US - Utah

[obsidian storm]

I didn't go to the space this week.

But I can set something up. And get that access. Do I need to do that immediately?

This was back to school week so I was visiting family before they left for college

[real cedar]

Well malice definitely need your bbs config and stuff

We will see if he can hit FPR

then lake mount on long fast when hes done testing SF

Francis Peak has LOS to Harrison haha

[obsidian storm]

I have remote access to LAKE and my house

[umbral ice]

Yeah lol. I saw that. 120 miles or something

[real cedar]

hell yeah lets get this bbs link going

That would be so dope

hahahah this will be so amazing

FPR has a nice amp on it too

should hear weak signals real well

FPR bearing 314° 129 miles alt -0.83° has LOS horizon alt -0.84° Harrison

[obsidian storm]

Do we know the creds to The hacker space node?

[real cedar]

I do

let me pull them

[real cedar]

DMed you

@umbral ice

gotta get it up high enough

@maiden wraith how high is FPR again off the ground in its loc

also which harrison building is it

[umbral ice]

From what I’ve been told at least

There is a pole that used to have a microwave dish on it that is gone that we should be able to put it on.

[real cedar]

how high up?

[umbral ice]

10ft to the roof + the highest point of the pole. I’d guess 12 ft

Working on solar panel mounts. Using the articulating lock as the hinge for the panel angle that I can fix to the door of the box.

[real cedar]

see I was thinking of how to help ogden and allen peak has a rf xmitter up there for public safety but its adjacent peak where the tram goes doesnt and it has trees.. I am seriously thinking of a bathouse

[obsidian storm]

we'r in

[real cedar]

nice, See if you can reinstall all that mesh bbs stuff and get rid of all the junk and experiments. then see if you can link the bbs together using bbslink

[prisma saddle]

hax

[real cedar]

lake mountain and the space is a good test

then in theory if harrison hits FPR its one hop from lake mountain which is insane lmao

[obsidian storm]

tbh, I don't have time tonight.

[umbral ice]

I'll get the other 2 femtofoxes built out today so that I can get the IDs for the link

[real cedar]

I think hes going up saturday

[obsidian storm]

I have an early start tomorrow. But I'll see if I can find some free time in the next 2 days to look at it.

[umbral ice]

Yeah you got a week

worst case I can do some config changes on the mountain. taking side by sides up so i'll have the ability to

[obsidian storm]

I need someone to explain exactly what I'm doing.

[umbral ice]

I haven't ready any docs on it, so I'll let @real cedar take the reigns there lol

[obsidian storm]

I don't need line by line what to do

[real cedar]

https://github.com/SpudGunMan/meshing-around
use bbslink and the bbs node id's to relay bulletin messages between each other

[obsidian storm]

but I'd like to know what software you're looking to test.

PERFECT.

I'll do that.

[real cedar]

Since lake mountain and the space both have internet.. feel free to add a lot of the cool internet stuff like noaa alerts and stuff. I dont mind it having a ton of capability. In fact at the space I want to work with tom to relay some amatuer repeater stuff in

if we can

I know someone has satnogs planned so being able to do satpass would be cool

IF you link them properly bash you should be able to relay a bulletin to and from the space and if harrison can see fpr.. too and from someones node that can ping harrison

each time a bulletin is updated the relay packet is regenerated at that bulletin node and the hop count is reset

so even if one bulletin node cannot reach all of the others they will progressively role out the update to which ever does not yet have it

in theory this should be our global store and forward layer if it works right

retrieve anywhere you can ping a bulletin node

[prisma saddle]

i can toss one up here too if we need more test nodes.

[leaden crow]

WC1 and WC2 are in way better shape after upgrades today.
Interestingly, both of them sometimes hop directly through FPR in traces now. I hadn't noticed before, but both of them show LoS on heywhatsthat.

[real cedar]

yeah FPR is a bit OP

im banking on its ability to see HPR

[prisma saddle]

what is crest1 name? or not up ? i don’t see it yet.

[leaden crow]

Wasatch Crest 1 │ !aac126e8 │ WC1
It still has long node_info_broadcast and position_broadcast values. It got an antenna upgrade, but it seems like it still mostly hops through WC2.

It really should be the better positioned node, but sometimes things just don't work out?

[real cedar]

im smacking it with location requests LOL

with my node that has 11 dB signal to FPR haha

[umbral ice]

So, I'm about 50 miles from harrison, and the Twin hackerspace is in the path, so I'm gonna set up a yagi at my house aimed at harrison with a pi node. I'm curious as to what kind of signal strenght i'll see

[leaden crow]

I know @white field had luck when our mesh was much smaller pointing a Yagi at mountain nodes to get connected.

Eh, he probably won't respond. He's braving the weather at burning man rn.

[real cedar]

RIP

[real cedar]

Who's taking bets on FPR surviving another lightning storm 😂

https://us.polymaker.com/products/fiberon-pet-cf17?variant=44225304231993
This is a very attractive filament.

100 bucks for 3kg.. similar to PA6-CF in a lot of ways but easier to print and anneal and UV resistant.. moisture insensitive

I am very tempted to order some

17% Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polyethylene Terephthalate. That's a mouthful

[umbral ice]

I assume that needs some extra parts to print. Better than stock nozzle and such?

[pseudo kestrel]

My node just saw FPR ~1 minute ago

[ember torrent]

Maybe last night, but some storms are rolling in today and tomorrow.

$2 it survives.

[pseudo kestrel]

It seems to have survived last night, good work 🙂

I'm curious how it gained a few percent of battery power overnight though?

[keen glen]

Fluctuating temps might have impacted reported battery level, right?

[real cedar]

Not for me. I have a diamond nozzle and a micro swiss high flow hardened hot end and a hardened set of gears in my extruder

I can do ceramics and glass FDM if I wanted to but I need a sintering kiln

The idea here is I want linear scaling. I want to be able to repeatedly make a part in x amount of time

[leaden crow]

Yes, but also the battery monitor built in to nodes are pretty rudimentary.

[keen glen]

Fair

[real cedar]

Yes

Heavily over the top of our part of the range

[vital hemlock]

Is that what you discovered as well @obsidian storm ?

[real cedar]

What's that blue zone that has a portion of the peak

You know it's hard to imagine investment groups and stuff buying a peak and just letting it sit forever. It's costs money 🤣

Some rich dude want a peak castle or something 😂

[vital hemlock]

Blue is Utah State Trust Lands

Yellow is BLM

South Lowe Peak is BLM

[leaden crow]

Did you get WC1 position overnight? I got the position at home and noticed slcmesh.rem-labs.dev did too.
The connection is still weak. I only got 20% success rate of traceroutes overnight. I have this antenna in shipping:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806241790045.html
It didn't arrive for last weekend, so WC2 got a temporary Alfa instead.

[real cedar]

@maiden wraith I pinged fpr fine

It's up there beating away

Survived the lightning storm

[real cedar]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

It's just as good of a peak

[prisma saddle]

yup i see it. not wc2 though. at least not pos.

[leaden crow]

Both of them have:
positionBroadcastSecs: 86400
They will only send position once every 24 hours. I think you will see it eventually.

[prisma saddle]

ok cool ya i killed of wc2 last night. so next update will see it

[prisma saddle]

interesting path.

[leaden crow]

That is actually the expected path. I placed WC1 so that it would have LoS right to NPR through the mouth of Big Cottonwood. That didn't work out. It gets all the traffic from the valley, but NPR can't hear it. WC2 is a bandaid. It sees a cone in the valley through the mouth of Big Cottonwood and TH Roof is right in the center of that cone.

[obsidian storm]

Yeah. Some guy in lehi owns it.

at least that's the address.

I'm tempted to go knock on his door and hear the story

"Why did you buy the tip of a peak in the 80s?"

[vital hemlock]

Tell me a story!

[keen glen]

Got a new H2T and SenseCap T1000-E in today. Hopefully helps with being heard. NPR is still 5 hops away, and I can't get any of the nodes to traceroute with new or old radios. 😢

[keen glen]

Eagle Mountain, City Center
The default MuziWorks one that came with the H2T

[leaden crow]

Man who wouldn't do that? I bet it was super cheap in the 80's.

If you meet him, see if he wants to sell. Maybe we could do a co-ownership agreement or LLC and make it our meshtastic evil secret lair.

