to help test skyline link? Iโ€™m trying to test routing links to SLC.

#

Iโ€™m currently on ridgeline with signal. Approaching placement

#

Just letting me know if locations reach the city would be helpful

leaden crow
#

I'm not seeing !edb23805. I'll go check from my roof node.

#

Yeah, sorry not seeing it. Have you sent any test messages?

#

checked slcmesh, not seeing it either

white field
#

I tried some tests, Iโ€™m seeing a new node routing my traffic. Fool Creek Peak

#

Remote admin works so I trust I can always swap to LF on a diff frequency if I really need it to make this string of connections work reliably

#

Iโ€™m gonna see about making sure FCP is linked to the mesh.

I know of 3 nodes that should also have los to mine, but they arenโ€™t acking anything

real cedar
#

So. IDK if its my end but where are the maps for the slc mesh? I get a 401 before I even get the option to be prompted for a page password or username

#

Idk like almost all my clients except my house to be client_MUTE
But what are the atak modes. I have atak civ and thought about messing with it. is it bad to place the device in those modes? will it bother others

leaden crow
#

It's strange, almost like something else has changed (lost routers?). I am still getting traceroutes back really fast from the new NPR, but not seeing a bunch of nodes I was previously. I reset my nodedb, and in the past 24 hours haven't seen anything outside the valley.

void iris
#

I'm in Saratoga Springs and haven't seen any packets on medium fast for 2 days now at my house. Usually I can leave my node in the window overnight and get about 30

#

I can only see my radios

vital hemlock
#

I brought my t1000e to saratoga tonight and I was seeing others on MF. I was able to ping jfirwin, and NRP, and my house is Taylorsville (only once though).

#

My in-laws live over by the new temple (what I'm calling Dark Spire).

white field
#

Well, update is. Iโ€™m at the Henry mountains, but the roads I needed are fucked. Gonna have to figure out an alternative hop

#

I apparently donโ€™t need to be on the mountain to get a link tho. This connection is insane. (180 miles away for some node messages Iโ€™m getting)

IMG_5239.png
white field
leaden crow
vital hemlock
#

Agreed

white field
#

Okay, Iโ€™ve woken up in the Henries and am working on an alternative placement.

I think thereโ€™s some great spots which avoid the snow/ice on the roads to the summit.

#

Is anyone here able to consistently send/receive messages to Fool Creek Peak?

leaden crow
#

Sorry, I haven't heard anything South of Jfirwin since I reset my nodedb. I have my tdeck at work today. I'll reply if I see any test messages.

hallow dagger
#

@white field You're in the Henry Mtns this morning? Last time I was there I had zero service. How you getting connected, StarLink?

#

I can't trace to Fool Creek either, but I haven't had a successful trace to ANY of the nodes I can regularly see in the valley for several days. I can trace to POTM so it's not my radio, just can't trace anywhere else.

#

I am convinced there's something really janky with MF. I'm ready to switch back to LF but on a custom frequency where nodes are more disciplined to keep channel utilization down. We should be able to support a good size mesh that is reliable and responsive with well-behaved nodes on LF.

leaden crow
hallow dagger
#

NPR channel utilization doesn't seem to exceed 4% even with its vantage of most of the valley, so I agree it's not overcrowding, at least not on LoRa. May be noise, although that doesn't seem to be reflected in SNRs I'm seeing.

leaden crow
#

That's the other confusing part. All my reported SNR values look amazing, and my node list is populating..

void iris
#

I still haven't seen any nodes in two days, I'm in Lehi right now and should have LOS to a bunch of you. My node settings haven't changed.

hushed zealot
#

After a firmware update, I see lots of nodes but no messages.

void iris
#

I just updated to 2.5.7 and I can get reports but can't trace or administrate any of my nodes

hallow dagger
#

Can't explain it, but I just updated my app and now I'm able to successfully trace again. iOS.

void iris
#

I'll try that. I would assume it's an app issue because until today my firmware didn't change

hallow dagger
#

Trace now shows hops towards and back too, so maybe possibly there was a breaking change to traceroute in newer firmware?

leaden crow
hallow dagger
#

Totally possible that my app update was just a coincidence then. I couldn't trace either of those for the past 48 hours at least, until now.

#

Anything change with your rooftop node @vital hemlock? I hop through it quite often, especially to reach NPR for some as yet unexplained reason.

vital hemlock
#

I got on my roof yesterday and updated it from 2.3.4 to 2.5.7, it definitly could have affected it.

#

It's been on 2.3.4 since literally the day it was released

hallow dagger
#

Hmm that doesn't explain why I couldn't see it this morning then... unless it was something to do with a firmware/app mismatch.

vital hemlock
#

Sorry, I meant that a newer version of the firmware might not have liked my roof's version, in the recent past here.

#

Which is why I got motivated to get up there yesterday

vital hemlock
#

I opened MeshSense and have been monitoring the roof node. It looks like I'm getting consistent trace routes back.

#

Mostly NPR, POTM, and MM

#

So that's ideal

hallow dagger
#

Wish I could understand why POTM can't talk to NPR. They're less than 20 miles apart with what you would think would be ideal LoS.

leaden crow
#

I upgraded my rpi to 2.5.7, but the inconsistency is the same. Got one traceroute back that hopped through bp_roof:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !8487cea8 (?dB) --> !0e81d07d (?dB)
Route traced back to us:
!0e81d07d --> !ac7f43c3 (4.5dB) --> !eb4c89df (11.25dB)

Most still failing. I may try different firmware and antennas on my roof node tonight. Some napkin math, I thought the rokland 14-degree vertical beamwidth would be good, but more testing can't hurt.

white field
#

Giving up on that one for today. Might come back for bull mountain if itโ€™s easier going this winter. (I was still 400 ft from the summit when the winds started spooking me)

#

Had a loootttt of wind when it was getting extra steep.

I have a feeling this summit might be a nice discrete spot eventually since itโ€™s so damn hard to climb. (No trail and lots of loose rock)

Mt Ellen probably has easier placement, but itโ€™s donezo for winter unless someone wants to do 3-4k vert in winter.

#

Fun side note, I could see the La Sals and get pings from skyline. Maybe Iโ€™ll just hop it farther if thereโ€™s obvious LOS. ๐Ÿคฃ

leaden crow
#

Are you guys attaching your nodes to trees? or something else? I assume trees are ideal for keeping them off the ground (and out of snow). I was thinking of attaching to the trunk with something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6VQ83HS?th=1
but I wonder if that will eventually fail because of growth? It only needs to support around 1lb. I was thinking of maybe grinding some of the teeth off the cams so they could slip if needed.

leaden crow
vital hemlock
#

I do wonder if what we are seeing on medium fast would be the same on long fast. Maybe there were just "so" many nodes repeating that it worked out.

#

When it was five of us on long fast, we often had traceroutes fail, or messages not go through. If you sent a second or third it did. We assumed bugs or lack of consistent signal.

leaden crow
#

The only way to know would be test, right? I'm okay with it being poorly functioning until we have more nodes, but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that people leave back to LF when MF is not working very well.

vital hemlock
#

Well, if we go back to LF with a non-default channel I assume we'd know within a week.

leaden crow
#

If POTM and NPR could reach each other that would be a good sign. Or if the half dozen of us that are active here right now switch for 1 day even...

hallow dagger
white field
#

Let's make an announcment if we are going to do any swaps. I'm going to rely on other nodes to reach my new routers.

I'll need to swap my farthest nodes first so they don't get cut off.

I'm kinda thinking it will be hilarious if I can get reliable 4 hop train away where if I accidentally swap one of the middle nodes before the farthest, I'll be stuck doing an 8 hour drive to fix it.

#

I'm a little bit regretful I didn't get the Mt Ellen node placed. I've never been out to the Henries and was really enjoying the hike I did.

TBH, the north face of Bull Mountain is a tempting alternative. It's fairly accessible and basically anything above a few hundred feet up actually gives pretty dramatic prominence because of the plateau that the mountain range is on.

vital hemlock
#

I would say those of you with the most remote nodes, and most prominent nodes, decide what you want to do with yours; the rest of us will follow suit because that's what will server our needs the best. We support you and your scientific endeavor ๐Ÿ˜€ โค๏ธ meshtastic

leaden crow
vital hemlock
#

Fair. Like checking to see if NPR and POTM can reach each other on LF? Something to that affect?

leaden crow
#

Yes, and at the same time how it affects SNR to several of us in the valley

#

@hallow dagger What do you think? This test would mostly fall on your shoulders.

white field
#

Yeah, I'm very interested in LF testing.

#

I'm a bit sad my link between onaqui and skyline isn't working.

I think my onaqui placement doesn't have LOS over a local ridge.

#

I finished running test data about SNR from within my own house. This isn't super scientific, but interesting SNR isn't totally relevant.

image.png
#

Notice how SNR is across the board lower for LF which isn't what we would expect. (this was tested with all the nodes within 10 ft)

#

SHORT_TURBO actually had the highest SNR ๐Ÿ˜•

#

Whatever metric we use for testing probably needs to be more about effective message delivery rate and not SNR if we are trying to compare LF vs MF.

vital hemlock
#

You did these all on the same channel, or a mix?

white field
#

The x-axis is channel band, y-axis is SNR.

#

colors represent the protocol configs

vital hemlock
#

Perfect, thanks.

#

I do assume the noise floor will be higher for the highly placed nodes. Right?

white field
#

To be fair, this isn't a very realistic test. This was with most of the nodes 2 ft away.

#

Yeah, idk how noise works. ๐Ÿ˜‚

#

I was chatting with someone about running this same test but with the receiving node for the SNR measurements being a few miles away at someone else's house.

I might try to figure all that out in the next week or two.

