US - Utah

[white field]

There's about 3-4 other remote nodes that I know don't broadcast location, but which link into the mesh.

I'm trying to establish a link to Moab before the end of the summer.

Others are chatting about trying to link to Vegas.

[twilit fjord]

Is that map only accessible if you have a node already?

Being able to reach Vegas sounds like a cool goal.

[white field]

Yeah, I'm personally excited for Moab/Indian Creek since there's some really popular climbing areas that don't have cell service.

My end goal is to put them on-grid with bridge to a discord. 😂

[twilit fjord]

do you have any recommendations for a device I could set up on my balcony?

[white field]

depends on the size of your place and if you can link a bluetooth device from your balcony to the far side of your home.

Depending on your location and nodes around you your balcony node wont always repeat messages to a "pocket node" in your house. So you kinda wanna be able to connect to the bluetooth of your balcyon node directly.

1. small place - bluetooth reaches - do anything you want - DIY solar nodes are popular - RAK makes very affordable low power hardware, but there's lots of options
2. large place - get some RF cable, place the antenna outside, but put your node in a more central location so you can connect to it.

[twilit fjord]

Gotcha. My balcony is probably 20 ft (with a wall between) from my desktop, I think that's close enough for Bluetooth? But I'm not sure

[white field]

plenty

My house node is a Station G2, it sits on my desk and the RF transmits fine through the window.

I connect to the mesh through a router on Nelson Peak (NPR). No special enclosure required.

[real cedar]

Other than my home node no

[white field]

What approximate town are you in and which mountains/direction does your balcony face?

[real cedar]

AUR isn't 1 watt

[white field]

@real cedar I realized for my testing I actually don't reallllllly need a 1w. Since my test will mostly be about if the router can RX.

[real cedar]

We are going to to be able to but I double we will have issues as long as you mount the antenna up high enough and it's a high enough gain

Do you have a filter on it

[real cedar]

I face the entire south of the valley.. I see all our current routers jovialis is the node

[white field]

We do probably want to test (noisy + filtered 1w <-> 1w) ranges.

[real cedar]

How do we want to run this

[white field]

oh, mean to reply to Smoom who was asking about house node setup.

[real cedar]

Ahhhh

Well cool. I was gonna say I won't be home much

I'm gonna be elsewhere tonight so I can't do much

Might drop by the space for a bit though

[white field]

ah gotcha

[twilit fjord]

I face north. My desk has a window facing north as well so maybe that setup would work for me too. I'm around 33rd south + state

[white field]

I have some free time from work today, I'm thinking about driving out to along i-80.

Can easily get a quick test of AUR from up to 75km (46mi).

[white field]

Can you try to figure out if you can see one of these points from your place?

• 40.81225, -111.877778 (AUR - north of the capital) - to the north
• 40.613703, -112.187459 (NPR - nelson peak router) - to your west

These are both routers that can reliably link you into the Mesh. (long term AUR might be the more long lived one)

You're also pretty close to rem-03 which I think is a reliable rooftop client node.

[real cedar]

Wait.. Is stansbury up?

[white field]

Nah, this is my planning map. I suppose I could hike it once I finish some code changes for work. 😂

[real cedar]

Its a nice day today. I just took a walk. Good breeze out.. About 95 F

[white field]

tbh, testing both might be good.

[twilit fjord]

AUR looks pretty clear to me (ignoring some trees?)

[white field]

What's the coords for it?

[real cedar]

Give her a ping

Do you have a room for one?

I have extra

[twilit fjord]

I don't have any hardware yet sadly

[real cedar]

So.. Here's what I suggest
Wizmesh mini for roof top
Wiz-pocket for daily carry
https://store.rakwireless.com/products/wismesh-pocket-mini?variant=44253549461702

https://store.rakwireless.com/products/wishmesh-meshtastic-solar-repeater-mini

If you want the easiest experience

Repeater is a client
Pockets a client mute. Voila

[white field]

Yeah, RAK hardware is damn simple to start with and very effient.

[real cedar]

Oh geeez you went amplified

Forget the filter

I don't have a spare acasom for the power

[white field]

I just ordered a 3w low pass filter.

I think it should be in

haven't tested it yet.

could drive to here and it's 75km from TPR

This spot is exactly 85km from both.

Really nice spot for testing.

big gravel road past the landfill

LOS looks good on both.

[real cedar]

I'll be able to remote admin them both from my place but I just won't be home realistically tonight. Probably not tomorrow night I'd things go according to plan.. Definitely not Saturday night hahahah

[twilit fjord]

I appreciate all the help, I don't know if I can really use solar at the moment bc my balcony is covered (I think all of the time? I don't know if the sun hits my balcony lol), would it be a waste if I can't use the solar part? I assume I could keep it plugged in full time for now, and would be nice in the future if I have more sun access

[real cedar]

Yeah you can. The goal is to get a node outdoors and it relays all the indoor ones

[white field]

TBH, the outdoor <-> indoor bridge only sometimes works. He has a neighbor client who might be rebroadcasting first.

They will probs want to direct pair to the outdoor node. At least this has been my experience when just trying to listen to mesh traffic.

[white field]

maybe we can run the tests in a few weeks then. I'm outta tow starting tomorrow until mid July.

I might still do it today for the hell of it to see how LF/51 performs as a baseline.

[real cedar]

Maybe.. I think just the couple northern router spots are a good testing ground not to break the network but I imagine a long fast and short fast network on the same FS might interfere who knows. In any case if the short term test goes well. We can move to a pseudo permanent deployment test in July?

[twilit fjord]

Direct pair as in Bluetooth?

[white field]

Yeah, as a side note. onaqui is stuck in router mode on LF/51 forever. I can't remote control it anymore.

[white field]

yup

[real cedar]

@obsidian storm Will you be at the space tonight? I have decided that we should attack the documentation a little bit differently and have us both brainstorm fresh how we should document it so we can go from LI5 to expert for people.

I will probably be leaving around 8 45 to 9 o'clock

[obsidian storm]

yes

[obsidian storm]

We decided we liked https://freq51.net better than https://wasatchmesh.com

[obsidian storm]

I moved my node above my roofline and now I get direct traceroutes back from POTM

Getting it above your roof line makes a huge difference

It used to bounce all the way to aur and then back to me for the trace routes back home

It's really interesting how much more powerful the one watt nodes are vs the Rak nodes.

Hearing at 4.5db from the 1W to the POTM rak, and then me hearing -8.75db is a big difference

[leaden crow]

I had the same experience with TH Roof on my friend's house. It was lower on the roof on a vent pipe. When I moved it above the roof line, I could get direct traces all that way to my house in Holladay.

[real cedar]

I mean consider the logarithmic scale?

Also your problems are probably explained by SNR bias

Causing others that see your signal as weaker.. More likely to repeat it first

Its not the best analog but its part of how the network works

[ember torrent]

Pictires or you’re lying.

I’m working on adding a larger bluetooth antenna to my noder. Might need a 3d printer here soon.

[ember torrent]

While not cheap, maybe a good vent for enclosures.

https://frogzskin.com/products/1-outside-diameter-0-5-inside-diameter

[real cedar]

ROFL whiskey throttle 🤣 yeah I've done that a few times

Down a ridge line

[obsidian storm]

Who's is this?

[obsidian storm]

@thorn marsh @vital hemlock @real cedar @prisma saddle

So... USPS has lost our capacitors. Or they're taking forever

If you're ok with using caps of slightly the wrong size, I can deliver the kits

^ that's what we have to do for the wrong size caps

I did it to mine and it's been fine. When the new ones come I'm probably not even going to replace it

The end cost ended up being $23

Per board

I'm going out of town Monday so I can either deliver the boards now, leave them at the hackerspace in salt Lake for you to pick up on a Thursday, or leave them with someone else.
Or you can wait for me to come back in July and I can deliver the boards with the correct capacitors.

If you guys could let me know what you'd like, I'll get that going!

Also if you don't know how to solder, let me know and I can help you solder up your board

I added a temp sensor to mine. Here's the final board!

Purple is the temp sensor

Don't feel obligated. You can pull out of the group buy no problem

[leaden crow]

I have a few spare of the correct caps if anyone is anxious to build their hat. I could probably stop by the hackerspace before thurs next week (also going out of town).
These are the caps I have:
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/581-APA0609331M010R

What time are you leaving in the morning?

[real cedar]

Yes I'm fine with that

[leaden crow]

That's too early for me. 😁
Maybe some other time.

I think it would take me an hour to pack up the bike and drive up there. I've already got another crest shuttle scheduled for Sun., so I would risk angry wife being gone both mornings.

[thorn marsh]

How far above the roofline did you put your node? End up using the fence posts? 🤣

[vital hemlock]

If this capacitor works then I’m good. I appreciate you getting the stuff together.
I’ll grab it wherever is most convenient for you.
I’ll pay you however is most convenient for you as well. 😀

[obsidian storm]

Yup. It's the same capacitor, just physically a tiny bit too big.

Here's the choices:

• Come to my house sometime on Saturday. I'll be here all day. I can DM an address.
• I'll drop off at 801 Labs before I leave and you can pick it up on a Thursday night in SLC.
• Tell me who to give it to and I'll do that.
• Wait till it get back and I'll give you the correct cap (just physically the correct size)
  • Maybe ask @leaden crow if you want, he might have extra and I can replace any that you take and give it back to him.

Tell me if you want it pre-soldered or not.

@thorn marsh @vital hemlock @real cedar @prisma saddle
Let me know what works best for you.

[real cedar]

Is it on short fast?

Or long?

Crap it's still a client

😂

I copied

Did you not receive?

Yeah I think I'm seeing that on 2.6.4 but not 2.6.11

Kick it over to router mode.. And I'll bump aurora ceresia to client and let's see what happens down here

[obsidian storm]

I've gotten both messages!

[real cedar]

Cool. Go ahead and kick it over to router..

Wanna test short fast or no?

We can always do it later

I can admin from my balcony just tested

[obsidian storm]

Router_Late?