[keen glen]

https://muzi.works/products/whip-antenna-17cm

[ember torrent]

The t1000-e wont help you see others very well, but the H2t and that antenna should. The higher that antenna is the better. Go hike the shoreline trail with it.

[leaden crow]

I don't know what LoS in Eagle Mountain looks like, but it sounds like he is populating nodedb just not getting any traceroutes back?

Maybe even try putting the H2T on top of your roof or in a tall tree. See if you get any traces back. If that works, just build a roof node.

[keen glen]

I can see ~36 nodes on the H2T, and I had ~90 on the T-Beams before. It just seems to be struggling getting out
I get that the t1000e would be worse.

[keen glen]

I do have a Nebra I bought coming soon for the roof

[quasi surge]

Nodes will trickle in as most won't broadcast NodeInfo but infrequently or if they hear another NodeInfo

The T1000e has better recieve performance than a Rak with the muzi antenna IME

You're probably in the foothills and under the shadow of some mountain features that are keeping you from having good LOS to any existing nodes

[keen glen]

I sent a few test messages on LongFast, and saw an acknowledgement, but I haven't seen any responses yet.

[leaden crow]

I think this will solve your problem. Most clients even with a good antenna still need a something with good LoS within a mile or so.

[leaden crow]

Acknowledgement can be from your own node if you have more than 1 turned on.

[quasi surge]

Elevation is probably the best bang for buck upgrade to performance you can make

[keen glen]

Makes sense, could have been the t1000e. I'll try again with that off

[keen glen]

I'm in the middle of city center for EM, behind Lake Mountains: https://maps.app.goo.gl/i6Zydkb8Thvhd1Ly6

[keen glen]

Tried again, w/t1000e off (all other of my nodes off) and got an acknowledgement. Wish I could see the info of which node gave the ACK

[quasi surge]

You can if you look at the debug log

You're in a nasty low spot I think, where many of the nearby peaks with routers are not quite visible

[ember torrent]

Roof node to the help.

Lol, ignore the reply quote.

[quasi surge]

And the Lowe Peak router being proposed might help as well

[keen glen]

to: 767542707
decoded {
  portnum: ROUTING_APP
  payload: "\030\000"
  request_id: 2833321844
}
id: 2457867959
rx_time: 1756158670
priority: ACK```

 This?

[keen glen]

That's what I figured

[quasi surge]

(something by cedar point might also work pretty well to link you to the rest of the valley)

[keen glen]

Yeah, that'd be awesome

[quasi surge]

You can tell if the id: of your outgoing message matches the request_id: in this ACK, but based on the limited traffic you see, quite probably

The nodeid of the ACKing node is the from: bit

[keen glen]

to: 4294967295 (!ffffffff)
decoded {
  portnum: TEXT_MESSAGE_APP
  payload: "Test - New H2T, attempt 3"
}
id: 2833321844
want_ack: true

Yep, it was

[quasi surge]

An example calculation of LOS to LAKE (first image) and NPR (second image)

[keen glen]

The from and to are the same id

[quasi surge]

I don't know enough about the on-wire protocol off the top of my head to know why that is, but it's not necessarily unusual or incorrect

You'll notice that e.g. broadcast traffic such as your message is sent to !ffffffff

[keen glen]

That makes sense for a broadcast address

[quasi surge]

Meshtastic doesn't have any routing tables or such, so all nodes see all traffic in hop and transmission distance as long as they're configured with the right channel/modem settings; the 'to' address is really a psuedo-application layer concept that has different semantics depending on the portnum

[keen glen]

Ahhh, got it.
So ACK here isn't guaranteed to have the info from the acknowledging node.

At least by the protocol

[quasi surge]

It should, I think, because the from: is who originated the traffic and not who is rebroadcasting

As I understand it, a rebroadcast is the same packet with the hop count decremented by one (similar to how ICMP TTL works)

[keen glen]

Interesting, didn't consider the rebroadcast. It wouldn't have been an ACK though, right? Maybe I need to look at the docs.

[quasi surge]

I'm not sure if ACK packets get rebroadcast; I would think that it would only be nodes with a direct link/ACKs would have a hop count of 0 on them though.

isn't guaranteed to have the info from the acknowledging node.
If by this you mean NodeInfo such as the node name and public key, then no; only NodeInfo holds that information.

But if a node can hear/ack you, you can send an ad-hoc NodeInfo which should trigger it to reply with it's own NodeInfo unless they're on custom firmware that patched that feature out.

Double tap the main button on your node to do that.

[keen glen]

Sorry, just meant ID

[keen glen]

Good to know

[quasi surge]

The nodeid is just 2dbfc5b3; it would show in your node list as Meshtastic c5b3 if you didn't get a NodeInfo for it.

[keen glen]

That's me

[quasi surge]

Huh, okay, I don't know enough about what's going on here then. If I broadcast a packet into the void I usually get a ACK packet with a failure-indicating payload back from my node, to inform the app that it wasn't ACK'd by another node. Maybe the ACK gets munged into this self-sent packet even in the case of a successful ACK?

[keen glen]

Maybe? I'm going to try a broadcast with the T-Beam from the same location

[quasi surge]

If you want to confirm what the traffic (that the node reports to the app) looks like, I'd set up two of your own nodes on a custom channel and see what the traffic looks like with ACK available (both nodes on) and not (one node broadcasting, nothing recieving).

[keen glen]

I'll do that next. I just tried with the T-Beam only, same behavior with the IDs

My T-Beam used to be able to get out, but traceroutes rarely completed.
I wonder if a node I was relying on changed; I've been out of town for a few days.

[keen glen]

Yeah, I see a different response.

from: 767542707 (!2dbfc5b3)
to: 84690052 (!050c4484)
decoded {
  portnum: ROUTING_APP
  payload: "\030\000"
  request_id: 2833321860
  bitfield: 0
}
id: 3756033297
rx_time: 1756160405
rx_snr: 13.75
hop_limit: 2
rx_rssi: -32
hop_start: 2
next_hop: 132
relay_node: 179

Followed by the ACK from its own node ID

[keen glen]

Oof, yeah, that would be it. I hope the roof node does help. The Lowe Peak/Similar peak router would hopefully help too.

For the nebra, are the hats the recommended hardware still? I recall seeing a post about an M.2 or USB one

[leaden crow]

I would just get the hat. The M.2 is a prototype that I don't think is available anywhere. USB is just more parts (USB > SPI instead of directly SPI). The only reason you'd want one of those is if you really needed the USB hub hat it comes with.

I would get one of these from bash if they are not gone already.
#1197577977781821541 message

[keen glen]

Can I still get one from you?

[keen glen]

Sounds good. The board doesn't look too complex, if there's no pre-built left and the Gerbers + BOM are available, I can make one.

[leaden crow]

If you only needed one, you could build it on proto board too. I did this before the nebra hat board was available:
#1367293403867516979 message

[keen glen]

I'll keep that in mind

[keen glen]

Looks like both 1W and 2W versions of the E22 are available?

[leaden crow]

Yes. 2W of questionable legality, but not likely something you'd ever get penalized for.

[real cedar]

I would have just set it to the standard client interval of 21600

They are clients

[real cedar]

Not true LOS. You need to input the frequency and the diffraction or reflective index of 0.166

Lol

Turn on curved earth not flat earth

[real cedar]

Oh you could. 2W on an 8dB is 41 dB EIRP. You'd definitely show up on anyone looking for it at that point

[leaden crow]

I figure they are static position. Any updates are basically wasted channel util., but yeah I'm sure that's insignificant.

[real cedar]

You absolutely will show up on radar 🤣

[quasi surge]

Yeah, I was just checking my assumptions at work -- it's not representitive.

[real cedar]

Someone put 1 W amplifiers on their Wi-Fi router to make it 2 watts and they instantly showed up on radars

It was like a beeline for hundreds of miles

It's happened in New Jersey and it's happened in a lot of European cities and it shows up on Doppler radar often too

It is extremely well known that all of the ism bands do this

[quasi surge]

You'd have to be on the DFS frequencies to do that with wifi

But yeah, ISM will do that too

[real cedar]

No you don't have to be on DFS. The entire spectrum can cause it because of side bands and intermodulation distortion and Spurs. the thing DFS offers is the ability to actually detect a brief pulse radar signal and get off the band as to be as polite as possible but it doesn't actually remove the interference and on most radars they tend to just do signal processing to remove signals that would be generated within the legal limit however the signal processing only removes signals that would be generated within the legal limit they leave other signals on so the radar can detect and pinpoint them so they can log it

I've actually written some of the software so I know how good it is I would not do it near radars

😆

Most ham people won't turn you in but the feds will

[quasi surge]

Hmm, I'm not aware of there being interference at 2.4Ghz even above permitted transmit power, but I only have the anecdotes of the radio nerds I used to work with to go on.