#

TBH, I kinda want to totally ignore the SNR values and just test ACK rate since it's all I care about.

leaden crow
#

I could give you a shell account and ssh to my rpi node if you can use that

#

assuming I can reach the other node you're testing with

white field
#

Yeah, I might try to figure it out so it can run between two rpis and the test can be run anywhere.

vital hemlock
#

I like the idea of counting actual successful messages. No metric counts more than that.

white field
#

I'm gonna be located near downtown SLC.

Once I script things for the commands to work on one SSH pi, I think it would be trivial to execute all the commands remotely.

#

Yeah, actually. This test should be pretty easy. If we only care about ACKs, the only truly remote command needs to be "CHANGE RADIO CONFIG"

#

Then you send the messages out from a handful of nodes with diff antenna quality/location around the control house and see how many get ACKed.

vital hemlock
#

Let it run for a week, constantly looping through the tests. ๐Ÿ˜€

white field
#

if I finally decide to take time off work. I know a way to auto-provision RPIs so anyone with a pi and a node could participate. ๐Ÿ˜‚ (tho with a massive amount of trust put into me controlling a computer on your wifi ๐Ÿ˜› )

#

Has anyone checked on the Bay Area mesh recently? They were testing Medium Slow. (since it's a bit more forgiving than MF)

leaden crow
#

haha, I could put it on my neighbors poorly secured wifi and setup a reverse tunnel for you. ๐Ÿ˜‚

leaden crow
#

Hopefully you get a respons on their Discord. I've been scrolling through the messages and have found some interesting bits.

"There are still a LOT of LF nodes down here in south SJ. I have a full 100/100 node db list on my LF rig, and 54ish on my MF rigs. The problem with LF down here is the segment is polluted with misconfigured nodes and the ChUtil is super high, so mesh on LF is mostly broken."

So even before the MS push, SJ had an MF network with 54 nodes.

"MF for me has never gotten anything other than my nodes"

A lot of this is just anecdotal

white field
#

I wonder if we can just gatekeep node membership.

#

I'm curious if we could experiment with a Long Slow private mesh with very restrictive rules about automated packets.

#

"This will 'just work', but its 100% not for tracking your location every 100m durring your commute"

vital hemlock
#

Have the routers throw away location packets ๐Ÿ˜€

white field
#

I really need to drive to Lake Mountain and try to configure my skyline + onaqui routers to Long Slow to see if they can see eachother finally.

vital hemlock
#

Iโ€™m still putting all my money of LF non-default channel. I hope not to have to get more creative.

Test LS, youโ€™ll be back on LF before you know it.

#

We were on it for two years, itโ€™s easy to get congested because it takes nodes longer to send and reply. In my experience the LF move was wonderful.

white field
#

I was able to get 100% ACK rate today from 75 miles away from my router.

vital hemlock
#

Oh yes, no doubt. Just not good for large meshes

white field
#

And then I was getting a 99% failure rate on traceroutes to an adjacent node. T_T

#

It was really windy tho. Maybe the Fools Peak Router literally 'fell over'

vital hemlock
#

I can take the negative social credits for this one. I pushed for MF and it didnโ€™t turn out great so far. For some reason Iโ€™m not excited about MS and I have no idea why. Itโ€™s a reasonable test case.

white field
#

Nah, we need improved performance. LF was totally saturated.

vital hemlock
#

It was, I hoped this would be the boost we needed,and itโ€™s broken most of your nodes. lol

#

๐Ÿ™ˆ

leaden crow
white field
leaden crow
#

This is interesting, and I wonder if it may be a problem with Toshi's nodes.

@riney
Would there be any negative effect from running a LF and MS node in fairly close proximity to one another? (A few feet apart on my roof). (edited)

Diezel โ€” 10/12/2024 4:08 PM
Unless you're running tight cavity filters on them, yes there will be some interaction depending on distance. Ideally you'd want them 3-4 wavelengths (915mhz = 33cm which is roughly 13") So about 3-4' away from one another at a minimum. The more the better.

I know BW suggested a vertically opposed antenna config, but this could still be a problem with Lake Mountains?

vital hemlock
#

Saw that. Wondered as well.

white field
#

If the nodes are on opposite side of that shack we should be fine.

leaden crow
#

No, Toshi was putting 2 radios in 1 enclosure

#

One for his private use and one on MF

vital hemlock
#

The inverted antenna was an interesting suggestion. Hoped @dim bay could tell us if that was ideal or urban legend.

#

Wait, was that in our chat, or the forum?

#

Mobile client search is not finding it for me

leaden crow
#

That quote is from the Bay Area Mesh Discord. I'm still reading comments about their switch to MS

remote current
white field
#

https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/long-range-optimisation-mega-thread/4632
Anyone read through any of these old threads yet?

Meshtastic
Long Range Optimisation Mega Thread

Hello all, I would like to keep this thread for discussion related to long-range optimization. I would like to compile a checklist and list of tips in the main post of this thread for everyone to read as a reference. Perhaps we can add something to the wiki. Please feel free to correct and educate me. Here is my current list of tips: Opt for...

#

I'm assuming some people have talked about congestion/range tradeoffs.

vital hemlock
#

I was just joking. A lot of folks like the idea of meshtastic just to help find lost people. Iโ€™d never actually consider this.

remote current
#

It feels like OG meshtastic. Not being able to talk to work in bluffdale from home in lehi haha

vital hemlock
#

Not that the old threads are bad. Lora p2p hasnโ€™t changed.

white field
#

So maybe the idea of optimizing marginal links is something novel?

#

I'm trying to figure out if writing scripts to automate testing of node links and stepping through not only defaults, but every possible variable would be worthwhile.

leaden crow
white field
#

I'm kinda guessing that frequencies have far less impact on range than coding rate.

#

I bet the most interesting experiments would be:

  • vary nodes - get a few rpis in different spots in the city all attempting to get direct acks from each-other
  • vary coding rate
  • vary spread factor
  • vary bandwidth
#

TBH, I don't know anything about the math/engineering behind these, but I do know how to brute force with software. (test everything a lot on frequency bands that dont fuck with MF/LF)

remote current
#

I definitely need a lower gain antenna. I picked up some 9db ones for home and work. The one in bluffdale picks up on everything nicely mostly through POTM. My Lehi one should be having no trouble hearing West Mountain and Lake Mountains but they are both last heard 3 days ago.

leaden crow
#

It's not just you. I haven't seen those nodes, and neither has slcmesh since 2024-10-25

remote current
#

Ok that's promising then.

#

I should have direct LOS for both, but even when they were working it didn't seem to tie the valleys together very well.

vital hemlock
#

SLC mesh doesnโ€™t see them because Iโ€™m not reporting to it properly

leaden crow
#

ah, ok. I know you are connected via mqtt, right?

vital hemlock
#

Nate never sees them directly. I do see them, and report them to his dashboard

#

Yes, and also directly now. We do both.

remote current
#

The radio on MF at home is not currently MQTT capable, but I'm planning to switch my nodes around at home to use the POE one on MF, and then I can push data over your way @vital hemlock .

#

IF you want it haha

#

Worst case I could do a MQTT downlink for that until we have a stable connection via lora

main stag
white field
#

Mountains looking like they might be done for the seasonal roads.

IMG_5272.jpg
hallow dagger
#

I propose LF on a custom frequency slot, just not sure which one yet. I saw an interesting video the other day where a guy was tuning his antennas against his VNA, and remarked that they needed to be tuned to 906.875 for MT since that's the default frequency for LF. I was thining if our stock antennas are (supposedly) tuned to 915, then maybe we should pick our custom frequency closer to that.

#

I may pull out my SDR and just listen on varying frequencies to find some quieter spectrum around 915.

vital hemlock
#

My vna shows all of my antennas being tuned best between 913-923~. I agree

#

We are currently at 913.25 if I recall, on channel 45.

leaden crow
leaden crow
hallow dagger
#

Yeah I was thinking 52 or 53. What I want to avoid though is choosing a frequency that ha a lot of IoT traffic on it, like power/gas meters and weather stations.

leaden crow
#

That's what I was thinking too. Maybe you will have more luck? I was hoping with a 915Mhz tuned antenna, I would see something, the only thing I could pick up were my own local bursts on meshtastic.

hallow dagger
#

That's a good sign ๐Ÿคž

vital hemlock
#

I'm a network guy, so 53 is easy to remember for me; makes me think of DNS. ๐Ÿ˜„

vital hemlock
#

I'm reporting to slcmesh again ๐Ÿ‘

#

thanks @main stag

hallow dagger
#

What I'm seeing so far on SDR (granted this is just my area) is there is quite a bit of activity centered around 915, from about 914.8 to 915.2, so I'd avoid that range. Either 914.625 or 915.375 (frequency slots 51 and 54) seem promising, maybe the former slightly quieter so I'm leaning toward slot 51.

#

As an aside, the default LF frequency 906.875 is pretty quiet, probably because it's so far from 915. Hopefully this experimentation will reveal whether quieter spectrum or antenna tuning provides the most advantage.

#

Let me kow what y'all think. If LF on 51 sounds like a good place to start then I'll work on making the change on my end.

leaden crow
#

I wonder what the overlap looks like? It is well understood on wifi, and why the default channels are 1, 6 & 11.