[real cedar]

He's on Francis Peak

That's definitely a router

Yeah mine has been too

Invalid URL constantly

Loss of node info

On android

Force stop

Clear cache

Open and connect to the node next to you

Seems to get it out of its funk

Bluetooth to router still works

Are you still up there? You could try and reset the node but it will often reset itself

If it gets in a bugged state

I had all this happen with AUR

Everyone's nodes started to see it. Capture the route

Node got busy. Config got difficult Bluetooth or remote 😂

Ceresia is now retired to Client from Router Late

The fuck

How

What firmware were you on.. 2.6.11? Or alpha

Got direct trace routes

Yeah sure

Let me. Switch

[leaden crow]

I got a trace back

[real cedar]

I'll wait to see you

@maiden wraith Umbriel is now on short fast

Ready for your test message

I got it

Its cuz we have to wait on nodeinfo

And we the only two people

I got your stuff

I got trace route too

-7.5 dB

Really good

Yes

You can put it back on LongFast

We know that one will do well on short fast

I suspected we would only lose 3 to 4 dB

Well stay warm it's cool today

I see it on LF

[leaden crow]

Traces from ds nsl are direct

!eb5de3e2 --> !34be10da (-14.0dB)
Route traced back to us:
!34be10da --> !eb5de3e2 (-9.5dB)

[leaden crow]

According to the Link Budget, SF is -10dB from LF

@real cedar I get traces back from C6C now

[real cedar]

Yeah I turned it to a client

Its retired now. I'll go put it on the pole at weber nuames today

[real cedar]

They say that but we went from - 3 to - 7.75

When he went short fast

I'm guessing if we converted all our routers at the end of July when we are done placing..

ShortFast will work

[hallow dagger]

Nice work @maiden wraith. Our little mesh is growing up.

Introducing SMS Gateway. As the name implies this is a (WIP) SMS gateway for all you whose partner/family/friend/dealer doesn't or more likely won't carry a radio.

Its open to all for testing, just DM /subscribe followed by the phone number you'd like to communicate with to the SMS node to get started. Note that a node can subscribe to multiple phone numbers, but a given phone number can only be subscribed by a single node. Send /help for a list of available commands.

Feedback is welcomed, and just be aware that this is a work-in-progress so things can and will change. Also note the firmware is experiencing some instability with MQTT enabled so reliability can not be guaranteed atm. Just ping me here if it needs a reset.

Enjoy!

[hallow dagger]

Anybody know of a firmware version that's good for mqtt? I've tried several alphas and latest betas, and am currently on older "stable" 2.5.20. Haven't found one yet that is really stable using mqtt over wifi.

[leaden crow]

My node works. I drove to the cone of reception and my tracker can traceroute it from the valley. Now I just need to work on WC2 placement

[pseudo kestrel]

congrats!

[obsidian storm]

@vital hemlock @real cedar @prisma saddle
Make sure you've seen the above

[prisma saddle]

dang just got home from rafting the green river. so much to read.

[real cedar]

Drop it off on Thursday bash

I'll pick mine up there

[prisma saddle]

Im good with waiting till you get back. I just got home today anway. so have lots to catch up on

[prisma saddle]

did you make it over there?

[vital hemlock]

Sorry @obsidian storm , had a day. Ping me when you’re back, glad to wait until then. If it’s okay with you.

[obsidian storm]

Sure. I'll ping you when I'm back. I'm also going to be here tomorrow if that's works. Whatever is best. I hate making people wait. I'm going to be gone for a few weeks

[real cedar]

I don't have @white field 's node

I would ask him

[real cedar]

2.6.11

Beta

[prisma saddle]

haha ya that was meant to him.

[real cedar]

Aurora Ceresia is recovered (God damn it was a chilly wet tree climb 🤣 40 ft up.. No ropes. Hahahahha)

And is now on the pole at Weber Nuames Campus in its abandoned drainage canal

Its a client cuz I don't think we need another router late now that FPR is up

Making Lowes Node

My buddy and I will bike it up @obsidian storm

Rufio and I enjoy that sort of thing haha

Location updated. Slightly off but it's the general area

[leaden crow]

You have a route up Lowes? I only looked for a min., but it looked like the hike was bushwacking.
Taking mini bikes or ebikes?
Do you need a mount fabcricated? My steel scrap bin is overflowing. I could probably massively overbuild you something to clamp on one of those masts.

[real cedar]

We are going to be pedal power mountain biking it. We have the bikes for it..

Sure massively over build something and leave it at the space

Should I make the enclosure larger and beefier (metal)

The route dagron isn't Bush whacking its a single track Black

Follow mill canyon

Then diverge south

[leaden crow]

It probably won't be this week, will be out of town. I would want solar panel dimensions, enclosure dimensions and mount hole locations

[real cedar]

Go straight up the canyon into the ridge line between lowe and Kelsey peak

[real cedar]

For sure. One second on the solar

@leaden crow I'm trying to keep the panel small and I really like these

They are more like 15W but the nice thing is

Partial shade its unaffected

Unlike soshine

My planned charger

Gonna output all the sensor data to the femtofox if I can

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

I'm confused though

10V Input

28V protected

So does that mean it can accept up to 22 V solar panel?

I could always just use something bigger hang on

https://www.waveshare.com/solar-power-manager.htm

I have 6 of these laying around

I think I might use this to be extra safe on the femto

https://www.waveshare.com/Solar-Power-Manager-D.htm

Its the D variant. And its mean for RPIs but whatever

[obsidian storm]

how are you sending to MQTT? I'd love to see some of that code 😄

@thorn marsh @ember torrent
You both asked for pictures:

I got too nervous on the roof mounting to the chimney so I didn't use any poles @thorn marsh . I just ended up using a dish mount on the top

[thorn marsh]

Seems to be working great!

[obsidian storm]

POST FPR, the top talkers has changed drastically!

I can actually hear people from up north!

[leaden crow]

Have you figured out the enclosure yet? I can draw up what I'm thinking, but it will basically be 2 angle iron rails at 30 degrees to mount the solar panel. enclosure directly below / partially shaded by panel, attaches to mast with pipe cut in half that fits over mast leg , attached with hose clamps (or something nicer like t-bolt clamps)

[obsidian storm]

I'm driving across country. Anything cool I could do with meshtastic nodes?

[real cedar]

Yes

I have it

Imma send you pictures

@leaden crow NEMA 4X waterproof 6x6x4

Gonna rivet on a pad lock

Big thick boron steel one

I can get mounting hole dimensions soon

[real cedar]

@leaden crow

Those are where the holes fall on the cm scale

[real cedar]

The plan is.. A tank of a box. Punch for the antenna.. With a true bulkhead adapter.. JB weld everything that doesn't need to be removed for servicing.. Perma attach to the tower.. Lightning arrestor. Ground the box. Shield the components with ESD safe and high voltage insulating 3d printed materials

I want it at the top of the tower with ideally an 8.5 dB antenna

That lock is hilarious as fucking all get out. How fun buttholes who vandalize 🤣 its LPL approved

I think due to solar loading I might add some insulation to it if I can find efficient thin stuff

[real cedar]

Jacob! I think FPR can see Boulter with direct LOS. Idk if the gains good enough for the direct hop but I think it can

[obsidian storm]

This is where 1W nodes can shine 😄

[ember torrent]

To ~sum up the solar panel angle chat, a panel-angle straight up and down had dead batteries come winter. To remedy this, more batteries and a ~40 degree angle?

[obsidian storm]

41*, yes.

and more batteries to last the winter.

two should be enough but I've been kitting mine out with 3

[real cedar]

41 degrees and due south

In summer this will be unideal

In winter this will yield maximum solar input

[long crown]

FPR giving 1 hop towards and 0 hops back to my t1000-e in sandy. Pretty neat.

[real cedar]

The poor poor avenues

Lowe soon

[prisma saddle]

interesting. to FPR

[real cedar]

Probably NPR

[prisma saddle]

ya.. i def need to get my roof node above the roofline.. wife is out of town.. hopefully i can do it while she is gone.. wont let me on the roof .. lol

hmm android app changed a bit while i was away . looks nice thus far

[hallow dagger]

Wasn't an easy nut to crack, but it's really pretty simple:
Send to public channel:
mosquitto_pub -t 'msh/2/json/mqtt/' -m '{"channel":0,"from":4179187316,"type":"sendtext","payload":"Testing, please ignore"}'
Send direct to user:
mosquitto_pub -t 'msh/2/json/mqtt/' -m '{"channel":0,"from":4179187316,"to":273209084,"type":"sendtext","payload":"Testing, please ignore"}'
This is assuming mqtt.root is set to justmsh as mine is.
If you want to see the actual code I can send that too. I'm just using the async-mqtt module in a node.js app.

[hallow dagger]

So far not any better. Still experiencing random restarts and wifi drops. Maybe it's the hardware I'm using, Station G1. Should be solid but I may switch to a T-Beam and see if that fares any better.

[prisma saddle]

im messing around with it. not able to get any msgs to it yet.

[hallow dagger]

If you're trying to us mqtt, there's another step I nelgected to mention. You have to create an mqtt channel for the uplink. Lemme see if I can find the instructions I used...

[prisma saddle]

oh ok. so i really cant just message your bot with the /subscribe phonenumber

and then send text.. to test with

[hallow dagger]

Oh sorry, I misunderstood your Q. Thought you were asking about how to get messages thru mqtt...

[hallow dagger]

Yes that's exeactly what you should be able to do. The firmware is super flaky though. I'm going to back it down to 2.5.20 again. That was ever so slightly better.

[hallow dagger]

@prisma saddle SMS is back to 2.5.20. Delete it from your nodedb and when it comes back, see if you can trace to it.

[prisma saddle]

ok cool. will give it a go

Thank you sir.

cool. messing with it now.

[hallow dagger]

So you can hear it in theory. Try to subscribe again. You should receive a couple of auto-replies.

[prisma saddle]

whats the number syntax?

i didnt not like my phone number

[hallow dagger]

Saw your msg, so that's good. Number requires "1" prefix

[prisma saddle]

ah ok country code

rgr

@hallow dagger oh that is way cool!

id love to setup one of these. does the gateway req a paid sms service?

Or general that would be great to have a good signal one connected to this mesh. would be useful for emerg prep. etc.

0-1 hops from a route

[hallow dagger]

Yeah it does, and cloud (business) SMS has become super-regulated in recent years and is a PITA to register and be allowed to send outgoing messages. I'm in the business though so I can sneak this low volume stream in for free 😉

[prisma saddle]

nice!