And yeah, I'm pretty aware of how DFS works; I did work on an implementation of it once, but it was all firmware level and the radio side of things was in a proprietary chipset/PHY and abstracted away from me.

[real cedar]

Well for the average person there's not going to be much interference but for a radar that is extremely sensitive and when I say extremely sensitive we are talking hundreds of DB more sensitive.. even the small Spurs and even badly tuned equipment can cause relatively major interference let me see if I can find a photo

Her s a good example

That was a 2.4 GHz wifi router set to operate at 30 instead of the allowable max of 27 in the area

[quasi surge]

Wow, is that on the L band?

That's a pretty clear interference spike, yeah

[real cedar]

While radars are well filtered. They can't filter out all of the noise if your near it's spectrum (within 2 to 3 multiples).. you can interfere if it hits your signal dead one. Now traditionally wifi won't do that unless someone runs ultra high gain antennas, places amps on lines or blasts beyond the expected power.. those lines are always there. As I said they are traditionally processed out if the signal behavior is any of the expected characteristic signal models. If you broadcast above power your Bart's head plot becomes much wider and full of huge peaks and troughs that it becomes much more noisey and noticeable to the point where the software will likely display it instead of ignore it and that's how you get caught

Particularly if two radars see you 🤣 which is objectively worse in so many ways

there are many things that can be picked up by a radar network, other than just rain, hail and snow like you might expect of a typical Doppler radar. It takes some skill to be able to pick out which radar echoes are actually showing rain, and which ones are anomalous. That's why we usually make it easy and have the software do it but the software is not perfect. It cannot account for someone being an asshole

[real cedar]

Here are s band radars that are identical to promontory and Francis peak

This is what wifi and baby monitors (915) show up like

[quasi surge]

Heh, had no idea that they'd pick up third order harmonics

[real cedar]

They are filtered but but amplitrons and klystron tubes can amp a lot of tiny stuff

Francis Peak posses an L band and an S band and a Type S military transponder station
Promontory Point peak posses a nexrad Doppler radar

The airport posses a short range solid state S band air search radar. All of these do not like us violating power limits so if anything I don't mind commandeering public lands but pissing off the feds is bad for my health 🤣

A good reason to filter all our devices is once again we are dropping our out of band harmonics prebroadcast which is a much better thing to do (increase receive side sensitivity) than more powee

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-more-power-power-power-up-spongebob-squarepants-gif-22777710

For all 24 dBm and lesser devices like rak and heltec
https://gpio.com/products/915-mhz-ism-band-pass-bandpass-filter-with-26-mhz-bandwidth

Cheap. Effective. Don't burn it out 😆 like jacob

[quasi surge]

Alas, you have to pile on some adapters and stack up some losses/additional cash to make that work in a typical meshtastic node.

[real cedar]

I already have multiple times it's really easy. 😆

[quasi surge]

i-pex to male SMA and then male SMA->RP-SMA?

[keen glen]

1W module w/ a filter for the Nebra it is then 😂

[leaden crow]

Not sure why you'd want RP-SMA on the end? For me that's usually N-connector. I used these for my node with Acasom.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00COX9MTG
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9RXN26M

[quasi surge]

most of the antennas I have are RP-SMA male

[real cedar]

I usually do an N bulk head to sma.. then filter.. then sma to my device on routers

for clients just sma the whole way

no need for rp sma when you have good antennas

[leaden crow]

GPIO labs shipping is expensive. It is nice they are compact, but it ends up being 60-70% the cost of an Acasom or Callboost.

[prisma saddle]

yup! 👍

[leaden crow]

I must be blind. I don't know how I missed this:
#1197577977781821541 message
That's (20) for $13. I thought it was $13/ea. I just bought them. I'm going to make my own GPIO Labs Dagronslayer Labs filters.

[prisma saddle]

how would that work?

[leaden crow]

Well you could spin up a little board, but I'm going to cut the cable and splice the filter right inline. Less shit in my signal path.
@real cedar tell me how bad my idea is radio expert

[real cedar]

Not as awful as you may think tbch 😆 as long as you put just the right amount of solder onto that ipex.. you actually might get away with it at the cost of some reflections but I wouldn't recommend it. Ipex is hard to solder to an input pin 😆🤣

[real cedar]

Those can work well too but a lot of work for me 😆

[leaden crow]

I'm not going to touch the Ipex end. I'm going to buy an Ipex > N cable, cut it it in the middle, strip the conductors, solder them directly to filter. solder shield to the ground on filter (both sides). probaby pot it in something

[real cedar]

Acasoms are even more expensive now due to tariffs and duties :/ I can't even get mine through I gave up

[real cedar]

That works

It won't be as awful as you think just make sure it's a good clean solder line. If I were you I'd use paste and heat it

Far more controllable

[leaden crow]

I don't know if it's always this price, but the Callboost is cheap on Aliexpress rn. According to nullrouten it is better than the Acasom.

[umbral ice]

I bought a call boost and it didn’t seem to work for me very well. Maybe I got a bum one. There is always the airframes?

[leaden crow]

Ah, that sucks. Isn't there a wait on the airframes? like sold in batches?

[real cedar]

Honestly I thought about making a taoglass filter board for the raks. As tiny as I could get it with oshpark.. lol.. slam sma's on the end and call it good

Same filter y'all use for the ebyte hats

[leaden crow]

I didn't try to squint at the datasheets and figure anything out, but guy who made the nebra hat said the murata are better. The do have slightly lower insertion loss. They are also way less than the Taoglas if you buy 20 from that ebay auction (under $1/ea)

[real cedar]

But now I'm tempted to cheat. Make a diode detector power meter and an active feed back loop on an LNA for cheap. Bidirection control of input and output power based on the decide. Get it right up there to 30 db conducted and feed back a strong return path that's filtered haha

They do. They are better filters

Taoglass is just a way more convenient preplaceable package by oshy

Could cheapily turn all raks into 1 watt filtered devices probably

[leaden crow]

Just looking, they are almost exactly the same footprint. When I get them, I'll see if I can put one on the nebra board we have.

[leaden crow]

Do it. I'll buy a bunch and solve my Wasatch Crest node problems.

[real cedar]

Yeah I've been thinking of getting into kicad lately just because of our other conversation regarding the lto batteries

That seems to be an increasing interest for people

I was thinking of taking a traditional Texas instruments lithium ion mppt charger chip and then just tuning its voltage curve for lto via it's set bias pins

Slapping one together and see how it does

The goal would be the size and shape of the adafruit version

Which is limited to lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate

[leaden crow]

Man, I tried kicad with the last board I designed and then gave up quick and went back to easyeda.

[real cedar]

I would like to know the highest voltage pv panel everyone would like to use

[real cedar]

Mines well tuned and has been for years. I'd cry if I lost the configs

[leaden crow]

I had a hard time finding parts and I didn't want to model them myself. I think you can find anything in easyeda.

[real cedar]

EasyEDA uses the same exact back end. I'm not joking.almost all of the parts are modeled in some sort of spice language and it's not hard to convert them over and you have chat GPT now which makes it even easier and you don't need to be an engineer for that

Also in fairness to kicad it was pretty bad around the 6.0 time but it's gotten so much better

I've actually started to see it in professional spaces

[obsidian storm]

yes. dm me

[reef ridge]

The Nebra lives! How crap are the stock antennas? Should I go ahead and grab an Alfa before I mount it up?

[real cedar]

Very crap

Like 3.5 VSWR crap

Slap an Alfa or a zisor on it

Or a rokland 5.8 dB

Also while the wifi is cool to usefully use it over an extremely long distance you need a Yagi and must modify the output power to being it down to eirp limits. So it's not practical without a big ugly antenna.

[real cedar]

Femtofox universal mount bracket

[keen glen]

Something's weird in the meshtastic software, I've got a bunch of nodes listed with 'last heard' as Never

[ember torrent]

Give em time.