2.4GHz-channels-metageek.png
hallow dagger
#

The MT slots are chosen to not overlap one another at 250K bandwidth which is what both LF and MF use. The vertical green lines in the waterfall above show where slot 51 would occupy the spectrum.

white field
#

Iโ€™m reallly tempted to try a different bandwidth to see if that impacts it too

leaden crow
#

Nice. I'm glad your SDR fu is better than mine, that looks actually useful.

white field
#

I might do a separate experiment for my testing tho. Itโ€™s gonna need dedicated nodes

hallow dagger
vital hemlock
#

I have a good view of POTM, so if you want to change that one first (when you're ready) and leave NPR until we test against my roof node that might save a trip

#

I'm 13.5 miles from POTM

#

12~ miles from NPR

#

9 miles from Mill Mesh

hallow dagger
vital hemlock
#

That was my assumption

leaden crow
#

@white field you are 9c33 mobile:1?
I tried to ack your message, but my work roof node is not very good, broadcast wise. It seems like I can receive messages, but not get anything out.

white field
#

Yeah, that's me. 9c33 is burried somewhere in my car. I think the battery might be dead too.

leaden crow
#

I don't think my messages from work are even being received by NPR rn, which is the only direct connection it has.

white field
#

Damn, I was going to suggest I got some crazy far off links from my house node, but I think it was actually just stale positions. T_T

#

This was what the mesh manifold showed for me yesterday.

I really would love to see these show up for my house. ๐Ÿ˜…

IMG_5280.png
#

solar:4 and Fool Creek coming online for us would be a huge expansion.

hallow dagger
#

Is Fool Creek on MF or LF?

white field
#

This was the MF mesh. the bottom 3 nodes were mobile and aren't fully representative. The owl node is mine.

hallow dagger
#

Is that one of yours?

white field
#

I think it's the same owner as Ophir. They had similar names.

#

I checked the map for Fools Peak, kinda nice placement since its drivable. Possibly event snowmobile accessible in winter.

Also in an area with lots of cattle ranching, so minimal relative environmental impact.

#

Is anyone seeing traffic from Fools Peak?

I lost the ability to run traceroutes via 3808 solar:4 after Sunday evening.

hallow dagger
#

I reset my node list yesterday and haven't heard from FCPK since.

white field
#

Yeah, there were high winds and it's a new node. Maybe it was damaged?

I'm a little scared for the 5dbi antenna I put on solar:4. I forgot summit winds during storms can be 150 mph.

hallow dagger
#

Anyone who plans to participate in radio settings experiments, please note your current signal quality to POTM before I change it.

white field
#

Better yet. Everyone send it a few DMs and see how many acks you get too. (I'm 3 hops away, getting zero acks)

vital hemlock
#

Interesting, it's bouncing around. I'm getting from -4 to +2.5

#

lol

leaden crow
#

unfortunately my trouceroutes not showing it
โ”‚ 13 โ”‚ Point of the Mountain Router โ”‚ !77272d1f โ”‚ POTM โ”‚ RAK4631 โ”‚ UNSET โ”‚ 40.4722ยฐ โ”‚ -111.8825ยฐ โ”‚ 1877 m โ”‚ 100% โ”‚ 0.57% โ”‚ 0.27% โ”‚ 10.75 dB โ”‚ 2 โ”‚ 0 โ”‚ 2024-10-29 05:37:41 โ”‚ 6 hours ago โ”‚
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !77272d1f on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !0e81d07d (?dB) --> !67e2f2c2 (?dB) --> !77272d1f (?dB)
Route traced back to us:
!77272d1f --> !8487cea8 (0.5dB) --> Unknown (?dB) --> !ac7f43c3 (0.5dB) --> !eb4c89df (11.0dB)

#

I think this is just wrong:
โ”‚ 14 โ”‚ Point of the Mountain Router โ”‚ !77272d1f โ”‚ POTM โ”‚ RAK4631 โ”‚ UNSET โ”‚ 40.4722ยฐ โ”‚ -111.8825ยฐ โ”‚ 1877 m โ”‚ 100% โ”‚ 0.57% โ”‚ 0.27% โ”‚ 11.00 dB โ”‚ 2 โ”‚ 0 โ”‚ 2024-10-28 17:40:48 โ”‚ 4 hours ago โ”‚

No way it's 11.00db SNR, I can't reliably traceroute it

vital hemlock
#

rssi from my roof to potm is consistently ~-100, snr is moving around.

#

responses are quick though

white field
#

Do not trust SNR unless you have a consistent direct link.

Old mesh nodes can fuck up readings for forwarded packets since they don't indicate if it's a direct packet or a fowarded packed.

leaden crow
#

so in my nodes list, if it's not direct, is the SNR shown just the SNR to the first hop?

white field
#

Also a good reminder that everyone should make sure there's no nodes on the mesh running <2.3 or we cannot trust SNR.

#

The SNR readings are not implemented in a trustworthy way. (they use a default value of zero rather than null/nil) There's a lot of defaulting that I'm pretty frustrated by.

#

It currently show, "0.0" if it's getting fowarded by a node on modern firmware. (tho it might be hiding 0.0 values) Arguably this is bad too since 0.0 is potentially a real reading value.

The your mileage may vary. I think iOS might have more issues than python + android. (I suspect python scripts are best)

leaden crow
#

I assume this is going to be almost useless:
Received an implicit ACK. Packet will likely arrive, but cannot be guaranteed.

I will send 10 and see if I get any 'Received an ACK.'
I guess it will be useful if I receive direct ACK during the test?

white field
#

I wonder if we should just swap some nodes to the settings and not worry about using routers.

#

If we are gonna manually test, we can ballpark how connected some of the test nodes are first.

  • test max possible range
    • move to freq 51, Long Slow
    • reset node DB
    • post in channel
    • record who got the message
  • test proposed new settings
    • move to freq 51, LF
    • reset node DB
    • post in channel
    • record who got the message
#

Starting from the slowest/most penetrating shows us what we are losing or what's possible with the other configs so we don't just assume we are gaining/losing anything. (and it isn't just the frequency hop)

vital hemlock
#

If we know things work on LF do we need to try LS?

#

Or did you mean MS?

white field
#

I mean, I'd want to see what we gain/lose from different settings.

#

I'd just be curious about LS. Open to any settings.

#

Just want to make sure that the frequency hop is isolated so we isolate the MF/LF/MS tests.

hallow dagger
#

I haven't ever been able to get a message out without POTM unfortunately. I'm apparently in a radio sink here so not sure how much help I would be.

white field
#

Haha, I feel like all in this chat might be far enough apart that nobody can talk without routers. ๐Ÿ˜‚

hallow dagger
#

That's very likely.

#

@white field no acks to any of your DMs to POTM?

hallow dagger
#

OK I'm changing POTM now to LF frequency slot 51.

vital hemlock
#

I'll change mine now

hallow dagger
#

Curious if that improved for anyone. I'm already close to POTM so not much change for me.

vital hemlock
#

I'm going to add the LongFast channel as well

hallow dagger
#

Responses are a little slower but that's to be expected with the reduced data rate.

vital hemlock
#

Roof and t1000 see gdane echo 2

#

Assume 2d1f is the POTM router?

hallow dagger
#

That's right

vital hemlock
#

RSSI is ~-100, same as before. SNR around 0, right now

hallow dagger
#

I can trace to your roof @vital hemlock

#

The real test for me is going to be direct link from POTM to NPR

vital hemlock
#

You made it half way there ๐Ÿ™‚

#

Do we know who manages Mill Mesh?

#

Anyone else that could have seen POTM before willing to change for the test?

remote current
#

What do I need to change to? My jfirwin node here at work picked up POTM

leaden crow
#

Mill Mesh responded to a message on MF while I was at lunch. Could ask on the mesh.
I will switch my work nodes to LF 51. Unfortunately donโ€™t have remote admin setup on my home roof node. Can change it after work.

vital hemlock
#

LF, channel 51. Add LongFast channel back with the default hash

remote current
#

Alright I switched over.

vital hemlock
#

Foster's will be up in a sec here

remote current
#

User error. Itโ€™s up now!

leaden crow
#

I DMd MM on MF. If his map coords are accurate, I think he may be in a location with direct LOS to POTM. In any case probably better than either of my roof nodes.

vital hemlock
#

Dragon, you're up north a bit?

leaden crow
#

My work is in North Salt Lake

#

Which is the only node I have switched. Home nodes in Holladay.

vital hemlock
#

Is yours seeing POTM yet?

leaden crow
#

I have to walk up 3 flights of stairs to connect to the bluetooth. Give me a minute.

vital hemlock
#

Your north salt lake wont see my roof, there is a hill in the way.

#

haha, you're good

#

no rush

main stag
#

I'll switch my roof over to LF 51, I can sometimes hit POTM and poster's roof.

leaden crow
#

Unfortunately, I think my LOS to POTM is blocked by Capitol Hill. Without NPR I'm not reaching anything from here. Hopefully I can do better testing from home.

vital hemlock
vital hemlock
#

Whoa, "all" of the old radios just started populating

#

How are we seeing them

hallow dagger
#

MQTT?

vital hemlock
#

No, Nate and I are talking through this. "What if" the radio sees the whole band on that modulation and only transmits on the channel you set. They see us, we see them.

#

gah!

leaden crow
#

I'll play around with my work roof node, but I don't think this is the case for me. I would see a bunch of nodes on LF20 from here, but I'm seeing none?

hallow dagger
#

I don't see how our radios tuned to 914 could see anything at 906.

main stag
#

This was my config change, I started seeing them all too. meshtastic --ch-set psk default --ch-set name "LongFast" --set lora.channel_num 51 --ch-index 0

vital hemlock
#

I can traceroute to them, not just hear them

hallow dagger
#

A lot of the nodes, looks like the default LF ones, have an MQTT designation in my node list. Don't know what that means for sure, but it's suspicious.

leaden crow
#

I switched from channel 51 to 20 and within a minute picked up 9 LF nodes. Switched it back to 51 and cleared the nodedb and back to nothing. At minimum, I can't replicate. I do have ignore MQTT turned on for all of my nodes.

vital hemlock
#

oh, I think I know what's wrong

#

standby

#

Okay. So, this was my fault. We have a coworker that has a few nodes on my private MQTT. He is still on the default.