[hallow dagger]

Agreed. That's my goal with this. That's why it's so verbose; eventually I'd like to be able to send a message from the wilderness with no cell coverage and kow that it was received and relayed.
With NPR upgrades connectivity should get a lot better. I also need to pull the trigger on my own roof node. Relying on LoS with POTM out a window atm.

[prisma saddle]

ah yes that would do it. working on getting my own roof node up higher.. currently bungee balled to an old dtv dish. moving it up higher hopefully this week

[hallow dagger]

Note you can reply from SMS and it should be routed back to your node too.

[prisma saddle]

yup did that a few times already. works like a charm

[prisma saddle]

eh who got the new seeeds? all i see is out of stock lol

ah via mqtt. guessing @hallow dagger from your tbeam?

[hallow dagger]

Yeah I just put a tbeam online connected to my own mqtt. What are you seeing?

[prisma saddle]

i have a tbeam sitting here. still deciding what to do with it

was my roof node but liked rak better.

[hallow dagger]

Yeah 6698 is mine

[hallow dagger]

OK, I think I identified the main unreliability issue with SMS Gateway. I think it's the Station G1 hardware. Unfortunate because it's my only 1W radio. Anyway I switched over to an old TBeam and so far seems solid.

Anyone wanting to use it may need to delete SMS Gateway from their nodedb so it properly registers the new radio.

[prisma saddle]

ill test again

[prisma saddle]

ya, IT did seem spotty before..

[ember torrent]

@real cedar Perfect!
@obsidian storm Beauty!

I was Direct Messaging myself from Marriott Slaterville. FPR is a game changer for me.

[hallow dagger]

Curious, is FPR filtered? Is the consensus that we only need filtering where other powerful radios are nearby?

[real cedar]

@maiden wraith is the guy who put it up. I'm just one of the admins

[real cedar]

No. It only needs it only if it's in proximity to interference

Its a nice to have

Not a requirement

[hallow dagger]

Makes sense. I've noticed I almost always get direct trace route back from NPR, but it bounces around getting there. The noise must be deafening up there.

[prisma saddle]

cant wait till its replaced. excited to see the results.

[hallow dagger]

What board(s) you using in FPR?

[prisma saddle]

huh sawys it can go up to 2.8w what is limiting it to 1w?

the power given?

lol

dang 21700 battery holders.. i need a tac welder. lol

What are you running battery wise on that thing? And solar panel?

[real cedar]

Is that all 3d printed!

@maiden wraith you might want to turn your backpack node on outside and let it broadcast location :/ unfortunately your last loc is putting the real FPR on blast

I was wondering what was up with that for a while

I would love the battery mount and holders step file or cad file

Yeah. I'll convert it in FreeCAD or something if I can

Wait they charge you for 3mf or stl?

Holy hell. I mean I'll take the 3mf

Ahh yeah 3mf

Its easiest to work with

Usually datums don't orphan

Danke

[prisma saddle]

which box is that. i like it!

wonder if that’s what i just ordered.

i love that battt mount too.

[prisma saddle]

orders a few of these. https://a.co/d/bLBmOfo

hopefully not duds.

those look like my pixel controller bud boxes i have.

eh my jal roof node died over last week. looks like i’ll be pulling it down in the morning. upgrade some stuff anyways.

[prisma saddle]

also what did you use for all those springs contacts points for the batts?

[real cedar]

Okay so I need to add depth to this box a bit

Cuz fitting filters is tight

But it's form factor is close

[ember torrent]

@maiden wraith three cheers!

FPR has me all fired up. Gotta go back and see what the chat is on Ben Lomand. Breaking into Cache Valley would be amazing.

[long crown]

I was looking at linking cache valley and I think FPR might have line of sight to Mt Pisgah where there are some radio towers. Any of you smarter that me have an opinion on that?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/VDWLZY88cFBy4H9P8?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy

[real cedar]

We have a link idea.

Mt Logan radio site

To FPR

@maiden wraith was talking about it

[long crown]

Oh nice even better!

[prisma saddle]

grabbed one of those to play with

[ember torrent]

Does it catch Southern Huntsville too?

[ember torrent]

I’ll buy a steak dinner to whoever lights up Franklin Basin.

[real cedar]

Uhmm can probably be done after Logan and prom point

Then it would simply be a matter of putting some node on the back side of my Ogden which should see francis

Or you know if you want to make a bird house node

@ember torrent .. That might be best actually if you made a router late and put it somewhere that can bounce the signal in near the resevoir

[real cedar]

DPR
latitude 41.139167 N longitude 111.672778 W
elevation 9267 ft above sea level (12 ft above ground)
https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=L9NUG6X7

Go place this

😂 make a router late

[prisma saddle]

did you use petg on this or asa/abs?

[real cedar]

PCTG is really good at being a best of both worlds

[prisma saddle]

ya was just wondering. got some ASA gonna mess around with it.

[prisma saddle]

yay. cheap one but cool!

[obsidian storm]

I've been doing ASA because of the UV resistance

[leaden crow]

Same. Almost all the stuff on Printables recommends it. We'll see how it holds up after a year or two in the sun. I've also been priming / painting it with Rustoleum 2x, but that's probably not necessary.

[obsidian storm]

Petg doesn't like the sun for too long

[prisma saddle]

cool printing out the 21700 batt holder with asa for fun.. see how it works out

used a lot of petg outside, just not out 24/7/365 more like 24/7 / oct/nov/dec every year..

[real cedar]

You know paint does a good job of handling UV protection. I've had PLA parts hold up literally because of paint

[prisma saddle]

not bad

looks like i need to mess with temps a bit more with asa. but thus far i like it.

[prisma saddle]

Gonna adjust that model for 18650 unless you already have one ??

[prisma saddle]

not my best work but not bad.

[prisma saddle]

@real cedar you have any sort of 3d printed mount model made for this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZC3X1C?ref=fed_asin_title

also anyone have one for the https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099RSLNZ4?ref=fed_asin_title ?

[leaden crow]

https://www.printables.com/model/221500-meshtastic-6w-solar-enclosure-base-station-lora-no
https://www.printables.com/model/820212-meshtastic-solar-base-station
https://www.printables.com/model/1307700-frogbox-for-voltaic-v1

I built this node based on that one:
#1197577977781821541 message

[prisma saddle]

cool thanks!

[real cedar]

Nah I just custom fabbed metal at home

[leaden crow]

Yeah, I've heard it's preferable for mountaintop nodes with high gain antennas. I don't think it makes a difference with lower gain like the Alfa. I did go out of my way to make the mast PVC conduit instead of steel. If it were a steel mast, I'd really want the antenna mounted above it. Also made the mast just tall enough the antenna is completely above the roofline. I'll see if I can find a pic., but it's a huge improvement over the previous node here that was below the roofline.

[real cedar]

My current 21700 project is 6x6 Samsung's so I'm focusing on that RN. It's going well with the first test fit on the bottom is good. Printing the top

My creality k1c is so much funner to use than the bamboo

I can do so much custom shit

I'm so sick of the bambu x proprietary overhype 😂

[prisma saddle]

sweet. ya i have 2 moded ender 3 v2's .. i love them. even though a pain sometimes.. but have been worth it

[real cedar]

Its not even much pain. I think that's way over stated. The entire community has basically figured it out for everyone

The bambus for people who want to point push do print toys 🤣 but too each their own

[prisma saddle]

just the leveling when needs done but other than that i love them

[prisma saddle]

ya had a lot tell me to get one.. ive held to my currents and not looked back

had for 3-4 years now. only replaced a few things. when they wear out

[real cedar]

Dude all the bullshit they pulled to. Trust revoked.. Permanently

But yeah I had the same "oh get the bambu not the knock off." "Oh the creality will suck" "oh youll have to do a ton of tuning"

Bruh I've got a cartographer sensor on it. Beefier bed and heater.. 3d printed my mods.. Now I'm doing full BrickLayers smooth AF.. Even have adaptive PA working moderately well.

Total time including prints for mods.. 14 hrs

Total time spent actually using the printer usefully.. We are getting close to its 1000th hour

Like bruh what? I'm calling cap.. K1c is an epic printer with orca slicer haha

[prisma saddle]

nice ya all i use is orca and and moved mine to klipper with a pi on each

game changer

[real cedar]

Ahh yeah mine came with klipper. All I had to do was root it. I moved to simple AF firmware cuz I have the carto sensor and that thing is bad ass af

An actually good eddy sensor

15 second calibration each time. 15x15 full bed mesh

First layer problems don't happen anymore

[prisma saddle]

the hot box closet.

[real cedar]

Forget the CFS. Build your own stuff for it

CFS won't come close to custom built mms

[leaden crow]

My coworkers acted offended when I didn't buy a Bambu based on their recommendations. The only thing they print are multi-colored toys.

[prisma saddle]

kids wish i could do that.. but not worth the $$$$ imo

[leaden crow]

I just bought my kid rainbow filament for toys. She thinks it's amazing, but not hard to please a 7 year old...

[real cedar]

Its not actually all that bad. You can basically do it a few subassemblies at a time
https://github.com/Enraged-Rabbit-Community/ERCF_v2

Fully detailed

You just gotta make it

Like I said. Most of the community has figured a lot of stuff out for most of the open source printers

[prisma saddle]

Ahh seen that before mega project there

[real cedar]

There's also another

https://www.3dprintersbay.com/armoredturtle-boxturtle-afc-kit

Like literally please don't give creality money for the CFS. It's basically that but cheaper built

Tbf consider the source here. I demand a lot from my printer. My top materials are
PA12-CF
PEEK
ASA
PC and PCTG
TPU
And PP

I don't think I actually print PLA or PETG at all anymore

[prisma saddle]

you use any of those?

[real cedar]

I'm building an ECRF rn but I'm trying to figure out the creality control board and how to offload control. It's a very complicated MMS but worth the complication

I mean I gave you a ready to buy option 🤣

I have my doubts they are bringing the CFS to the k1c. I've been hearing it since before they released the CFS.