[keen glen]

I'm less concerned about the state of the nodes, and more interested in the why it would show that way. If I've received a packet with enough info to enumerate a node name, it should have at least a local timestamp on that, right?

[long crown]

I can trace route to the Wasatch crest nodes from Sandy pretty easily it seems! Nice work @leaden crow

[real cedar]

ABS fumes begone...

The Filtertron Jank v9001 3M edition is born

[vital hemlock]

Nothing like a skull splitting styrene headache 😄

[real cedar]

I don't get headaches from it I just feel high 🤣

[vital hemlock]

I dont get the headaches either, I usually just get light headed

but lots of folks get wrecked by them

[real cedar]

It's like gasoline for me.. it smells sweet and lovely. Same with dirt bike exhaust. But most people hate it haha

[prisma saddle]

found this. prob old news for you guys. do we want to be listed here? https://github.com/ShakataGaNai/awesome-meshtastic

found it after looking at bayme.sh site. cool url.

[real cedar]

@leaden crow this say it's supports LTO. Should I test that?
https://a.co/d/caJhpbr

I'm gonna build and test a 12V LTO pack and then try to charge it with that. If that works I might switch one of our chemistries to it on our routers and see how they hold up

[ember torrent]

Is thebadplace.org supposed to fill the telemetry hole left from using the Freq51 default channel?

[real cedar]

The bad place is the server that is collecting automated location broadcasts, neighbor info and so on from Freq51 being the main channel for that stuff

That said I seriously think all stationary clients should participate on that channel should someone wish to be on the map

The key thing we don't want are non stationary nodes to be submitting neighbor info as that would screw up a lot of stuff haha

I need to update the docs with everything we have been finding and discussing

[obsidian storm]

I think LAKE is down

Not sure if it's a power problem or otherwise

[prisma saddle]

oh dang, lightning poped it? ha ha hopefully not

@real cedar good if i PR a change to that "awesome" github site to add utah/freq51 ?

and the bayme.sh site has some good info on it i saw about setups and settings too. did not compare it to ours yet

Ya i dont even see lake on my foxy node. its been up for like 18 hours or so

I think that was talked about at one time, would be a great idea.

[leaden crow]

@obsidian storm did you try to order those murata filters? the ebay seller cancelled my order.

[real cedar]

Yeah you can

[real cedar]

That's been happening on a lot of intl orders on eBay. Most sellers don't even bother to communicate. They don't want to deal with tariffs and import duties. It's even more of a mess on the retail side

[ember torrent]

@obsidian storm you still have that chimney node-mount and wanna sell it?

[leaden crow]

Yeah, I have been lucky so far. I don't blame them. Wouldn't want him to lose money selling me stuff.

[obsidian storm]

heh.

I already sold it on ksl

[real cedar]

Yeah all the tariff business is garbage tbch inho it's not going to do much to help anyone if worse just harm

[real cedar]

Did FPR die in the t storms and Torrential rain @maiden wraith 😂

[prisma saddle]

same been trying to trace it all morning

[obsidian storm]

No. I figured it wouldn't be worth my time

[reef ridge]

FPR was my only link the the rest of the mesh. 😭

[real cedar]

Rofl then it probably died. What was the new setup batman. Did water have the chance to get in there. It was ultra windy and rainy haha

[keen glen]

I can't check since I'm in a void of coverage, but can anyone trace Lake Mountain router?

[leaden crow]

It's down too
#1197577977781821541 message
I can't trace it

[real cedar]

Give us some pics of the build. What lightning arrestor you used. How it's grounded etc. if we fried another we really need to solve it. Part of me suspects it's the amp. We don't need 1W there and if it's causing the issue a higher gain antenna + lightning arrestor and filter would probably be far better than more power. I suspect the amp is probably amplifying surges induced. My best guess

[real cedar]

Did we fry a second one 😂

[leaden crow]

That would be some terrible luck. Especially since the antenna, cable, grounding has already survived on Lake Mountain for ~2 years.

I wonder what the PoE setup is up there? I love that my UI PoE switches at work, I can just remote power cycle ports.

[keen glen]

I watched lightning hit Lake Mountain in a few places just now 🙃

[haughty moon]

How about a taller sacrificial lightning rod nearby the node

[real cedar]

Well that could just be that power got knocked out to the area

[prisma saddle]

hmm so need some sort of backup it would seem. .if we need this for emerg. and the power grid gets nocked out... 🙂

hmm power backup for a nebra...

[real cedar]

Nah go put a post up there at the very top. This is why I initially wanted to go with a ground wire off a metal box on a sch80 pipe that's painted to protect it from UV. Only because I realized we would want to discourage lightning from using the pole as a ground. My suspicion this time however is it might have gotten flooded out. But you'll have to tell us.

Amplifiers are by in large the most sensitive to lightning. It's why amps kinda suck even in professional installs because you need to be able to switch to dummy input during lightning storms

[real cedar]

That's kinda easy though on a nebra. Just have an additional box with a 25W panel, a 4s lion pack with some in parallel for additional capacity

Then just 12V pwm renogy charge controller it and voila

[prisma saddle]

oh.. ok 🙂

[ember torrent]

I got 4’ of spare copper grounding rod if FPR wants it.

[real cedar]

I can take over. If you want to give me the enclosure after this time. I'll probably set something up. I think I'll forget the amp. I mean think about it. What's different from yours and NPR and all the other nodes that survive. It's the amp

[ember torrent]

I guess i’m looking to get my temp data back from having Freq51 as the default. It aint on thebadplace.

[real cedar]

It's automatically broadcast only in slot 0

[ember torrent]

Right, which is Freq51 now. Where is that data going?

Lol, hardly matters without FPR. Back to my mesh-hole.

[obsidian storm]

The PoE setup is just a standard Ubiquiti Poe injector

I'm going to check if the whole site is down or if it's just the node

NVM. LAKE is back

It must just be a power outage. I was told that UPSes just die up there

But maybe the right kind of UPS would be able to withstand the power & temp fluctuations

[leaden crow]

Most UPS suck until you get to datacenter hardware. My work had a Rackmount APC with 2 expansion batteries. (6U total). Of course all the batteries were toast after ~3 years. I got a quote for just the replacement batteries and it was $2k.
So instead I spent the $2k on this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZV74HRD
and 400Ah of LFP batteries.

Same thing with heated LFP batteries would probably be perfect in that shack.

[obsidian storm]

Yeah. I'm not spending $2,000 to keep LAKE online a couple times a year

[leaden crow]

lol. I wasn't implying you. suggest it to the ham radio guys. they have to have some sort of budget for that place?

[obsidian storm]

I was thinking maybe of adding a lower end LiFePO4 ups. See how that handles

[real cedar]

Well. Ceresia is the only router up north again. Sorry ogden 😂

[leaden crow]

Yeah, especially if you could remove the inverter and just run it off a 12v charge controller. It'd be way less expensive. That would remove the PoE from the equation though.

[real cedar]

At this point I have some doubts about the heltec too hahaha

[real cedar]

Literally a solar panel. 4s3p lion.. renogy pwm charger. 12 V to the nebra haha

It's what I'm doing for promontory

Haha

It's jank but it will work for backup power

[pseudo kestrel]

RIP FPR
🙁

[ember torrent]

Why not stick your sign node on your roof?

[pseudo kestrel]

rental + no ladder + there's a tree that screws with solar potential 💔

(and I haven't made the sign thing yet, need to get parts)

[ember torrent]

Good to know. I figured you were sourcing parts.

[vital hemlock]

It’s an issue with mesh-view right now. Their last update broke some of the packet types. Hopefully they’ll fix soon.

[real cedar]

Oh FPR is so dead lmao .. I was out getting mail just now and saw a bolt hit it's exact neighborhood up there

🤣

[real cedar]

Its thunder was loud even down here tbch

[prisma saddle]

Ah dang. there was so much more lightning at 2/3/4am too.

def a test for all the mountain nodes.. lol

[ember torrent]

Ah, okay.

[reef ridge]

Thinking about my options now that FPR is down. Ceresia is almost exactly 10 miles away, I wonder if I can make contact with a yagi. GPS says it's technically 400 feet higher in elevation, but I'm not sure how useful that is in application.