My MQTT poisoned ours because the channel has the same key

#

I fixed it

#

The other solution is to have a non-default channel key

main stag
#

After we're done testing channels I'll nuke part of the slcmesh DB so it's not as confusing

vital hemlock
hallow dagger
#

Nice find

vital hemlock
#

FYI, this is how you can "bridge" LS/LF/MS/MF, with a private MQTT and a channel with the same name/key across them

#

It will "translate" for you. Great, or terrible. Depends on your needs.

vital hemlock
#

Fixed and cleared all the nodedb's. I'm not seeing POTM yet again. I'll be patient

main stag
#

Alright, cleared grafana, anything on there now will be the longfast ch51 test.

vital hemlock
#

@hallow dagger did POTM disappear for you, or just me?

hallow dagger
#

I can traceroute to it

vital hemlock
#

I am reaching gde2 directly, hmm

hallow dagger
#

even the return path? that would be exceptional for sure.

vital hemlock
#

DSC2_RPI just showed up

hallow dagger
#

I just traced to your roof and toward is through POTM and back is direct.

vital hemlock
#

fun

leaden crow
#

My node list is just starting to populate, but I got a couple of traceroutes back almost immediately from bp_roof

Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (6.0dB) --> !8487cea8 (-13.25dB)
Route traced back to us:
!8487cea8 --> !ac7f43c3 (-12.25dB) --> !eb4c89df (6.5dB)

leaden crow
#

I keep seeing more nodes, but they all hop through bp_roof. My connection to bp_roof seems better than ever.

โ”‚ 2 โ”‚ GDane Echo 2 โ”‚ !1048d6fc โ”‚ GDE2 โ”‚ T_ECHO โ”‚ UNSET โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ 73% โ”‚ N/A โ”‚ 0.21% โ”‚ 6.00 dB โ”‚ 2 โ”‚ 0 โ”‚ 2024-10-29 17:19:09 โ”‚ 3 mins ago โ”‚
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !1048d6fc on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !8487cea8 (?dB) --> !1048d6fc (?dB)
Route traced back to us:
!1048d6fc --> Unknown (?dB) --> !8487cea8 (-0.5dB) --> !ac7f43c3 (-12.75dB) --> !eb4c89df (6.25dB)

cloud lodge
#

I'm the Millcreek node (Mill_Mesh) trying to keep up with the discussion. My roof node was down for a time when I tried to come up with a plan for LiPo charging this winter.

In theory, I have power to burn with 200W solar panels, so I tried to use silicone heat pads. With our recent overcast skies, the pads drew too much current. The idea was a major fail.

I'm in the process of switching to an AGM solution. In the meantime, I'll turn my system back on for the experiment.

I'm confused - is the current test LF 51, AQ== ?

I think there is growing consensus that, despite all of the hype, the meshing algorithms of Meshtastic are fundamentally flawed. The biggest (imo) is assuming that weak signals are distant ones. I suspect that an alternative LoRa solution will materialize before Meshtastic gets it right.

main stag
leaden crow
void iris
# cloud lodge I'm the Millcreek node (Mill_Mesh) trying to keep up with the discussion. My ro...

I agree that the meshing algorithm is fundamentally flawed. I think the base issue is nodes not repeating if they see a packet getting repeated already. This leads to a situation where you can't message through a LOS mountaintop node because a closer node on the valley floor sees that same packet with a worse SNR. It prioritizes reducing airtime over message reliability.

It seems that the devs are prioritizing bandaid fixes getting large meshes to not crumble under their own weight; Rather than smaller meshes working great, and taking the time to do large meshes correctly

#

Also, I think that a setting that prioritizes any node (router) is a fundamentally flawed idea, as the purpose of this project at the start was a self-healing/self-regulating mesh

#

I have put some thought into the routing, and I don't have any solutions at this time. I am just ranting

vital hemlock
#

I find myself on the opposite stance. We are one of maybe six mesh's our size. We did this for years with less than 10 radios ever visible. It's sounds discordant for me to hear folks say the algorithm is "flawed" when it simply doesnt match their use case, or the direction the project was developed in.

There will now no doubt be improvements made for use cases like ours. But we are the outlier in the community, not the norm.

#

We are doing something interesting, and you all have put in a lot of work and money to get some nodes where they are. I'm enjoying the project more all the time. And we are discovering issues that will need to be addressed as meshes get larger for others.

Version 3 is at least a year off, but it will address the routing. That's part of their roadmap. They want to do it right, which is why it wont be rushed.

#

A good example is how MQTT will be affected long term. It caused issues, because folks were dumb about it, and they were forced to neuter it. It's an aspect of this project that has made it quite extensible, we dont want to lose it.

I appreciate ideas like making router a cli config only. It's not breaking anything, and it helps avoid the issue. It's worth pitching.

white field
#

I wonder if a non-v3 possibility is changing the way router priority works.

#

I had a proposal for routers to track their connectivity and repeat with priority based on that.

#

I think a crucial problem tho is that due to turn taking nature of the protocol, that older "less polite" nodes can fuck things up.

void iris
white field
#

TBH, having a rating system for routers would be really nice.

"tier 0 router - it's a mountaintop repeater with multiple regions or the tallest radio tower in the entire region"
"tier 1 router - the tallest object for at least a few miles"
"teir 2 router - this is a local router - it's on a rooftop and provides access to a local group of nodes"

#

I wonder if it could be that routers get specific protocols to spread the message to all other routers before any of them try to repeat it.

real cedar
#

So if I wanted to see the most on the local Utah channel. I'd need to set to long fast or are there a lot of people moved over to medium fast?

Im asking because I'm putting one up for a local group and want to know what y'all think I should set it to. Its honestly going to be client. Mode. It would be a tier 2 router but I think y'all dont need more of those rn

white field
#

"I'm gonna try to send this to all my router friends. It will be a message only routers can RX. Then after a few hops of delay, all the routers retransmit"

void iris
white field
#

Yeah, I think the problem is that we have too many routers and the packets never span the whole router system.

#

However, I think we also have some legitimate RX/TX issues between nodes that should have direct LOS.

real cedar
#

I couldnt access the Map. The link doesnt work but if we want to out a concerted effort into fixing that. We need some kind of map that shows us where is what and see if we can help others help us fix it?

white field
#

I have a private map/spreadsheet of all the regional routers. (not publishing since some are renegade nodes)

#

From the map, we SHOULD have full mesh coverage on MF. (we have 6-8 exceptionally well placed routers)

white field
# white field From the map, we *SHOULD* have full mesh coverage on MF. (we have 6-8 exceptiona...

These routers alone should give us pretty solid coverage between Spanish Fork and SLC Capital Hill

  • Lake Mountain Router
  • Nelson Peak Router
  • Point of the Mountain Router

However, I've had issues linking to them unless I had flawless line of sight from my personal nodes. (they were sometimes flaky even when I was on another mountainside)

This wasn't my experience when testing nodes that were very far away, but in regions outside the city. For both of my Onaqui and Skyline nodes, I have tested links 50-75 miles away and had 100% ack rates on DMs sent to the nodes. (these nodes didn't have any real traffic yet since they aren't linked to any other regions yet and they aren't picking up traffic from our other routers)

#

I'm wondering if we have phantom RF node signal that's too low to be interpreted, but is soft-bricking the nodes from RXing other traffic. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ

real cedar
real cedar
#

So explain something @white field .. If a node doesnt have the channel settings as a client it won't forward those channels broadcasts right?

#

At least in client mode

#

Idk about router or repeater or TAK nodes

vital hemlock
vital hemlock
hallow dagger
#

The great thing about open source is that we can do all of these things without it necessarily being accepted in the main project, if we really want to and we're motivated enough that is. If we come up with a reasonable solution, I'd be happy to contribute (time permitting).

vital hemlock
#

@cloud lodge thanks for updating MillMesh, I see it now. (again)

hallow dagger
#

What do we think about moving NPR over to LF-51 today?

vital hemlock
#

I can see POTM and MM both at ~-100 RSSI, they seem to connect quickly and easily. It feels like it would be safe.

You have line of sight to it, or no?

hallow dagger
#

I do not. Would have to motor to somewhere closer with better vantage.

#

Not a problem though. It's a beautiful day.

vital hemlock
#

We could have you wait, with MM up and running again.

I dont see a difference on LF over MF yet, but mine was fine basically the whole time. I'd love to see a few others weigh in. Having you update NPR for testing feels like something I wouldnt want to do too much, just in case.

#

I dont doubt it was a fun hike up there

#

How does the POTM connection to MM look for you?

hallow dagger
#

Agreed. I do need to confirm whether LF enables direct POTM<->NPR visibility though. That really irks me, and I have a feeling it won't work anyway.

vital hemlock
#

Really this is about your comfort level. If you arent worried about NPR changes then you should totally go for it. I'm nervous "for" you. ๐Ÿ˜„

hallow dagger
#

I wasn't able to trace to MM just now

#

Second trace was successful. Toward had 1 hop thru POTM, back was direct.

#

So no real improvement for anyone on LF-51 vs MF so far?

vital hemlock
#

Not many others have been able to test yet

#

I'm still curious to find out if all that flood routing from before is what was allowing it to work as well as it was.

But when I camped a few months ago and just used 2-3 radios on LF it worked like a charm, basically 100% success rate.