It is? I thought they only released it for the K2

The fact that creality has this issue with it working with orca turns me off majorly. The fact that the BoxTurtle being 100% compatible with Klipper and orca.. 🤣 got developed in less than two months. And creality takes many months to realize a proprietary product with half baked orca slicer support. I mean IDK. To each their own but I'd be like I'm just gonna try the box turtle instead hahaha

Tbf this could have been because they were developing the K2

Ahh yeah

Don't watch talking heads

🤣

I can't stand them either haha

I've had so many "this is easy.." Only to be gotcha'd because the youtuber was a retard haha

I hope it gets refined. It's just that's on the open source community to do and well you know

[real cedar]

Perfect tolerances first time

This is PC btw

[prisma saddle]

oh awesome polycarbonate?

this e-bike or for a node ?

[real cedar]

Ebike

[prisma saddle]

nice!

[real cedar]

Yeah I basically put a loose stringy couple tie togethers so if the cell explodes it successfully breaks the nickel strips and snaps the cell out dropping it out of the circuit

That's why you see some stringing

At least I hope it functions that way

I'll make one for mesh nodes soon

[prisma saddle]

cool. look forward to seeing it in action.

[real cedar]

Maybe soon.. I guess. IDK I have two things I want to build that I need to budget for

a hyper good all terrain truck e-longboard

a hyper e bike

Working on 18650 stuff to store my 1000s of bats haha

[prisma saddle]

dang lol that’s insane!

[real cedar]

BTW it really is a true.. Steel backed resin compressed woven carbon fiber build plate. Even my diamond nozzle doesn't scratch it when it rubbed a few times. I was pretty happy

There's a pic. Wam Bam makes good shit

[prisma saddle]

dang that’s nice. i have the fulament bed mag and plate. was overpriced and worthless.

noting special really.

[real cedar]

Yeah it cost me money and at first I was pretty skeptical due to cost but I realized I'm building this printer to do PP, PE, PEEK and PEKK. The nice thing about resins is most are incompatible when it comes to cohesion so.. Carbon fiber woven and compressed with resin ALSO sticks to no other resin. The downside is the re-occurring cost for a PA/nylon glue stick from magigoo but it's the price you pay to make sure you can just pull the plate out.. Bend it slightly and boom.. Print pops off no problem.. No scars to the plate. Just reapply glue and go off printing again. Don't even have to remove the old glue as it doesn't cure and stays sticky

[prisma saddle]

i’ve never had to glue.

[real cedar]

That do be the advantage of textured PEI. I don't have that

[prisma saddle]

true.

[clever cipher]

Hey so I just checked up on one of my remote nodes via an Android device like I usually do like every week. I see there's been an update to the app, and the "Remote Administration" button is gone... I'm looking around for it and cannot for the life of me find it

Do I need to remove the node and let it get re discovered?

[umbral ice]

IIRC if you go into more details on the node it should be a button in there

[clever cipher]

It is no longer there

I'll just let it rediscover

[prisma saddle]

i’ve seen it on mine today with android. so ya i’d try that and make sure your keys are still good too.

[clever cipher]

Yeah it's there now, so all good to go

[prisma saddle]

@umbral ice i see your node. getting setup for some idaho action?

[umbral ice]

I’m just traveling through atm. Short layover here

[prisma saddle]

that’s pretty cool.

[prisma saddle]

def hitting morgan from fpr.

not me. just happens to see it there.

[thorn marsh]

https://beco.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=decfc0e5a98e4827bd4fea72ea260f32

Box Elder property map. Surprising to me the random BLM land on promontory.

[clever cipher]

Yeah so the admin config was there this morning, but now it's gone again. Any of you guys having this happen after this last update?

[real cedar]

They are stakes

So unguarded and development so probably decades away rn

Imma go tag the 7000 fter behind the radar and filter the shot out of the node

Its gonna be premo bro

I'm dragging out a full size auger. This pole will become a monument

[prisma saddle]

Whats the status / eta on new npr and stansberry? @real cedar @white field

[real cedar]

I'm working on Lowe.. Maybe next weekend. I need to do scouting really. It's a tough climb. And I need to plan accordingly. @leaden crow did you make that mount or no?

[white field]

I’m traveling for 2 more weeks. Stansbury will go up when I feel motivated 😅

And honestly might go up only after I do mt Ellen if someone gets a more reliable hop to solar:4

[leaden crow]

I will, but I'm out of town rn. probably next week/end

[real cedar]

Can lowe see the owl?

[real cedar]

Cool. I can take it easy then

[white field]

Lowe should 100% qos link to solar:3 (close and good Los).

solar:3 is a 100% link to solar:4

If Lowe goes up, I gotta hike onaqui again to either replace it or take it out of router mode

[real cedar]

Yeah put it in client as a retirement

I say we leave mounted stuff as clients when they no longer need to be routers. It only adds to the signal coverage of the network

I did that with Aurora Ceresia

[drifting hatch]

Someone drive down to Oljato so I can see another device pop up 🤣

[pseudo kestrel]

I got your Big Mountain Summit message in SLC

[real cedar]

I never got either. It depends on FPRs position. You want clear LOS on both sides of the the peak. If it's not right near the ridge the back arc will interfere a bit

But also we are at the edge of longfast like I struggle to send out messages. Short fast is the most logical step

[real cedar]

If you said your hop limit to more than you need that happens yeah. Really what it is, is likely the SNR bias causing the weaker more distant routers to respond first. It's annoying but it happens

[real cedar]

Ahh yeah but that's why I really want to use 8.5 dB antennas

[dusk trail]

Hey, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but I’m new to Meshtastic and live in Riverton. I found that the mesh here seems to operate on channel 51 and can now find a lot of nodes but whenever I send it seems to fail. Is there a particular key I need to be using?

I’m also not getting any messages on my T Deck

[dusk trail]

I’ve tried sending to all sorts of nodes but it always seems to fail. Any debugging suggestions? Is there a specific key we’re using for long fast on channel 51?

TX is enabled, I’m on the US region, I’m using the built-in frequency for channel 51 (via the modem setting), but I am also using the pre-installed Meshtastic firmware. I also see that there are debug logs when I connect to my iPhone so I’ll reflash the firmware and try sending via my app to see what logs I get and share them if any kind soul is interested in jumping down this rabbit hole with me.

[prisma saddle]

i’m prob the closest to you and not seen anything. what is your node called.

[dusk trail]

The short name is SDTD

[prisma saddle]

nope don’t see it at all. what role is it set as and hop count?

and confirmed it’s on freq slot 51? how high is it in your house?

[dusk trail]

So, to summarize and add context:

• I can see other nodes but don’t receive and can’t send messages
• I’m using a T Deck Plus (included internal antenna I haven’t touched)
• Firmware is 2.6.11 (re-flashed)
• Node short name is SDTD
• I’m in Riverton
• Running on client (have also tried client mute)
• Using channel 51
• It’s got a SNR of -16.2 and an RSSI of -123 and next to those values a single 3% (presumably link quality?) so that may explain things. However, I had similar issues outside the aquarium. Once I can I’ll take a walk and see if somewhere else outside is better.
• I also have the antenna I’m planning on upgrading the included internal antenna to tonight if I can get any kind of success proving the T Deck doesn’t have some other fatal flaw.
• Kinda surprised the noise is so bad in my house

Not much better on my street

[prisma saddle]

can you trace potm or npr?

[dusk trail]

I’ve tried running traces against both and the traces never get anywhere - no results

[prisma saddle]

i wonder if your device is having issues. how far west in riverton are you?

[obsidian storm]

Did you set your region?

[prisma saddle]

i was gonna say come piggy back off my roof node and see if that changes anything. . but ya sounds like a setting is not right. woods be happy to go though them all with you.

[dusk trail]

Depending on what the problem ends up being, I may want to stick a solar node on my roof to allow me to get messages into and out of my house. Would CLIENT or REPEATER be a preferred role for that use case?

[thorn marsh]

Client on the roof, Client_mute indoors or mobile.

[leaden crow]

I have a t-deck plus. The internal antenna is nothing to write home about. I'm not surprised you're having trouble getting messages out. Try testing from a prominent hilltop.
Ultimately you want something like a roof node with a decent antenna.

[prisma saddle]

this is what is is suggested. was a game changer for me after a month of messing with everything. roof node, brings in to the house. and it works 100 times better.

[ember torrent]

My comparable small antenna only got me 1/4 mile from my solar node. So unless you’re outside and within 1/4 mile of a “better” node, you’ll struggle to really join the fun.

Knock out the external antenna hole in your t deck and get a Muzi Works 17cm whip antenna or maybe an Alfa 2cm. You’ll likey need an ipex to sma pigtail for this newer antenna.

[real cedar]

It also helps the muzi works has a proper ground plane but that's not a super big deal

[prisma saddle]

lots of new nodes this weekend.

[ember torrent]

A couple this hour.

[long crown]

My new Seeed xaio nodes showed up so some are mine! Fun to get new goodies.

[dusk trail]

Update for all those helping me yesterday: I installed a better external antenna and had successful contacts after I left my neighborhood and went to higher ground this morning. I’ll be installing another client node in my roof in the near future to see if that helps give me better connection from my house.

Thanks again for all the help and advice!

[prisma saddle]

Good to hear. we are here to help if needed.

[prisma saddle]

been getting this like every 30 min to hour today.

@real cedar

[pseudo kestrel]

you may have to reset your nodedb 😬

I wonder if all our nodes that are being seen so often are hitting an undisclosed limit of the database configuration?

[prisma saddle]

kinda thinking that...

[prisma saddle]

i know the app can now trim the list based on active days. but seems to still not work right.

[leaden crow]

I'm not sure if it's the same nodedb size for all MCU. Some have more flash and ram than others. For example:
nRF52840
1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM

ESP32-S3FH4R1
2MB Flash, 2MB SRAM

You can set whatever nodedb size you want on meshtasticd. dsr1 has seen 187 nodes on LF51 since I last reset it

[real cedar]

We literally are

Its 100 on small nodes

[pseudo kestrel]

Does my T-1000 card count as "Small?"

O-o

[real cedar]

Yes it's 100

[pseudo kestrel]

Is that something that could, realistically, be altered?