[real cedar]

Rofl I was awake. I think @maiden wraith is onto something about the structure. See the radar station next to it has a counterpoise grounding system. So lightning is unlikely to strike it and damage stuff but I'm pretty sure that weeee tower just gets smacked constantly.

Maybe consider putting an ABS small diameter pipe on one of the tall sister peaks drive in a grounding stake and wire.. ground the lightning arrestor and plastidip the entire antenna feed to the box over the wire 😂. Then ground the metal box and 3d print some esd safe petg box to mount inside the metal box. That would be my next try. Also maybe use a rak. All my raks on mountains have survived lightning in plastic boxes

[prisma saddle]

yup was mega loud

[real cedar]

It was amazing 😆

I checked my other nodes they all survived the night haha so yay

[leaden crow]

Can anyone reach NPR? I think it might be down. I can't reach it from dsr1 or dsr2. None of these have seen it since 6am:
mesh.thebadplace.org: 5:52:42 AM - 08-28-2025
slcmesh.rem-labs.dev: 2025-08-28 06:00:13
Meshbook: Aug 28, 2025, 05:52:42 AM

[real cedar]

Down

It's time to go up there. It's getting cold up there. It's also possible it was removed by summer crews. Who knows. This is about the time that tower would be services similar to Farnsworth

[leaden crow]

I'm a little worried it took out WC2 also. rem-labs heard from WC1 a couple of hours ago, but WC2 is radio silence. It could just have worse connectivity to the valley now. I just got a new antenna for it yesterday, so I'll take a spare xiao up there next weekend.

[real cedar]

I am going to redesign NPR with a custom enclosure
https://www.printables.com/model/655393-customizible-outdoor-electrical-box/files

Several of them that I can mount inside one of the home depot 6x6x4 nemas

Will do lightning protection of all the lines. WIll do a filter. Considering using the rpi zero and ebyte hat and lots of batteries. DC line protectors on the solar panel input. If I arrest the hole thing. surround it in polycarbonate.. mount it in a grounded metal case .. thats about as much as we can do right?

Im thinking of making compact boxes for each by inlaying a mount in the slicer

do it quick and easy

same with the batteries. They can sit in there own plastic compartment. Maybe if we step up our boxes and protections they can be pretty set and forget

its router infra after all.

not every box

@obsidian storm do you have a working bbs setup. I will want to put it on the new NPR if I go rpi

[obsidian storm]

I have been sick the last 2 days and did not feel up to working on anything beyond the bare minium.

[real cedar]

ahh man. I hope you feel better

[real cedar]

it looks like bbs link just runs off of node id. If I stop by the space ill configure meshing around and everything on a clean slate and just input the other nodes I expect to have meshing around

[umbral ice]

I'll have my IDs ready by tonight so that we can preempt them, though I'm wondering if we even need to whitelist. though the inclusion of a blacklist implies that it will forward to any nodes that aren't blacklisted, so i'm unsure about the purpose of a whitelist

[haughty moon]

How are the mountain top nodes powered? Could a surge have came from the power source?

[real cedar]

most of them are solar powered. surge can come from any incoming line

[haughty moon]

right. I was wondering if it could have been the shack power or something

[obsidian storm]

only LAKE has shack power

and LAKE still lives 😄

[real cedar]

Well lake is properly grounded

[umbral ice]

Minus the BBS configs, introducing MHR (Mount Harrison Router). Pole gets hose clamped to the post that’s on the building. Might give an extra foot or two. I’ll bring a tape measure to get exact height AGL

Panel is 61~ degrees. 3s8p battery pack of 5000 mah 21700s

[reef ridge]

What's inside, a RAK?

[umbral ice]

Femtofox and an Acasom filter

25w18v panel

8db rokland antenna. It might have been able to hit FPR 🪦😭

[prisma saddle]

awesome ! excited to eventually see it on the list.

[prisma saddle]

no npr from herriman or fpr.

[prisma saddle]

and awesome box. i have the same one. what panel is that?

[umbral ice]

https://a.co/d/4PjxqDx

I have a couple more of them and a couple 10w ones. Running into a Renogy 10a wanderer

Mainly have been using them for lifepo4s, but with the right settings it does my 3s pack just fine

[obsidian storm]

I updated POTM to a router to fill in for NPR

[leaden crow]

Looks like NPR is back. I just got a traceroute back from it.

[prisma saddle]

oh that’s the one i ha ve cool.

[prisma saddle]

ice.

nice.

yup.

[real cedar]

Fuck yeah hey it's just based on node ID right?

I can give you the node IDs of the currently active BBS nodes so they are in the config

DM me what you need. I'll gather the data for ya bud

[umbral ice]

Yeah, my only other thought is the frequency of the links and the channels. I think we need to make sure that channel 8 is synced up across them and to see if we can change how often they sync up. currently according to the github it's every other day. Not sure if that is frequently enough or not.

I'm doing some testing to understand it better before i got to bed tonight

[real cedar]

Wdym ch 8?

[umbral ice]

So, to find peers, it designates a channeli guess. the code in the mesh_bot.py is:

schedule.every(2).days.at("10:00").do(lambda: send_message("bbslink MeshBot looking for peers", 8, 0, 1))```

so they've got to have a shared channel to find each other

but thats looking for peers, and I'm not sure how often it syncs up

[real cedar]

Send your channel config to me in dm

I'll throw you node names

We will get fpr restored 🤣

I'll pony up and put a nebra on promontory. God that's the one I've dreaded

Bush whacking up diamondback territory

[umbral ice]

wear thick boots 😛

[real cedar]

Yeah I probably am going to

I have to go when the storms die down

Even an isolated t storm off the lake when I'm holding a metal pole could end very poorly

[umbral ice]

yeah probably for the best. Don't get your self dead for the sake of meshtastic lmao

[umbral ice]

sent

[real cedar]

I would start a wild fire 🤣

I knew I'd burn down the state some time

[pseudo kestrel]

I'm curious as heck to hear how it came back. or why it went away for a bit

[leaden crow]

I think it's still got problems. dsr2 is completely deaf without FPR or NPR, so it's super obvious to me when it's down.
meshbook, remlabs, thebadplace none of them have seen NPR since ~9:38PM last night.

[leaden crow]

I still think something is up with it. I normally get direct traces from NPR. I've tried a few this morning and they've all failed. (other traces today have succeeded)

that is some crazy routing you got on that trace

[obsidian storm]

It's AMAZING that LAKE can go directly to your house @pseudo kestrel

[pseudo kestrel]

especially with what side of the house it's on!

[real cedar]

I mean the peaks high enough. 😆. Not surprised at all. Barring curvature you could probably get 100s of miles in open air if your high enough and even more so with directional. Wanna strap some mesh nodes to weather balloons and ask the FAA for permission to launch and test 🤣

You need very little power to communicate. The reason being that artificial signals are very easily distinguishable from nature. That was probably one of my favorite probability heavy classes in university. Stochastics, estimation, and detection theory.

https://www.mwrf.com/technologies/communications/wireless/article/21273819/microwaves-rf-the-lorawan-distance-world-record-now-over-1300-kilometers

I'm really not joking. They used the Lora preset of essentially long slow

That's far more impressive given salt water was the main component of attenuation

When an em signal travels over salt water just like 60 Hz AC.. the ground sinks.. the salt water is a weak dielectric but also conducts so it's a gigantic capacitor. Easily attenuates signals though if low enough in frequency you can skip it across the water or even lower you can pass through the water (ELF)

[quasi surge]

NPR is back again

[obsidian storm]

This is the best nebra guide I've seen so far

https://casper.im/Recycling-Old-Crypto-Miners/

[prisma saddle]

cool. i’ll read through that. how is their hat compared to the wehopper one?

[reef ridge]

Looks like they're using the WeHooper hat.

They list NebraHat with a source of Discord on the BOM.

And in the second half they just gut the whole thing and slap a wisblock in it for a solar option, lol.