#

And that was reflecting off a rock face, because there were hills between myself and the other two radios.

vital hemlock
leaden crow
#

Sorry, busy with work this morning. I got a direct traceroute to POTM. I don't think I ever have before.
Route traced towards destination:
!eb4c89df --> !ac7f43c3 (?dB) --> !77272d1f (?dB)
Route traced back to us:
!77272d1f --> !8487cea8 (-3.5dB) --> !ac7f43c3 (-7.25dB) --> !eb4c89df (5.75dB)

#

(that middle hop is just my roof node)

vital hemlock
#

Nice

#

Your connection pretty much broke on MF, right @leaden crow ?

leaden crow
#

I wouldn't say that. I felt like it was pretty good with NPR, but I definitely have never reached POTM directly. Either hopped through other nodes or failed.

#

Which I have tried several times in the past, because according to heywhatsthat, I should have line of sight to POTM. Probably obscured by tall trees in my neighborhood.

vital hemlock
#

Thanks, I couldnt recall and I'm juggling system outages, so I didnt go searching.

real cedar
#

I wish I knew what the acronyms meant

vital hemlock
#

LF is Long Fast
MF is Medium Fast

POTM is Point of the Mountain router
NPR is Nelson Peak router
MM is Mill Mesh router

#

we dont always speak in acronyms, but we are today

real cedar
#

So you have stuff thats going south. Anybody got stuff going north?

vital hemlock
#

We do, @leaden crow you're the expert there, right?

real cedar
#

Epic. I'd love to hear about it. Currently I'm going to put a client node up at the hacker space. It will be client, MF, forward local

But for my own net which I will repeat the public channel.. But I kind of want my own private on it.. I'd only repeat public to give back to the public net

#

One of my stretch goals is complete coverage of the ski resorts I frequent. And the back country areas I go.

vital hemlock
#

You work with @granite carbon ?

#

I assume that most of what you want is already underway with the folks in this channel. Glad you're here.

When it comes to channels, modulation, repeating, etc feel free to ask. It's something we have worked through repeatedly for months. Most of us have private channels, you dont need to be on separate modulation, you can ride everyone else's, as most of ours repeat everything

real cedar
leaden crow
# vital hemlock We do, <@696046204324282440> you're the expert there, right?

lol, definitely not, but I'll help where I can. I have a node in the top floor of my work office building in North Salt Lake. I hoped it would bridge some gaps in MF, but anything north is a desert on MF right now. I think next Spring when BW can get another node around Francis peak, it would basically bridge that gap. It worked well when it was working.

real cedar
real cedar
leaden crow
#

The standard (default) is Long Fast on channel 20. Wasatch Front has a lot of nodes and LF works pretty well. If we didn't have so many nodes with incorrect roles, we could probably make it work.

vital hemlock
#

We are testing, we were on LongFast, default channel (20), and were getting drowned by misconfiguration. There were like 30 "routers" in the valley. We moved to MF, but have had issues. Testing LF on a non-standard channel (51) now.

#

Sorry, duplication there

leaden crow
cloud lodge
#

Mill_Mesh was up, then I realized that I needed to pull the thermostat out of the system or it would cause problems again once the temperature drops. MM is now up again and should be ping-able or whatever. I'm just running as CLIENT. I don't really understand how routers help at all??? I would be interested in running our experiment with all Client / Client-mute for inside/mobile type of units.

vital hemlock
#

The "only" transmission difference of router/repeater vs client is how quickly they respond. Clients wait longer to see if routers will first. Your node is great, and client mode is probably perfect.

All nodes that are mobile should probably be client_mute, if in the valley.

If you are out hiking/camping, client is great

leaden crow
vital hemlock
#

My roof node is on the south side of a large mid-valley hill. I'm in client mode, but end up being a middle hop for a lot of traffic. Eventually we may not need my roof node at all. NPR will help a lot with that.

Right now my roof is good for testing, but eventually the extra hop could be a detriment. When that happens it will become client_mute.

leaden crow
#

I think LF 51 is at least a minor improvement. I am about 50/50 on traceroutes to POTM, with them sometimes hopping through bp_roof. The silver bullet would be if it fixed NPR > POTM, but I am skeptical. I don't think the advertised coords are completely accurate, but NPR > POTM has a slim LOS from what I can tell.

Screenshot_2024-10-30_at_11.45.09_AM.png
granite carbon
leaden crow
granite carbon
#

C6 is working on an enclosure, power, lightning proofing, etc.

#

I just run the hackerspace and encourage people to do projects there.

cloud lodge
# leaden crow You are pretty close to me, but I don't think we have LOS. My traceroutes bounce...

I think that the problem might be my 5 dBi antenna. Being on the bench, this may overshoot nodes lower down. My best connection earlier with with NPR ~25 miles away. I often am multiple hops away from nodes less than a mile away. I also had much better SNR to POTM and bp_roof over the summer on the standard LF channel. I question how accurately my Heltec is selecting frequencies. I need to invest in a spectrum analyzer.

granite carbon
#

If someone wants to do something, I try to say "yes" and let them do it.

leaden crow
#

I have some spare hardware. Willing to donate or help out. At least on hand I have extra antennas, solar panels, a nema enclosure. I have extra 18650s, but only 21700 holders. lmk

real cedar
real cedar
#

What's the frequency everyone is on?

#

For the public AQ channel?

real cedar
#

Oh holy crap nice. Do you got a bom. Have you had any issues placing these on public lands up there?

#

I guess when it looks like junk it doesnt get messed with at that altitude

#

I guess all the premium real estate is getting posted on. Not really an issue but also for some of us who actually want entirely seeprate non public non forward nodes we will probably just have to share space up high

#

I guess I'm curious where you got reliable lion batteries

#

Most I've messed with are 18650s and they have a hard time in the winter for sure

#

I actually had one degrade rather quickly. I buy from lion wholesale currently

#

I definitely was attacking from a different angle with insulation and cold weather "rated" bats

#

Yeah I care a bit more about the front but it would be nice to have coverage all the way to pow mow

white field
#

I have some batteries at home. I might just throw them in my freeze with a temperature module to see how they perform. ๐Ÿ˜›

#

Freezer temps should be low enough to simulate avg winter lows.

hallow dagger
granite carbon
leaden crow
leaden crow
vital hemlock
#

Down in the valley (but on a hill) I can see Nelson Peak and Point of the Mountain routers without issue with a 5db. FWIW

real cedar
# leaden crow SMA. I have a couple spare of the ZIISOR antennas recommended here: https://mesh...

Yeah the shirnk wrap is what I've got laying around. I mostly have pro/instrumentation grade outdoor and indoor type N antennas. Mainly because they are a far better much. The vswr on meshtastics center frequency is 1.2 to 1 on a lot of my front ends I can build. Ive got my VNAs, SAs and other instruments calibrated against metrology grade stuff and pasternack connector savers on everything

#

So ive been able to actually characterize and check the front ends to make sure they are solid. After all what good is a higher fain antenna if its poorly matched haha

#

My issue has mostly been designing around the beam width. I want high gain for distance but it sacrifices local of course... A bit

leaden crow
vital hemlock
#

They arenโ€™t labeled as such, but we all suspected.

hallow dagger
#

There's no reason NPR should not be smothering POTM in signal.

Screenshot_2024-10-30_at_1.38.50_PM.png
leaden crow
hallow dagger
vital hemlock
#

We need a temperature sensor on NPR and POTM ๐Ÿ˜

hallow dagger
#

I haven't done the math, but I would expect a 4db antenna to have no problem with that.

hallow dagger
real cedar
# hallow dagger There's no reason NPR should not be smothering POTM in signal.

I mean. Dont just rely on the LOS calc. Its just an idea calc. Sometimes other things have an influence on you getting a signal somewhere even if you can see it. The lower Fresnel zone under that transmission link also needs to be free obstruction. That said. This link. The only thing I can think that would cause issues is really just weather and it would have to be terrible weather tbch

#

I'm not a meshtastic expert but I do spend a decent portion of my time on rf link planning. It can be a pain and quirky

leaden crow
#

Distance wise that is almost exactly the same as NPR to me in Holladay (19 miles). I had great service to NPR on MF. Traceroutes almost always came back direct and ~instant.

hallow dagger
real cedar
#

Give me two altitudes and I'll go create a Python script that does something cool to visualize this. Might take me a minute though

1637303341976_637729001442475744.webp fresnel_zone.webp
#

What's the distance between the nodes and altitude

hallow dagger
#

Nice. NPR is at 9350', POTM at 6170'. Distance is ~19 miles.

#

I can send you more accurate coords too if you have a tool that can visualize that.

real cedar
#

I can try and write one haha..
I would estimate the Fresnel zones to sit 50 m below and above so its fully clear

white field
#

I have tests links at 75 miles just fine. Worse Los than this since it was summit to valley

real cedar
#

Unless anything around is higher than it or less than 50 m below in front or around it

#

So it should have solid Los. I'd suspect other issues are occuring

hallow dagger
#

NPR is not quite on the edge of a little plateau, so possible that could be interfering. POTM is right on the edge of the ridge with Steep Mtn right below it so no obstruction there.

#

High powered antennas next to NPR, maybe 30' away on a tower. Could that interfere?

real cedar
#

Id be surprised if it were reflections or obstructions in the lower f zone. I wonder if its antenna orientation. If your using a higher gain antenna irs going to have some lobes both on the sensitivity measurement and the transmission.