[real cedar]

Firmware change

But no

Nrf52 don't have much flash

[real cedar]

It won't be. Dendrites don't form when no current is flowing

So the battery should be fine

Out of curiosity.. As your antenna high enough to be 10 degrees azimuth above the horizon from the two radars on the peak? Also the type S IFF could broadcast enough power to burn it out if unfiltered in theory

[pseudo kestrel]

my apologies if there was chatter on longfast from RxAx

[hallow dagger]

Anybody running the Nebra Hat have any advice for troubleshooting? I'm getting SX126x init result -2 and No sx1262 radio in logs when trying to start meshtasticd.

Using the default NebraHat_1W.yaml file from wehooper4's github repo.

[leaden crow]

The last time I saw a problem like this, it was due to whitespacing in yaml.
Somebody had copy/pasted the config in a text editor that changed the indenting.

[hallow dagger]

Thanks @leaden crow . I got past the above error finally. Turns out I had to uncomment CS: 8 in the yaml file. Trying to configure the radio now...

[real cedar]

That's good to know because it definitely can burn things out

[hallow dagger]

Another Nebra question, or maybe more generically Pi meshtasticd... Where are the bloody radio logs?? Following the MT docs and running journalctl -u meshtasticd -f only shows very limited initial startup logs. When I directly run the app /usr/bin/meshtasticd I can see everything in nice colorized output, but obviously I'd rather run it from systemd as intended.

[leaden crow]

you need to define it in /etc/meshtasticd/config.yaml

uncomment these lines toward the bottom

LogLevel: debug # debug, info, warn, error
TraceFile: /mnt/ramdisk/meshtasticd.json

[prisma saddle]

eh have not picked mine up yet. looking forward to a new toy.

[leaden crow]

sorry, that copy paste is from mine. You won't have that tracefile path. I put my log on a ram drive (less writes to sd card)

[hallow dagger]

Hmm I get a few more logs that way, but in journal, not in the TraceFile I specified. I'm still not seeing the radio debug logs. Do you get those in your log file? Like

DEBUG | 23:23:57 8 [RadioIf] Lora RX (id=0x2d63ad65 fr=0x433dcc48 to=0x63ade3bf, WantAck=1, HopLim=4 Ch=0xc encrypted len=22 rxSNR=6.5 rxRSSI=-35 hopStart=7 nextHop=0xda relay=0x98)
DEBUG | 23:23:57 8 [RadioIf] Packet RX: 395ms
DEBUG | 23:23:57 8 [RadioIf] rx_snr found. hop_limit:0 rx_snr:7.500000
DEBUG | 23:23:57 8 [RadioIf] rx_snr found in packet. Setting tx delay:4228
DEBUG | 23:23:57 8 [Router] Add packet record fr=0x433dcc48, id=0x2d63ad65

[leaden crow]

does your log file exist, and it just empty?

[hallow dagger]

It did not exist after restarting so I created it and chowned it to meshtasticd but it's still empty after restarting again.

-rw-r--r-- 1 meshtasticd meshtasticd 0 Jul 1 17:20 /var/log/meshtasticd.json

[leaden crow]

ok, well that sounds good
is your node list populating?

meshtastic --nodes

you may need to install the meshtastic cli if you've only installed meshtasticd so far
I would recommend doing the pipx method

sudo apt install pipx && pipx install "meshtastic[cli]"
pipx ensurepath

[hallow dagger]

Yeah I have meshtastic cli installed already. This is interesting. When running the app directly usr/bin/meshtasticd I can see that my node list is populating. 7 nodes already. But when I run instead via systemd, the node list is empty except for the local node.

Maybe using a different config?

[leaden crow]

that's odd

[hallow dagger]

I bet that's what it is. I'm going to try re-provisoning the radio while running under systemd...

[leaden crow]

You can specify the config file path manually when running meshtasticd, but I would assume it would default to using /etc/meshtasticd/config.yaml
-c, --config=CONFIG_PATH Full path of the .yaml config file to use

If that doesn't work, I'd ask on https://discord.com/channels/867578229534359593/972586878337433670

You may already know this, but yaml is extremely sensitive to whitespace. I spent like an hour troubleshooting problems with @real cedar once and the problem was just the number of spaces indenting one line of the config.

[hallow dagger]

Ok that was it. I re-provisioned while running under systemd and now I'm getting radio logs and the node list is populating. When meshtasticd first starts up it reads all of the .proto files that are normally stored in flash on the device. Those files must have been coming from a different location when I running directly, like form my own home directory.

Still not writing to the file but that's less of a concern. Thanks for the tip to check the node list. That revealed what was going on.

[leaden crow]

I see it in my node list

│ 6 │ GDane Pi │ !d55a5a9e │ GDPI │ PORTDUINO │ r1TKB0TRP66cHpQxfJiy0WsDmwoQGW4Fxby5dCx8hHo= │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ Powered │ 12.17% │ 0.03% │ 2 dB │ 4 │ 0 │ 2025-07-01 17:40:47 │ 6 mins ago │
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !d55a5a9e on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eba4d26b --> !8f7bd9af (-11.75dB) --> !34be10da (-11.5dB) --> !7a6c6698 (-15.25dB) --> !d55a5a9e (6.0dB)
Route traced back to us:
!d55a5a9e --> !77272d1f (-10.0dB) --> Unknown (?dB) --> !eba4d26b (-13.0dB)

[obsidian storm]

@hallow dagger Is this your nebra?

Have you mounted it outside? I'm guessing not from this trace route

[hallow dagger]

Yeah Nebra, but not outside 👎 . Haven't gotten the nerve to go into the hot attic to run poe yet.

Impressive that it heard your node directly though! Is that your 1W radio?

I'm not confident I'll be able to transmit directly even from my roof. I'm in a real hole here. That was my impetus to install POTM in the first place.

[obsidian storm]

yeah, it's the 1W node.

I think, outside, I'll probably hear you.

[real cedar]

TFW life has pulled you away from meshtastic for a minute.

Anyways I got Lowes enclosure. It's all metal. I'm 3d printing a battery pack rn

[obsidian storm]

hot attic sucks. so I get it.

[prisma saddle]

i was able to trace it too.

need to still get above my roof. wife was not gone long enough

[manic fractal]

Are you running the meshing-around bot?

[pseudo kestrel]

I was toying with it and forgot to save a change to the config file 😬

[real cedar]

We have one at the Hacker space but I'm planning on a router hosting our true freq51 mesh bot

@obsidian storm @leaden crow @white field @hallow dagger And all other router owners. Which bot do you like best and want running on Lowe?

For BBS and beyond

I know y'all been playing with a few

[obsidian storm]

Will we be able to update and change it over time?

[hallow dagger]

No opinion. I haven't played with any of the available bots yet.

[obsidian storm]

The reason I ask is because the current ones don't really matter too much. We really need some customizations to make them extremely useful

[real cedar]

No there's no internet

[real cedar]

Then we need to brain storm and create it soon. I don't want to rebike from butterfield to Lowe that often

Im down for custom. But i think something need to do with BBS is guarantee message delivery

Maybe a signaling or heart beat signal to provide awareness if the end user is ready to receive? Otherwise S&F when online

[umbral ice]

Will there need to be more linked bbs nodes for that? I assume probably?

[real cedar]

Yes. The idea though is to place one at the center (Lowe is good) then relays at the edges of the reliable link to send to the next BBS link. In theory the bbs could bypass the hop limit by making a fresh packet every time it hops. As it finds it route through the BBS repeaters

So say prom Harrison and Lowe are relays

[ember torrent]

SMS Gateway not using a bot?

[real cedar]

Well Lowe sees a message from one user to another. It sends out the BBS packet. Prom receives it. Processes it. Has its own dB that says oh hey I know this node is connected to that BBS station at harris. I'll go ahead and make a new packet.. Forward it on.. Forget about it.. Then Harrison takes over store and forward for the destination @umbral ice

Would that be a hard not to make? @obsidian storm idk

We do it with satellites

Since they can't always view one another

I think neighbor info could be a massive help with that routing too even if it's not super reliable

Idk I'm trying to think of how to make BBS make the network more aware, Bypass 7 hops and guarantee message delivery

[umbral ice]

Let’s just throw them up on micro satellites. I kid (mostly). I do wonder the feasibility of it tho

[real cedar]

You'd have to control the flood. Also while that might work for Leo. If you want any sort of real coverage and a much more robust signal.. You'd want Geo. Leo also has the downside that you now need a graveyard or reenetry burn plan and a limit of 5 years before forced reentry

Geo will require a big tube

Its feasible but do you have the money

Space is my day jobs industry so it's not like I couldn't build one 😂

Falcon heavy ride to Geo is about 85000 dollars for a 2U

Falcon 9 to leo is 27k

[real cedar]

Also you would need an uplink router. The weee little xmitters we have would not be able to punch through the atmosphere to a Geo cube. So you'd want a high power quadrahelical or parabolic dish node that acted as a relay with a low power omni radio for local Rx tx

[umbral ice]

Pocket change. Lemme just run to the ATM lol /s

[real cedar]

I can build the ground part easy. It's the space part that gets fun 😂

Need a cleanroom dawg

We call them VABs

[umbral ice]

It would be a damn cool thing to see

[real cedar]

Vehicle Assembly Buildings

[leaden crow]

We need this
https://www.spinlaunch.com/

[real cedar]

If they make happen that's cool

[real cedar]

So I'll tell you'd how I'd build one.

I strap a primary and a secondary high power amplifier network with a 3rd lower power S band radio for telemetry much like Voyager

I would then make a custom flight computer from 3 rapsberry pis which constantly interrogate one another as well as their sensors and make the onboard systems. I would have backup thrusters and backup servos for essential power systems. I would also make sure the electrical supply is triple redundant like the airbus a321.

That way it can sit In Geo for 2 decades no issue. Might even outlast its predicted lifetime

Like could you do it with a cheap cube sat. Yeah but it will probably fry itself pretty quickly. Most educational and amatuer cube sats are pidly in comparison to really well designed sat.. For obvious reasons right.. Budget

But there are ways to compromise without breaking the bank or a good design

[manic fractal]

I’ve been running TC2’s bot. It’s simple but it’s easy to setup and run. I just have it on a Pi Zero 2 W. I’ve been trying to setup the meshing-around bot from SpudGunMan which I like better. It has more fun bells and whistles. Problem is I’m not a python coder and have had to learn some basics so that the process won’t get killed when I close my SSH connection. I don’t have a router and don’t personally care what bot gets used. I do like that the meshing-around bot can link up with other bots on the mesh to sync stored messages and info. That seems pretty cool. Mostly, I’m just really enjoying learning about all of this stuff and how inclusive and helpful the Freq51 mesh is.