[pseudo kestrel]

I only have access to BezosMart at the moment, do you think this will work? https://a.co/d/gS1fVxG

[real cedar]

your bettter off with these
https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Charger-Lithium-Application-Charging/dp/B082F7X8WS/ref=sr_1_10?crid=2KJ52OCMWW3KD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.49ldqop5Ee_AGPj1RXgdavN5VohzqyADOpoSIHUCdOmHeFfyfdqiQ837jR2HD_5ChW8MG7Xk9n-aOLY2iv96WlycMxbHX71CqEDuE-cglV6_lVb_BzaX97iKVVaHQqmFlyun6F3Vtqq4hr6qd8T0b5ElhoQ0YDM3UgeaJNxL0MhFaIjQRbnJZUMI5BOPiyNKG48HIWR1XHrFF5ix28Kl_8NJhIxbMOW8K29H0-hwbNU.iZgTifezJlaMFAuFu56I6oahqk8i2b42P30I2DFTXdM&dib_tag=se&keywords=CN3791+Solar+Chargers&qid=1756511439&sprefix=cn3791+solar+chargers%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-10#averageCustomerReviewsAnchor

also desolder the led's and watch your polarity

[pseudo kestrel]

Are the LEDS really that bad? O_o

(and thank you very much for the recommendation)

[real cedar]

youll never need the leds

so yeah kinda useless waste

[pseudo kestrel]

Same general setup as before it looks like, diode protect the solar inputs run it into solar in, then run "system out" to the battery pack input, if I understand correctly?

[real cedar]

Yeah. The diodes help because they prevent back feeding the panel at night

[real cedar]

ahh yeah boys
My slicer has something cool and ive been getting ai to find me some materials on it

TPMS-FK infill

https://xyzdims.com/2023/02/09/3d-printing-parametric-generative-3d-infill-geometries/#:~:text=a small plate:-,Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS),have proven hard to parametrise

https://github.com/NanashiTheNameless/OrcaSlicer

In additional to bricklayers, overlapping (interleaved layers) and all the other improvements in the up to date fork.. I got some epic infill control

printing one right now for a battery casing. This could reach the strength I want it to have

[real cedar]

Holy shit
https://antennatestlab.com/3dprinting

I wonder if one could 3d print a dipole

Using this method

[reef ridge]

What is this, an improvement on strength/material used ratio? It's cool, but I don't see how it'll make prints stronger than just a solid infill.

[real cedar]

So the idea behind staggered perimeters and walls is that you interlace the z layers so they are shifted instead of butting against one another. Add a little over extrusion and you have far better layer adhesion. CNC kitchen did all the work testing it
https://youtu.be/dDgA51zdfLc?si=9c3kD4V0ArRfxSkL

Now when I add the infill

Now I have strong walls and a super strong infill that's good at absorbing shock

So let's say a solar panel gets a foot of slough that smacks it. The material is much less likely to give on impact given this type of infill

[reef ridge]

Less likely than solid infill? Looks like in the paper they mostly compared TPMS to the usual gyroid infill.

[real cedar]

CNCkitch proved that solid infill rarely helps. He did 100% runs lol.

Your wasting a lot of material and like many things it's more about structure than being completely solid

[reef ridge]

The walls do all the heavy lifting, but solid infill definitely helps depending on the direction of whatever force is expected to act upon the print.

[real cedar]

It's more about the minimum material needed to achieve the desired strength. Solid fill is like throwing a jack hammer at a nail tbch

[reef ridge]

I'm really interested in what this guy is doing, non planar printing really solves a lot of the annoying shear force issues that printed things have.
https://youtu.be/M51bMMVWbC8?si=OFOa2AkCe81-Xmn9

[reef ridge]

With how cheap filament is overkill isn't bad! When I was printing Glock frames I printed solid infill at about 30 degrees to reduce shear forces. I let other people experiment with lower infill, lol.

[real cedar]

Well that's a use case where I'd be experimenting with other materials not just simply infill 😂. PET-CF and GF and PAHT-CF seem to be my new favorites but those are expensive so I definitely like knowing what infill is best

PETG without the glycol and with carbon fiber. It's extremely strong just more difficult to print with the average printer hardware

[umbral ice]

Mt Harrison is up

None of the antennas on the other side of that pile are in use

[obsidian storm]

I'm going to connect to lake mountian and see if it sees you.

Nothing yet.

[umbral ice]

Without FPR or Prom point it might not quite be there yet

[obsidian storm]

Yeah, LAKE was our only hope without those.

[umbral ice]

I am about 18-20 ft off the ground. Antenna has clear LOS to the south

[prisma saddle]

dang that all looks awesome!

[umbral ice]

For reference

[prisma saddle]

well after a month my node at the cabin still works. going to investigate the mountain i need to put one one to connect to lake.

most prof mounting job.

[ember torrent]

Throw a motion sensor on that beach?

[prisma saddle]

i have a ring camera on it basically. haha

dang just tried to get up to this https://maps.app.goo.gl/LRyFsPVjYyDFxULS9?g_st=ipc fenced off. @real cedar looks like i hiking it sometime or reaching out to who owns.

[real cedar]

Oooff yeah there's a lot of private land out here. So different from Idaho and Colorado.

Kinda makes me dislike this place more than other mountain states I've been but the skiing keeps me here 🤣

[prisma saddle]

haha ya.

[leaden crow]

UT has more public land that either ID or CO. Significantly more than CO.
https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111

[real cedar]

It might but Idaho has much nicer public lands. A lot of UTs public land is land absolutely nobody wants like deserts and salty basins. I never remember having to worry about hiking a peak in Idaho and being concerned about private land. Like the only place I had to worry about it was in the desolate bruneau-jarbige area. Thankfully Mike lee lost his bid to sell public lands. He's earned enough scorn from me to not get a vote from me again 😆 I personally have zero interest in selling the lands as they would only go to rich types and get closed off and turn into some big development. I was against Wasatch peaks private resort as well

Actually there's a second one but I know the owner. Elkhorn Peak near Malad. He's the former CEO of my last company. I thought about asking him if I could use it for a meshtastic node. He's super into radio

[prisma saddle]

anyone hungry?

followed them around for 20 min. was about 15 of them.

[umbral ice]

I’m gonna need my yagi soon and to update my other router tomorrow lol. Can’t quite hit MHR from my house lmao

Actually, I’m just gonna upgrade ISR to a g2 I think

[reef ridge]

Oh yeah, it's all coming together.

Now it just needs to go up.

[leaden crow]

You should get an SMA > N cable. If you use the ipex on the Ebyte module like that, your signal path is not through the Taoglas filter.
You can just get an SMA-RP adapter and use the cable that came with the Nebra for the wifi adapter. That's what I did.

[reef ridge]

Thanks for the heads-up!

I'm glad I took a picture first to make sure I wasn't doing something dumb. 😂

[leaden crow]

I was just thinking. If you bought that hat from bashNinja, I think he ordered RP-SMA connectors, so you wouldn't even need the adapter.

[reef ridge]

I didn't think to ask, the GitHub page just said SMA support, so I thought it was optional. It's a two hour round trip though, so I'm not keen to go back for one!

[leaden crow]

Also, be careful when you unthread those N-connectors from the case. If the cable can't spin freely while the connector turns, it can really easily break the center conductor on those cables. I thought I was being careful and still broke one. It's doubly bad if you don't notice the center conductor is broken, you'll esentially not have an antenna connected and will probably toast your E22 module.

[reef ridge]

I already took it out, I'll hook it up to my computer and check with the wifi dongle. If I see the neighbor's Wi-Fi I'll assume it's still good.

[leaden crow]

If you've got a multimeter, it's pretty easy to just do a continuity test. although probing the center pin of an ipex can be a little tricky.

[reef ridge]

That's a better idea, I'll do that too.

[reef ridge]

Alright! Multimeter says we're GTG.

[prisma saddle]

eh not a good spot at least to talk to lake..

[real cedar]

There have been many attempt. The issue isn't slicer math it's human laziness. Reality is we had conical slicing before this and it would be extra nice if we could get suitable non planar slicer geometry to be mainstream as I'm building a cylindrical 4 axis core R theta printer soon

And I'd like something to be out there as a basis

[umbral ice]

Fresh EVE 50Es are on sale

[prisma saddle]

these any good?

[umbral ice]

They're running MHR. Haven't done any real stress tests of them tho

[obsidian storm]

Did you take out the original SD card and put in a custom one?

[reef ridge]

Yes, is that not good for some reason?

It had the weird looking emmc card in it, I figured an SD would be okay and it booted fine.

[obsidian storm]

Should be fine.