#

If your in the dead zone of the orientation of 1.. Then the signal could be great but you would receive it poorly

#

So say its a dipole. And its dead zone is north and south. And its laying sideways.. And say the other is too.. So the beam width covers the valley vertically better than it does horizontally.. If they are fairly lined up on total accident.. they actually will have trouble receiving each others signal

#

This is the quirky part I mentioned.. If they see both straight up and down.. I'd say its not this either and you need to hike up and see if something fell or got tampered with. Particularly if bad signal issues are consistently linked to one node or the other

hallow dagger
#

Yeah both are oriented the same.

real cedar
#

Oh damn. Yeah then I'd go see if it got tampered with if its having consistent issues

#

Do you know the frequency of those dishes?

hallow dagger
#

I don't think NPR was tampered with; it's had consistent inability to communicate with POTM since day one. Maybe POTM is the issue.

hallow dagger
real cedar
#

Well I wonder if that dish. The particularly large one is an old UHF backhaul and is just swamping the shit out of your receiver ๐Ÿ˜‚ but yeah I'd say if everything else is communicating and POTM is the one having trouble.. That would be your culprit

#

Got a picture of potm?

#

I'm surprised they let you park it up so close

#

Farnsworth would have deleted it quick

#

I know people who have tried on Farnsworth and they take it extra seriously if they find it

hallow dagger
#

POTM

real cedar
#

Hmmm and that's not far off the path either. Yeah I'd kind of wonder has anyone had eyes on POTM recently?

hallow dagger
#

They're both vulnerable but that's ok. They're cheap.

real cedar
#

I'm currently running calcs for ground buried and disguised one. The math is way harder.

I'd say POTM is easy to get to. Go see if its still upright

#

See if you can move it to the right or left

#

Bring high power binocs

#

Look at nelson. Get an idea of the view

#

๐Ÿคฃ

#

One sec. I'll change the formula to fractal

leaden crow
main stag
#

@vital hemlock mentioned this to me and I didn't set it. If you are switching back to LF on channel 51 coming from Medium fast I forgot to set my modem preset back to Long_Fast as well (it was medium_fast)

white field
#

Do we have any regional grade router placements that have AC power?

I have a Station G2 which could replace one if we want to test that. (Itโ€™s really power hungry and not solar friendly)

Iโ€™ve read that anecdotally these have better sensitivity and higher max power output (especially if I fork the firmware and override some configs). ๐Ÿ˜

leaden crow
white field
#

Anyone know much about Lora amplifiers?

leaden crow
#

Ask Golf, I know he used an amplifier on one of his nodes

#

#antennas message

white field
#

I have one of these installed on my station g2, but never really tried to measure output power before/after.

itโ€™s still not enough to get reliable links from inside the house. ๐Ÿ˜…

IMG_5293.png
leaden crow
#

haha, I'd try it out too for $5

white field
#

Iโ€™ll do some testing on rssi before after sometime. Too busy with work/move atm.

Might have free time starting in two weeks to do some of the remote node link testing I mentioned

real cedar
#

to pull the latest lidar elevation models and stuff

#

but if I get it working ill share

#

I think it would be cool.. Hey whats that is alright and I love what they provide for free but part of me wants a good bit more capability and I dont want to pay for it

#

radio site survey software is highway robbery for the calcs its doing

#

it really annoys me how expensive it gets

white field
#

Use ubiquiti? Itโ€™s free

real cedar
#

I dont really want to though. I love the idea of having my own tool I can add to. Its kind of my hobby in my off time.

#

I do love to make my own in house tools ๐Ÿ˜†

white field
# real cedar to pull the latest lidar elevation models and stuff

If those lidar data are the same ones available in Ubiquiti (there's an option to use lidar), the information was a lot less granular than the default.

You can see them overlaid and it's like 10-100x smaller mesh size. Might be good to validate that assumption about precision.

#

lidar is the light blue.

image.png
# 
USGS 3DEP LIDAR Point Clouds was accessed on10/31/2024 from https://registry.opendata.aws/usgs-lidar.
#

Hopefully they are pulling less granular than the max that's available. (Tho even some of the peak values for elevation appear to be inconsistent with what I assume is data from something like OpenStreetMaps.)

#

I'd love to see it come back that they are Ubiquiti is just not using what's available correctly.

white field
#

Would anyone here want some RAK wisblock GPS modules?

I have 2-3 spares I'm not planning on using anymore. They draw too much power to work for my solar units. (they don't have a low power standby like I had expected) They are still kinda nice if you have larger capacity solar or batteries on node - or a powered router that wants a clock sync.

void iris
#

Yes

leaden crow
#

I would take one for my RV node since I have ~3,000 Wh of battery.

void iris
#

I don't think that exists. On the RAK they take 40ma when searching for a signal, and I think about 10 in standby

real cedar
white field
#

Do rack modules have any spare IO pins or is it just the IC2 bus?

void iris
#

There are a couple, along with an exposed I2C. Or they have an add-on module

white field
#

It feels like you'd have to setup a low-power I2C proxy that can power off the module when it's not needed. (nothing drop in exists that I know of)

#

Probably custom hardware and firmware to get anything working on RAK.

GPS units sold for RAK are $25, it would be cheaper to buy a T1000e tear it apart to embed as a replacement for a RAK.

void iris
white field
#

haha, let's see if anyone has destroyed one yet.

I'd like to hold off until I find out if it's possible from someone else.

#

It sounds like the T1000e is drawing 11mA with the GPS enabled.

white field
cloud lodge
#

FWIW: I modified frequency offset (-0.01 MHz) in LoRa settings and increased SNR to POTM and NPR routers about 3 dB. Mine is a HelTec and the routers are RAKs. I'm in the process of buying real analyzers to improve on trial and error.

void iris
#

Is there a way to emit a test tone? I have an analyser at work

white field
#

.250Mhz range 0.01 offset, is that a big deal?

cloud lodge
#

I asked Copilot... It spit out Arduino code ๐Ÿง about 20 lines. Looks fairly straightforward...

white field
#

I wonder if we could screw around and test 500kHZ bandwidth, but with coding rate and spread factor that give us similar performance to MF.

#

possibly 125kHz bandwidth with similar custom tuning.

#

Yeah, I really want to run those scripts to try optimizing all of this programatically with real nodes.

cloud lodge
#

The Meshtastic code base is trying to support quite a few platforms. Who knows what the offset might be doing, but the signal reports do shift with small changes.

white field
#

What if short_turbo works better with the different bandwidth range for the hardware? ๐Ÿ˜‚

void iris
#

I have seen the oscillators not being tuned correctly from the factory on other products (I test that at my work) the target for zigbee for us is +-10 ppm. 0.01MHZ adjustment is 10.92 ppm so it is plausable

hallow dagger
#

NPR is on LF-51 now FYI. It unfortunately did not solve the POTM -> NPR direct link issue. I still have to hop thru valley nodes to get from POTM to NPR.

white field
#

Out of curiosity, did we do binocular style check to ensure there's true LOS and no leg of a mountain in the way? (I know the maps show it as clear)

hallow dagger
#

No, I haven't been back up to POTM and not sure when I will (if at all before Spring).

#

There are no obstructions on Steep Mtn, that's for sure. There are several hills below NPR though. None in direct LoS, but I suppose could be in the fresnel zone.

white field
#

This is what the map data shows from what I had for NPR + POTM locations.

#

30km is really short. T_T

hallow dagger
#

Right?! Shouldn't be an issue at all.

#

I had a hell of a time just getting direct connection with NPR over MF to change its radio settings this morning, so there must be something up with it. Could be saturation from a nearby antenna like you suggested.

#

Strange that others like @vital hemlock can communnicate with it no problem.

white field
#

I might drive up a hill today to test POTM links.

That could rule out a local vs regional issue.

white field
#

What's the hardware/firmware version? (adding it to spreadsheet)

#

I wonder if it's some combinations of some devices not playing well with others brands.

hallow dagger
#

Yeah RAK4631. v2.4.2

void iris
white field
#

that's telling me it's mostly flat performance until 30/125 = 24% and then signal dies

#

not sure what 10% PER link means from the comment tho.

void iris
#

10% Packet error rate

white field
#

So if we were off 10/250 = 4% offset, shouldn't cause issues

void iris
#

Error rate does not scale quite like that. It's generally zero then shoots up to 100%

vital hemlock
#

I am ~99-105 RSSI to each of the routers (counting MM as a router for now)

image.png
#

no change at all from MF

void iris
#

Looks like the datasheet specifies a +-10 ppm ideal, +-30 max. This seems contradictory to the conclusion drawn by the figure posted above. Reguardless, a 10ppm change would be significant

white field
#

I wonder if one of the nodes just has a dead partially degraded RF module?

void iris
#

ChatGPT gave me a piece of code that allows me to emit a constant tone on the RAK board. I'll see if I can get that working tonight and test frequency stability tomorrow

white field
#

Can potentially lose 5-12 dbi if it's ~30 degrees down to the other node.

#

inverted high gain on the tallest mountain, inverted low gain on lower peaks.

#

jusstt kidding, the viewing angle from NPR to POTM is only -2 degrees. This shouldn't be a problem.

NPR to the base of the mountain is -5 degrees. This isn't gonna be a serious problem.

vital hemlock
#

I was down in south jordan with my t1000 before lunch, I couldnt reach anything. I saw advertisements, but I couldnt trace or message anything.

I still wonder if this worked as well as it did because of our mesh size before

#

Very small and very large meshes seem to work, it just doesnt make sense.

leaden crow
leaden crow
#

I find this kind of funny. On MF I had pretty consistent traceroutes to NPR, but could almost never reach POTM (and when it did, it was through multiple hops). So far on LF51, I can get direct traceroutes to POTM, but nothing back from NPR. ยฏ_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ

vital hemlock
real cedar
#

Hey folks. So one of my nodes comes default with some settings I feel are strange. What should I set these to on this tbeam?

Screenshot_20241031-135154.jpg
#

I sure as hell know it shouldn't be broadcasting 1 watt ๐Ÿ˜‚

vital hemlock
#

That is 99% right, pure defaults there

void iris
#

Those all look correct, if the radio doesnt support 30 dbm, it just sets the max

real cedar
#

What frequency is the SLC net on again?