[leaden crow]

An easy solution without coding anything is to run it in screen or tmux. If you install screen and add screen -D -R to the bottom of your .profile it will keep your terminals open and reconnect you whenever you get disconnected.

[manic fractal]

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll look into it. I know nothing about python or Linux at all. My last coding language was BASIC in high school in the ‘90s. I’m like a step below a script kiddie so I appreciate it.

[leaden crow]

You got meshtasticd working. You know something.
Do these 2 commands:
sudo apt install screen
echo "screen -D -R" >> ~/.profile

close your ssh and log back in. now start your TC2 bot.
close your ssh window and reconnect again. it should keep it running and connect you right back to your TC2 terminal.

If you want to keep that running and still do other stuff in another terminal do:
Ctrl+a c
^ create new terminal
Ctrl+a <spacebar>
^ switch between the terminals

[hallow dagger]

It's my own bespoke bot code running the SMS gateway. I assumed they were referring to available bbs bots being used by others with MT.

[ember torrent]

They probably were.

@obsidian storm What’d you end up doing with your Alfa antenna’s spinning black “sleeve”? I’m thinking about heat shrinking some other antennas i have with the same “issue”.

[leaden crow]

I had one Alfa the sleeve came off. I cleaned out the old glue and reglued it with jb weld plastics epoxy, then used heatshrink with adhesive over the top. Probably overkill, but it's on my RV and I don't want to lose it at 70mph.
One thing to note; I emailed Alfa and they told me to make sure it's "clocked" so that the bend in the top goes in the flat portion of the sleeve.

[leaden crow]

I found the email. I asked them what adhesive to use and they only said to snap it back together.

[real cedar]

Meshing Around Bot is the most robust and its also the most extensible

If we were to make our own it would take a good bit of time I imagine. I think meshing around might be easiest

I wish Lowe had LTE

But it doesn't. The tmobile and AT&T signal up there is non existant

So even if I wanted inet id probably not get it

[obsidian storm]

I never had any come apart like that

[real cedar]

Yeah that's what I did. Rufio and I broke the antenna more than a couple times getting it up

Just lexel it

[manic fractal]

Yeah, meshing-around is the one I like but I don’t really have a dog in the fight. I know TC2’s bot has JS8CALL functionality built in and I know there’s a Ham contingent on Freq51 so I wondered if some people would want to try that out.

[real cedar]

If someone wants to provide js8call to meshing around all they need to do is have a bbs relay and js8call fed via python over to meshing around. Bet it could be done

@maiden wraith jovialis has the strongest signal to FPR. Here are the stats since cleared

9 days ago

20% bad packets
Another 24% are duplicated

I wonder if that's NPR

[real cedar]

I have LOS to both

I overlook the entire southern part of the valley from near the base

North is slightly obscured

I have LOS down to lake mountain lmfao

My position is OP tbch

I get literally all the traffic with Jovailis which has 3 redundant routes to 3805:owl

Which is cool

[prisma saddle]

oh lake mountain. that will be fun. one day.

[real cedar]

@obsidian storm

[prisma saddle]

nope not had that happen or seen that.

[ember torrent]

Any t-1000e folks struggling to Enable GPS without the iphone application crashing? Pc works fine.

[prisma saddle]

hmmm. i’ll try it out.

oh without iphone. so android or?

[pseudo kestrel]

if you're looking for a way to avoid the issue in the field, you can triple-click the face button on the card 🙂

[prisma saddle]

there ya go. program the button to what ever too .

[real cedar]

Yeah it happens when you click on the reply notif

Just open the app from the icon

Its being dumb

[ember torrent]

Sorry about the confusing sentence. I was using iPhone and it would crash.

Button, brilliant! 🤣

[prisma saddle]

ah weird. app version?

[ember torrent]

Iphone app Version 2.6.10, T-1000E 2.6.11. I recently flashed the firmware, but dunno if it was before or after the iphone app crashing.

Three button clicks fixes the problem. Doh!

[prisma saddle]

just got this. @real cedar

hmm starting to like the android app better than ios.

it’s even better in a tablet.

[prisma saddle]

is 38fb getting replaced or name fixed?

router late?

[real cedar]

I think its getting retrieved at some point. When lowe goes up

Probably

After stansbury is my guess

[prisma saddle]

👍

[obsidian storm]

i will have lake mountain up before defcon if I can

[prisma saddle]

weird i see this every once in a while now.

anyone else?

that is the device my app is connected to. so it’s seeing itself all weird.

[real cedar]

@maiden wraith

This is the neighbor info map

It does not disclose locations

It merely shows the network nodes connect together

Now someone in the dc801 IRC had a good idea.

If we can correlate the neighborinfo with the last known accurately timestamped position. Then we could make a topographical network wide map

But that's not a thing rn

I've yet to switch over neighborinfo but since it sends so little.. Rarely.. 14400 seems legit

Xmit over lora.

But as I said in our mesh chat. Do not enable it on mobile nodes. It destroys the map and causes others to get different maps

Its in the docs not to do that as it can confuse neighbor data

[prisma saddle]

notice mine show up on it if i’ve traced a router if not then it goes away.

i thought you said routers only do it. maybe that was.something else.

[real cedar]

All nodes can send neighbor info over LoRa. It is paramount that they are stationary nodes and not mobile nodes.

That is the only stipulation.

[prisma saddle]

ok cool!

[slate urchin]

Just an FYI. If anyone wants to join me and test out MeshCore, I set up a couple of devices and a repeater at my house.

[manic fractal]

Approximately where are your nodes? I have one in Clearfield that I check periodically but it hasn’t seen any traffic. Are you using the recommended radio settings from the app?

[real cedar]

Once we are done placing lowe, prom point, and a few other routers

I think we need better coverage in the city. I'd love to see a ton of clients spread around somewhat hard to reach in between building zones.. Solar bat

[real cedar]

Also weird stuff is happening

Repeated messages sent from the same node

I'm also getting wild fluctuations in numbers of nodes online

I have direct LOS to FPR

[leaden crow]

I wonder if that is a consequence of many of us making our node_info_broadcast long intervals?

I am working on a couple of nodes that might help SLC, but nothing on the bench / mountains. I'm a little short on time right now. I think WC2 will go up in the next 2 weeks. I also hope to finish your mount for Lowe this weekend.

I have debug logs on my rpi nodes. I wonder if we can figure out anything on the repeat messages? If I have time to look, I will.
If anyone else wants my logs. LMK

[real cedar]

Yeah send them to me north and bowl?

[real cedar]

Alright. Everyone here switch your node info to 14400

Let's test this theory

😆 I'll switch FPR

C6C

And C6H

[real cedar]

I wonder if that's a round trip down to the far router on Marys nipple

I'll limit to 5 hops for a bit

[slate urchin]

I am in Eagle MT. I need to get something on the top of the MT to help anyone on Eagle Mt. we are kind of lost with out a repeater up there

[void iris]

I'm in the same boat in saratoga springs. Meshcore seems interesting. Does it work on the RAK boards?

[slate urchin]

I am in Eagle MT. I was in Sandy today with one on, but didn’t see anyone. lol I think there is maybe 3 people in Utah showing lol

[slate urchin]

I believe so.

I’m not quite sure if this is the right frequencies or not, but this is what I found to be their standard for the US

[void iris]

that sucks

what the heck. never heard that one

[void iris]

What case design do y'all use for your completely legally-placed outdoor nodes?

[real cedar]

It likely survived

[real cedar]

Do we want to try it at all?

Idk if I want to switch stuff over ATM though I'd be down to small scale test

Isn't meshcore limited in BW though

Like
Spread Factor (SF): 11
Coding Rate (CR): 5
Bandwidth (BW): 250.00

Is hard coded

[void iris]

it's not hard coded, thats just the defaults. As far as I can tell the only network overhead is router announces every 240 minutes, so less time is taken up by telemetry, etc.

I would love to try it. It appears that the routing is worlds better, I like the "room" system rather than the flood group messaging that we have now. I don't know how well encryption/managment/discovery works

The client nodes also apparently don't repeat

[umbral ice]

MeshCore bandwidth is 125kHz and Meshtastic is 250kHz

[void iris]

meshcore default in the US appears to be 250kHz

[umbral ice]

Interesting. The only thing I can find without combing through the documentation is that the eu and uk can’t use 250kHz

[slate urchin]

You can change the frequency at the very beginning, it walks you through the different steps and ask you what you would like to do, but what i posted was the default.

Can you send me what you used, I want to build something like that asap

[prisma saddle]

happy 4th guys.

[slate urchin]

Wow

Where is that

[prisma saddle]

riverton.

still going.

[slate urchin]

Dang

[prisma saddle]

Morning. any benefit to me putting a client node here. https://maps.app.goo.gl/TiKhvmNoaLqkL5kYA?g_st=ipc working further to get family setup and that’s top of their prop line. above their house. would hit potm and aus. not npr that i know of.

[prisma saddle]

weird i’m getting duplicate or echo trace happening. run them. then 20 min later they come back again. without me doing it.

[real cedar]

I'm down to try it at a small scale? Like maybe we convert NPR to mesh core.. Leave lowe on meshtastic.. See how that works out? We would need stansbury up since toele would lose NPR

Thing I'm worried about is.. Does the room system forward the room across the whole network?

Like I still want the ability to communicate over lots of hops super far away

[slate urchin]

I am with you. I’ll try and let’s see what happens.