But the emmc card will last longer

[real cedar]

EVEs are pretty well known in the ebike community

They are basically rebranded rechem'd samsung 50Es

[leaden crow]

You should use the emmc card. It's better than an sd card.
The embedded flash management software or FTL(Flash Transition Layer) of eMMC manages Wear Leveling, Bad Block Management and ECC

[reef ridge]

Thanks, I'll go ahead and flash the EMMC card then.

[real cedar]

Are they sure those are truly emmc?

Or are they just pSLC disguised as emmc 😂

Known to happen tbch

Because the smallest known microSD to eMMC interface uses BGA and the hobbyist grade and cost stuff which the Nebras are consumer grade ... uses big stuff like above.

I some how want to investigate now who's got a thread on it

Part of me just doubts they managed to pack that into a module that size idk

Like there's one used on a pi form factor abc that allows it to be upgraded

Even without the Zif sockets.. the modules are usually large

[reef ridge]

The guy who designed the Nebra is in the main Nebra thread, maybe you could ask him.

[real cedar]

I'd love to know cuz that's a stupidly small form factor for them. If so impressive.. also very expensive

@reef ridge the infill I was talking about with bricklaying and staggered seams

Wiggle wiggle wiggle

It will be cooler soon once a few more layers get laid down and some interleaving occurs

[prisma saddle]

one of my nebra emmc is toast. :(. DOA.

[leaden crow]

Yes. I linked to the datasheet of the module that was on my Nebra card in my last post.
klmbg2jetd-b041
So unless they got a counterfeit module.. It also writes faster than any sd card I've ever had.

[reef ridge]

Nice, you're using Orca, right? I haven't tried it yet, but Cura has been pissing me off lately.

[leaden crow]

That sucks. I wish I could buy more of these without buying a whole Nebra. I'd use them in more of my rpi projects.

[reef ridge]

They got mystery meat ones on AliExpress if you're brave enough to try.

[obsidian storm]

They're on Amazon too

https://a.co/d/aaFC6GM

But probably not any better than AliExpress

[real cedar]

They are slower than most of my UHS class Is and V30s is more why I asked. It does look like that's a Samsung emmc chip yeah. "KLM8G2JETD" = Samsung part number for an 8 GB eMMC 5.0 NAND+controller package (BGA). Variants of this same family exist in 16 GB, 32 GB, etc. it's the controller that makes the difference on the NANDs wear leveling. I'm surprised. The controller being built into the singular chip module

[reef ridge]

First attempt at printing ASA on an Ender 3. It did not go well, but it could be worse. I think I just need to slow it way down. The bricklayers are cool though. Anyone else print ASA and have tips? My PLA T114 enclosures melted in the car.

[dawn monolith]

Greetings, Utah Meshers!

[obsidian storm]

You have to have it in a heated enclosure

[obsidian storm]

Hello!

[reef ridge]

I think I can get away with not having one, just need to dial it in. Second one came out better.

[reef ridge]

Welcome, more mesh is more better!

[dawn monolith]

Thank you! I've got 3 Heltec V3 nodes that I just put online. One of them will be stationary with a roof-mounted antenna near the city offices for St. George.

[reef ridge]

How's the mesh down there? Is everyone on LF20 still?

[leaden crow]

Haha, that's like the cost of a Nebra for the EMMC card. Maybe I should buy more Nebras?

[umbral ice]

Good news! I managed to get a connection to MHR from my house with nothing outside. I reckon once I put my roof node back up I’ll be in better shape

[reef ridge]

Nebra does come with a pi already. 🤔

[leaden crow]

Yeah, it's an amazing deal for the pi, enclosure and other stuff included. I just don't have infinite storage. I don't want to buy a whole bunch of stuff for projects I haven't conceived yet.

[prisma saddle]

yup. for sure.

[prisma saddle]

i printed asa few months ago. used my abs profile and adjusted temps. worked great. mine is e3 v2.

[prisma saddle]

nice. ya mine is in a cheap fabric enclosure

[prisma saddle]

hi there!!

[prisma saddle]

very cool. i’d like to get reach down there. MIL has house there. so will be good

[dawn monolith]

Not sure to be honest. I only personally know of 1 other person that even has a node - one of the Muzi Works R1 devices.

I have added the 51chat 'channel' to my devices, but didn't get a response to my message.

[reef ridge]

Yeah, it's kinda sparse up here too. Most of the activity is in the Main Salt Lake metro area, both on LF20 and LF51.

[vital hemlock]

We have a few lurkers on here from the cedar city area. They might pop up, since it’s being mentioned.

[quasi surge]

Something is still borked with meshview/neighborinfo

I wonder if my MQTT gateway is set up correctly -- is there an easy way to check from the broker if a node is posting packets?

Okay, peeking at the broker traffic, it seems like the docs might be wrong -- they claim the correct topic is msh/US/UT, but most of the nodes I'm seeing posting packets are under msh... cc @vital hemlock

Oh, and maybe meshview doesn't have the keys to decrypt Freq51 packets, since they're being posted in encrypted form?

[vital hemlock]

There is no official way to do it. The way that meshtastic set up “their “server, by region. This is my server, so we just subscribe directly to MSH.

[quasi surge]

Right, I'm saying that the freq51.net docs that refer to your server have the wrong topic for what your infra expects 😛

Which would explain why my packets don't appear to be reflected in meshview

[vital hemlock]

Yes, it does not have access to 51, yet. Most folks are on LongFast still, I have a hope they’ll support two channel keys #soon

[quasi surge]

Ah, okay; so the switch to Freq51 as primary to post NeighborInfo will not help populate neighbors on your meshview

Not unless we elected to post the packets as unencrypted

[vital hemlock]

Yes, you are correct 👍

[prisma saddle]

hmm. dunno. #1367293403867516979 message

[real cedar]

@leaden crow my bom cost is high due to PCB cost 🙁 probably about 21 bucks through oshpark 4 layer

It has to be 4 layer too

To make compact

For the LTO charger

Working on it still will do what I can

[real cedar]

Tariffs make this hard

[reef ridge]

Nebra deployed.

[quasi surge]

What antenna is that?

[reef ridge]

It's an Alfa, the one everyone suggested

[reef ridge]

I was hoping to hear some nodes down south by now, but didn't expect to. My expectations are currently being met. RIP FPR. 😭

[prisma saddle]

nice!!!

[white field]

1200 nodes, short turbo held up with some firmware tweaks

[prisma saddle]

wow awesome!!

[pseudo kestrel]

dang!

[reef ridge]

Was there a meshtastic meetup or something somewhere?

[quasi surge]

burning man

[reef ridge]

Oh, right. I thought burning man was an art festival/concert thing, I'm surprised there's so many nodes.

[ember torrent]

How’s the GPS performing on the H2?

[white field]

Meshtastic is the only reliable communication system there that doesn’t require a radio operator license. Cell service dies since there’s one tower for 80k people.

Meshtastic crushed it! I was getting 90%+ traceroute success rates. It was crazy.

My friend gifted me a 1w femptofox node that we used as one of the routers. 😇

[reef ridge]

No Starlink? I guess it would have the same issue as the cell towers. 🤔

[white field]

Yeah it kinda works, but not for keeping up with friends

We could track eachother on the map

It’s total fucking chaos and the most prominent landmarks are mobile sound stages or get burned throughout the week

Probably the wildest new thing:

This sound car had a 15’ x 8’ x 4” thick aluminum plate on the front. I think they either machined or cast it with 2-3” deep engravings 🤩. It was machined thru so those LEDs could be displayed on the front.

[keen glen]

Not sure yet, I've had it off mostly. I'll have to check it out and let you know.

[reef ridge]

Any of you guys use the web client? I'm testing it out on my Nebra. I can send messages via web client but it doesn't display any received messages.

[prisma saddle]

Nah, it does not work very well frrom what i have seen and tested on a few nodes. i like the contact app. tried that?

[ember torrent]

I thought the received messages went above the sent message, or something abnormal. Web client is better than ios for Neighbor Moduling.

[obsidian storm]

It works great for me. Do you have another device connected to it at the same time?

[prisma saddle]

Hmm somehow recovered my emmc that was dead.. deleted all partions off it via my work laptop, then did the same on my mac. and then recreated it.. works.. weird

[reef ridge]

No, just the Nebra. It's weird, I'd expect it just not work at all instead of just not displaying received messages. I've tested it with Firefox and Chromium. I know it's getting them because the CLI is working as expected.