#

I know the key is AQ=00

#

Or whatever

vital hemlock
#

change the frequency slot to 51, and if it's a 1262 chip on the tbeam enable the rx boost

#

AQ== is the default key

real cedar
#

Got it .. One sec

void iris
#

The frequency slot 20 is correct for the default LF mesh. use 51 if you want to test with us

real cedar
#

Thanks guys. Ill be in town on a bike ride tonight so I figured I'd see what's out there

#

That and once I know it will be easier for when I hook up a client node at the space

#

If I may ask what's the medium fast config?

void iris
#

just change the modem preset to Medium_Fast, and set the frequency slot to 0 (auto)

vital hemlock
#

If you have power, the tbeam is a great router or terrestrial client. It has the memory for store and forward server, runs the web version well (enough), and can log the range test locally

#

If you cant see anyone on 0, which like BCP said is auto, it's actually 45

real cedar
#

I have a singular 18650 but usually its in the car lol so its a client mute

vital hemlock
#

With GPS on I can get about a day off a decent 18650 with tbeams

#

sometimes more, sometimes less, but about a day

real cedar
vital hemlock
#

0 will choose the default for the modulation

#

LF is 20
MF is 45

real cedar
void iris
#

0 will chose the default for the Primary Channel. By default that is Longfast/MediumFast

vital hemlock
#

If you triple press the user button it will disable the gps altogether. Save some juice

real cedar
#

I usually have it connected to a large battery pack so juice is fine for now

#

I can definitely tell that the net doesnt make it up to me in Roy haha

#

Nothing on the air waves. So can confirm nothing on Francis is working haha

leaden crow
#

Do you see anyone on LF channel 20?

real cedar
#

I have it set to lf. where do I set to 20?

void iris
#

in the Lora config, that is the "frequency slot"

real cedar
#

Ahh yeah its already set to 20

leaden crow
#

Also, it may not populate immediately. Try leaving it on for a while.

#

I think you should see some people up north on the default LF

void iris
#

it'll take a while before you see nodes if you have just changed it. I think the default beacon period now is 30 min

vital hemlock
#

If you double press your user button (middle) it will send at an ad-hoc "I'm here" ping

#

sometimes that elicits a response

real cedar
#

Got ya. Yeah here are my settings. Pretty sure I followed it verbatim

Screenshot_20241031-140935.jpg Screenshot_20241031-140926.jpg
#

Logs show little. I'll check back in 30 mins I guess

Screenshot_20241031-141107.jpg
leaden crow
#

I should probably stop posting about my intermittent experience, but I saw that 2.5.8 was released to beta, so I upgraded and rebooted my rpi. For whatever reason now, I'm getting traceroutes back from NPR and POTM. Looks like I have better SNR to NPR.
!0e81d07d --> !ac7f43c3 (-1.25dB) --> !eb4c89df (6.25dB)
!77272d1f --> !ac7f43c3 (-9.75dB) --> !eb4c89df (7.0dB)

void iris
#

That looks fine. Just give it about 15 minutes and see if anything pops up. It helps to be outside/in a window

real cedar
#

Its on a window side at work 5 stories up.
5 dBi sma antenna

vital hemlock
#

you dont need the uplink and downlink, unless you are using mqtt

void iris
#

That should be a happy node (unless the windows are RF coated like my work's)

vital hemlock
#

uplink sends messages you see to mqtt, downlink broadcasts them locally

void iris
#

How are we feeling about the 2.5.x firmwares? I tried updating a few days ago but i couldnt get the legacy admin channel settings to work and the node would't save some of my config changes so i went back

vital hemlock
#

2.5.7 have been rock solid for me on tbeam/t1000/rpi

real cedar
void iris
#

I'll try 2.5.7. The last one i tried was 2.5.5

leaden crow
#

I think 2.5.5 did have some problems

real cedar
void iris
#

That looks very possible. Check it when you go home tonight. your office windows might be causing problems

real cedar
#

Wonder if its firmware?

vital hemlock
#

Not normally the case. If you are on LongFast default you should see folks. Strange

#

There have been a ton of hosts around

real cedar
#

Could just be its gotten really cold for the first time and peoples stuff are dying? Keep in mind im quite far north in roy

#

But I can visibly see salt lake.. Parts of POTM, Farnsworth and nelson

#

So its not like it doesnt have LOS it just might be too weak

#

I guess I'll know tonight when I get in SLC and switch to 51

main stag
real cedar
main stag
#

These are the ones in that area showing up for me in millcreek. Iโ€™m routing through some node to get to them though. This is regular long fast.

image0.jpg
vital hemlock
#

In the past, if it wasnt named "LongFast" it didnt work. I havent tested it now, maybe only the key has to match, but I doubt it.

#

I agree with Batman

real cedar
#

Ah okay I had accidentally deleted the old one thought it was just the key that had to match

#

@vital hemlock @maiden wraith is that fully spelled out or just "LF"

main stag
#

LongFast

real cedar
#

Ahh okay so fully spelled out. Thanks

main stag
real cedar
#

Sweet I got something

main stag
#

This is my config for Lora settings in the app. For channel 51.

image0.jpg
real cedar
#

Yeah I'll probably switch slots when I get downtown tonight. Good to know where everything is now. Can make configs easier when I get all the stuff together for that other node

#

I really need to upgrade my firmware. I'll still on the old stuff

#

๐Ÿ˜‚ someone replied with a pumpkin. sweet
So basically if someone wants their own private room. As long as you change the key and name and they are sync'd on two devices. The existing networks routers, repeaters and forward all type clients should forward the packets?

#

Thats what I can tell from documentation

real cedar
real cedar
white field
#

Yeah I might go test mine at make salt lakes electronics bench

#

Wait does name have to match?

#

I thought the default didnโ€™t require it if you set freq manually

real cedar
#

So the network forwards all private group chats regardless if it has the key or not?

white field
#

So: LF 20 would just work

#

Or MF,45 with random name

#

As long as key was blank

real cedar
#

Cool I'll do that for the client thats hard wired

white field
#

Testing with my nodes

real cedar
#

Make sure I can help facilitate all things

#

This is gonna make me and my buddies off grid irc chat so much easier ๐Ÿ˜‚

#

Cuz we had no idea a net existed

#

We were going to foot one all by our lonesome and hike up some serious peaks

white field
real cedar
#

We still might particularly up north and through the cottonwoofs

white field
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Blank config renders as primary in iOS

real cedar
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Got ya and the key can be anything it will still get forwarded?

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This is cool!

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My buddy and I wanted to have comms in a crappy situation so this will be very handy

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Also if POTM always has trouble with nelson why not move it over a bit

Screenshot_2024-10-30_at_1.38.50_PM_12.jpg
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Somewhere solidly in the red

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Props if anyone puts one on the top of the twin peaks. ๐Ÿ˜‚

real cedar
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this seems like it could be lower power than gps
Anyways I guess what I still am not quite clear on.. IDK why im having a hard time with it
Clients set to forward all will forward a packet on the mesh even if the channel is say SuperSecretYouSawNothing and the key something random?
Or does 2.5 change things

vital hemlock
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Default is to forward all meshtastic packets, but you can change that. "Most" routers will forward all, because of this.

Also, note that only the payload is encrypted, the header is in the clear. The header includes your node name "and" the name of the channel. Dont name your channel "lets do crimes" unless you want folks to know about it.

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It used to be that all direct messages were sent with the primary channel encryption key. So if we both had the default as channel 0 anyone could read our direct messages. Now with 2.5+ each radio has a public key that's used instead. That's the lock on the app next to nodes that have broadcast their key. Default channel was also where telemetry was broadcast, and some still is. If you want to have more privacy, change channel 0 to your custom channel, and have a secondary channel be public.

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And that concludes our Meshtatsic lesson for tonight. Thanks all, happy Halloween! ๐ŸŽƒ

white field
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Blank works.

I was able to send a message when no channel name was configured and received it on the channel LongFast on my other node

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โ€œโ€ defaults to the default channel name for your radio settings

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So itโ€™s best to use empty if you ever switch radio configs.

vital hemlock
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Channel sequencing used to also matter, it doesnโ€™t now, luckily.

void iris
vital hemlock
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It is. I meant if we both had the same custom channel, but it was 2 for me and 3 for you it would work. Now it doesnโ€™t matter. ๐Ÿ‘

void iris
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Got it

vital hemlock
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You are still correct to my knowledge BC

vital hemlock
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Yes. Which is why folks focused on privacy should move their primary channel.

This also comes back to frequency slot. If you change the name of the default channel it wonโ€™t use the right frequency any more. You have to make sure LF is on 20 still (or 51 in our case), and MF is on 45. ๐Ÿ‘

remote current
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I have connectivity in Lehi through NPR, I was pleasantly surprised to find that out this morning.

white field
vital hemlock
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Correct

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But most do, by default

hallow dagger
# real cedar Somewhere solidly in the red

Only reason POTM appears to be right on the edge of coverage is because that is a very narrow ridge and everything East of it is in the shadows. POTM is right on the top of the ridge on an 8' pole.

hallow dagger
remote current
white field
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I wonder if maybe something we aren't getting from our house nodes is that these summits are getting LOS to tons of devices which emit RF. (so even without the antennas they are the "brightest" spots in the region)

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So it's a double edged sword, they can see everything, but they get overwhelmed by noise and lose sensitivity to weaker signals from far off mountains. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ

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RF conspiracy book club

leaden crow
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I guess hiking up to the node with an SDR is how we would know, eh?
The odd part to me is that multiple of us in the valley can connect direct to both NPR and POTM, and my distance / LOS to POTM should be much worse than NPR > POTM.

white field
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So, here's my theory. ๐Ÿง™โ€โ™‚๏ธ

  • valley
    • low noise on RX
  • mountain
    • high noise on RX

valley -> mountain (high noise)
mountain -> valley (low noise)
mountain -> mountain (high noise)

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valley -> valley (low noise, low RSSI)

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From a quick thinking about ISM band users.