Making a couple of these to test out. https://makerworld.com/en/models/219730-beta-meshtastic-rak-19007-duel-18650-no-tools

Then maybe something like this. - https://makerworld.com/en/models/846422-solar-panel-mount-for-demeshe-node-rak-meshtastic?from=search#profileId-793591

But need to make it stronger

[real cedar]

That's.. Ugh so I guess that differs from what I need unless we are gonna make a mesh wide room. I definitely need to be able to interrogate the drone over it whether it's 4 routers away or 1 router away

This will be a fun shoe horn if rooms are how it works

I stay very partial to meshtastic due to the sheer integration

[void iris]

The rooms can optionally repeat according to the docs

[real cedar]

I just wish the devs would draw inspiration from the other projects. Those are great ideas. Many hops.. Shows its possible to have more than 7 in the same header too

But also meshcore was smart

They didn't use shython

@void iris where are you located I got spare radios

Let's see if you and I can set up a test

[void iris]

Saratoga springs

[real cedar]

Balls

[void iris]

I don't have a roof node and usually can't see anything from my house

[real cedar]

If you had a roof node you have direct LOS to my apartment up north on the hill before ben Lomond. Like I kid you not where aurora ceresia now sits. I could probably see saratoga with binoculars

I've got an ideaerrr

Aurora Ceresia converts to mesh core

Then someone in the fair park to west valley area who can see that directly put a mesh core rak up

Should get to saratoga

Idk I'm down to test it I'm just up north so I have to drag extra infra down is all

[prisma saddle]

i could toss one up in herriman /riverton. that work at all?

[real cedar]

Maybe. If you can see ceresia it might

[prisma saddle]

thought about that after i sent that. mountain between herriman and saratoga would still be in the way.

[obsidian storm]

I think when I get Lake Mountian up with the 1W node, that'll make a big difference.

We're going to put it in that ham radio shack up there

[prisma saddle]

you back from your vacation?

[obsidian storm]

not yet.

I'll have it up before the end of the month.

I hope.

[prisma saddle]

def looking forward to that for more “science” testing.

[obsidian storm]

I have my solar desgin under testing right now, but they're looking good.

I'll start throwing a few of those up as soon as I get bacx

[prisma saddle]

cool love to see stats on those or build if possible when back. need more projects.

[real cedar]

We were talking about testing meshcore

Concurrently in the valley for a bit

It fixes a good few of some of the issues everyone commonly complains about here

[slate urchin]

Would that be on MeshCore ?

[pseudo kestrel]

I'm happy to host a pole and hardware in my yard if it'd be helpful. I'm over by the U's SLC data center, but I'm in a bit of a bowl

[prisma saddle]

nope. none

i grabbed the rak 1906 to mess with but the node i put it in keeps killing over. so prob need to factory reset it

[leaden crow]

I just checked my log. The last one I received was Friday, July 4, 2025 5:50:53 PM

{"channel":0,"from":884871386,"hop_start":7,"hops_away":1,"id":3106677517,"payload":{"barometric_pressure":724.036682128906,"current":0,"gas_resistance":207.320434570312,"iaq":117,"lux":0,"radiation":0,"relative_humidity":55.0043640136719,"temperature":13.7297115325928,"voltage":0,"white_lux":0,"wind_direction":0,"wind_gust":0,"wind_lull":0,"wind_speed":0},"rssi":-80,"sender":"!eba4d26b","snr":-0.75,"timestamp":1751673053,"to":4294967295,"type":"telemetry"}

[prisma saddle]

dang dudes. my back yard pretty much. https://neighbors.ring.com/n/Oov2XPmC0z

if you can see that.

[real cedar]

@dense basin @maiden wraith we have some unknown repeaters bouncing between fpr and stuff. Over and over. You guys got any repeaters sitting somewhere up here?

[pseudo kestrel]

What a cursed routing...

I got a direct message from !e6764116 at 02:41 🙂

[real cedar]

When stansbury and lowe go up. @white field retrieve 38fb? Or ret to client?

[pseudo kestrel]

That's really pretty

[real cedar]

Yeah I was at a ride with the girl I'm talking to and we both liked it and chatted about it for a bit

[pseudo kestrel]

is there a way for me to help figure out where the duplications are coming from?

[real cedar]

Hidden

Node

[pseudo kestrel]

💔

ahh hell, it duplicated twice this time

[real cedar]

The conclusion we got from it was you can't have light without the dark.. Black without white. Good without some bad. Female without a male. Male without female 😉. Moon and Mandela concentrics made me think the artist was oriental or eastern cultured of some sort. Just a best guess but that was a good convo starter for sure.

[real cedar]

Yeah IDK why that's happening

I think it's gotta do with NPR

I keep losing its node data

[ember torrent]

Must’ve been the storm. I was “using” that temp data up until the storm.

Wonder if it got zapped by lightning. The lightning and thunder was insane just southwest of FPR.

Should harness all that lightning energy with a suitcase of batteries.

[prisma saddle]

ah ya car hit a dominos near by it and blew up. https://ksltv.com/local-news/flames-seen-at-herriman-business-fire-crews-on-scene/793766/ Explosion reported at Herriman business, fire crews on scene

[slate urchin]

Oh wow

[ember torrent]

What pocket?

Ahhhh. Sick placement. Figured it was inside.

Print a little roof to “cover” the hole?

[prisma saddle]

hmm one of my 19007 runs for a bit then decides to crap out and the red led just blinks. what causes that.

pk cool thanks ill give it a go.

[prisma saddle]

gonna try to moitro over serial for a bit and see what it says in the logs when it dies.. maybe that will help

I wonder with all the issues we have just all the sudden started having .. the echos etc.. anything to do with new firmware versions?

[ember torrent]

Sure would be kewl to know how windy… I’d throw some money at it.

[ember torrent]

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2785.html

I would expect there to be a cheaper option.

[umbral ice]

Harrison router build so far. Still missing the filter and I’m gonna put the 1w amp in it. Will need a bit of disassembly to fit it all, but hopefully stacking the components using the risers will help cram it in cleanly

[slate urchin]

Holy crap, that’s so cool

[prisma saddle]

looks awesome. well done!

[real cedar]

Im dead in the water. Phone broke. Couldnt access banks.. so just ordered a new one off amazon. hopefully gets here tomorrow this is not fun

[prisma saddle]

dang sorry to hear that dude. always sucks.

when that happens

[hallow dagger]

I'm very interested in testing Meshcore. I brought up Reticulum here months ago as a potential solution for long-distance routing and I've been involved in the that project working on the mcu port. Nice to see that Meshcore is doing the same.

[slate urchin]

It will be fun and give us something to do 🙂

[hallow dagger]

That is really lame, especially considering they're building on the back of an extensive open-source protocol.

[umbral ice]

When I try to use S&F on our LF20, I get a return that it S&F not permitted on the public channel and a cursory search indicates that this is true across the board.

[prisma saddle]

i thought i heard someone was at one time. but was turned off. @real cedar ?

[leaden crow]

I wonder if that is a new feature? I have turned on S&F in the past (just testing, never left it on) and never got a warning like that. Could be some node on old firmware?

[umbral ice]

That router is 2.5+. I can't remember exactly which its on, but its been up for a few months now. I don't have regular access to it, but I'm going to pull it down and update it next week.

However, in their docs: https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/module/store-and-forward-module/

[ember torrent]

Lol. My recollection too. We gotta stop having chats on LF51. Losing searchable info.

Perfect segway, anyone know what commands to use on the Big Beautiful Bulletin Board?

[ember torrent]

I think the latest theory is the presence of Repeaters.

[umbral ice]

Yep. My reference to the documentation is the same :P. Just was trying to help rule out S&F on LF being the issue

[ember torrent]

Hah! Same damn Note.

[prisma saddle]

someone said to start keeping logs.. can we start creating a list of all nodes / known nodes and keep track of what is what. then we can maybe find the repeaters based on what we not not know and /ignore them?

if thats possible. like ignore/block from routers, and each of our clients

will that stop them from rebroad the messages at all?

[ember torrent]

My understanding, which can be wrong, Repeaters dont populate the Node list so we cant block em. Need the owners to make them clients.

[prisma saddle]

right, but we can get their node id from the logs/etc.. so list out all nodes. figure out who is who. and root through and figure from there?

[umbral ice]

Correct. I've had no success in blocking rogue routers either. Trace Routes, at the very least, still route through ignored nodes.

[prisma saddle]

hmm dang

[ember torrent]

This is why we cant have anything nice.

[prisma saddle]

sounds like we need to get soem sort of feature added into the firmware that can make them trackable somewhere. i would think this would be a game changer in a way for a healthy mesh..

as we are seeing

[hallow dagger]

As I recall repeaters don't have their own identities per-se. They literally just re-broadcast packets on the radio and that's it. You'd have to physically triangulate its location to find it I believe.

[ember torrent]

I dont imagine repeaters will be around long. Seems like an odd role.

[hallow dagger]

I don't really see how a repeater could be the issue anyway. Packets have unique ids, am I right? I would think the firmware and/or app would have the ability to ignore duplicates packets based on that id. I could be wrong here because I've never actually looked at how this is handled in code.

If I'm correct then it would definitely make more sense thatr it's S&F duplicating messages since it would likely relay messages using new ids.

[ember torrent]

Yeah i dunno.

For sure. We dont know if we have a store and forward, let alone how to use it. 🤣

“rebroadcast at the same time” i understand as our LF51 “echos”?

[prisma saddle]

hmm so if we can track through the packet logs and watch where things go. see what is sending things again i guess

[ember torrent]

I havent seen a repeater for a day. Might be gone.

[prisma saddle]

ight guess we will see then

[ember torrent]

I have to believe a Store and Forward (SF) would be a direct message, as to not cause echos for the rest of us. Akin to your SMS Gateway.

[umbral ice]

I get my errors in a dm from the S&F router at least lol

[hallow dagger]

Yeah it would have to be in some sense.

I saw this in logs on my nebra moments ago...
DEBUG | 21:11:45 432668 [Router] Ignore dupe incoming msg (id=0xb492bfff fr=0x67e2f2c2 to=0xffffffff, WantAck=0, HopLim=1 Ch=0x8 encrypted len=51 rxSNR=-15.75 rxRSSI=-110 hopStart=3 relay=0x84)
So it's obviously filtering literal duplicate messages in firmware.

[ember torrent]

Which node is your Nebra?

The SNR and RSSI are heavy in the bad sides of their scales though.

[hallow dagger]

GDane Pi

[ember torrent]

Guess I wouldn’t jump straight to it “ignores duplicates”, as in echos or repeat messages received, without understanding how Prioritized Routing works.
🤣
long winded way of saying, i dont know what i am looking at.

[prisma saddle]

@leaden crow what do you use tj rub the trace tests you have been doing? for the signal snr tests?