  • Z-wave - 908.4, 916 (default), 912, 920 (alt)
  • ???
white field
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^ We'd need a router with the latest firmware tho to get this measurement.

leaden crow
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interestingly my traceroutes are missing SNR on outbound, but I have the values on the return.

vital hemlock
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I've seen that a bunch as well

cloud lodge
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As CLIENT, I have good direct connections with the mountain routers. For testing, I switched my role to ROUTER and could no longer trace route to them. In fact, trying this totally crashed my node. Time to get on the roof again.

I don't think that the routers' failure to ping each other is related to signal strength.

Router role is evil. ๐Ÿ‘น

white field
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What if we try swapping our routers to clients just for funsies?

dim bay
# white field So, here's my theory. ๐Ÿง™โ€โ™‚๏ธ * valley * low noise on RX * mountain * high no...

That's exactly right. When I first got into the lake mountain site, it was 100% AREDN mesh. We had some gear on wifi channel -2( ham radio spectrum ) and some on the ham band just above 5ghz(ism) and we could go many many miles away. After we started adding lots of radios, we found that you got the hidden node issue, where a packet would be sent from Utah county, and a guy in Salt Lake or Layton might send a packet at the same time because they otherwise would not hear each other. Once you get so many nodes on the mesh, the mountain top node will only repeat the packets that it actually is able to decode without the signals doubling. Ideally, you would not get that issue if everyone can "hear" everyone. I kinda suggest that since the default channel now has plenty to nodes to support local mesh, the mountain top node be changed to a different channel. It's served it's purpose to get everyone connected, but I think it gets to be too much traffic to unnecessarily repeat all the traffic up in Layton down here. If we changed that channel on all the mountain top nodes, we could use that for more distance. I think it might help clear up issues in the default channel while still allowing long distance. The only down side I can see is that we have some users in eagle mountain that relies on lake mountain.

void iris
hallow dagger
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My traces to NPR lately usually go POTM -> MM -> NPR when MM is a client in the valley and should be less prominent from a LoS perspective. That's what's so strange about this. Why is MM -> NPR ok when it's valley -> mountain so should be high noise?

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I think @dim bay may be right that hidden node is at play somewhere here, but given that our limited test mesh only has 2 routers, in my case where NPR very likely doesn't hear my client directly, POTM would be the first to re-broadcast the packet and shouldn't have any competition from other nodes trying to transmit at the same time.

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... maybe I'm missing something though.

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I can switch POTM to client-mode if that would be a beneficial test.

white field
real cedar
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If people do that. I guess as a person who was unfamiliar with the layout coming in. A map of frequency and map coverage would be super nice to have

void iris
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we need some way to link together multiple nodes so we can have directional antennas in addition to the omnis

real cedar
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Or hmm. If the routers do provide enough coverage. Would a concerted effort to client_mute fix the hidden node issue?

void iris
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I think that would be a bandaid, there are still the packets originating from the node that would cause the problem

real cedar
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True rip. This is a fun one.

void iris
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To be fair, this is a problem that all radio systems have had forever. Wifi solves it by assigning time slots but that probably wouldnt work for us

real cedar
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Yup. No I get it. I get the technical issue entirely. I just am trying to find a way for y'all not to have to make some hikes ๐Ÿ˜‚

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Can nelson see deseret? I think deseret can see wendover and I'd find a link out there both useful and hilarious

vital hemlock
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I keep coming back to the same question. Do we want the commodity network (the default channel) to travel between valleys? Some of you do, but it could just as easily be a channel or config specifically for that (like we're testing now), if you're willing to let folks ride over your node for that.

I use my radios here in the valley, and when I camp/hike. I want them to work perfectly in those cases.

When this project first came to my attention a few years ago I wanted what you all want, but as time has gone by I realize that both use-cases don't live well together. They are two separate cases that have specific needs.

We don't yet have a "works anywhere in the valley" solution working. Connecting the valley's made it worse not better.

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Not trying to change/stop the conversation, just differentiating the two use cases.

real cedar
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Thats why I'm more leaning towards a directional than an omni and repeater not router to so long backhauls. That way at least I'm not screwing up routing as I understand it

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I dont want to hurt my local functionality for my back country and desert cases

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I'm out there enough that I'd like it but its not required lol

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You guys have nodes but if you want a works across the valley situation. Alotting a different frequency for different areas and maybe a map seem like a frictionless solution.

I dont know enough about that though. If one router sits on 20 and another 51. Can a node on 20 talk to a node on 51 through different routers?

void iris
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Ideally, I would like to be able to talk across the country without any internet bridging. I know that that will probably never happen but I want the network as large as we can get it while staying reliable

real cedar
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Thats a big goal mostly because of the human element not just technical ๐Ÿ˜‚

void iris
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It would also be a LOT of hops. Latency would be insane

real cedar
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Latency is fine. Its almost poetic/romantic to me in ways. It takes time which means you gotta take time to think what and how do I send in order to not need to separate said message etc

But anyways I think there are better ways. A few in here mentioned regional BBSes

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Idk how that would work though

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So directionality. I know there are ham guys in there. I see your call signs ๐Ÿ˜‚

What have you thought about for beam width. How big. How directional. How high of gain?

void iris
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depends /s

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whats the goal?

real cedar
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The goal might be to use repeaters for long connections between valleys. As in.. Theres a ton of empty space out here next to nobody cares about but theres a town the size of Nephi over there. How do I get a signal over there without causing routing issues. Is the goal

void iris
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we have talked about it a bit before. Right now there is no easy way to join nodes together. This means that if a node with a directional antenna recieves a message, it will simply just rebroadcast it straight back to the sender. Unless there is a node nearby (close enough to pick up the first node repeating it back while being outside of the directional beam) with an omni that would repeat it an add another hop.

real cedar
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Hub spoke model lol

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Ahh shoot. Thats right. We would need multiple antennas and antenna diversity. Where if you receive on one. transmit on the other in another direction

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Ooof

void iris
real cedar
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The engineer in me says this is solvable. Meshtastic controller on a pi. Two radios. ๐Ÿ˜‚? Maybe

void iris
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That might add a hop, or need custom software to fudge the packets

real cedar
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I would be fudging the packets with python. ๐Ÿ˜‚ and feeding them out via serial and CLI. But yeah it wouldnt be robust. A beta test at best. I could make something custom but I'd need someone else to do firmware

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I got a friend who does firmware for a living. And he likes this stuff. Could tickle the idea with him

void iris
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I've been working on a node with 3 radios that I want to use for something like this. Right now it is just repeating as separate nodes on 3 different modem presets

PXL_20241101_204157540.jpg
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It could potentially fit a pi (zero) and two radios

real cedar
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COOL! yeah so thats a similar idea. I basically want to achieve having one radio one direction. Another radio another direction but make the radios seem the same as to not add a hop. Its a hack though. let me marinate the idea for a bit. Im sure theres a way but im not thinking of the most elegant solution to the directional repeater-relay hardware yet but you get the idea

real cedar
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This is the hardware going up at the space soon though. 6 dBi might have been a bit high gain for the spot but we will see how it goes

PXL_20241101_205909591.jpg
void iris
real cedar
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Yup
Poe to pi. Pi powers radios and takes serial output

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That way both are individually rebootable even if they hard lock up without us returning to the roof site

void iris
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And easy firmware updates

real cedar
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Yes precisely

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Can sit on a computer down stairs and do anything I need to do.. From updating to power cycling to BBS hosted on the pi

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It will be downtown in a dense area of buildings bit it had a view of Nelson peak so it should improve hopping from structures downtown if anything its for educating people at the space. I wanted it to be an example of a good setup not my normal cheaper stuff

real cedar
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@void iris you want a nation wide net? ๐Ÿ˜‚ how about a meshtastic satellite .. 2u cube ride on a falcon heavy to Geo. Downlinks at router site with a good omni. Boom voila. Route to space and back HAHAHAHA lol.. If only right?

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damn I was really hoping ben lomond would see Nelson :/ okay getting to logan might be harder than I thought

Screenshot_from_2024-11-01_15-50-08.png
void iris
real cedar
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๐Ÿคฃ yeah I know was just making a funny joke. Look all it really says is the project has goals as a whole that will need to morph its scope, network structure and hardware a bit. No problem is trully unsolvable. Its just whether or not the time and money is there to invest in it as a community or an individual lol

vital hemlock
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Honestly, the backhaul portion of this should almost "not" be meshtastic, just pass the payload back to a meshtastic node via mqtt once you reach a valley (could be done on a pi pico). Changes the requirements in a way that is more flexible.

real cedar
vital hemlock
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I just assumed there might be other cool point-to-point ideas/solutions out there. Even lorawan

real cedar
white field
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For the hidden node problem, have we tested putting the routers on their own private frequency and then testing their connection?

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I had a firmware proposal if we shifted the routers to all try to spread to themselves with much longer delays for clients.

Maybe thereโ€™s a max router hops that gets consumed first. Then a separate max client hops.

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The delay for clients trying to respond would have to be enough to allow every router hop a chance to respond.

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Sender (r:3, c:3), client node (r:3, c2), router 1 (r:2,c:2), router 2 (r:1,c2), router 3 (r:0, c: 2)

Now many routers and many clients have seen the packet. Clients begin repeating.

Client 2 (r:0, c1), destination replies (r:3,c3)

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This strategy prioritizes ensuring routers get packets before any clients try to repeat it.

real cedar
real cedar