[leaden crow]

https://github.com/dagronslayer/meshtastic-bash-scripts/?tab=readme-ov-file#mtrl_statssh

[prisma saddle]

i need to get a static node hooked up to a pi or my comp i cam mess with this stuff and contact stuff

[prisma saddle]

I’m messing with private channels for the wife and family. do i have to setup a longfast channel or mute it ? to avoid confusion for them?

[umbral ice]

You don’t need a long fast channel as long as the frequency and slot are correct

I had my mom set up on a tdeck similarly

[prisma saddle]

ok great! ya will just confuse the mil. and my wife. lol.

ok and only primary channel gets positions auto sent. secondary you have to request right ?

[umbral ice]

Correct. The way I have mine all set up is the family channel on 0 for location and then longfast is on a secondary. Since you’re already on 51, you should be ok. If it were default, you would have to manually set the frequency slot

[prisma saddle]

right. ok cool. had a heltec v3 as the “home” node but ble signal for it sucked. so moved my rak travel one upstairs and renamed it. can use that all over the house. love the signal on them.

and gave the heltec away.

don’t like them.

still need to replace mil’s heltec.

eh wish the node list had a filter not show fav

[umbral ice]

I have a stash of v3s. I build them out with 2400mah lipo batteries in a little 3d printed case so that I can give them away in hopes people will get interested

[ember torrent]

That is about a B. Leave it?

That a picture of Khaki?

[prisma saddle]

hmm what’s not been working on it?

ohh weird. rebooted. all that jazz?

[obsidian storm]

Anyone know what this means?

[slate urchin]

it means you have notifications from mesh, Amazon, and Costco

😉

I'm being a punk. Sorry… I truly do not know what that means.

[obsidian storm]

Yeah. It's not the unencrypted icon, so I'm not sure

[prisma saddle]

maybe its the same thing. just on the channel itself?

hmm i dont get it.. any errors with sending anything?

[ember torrent]

Critical error?

Reminds me of the icon one gets when first starting the application. There are regular notifications and i think “critical” notifs. with a similar icon. Critical error is as close as i could DuckDuckGo to find the “critical” notifs.

[ember torrent]

Google won that round. My guess, critical alert of some kind 🤣

[prisma saddle]

uhh but no idea what.. lol

[real cedar]

we turned it off

[real cedar]

So what we need to do is move to Short Fast

like this just seems like a logical step

and we can deal with the issues as they crop up

[real cedar]

LMFAO

[prisma saddle]

anyone else seeing that some metrics are not showing in the app? like i. have power metrics set to update every 2 hours. yet in app it’s greyed out. been watching it all day.

does device metrics need to update the same time?

[obsidian storm]

The icon I had was the bottom one

[ember torrent]

When? I have the yellow one.

[ember torrent]

Why ShortFast? Step us through the logic.

[ember torrent]

Usually when my Iphone App acts wierd, an IOs App kill usually solves it.

[real cedar]

You need more available BW than you currently have available. LongFast was not designed to handle very many devices. ShortFast is. You get a much better maximum throughput so that opens other possibilities

[long crown]

Reading online a bit it sounds like shortfast doesn’t actually have a large range drop, is that in line with any of your experience?

Sounds like a no brainer to switch if that’s the case.

[real cedar]

We have definitely tested with FPR and we lost about 4 to 5 dB strength. That's it

It's a 0 barrier switch or so it seems

[leaden crow]

It has a -10dB link budget compared to Long Fast.
https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/#presets
Last year when we tried Medium Fast (-5db link budget compared to LF). POTM and NPR couldn't communicate reliably.

We have a much larger mesh this year, but it will require a coordinated effort to test.

[real cedar]

I really wish POTM was in that other spot I showed @obsidian storm

As for why it won't comm

That's an NPR problem

When we put Lowe up those problems should be gone

I'll put a filter on the rak at npr

Turn it to a client

Leave it there as a backup way to route..for all intents and purposes it should help extend coverage

But I severely doubt that POTM and NPR not talking is due to SF. It's far more likely that it's NPR being receive blind

[obsidian storm]

I have the gear that's going into that new spot outside and testing.

TKR 2😄

I need to figure out why the battery level is dropping so much

6W panel, three 18650s

facing south at a 45* angle.

@real cedar any ideas why?

[real cedar]

That's normal drop

Oh

That's over 9 days

So I think I know what it is

Move your solar panel angle to 37 degrees

See if that helps..right now the sun is high due to summer.. as it falls back down for winter your panel will produce more..right now it's about 20 degrees off what it should be for a summer sun which means it's probably producing about 15-20% less wattage

That still should be enough though

Do you have GPS on it?

[obsidian storm]

no gps

[real cedar]

Also see if it stabilizes around 91-94

Aurora Ceresia and AUR both did that with the RAKs

[obsidian storm]

just a bme680

[real cedar]

Okay then there's likely no extra draw

[obsidian storm]

it's even in client_mute right now.

[real cedar]

This is probably just a simple matter of .. solar panel angle

I would try angling the panel up higher

Your ideal winter angle here is 41 degrees

Your ideal summer is 17 degrees

[obsidian storm]

wouldn't 45* be better than 41?

in the summer

You think it'll stabilize around 91-94 huh?

[real cedar]

No. The sun is higher in it's periodicity across the sky. Remember earth tilts.. the northern hemisphere has a much steeper angle of sunlight

Therefore the panel must be pointed much more upward

If you put a camera on a pv array that tracks and moves all year you'll notice in summer it's pointed up more.. in winter it's angled down and south more

[prisma saddle]

dang there is a science to just solar panel angle lol.

[obsidian storm]

hmm. k.

https://www.printables.com/model/877883-soshine-solar-panel-mount-for-meshtastic

I'll have to modify this model

to be 41*

and by modify, I mean re-create.

since I don't know fusion360

[real cedar]

Just bend over tkr2 for now as a test

[real cedar]

Yes there is. This is simplified
@prisma saddle
https://www.ecoflow.com/us/blog/solar-panel-angle-north-america

But I've built the PID controllers that use monitor sunlight and adjust the angle of the panel to retrieve the maximum transfer via an MPPT

In winter you want a steeper angle pointed south. In summer you want a shallower angle still pointed south

[prisma saddle]

nice.. that cant be cheap

[leaden crow]

I wouldn't do anything, this looks fine to me.

I've had solar RAK running for over a year and my reported charge levels seem to fluctuate between 90-96% and honestly have been on the lower end at peak summer when they should be highest.

[obsidian storm]

I'm charging directly from the RAK

[prisma saddle]

SO i didnt know this, power metrics only gets stuff from the usb i think how it was explained. device metrics is solar/battery from rak that is

so explains why my power metrics show nothing

and wont update

[leaden crow]

That built in charge controller in the RAK is wonky. It works well enough, but does some weird things. I've been watching the temp of THR and also outputting the battery level. It was at 90-91% for like a month, then it will randomly charge back to 100%.
I will say, the soshine will recharge the battery really fast if you let it drop to like 50%. I've seen it back to 100% in ~6 hours. So it's way more solar than you need for a RAK.

[prisma saddle]

so what is a recommended mppt for that then? if the rak inboard one is subpar?

[leaden crow]

If you have a larger panel than you need, I would just deal with it being subpar.
If you're really trying to optimize solar / battery, get a better charge controller.

[obsidian storm]

I wonder if it's doing something to try to keep the batteries healthy

[prisma saddle]

like not maxing them out not use up cycles?

[leaden crow]

Could be. I would actually prefer it keep my batteries at 80-90%

But if you really want to test before you place it. Disconnect the solar panel and let the batteries drop below 50%, then see how long it takes to charge all the way back up. My guess is less than 1 day with the soshine

It could take weeks to get the battery below 50% though

[prisma saddle]

throw a gps on there, let get new pos a lot, and umm... what else.. put it on router/repeater on slot 20 lol

[real cedar]

I mean that's assuming a cycle is 100% drained and then 100% charged. If you do charge to 80%, then you can safely assume you'll get about 20% more charge discharge cycles. But it's not linear. It turns out it's kind of exponential as you keep the battery in a healthier range

You can get lithium batteries to last an extremely long time if you keep them above 35% and below 85%

[real cedar]

Just disconnect the battery and go drain it on something. Bring it back, plug it in. See if it charges up

[real cedar]

It really could be as simple as ADC drift

Literally you could just be getting millivolts of drift and that would be enough to perturb the top end of the percentages because you're talking about the difference between about 4.1 and 4.2 volts

[umbral ice]

It took me a while to get passed the "bUt ItS nOt At 100%" lol

[real cedar]

I literally only care if my telemetry is telling me that it's dropped below 30% or it's not reaching above 60%. That tells me that there's a bad cell in the pack

In fact, I don't think I charge my car node until it sends every one of the other Aurora nodes, a message stating less than 15% battery

[leaden crow]

You should hard wire to your car. Something like this would be perfect:
https://www.amazon.com/Gebildet-Hardwire-12V-24V-Protection-Detectors/dp/B0CPF6WNP1/?th=1

[real cedar]

Yeah when I stop partying hard I need to come back and revisit some things. It's been a wild summer

I do need to get the lowe node put together. It's just I've been completely tapped out after each weekend. Recovering through the week and blasting another 3 to 4-day weekend of partying

You know it's July

[white field]

Have you measured the drain rate of your system without the solar and that same battery pack?

I like testing my system without the solar to know what's happening and then after attaching the solar, I can estimate how much juice I'm actually getting per day. (since I know my drain rates)

[real cedar]

So what I will say is adding a capacitor actually fixed a lot of this problem for me

I'm not sure why it happens, but having the capacitor on there allows the highest voltage from the solar panel to be stored in a relatively large bank while it's charging and every time the mppt kicks out to reset the power level and find the maximum PowerPoint to track it quite literally dumps and maintains the charge at the voltage that was being provided before. So you really don't see any of those mppt fluctuations anymore and I've noticed I've been getting a much more consistent full charge

It makes sense in concept. I just don't know why it would be necessary. It could just be that we're attaching way too many batteries to this poor mppt

🤣

Each of them has different internal resistances and they're all going to sit at different levels. I mean we're not even using a balancing BMS

[real cedar]

Imma lexel seal a filter to this.. 😂 and call it good for now. Mini bike will be ready for cross country stuff with that thick of a engineering grade tpu 95a