[reef ridge]

Haven't heard of it, I'll check it out thanks.

[prisma saddle]

https://github.com/pdxlocations/contact

[leaden crow]

Maybe you already know this, but you have to have the web client or connect actively running to receive messages. meshtasticd doesn't work like the MCU based nodes that are always listening and cache all the messages until you open a client app that retrieves them. I prefer to leave connect running in either screen or tmux

[leaden crow]

Are pretty much all the personal nodes configured as client-mute? If so, how many routes were used to cover the event?

[reef ridge]

Yeah, I was SSH'd in and had it open on my console. I was watching the CLI on one monitor and had the web client open on the other. I'd send a test message via the android client and CLI would see it but the web client would be crickets.

I mean, there's a real possibility I misconfigured something I'm just not sure what.

[leaden crow]

This is expected, it can't handle 2 clients at once. One or neither of them will function well.

If you have web client open and you're trying to use the CLI at the same time. They are both clients.

[reef ridge]

Oh, I thought people were saying you can't have two nodes connected to one client! Well, the reason I was doing that was because the web client wasn't working to receive in the first place.

When I get home I'll try again to be sure.

[leaden crow]

If your web client wasn't receiving messages and you weren't using CLI at the same time, that may be another problem. It has usually worked for me, but I don't run the web client much. I prefer to use contact.

[prisma saddle]

eh nvm not fixed emmc.. just using a 64g samsung for now. i guess

[reef ridge]

What you need to do is buy another Nebra just for the EMMC.

[obsidian storm]

Sounds like this is the problem. 😄
You can only have a single client connected to the nebra at once. Web Client, App, Connect, etc. Only one at a time.
Glad that got cleared up.

[prisma saddle]

yup lol

[reef ridge]

I didn't think I was is the thing. 🤔 I'm under the impression that when you use the CLI it will connect to the meshtasticd, execute its task, then disconnect. Am I off base here?

[lilac shadow]

Random question had to re build my network and the long fast network says the key is deperciated , its still that AQ== key right?

[leaden crow]

You could ask for clarification in https://discord.com/channels/867578229534359593/871553765105348668 or https://discord.com/channels/867578229534359593/871553714782081024
My experience is that trying to run CLI traceroutes while the web client or connect are running are much less reliable. I always just assumed it was contention between the clients.

[obsidian storm]

That is correct.

It disconnects

So maybe this is something else.

I've seen some people forget and have multiple browser tabs open

or forget that a phone or tablet is automatically connecting

[prisma saddle]

@obsidian storm dang outdated already. newest dietpi img is trixie now. https://freq51.com/equipment/nebra-miner.html https://meshtastic.org/docs/software/linux/installation/

i can adjust that for you, unless you have more to add to it already

[ember torrent]

Just choose “Default” and it’ll populate the correct password.

[obsidian storm]

go ahead and update @prisma saddle

[prisma saddle]

ok sounds good ill work on that tonight

[prisma saddle]

ok freq51 added to https://github.com/ShakataGaNai/awesome-meshtastic

[reef ridge]

Contact is working great, and TUIs will never not be cool.

[leaden crow]

Man I hope they can keep the price low on these. I actually like the tiny keyboard on my OG cardputer better than the t-deck keyboard.
https://old.reddit.com/r/CardPuter/comments/1n6xiu6/update_first_look_at_cardputer_packaging_loragnss/

[frosty ocean]

I just start work on the client on CardPuter to connect Meshtastic via BLE.

[white field]

it was short_turbo, 31, 100% client, 4-hops, way reduced overhead using custom firmware. Only routers would retransmit certain packets like node-info.

3x 1w femptofox routers with cavity filters, unlimited node_db size so we could do true next hop routing. Routers were plugged into 120v power and had battery backups.

We had to fork the firmware so that we could do next-hop routing, but also broadcast location only on private channels.

nodes went up on these structures.

To be honest, I was shocked at how reliable client-client-client routing was. As an experiment (and to add to the chaos) on the busiest night out, @feeb put all the routers into client mode. 🙂

[leaden crow]

That's amazing. It's such a good opportunity for real world testing.

[white field]

Yeah, it was incredible. I think I was seeing 15 mile ranges on short_turbo while driving in.

I'm really excited to look at mesh stats over time for the event.

[leaden crow]

Yeah, I assume they got debug logs from the 3 Femtofoxes? I wonder how large those logs are?

[obsidian storm]

What do you mean by next hop routing here? What did that accomplish?

[real cedar]

Well clients supposed to be the kitchen sink mode. It will do everything. I would love to see a lot of those firmware tweaks make it into mainstream

[white field]

https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Ameshtastic%2Ffirmware+EVENT_MODE&type=code

Here's the compiler flag for the changes.

[prisma saddle]

@obsidian storm ight 2 PR for freq51. looks like @leaden crow had one too

[white field]

A lot of them are very sensible:

• no routers
• throttle position interval updates heavily
• 5min minimum interval for smart location
• hop limit clamping
• wont forward nonstandardPorts packets
• disable MQTT

^honestly, I think clients should never have MQTT enabled and nodes should have certain data throttled heavily in firmware.

Depending on other node's memory availability, maybe we could event setup nodes to stop rebroadcasting messages from nodes that originate too many packets per 1h/24h period.

[obsidian storm]

Done. And I set up notifications so that it lets me know about them next time

[prisma saddle]

thanks buddy

[thorn marsh]

New router up in Layton same guy who was causing extra router traffic on freq20. KR1P Layton Parkway. I first heard it at 7:40 and about every 15 minutes since. 🫩

[prisma saddle]

hmmm ya that’s not good.

router late. maybe won’t be horrible. but….

[thorn marsh]

Looks like he's changed it. Router late is way better.

[real cedar]

Hey @maiden wraith what's the status of FPR or recovery?

[real cedar]

He's a router late in a good spot tbch. We have no FPR. We will work out being a client later

[obsidian storm]

This is the one that's on the gas tower, right?

[real cedar]

I don't remember where it is but I know it's so high up it's basically got aur and npt directly in its sights

[obsidian storm]

can we get it added to : https://freq51.net/infrastructure.html ?

[thorn marsh]

Nicely done. He's also updated his firmware. Glad it wasn't in its final form.

[real cedar]

Yeah ask him on long fast

KR1P

[obsidian storm]

will do

[real cedar]

It really only helps us up here without fpr and promontory so I actually welcome it haha.

Ahhh it got hit with a fire?

[quasi surge]

"on the back burner"

other priorities took priority 😛

Also I dunno if it's worth putting my high node in Sugar House in the docs; it's semi-temporary/not ideal in the long term, but it works for now.

[real cedar]

Oh shit. Alright if the road is open all the way up I'll go park up there and walk out there. How's it fastened and stuff

[quasi surge]

(it's currently a ROUTER_LATE and I did get some questions about it; this is because while it does work as CLIENT, some hops tend to get eaten by closer fixed CLIENT nodes and traceroutes are coming back longer, vs. always having it rebroadcast with it's superior LOS)

[real cedar]

It's okay to allow extra hops. The client is the kitchen sink mode. It's the best for most things

[quasi surge]

It's on one of the very tall apartment buildings in SH, but ideally there would be something up above the U or Parleys to punch through all the buildings here

[quasi surge]

No, I mean I couldn't traceroute e.g. layton because we'd max out 7 hops with two of them just getting to the high node 😛

[real cedar]

We are planning to put a router on olympus

[quasi surge]

olympus would solve the SH black hole problem, yeah

[real cedar]

Oh it would solve all the problems on that side of the 15

[quasi surge]

Things are dense enough here that fixed CLIENTs tend not to realize that there is a high node better suited to rebroadcast than them

[real cedar]

The question is can I make it storm hardened and compact

My buddy Xandor has the parts

[quasi surge]

some of the turnkey options are quite mature -- the seeed and rak prebuilt units look quite good actually

[real cedar]

So being the kitchen sink. Can do

[quasi surge]

but honestly a waterproof project box is all you need if you have a weatherproof solar panel

I guess compact depends on what curve you're grading on 😛

[real cedar]

It's not that weather that's an issue.. Olympus is a magnet for lightning

[quasi surge]

I'm playing with the idea of a node built around a single 18650 for on-body use, using the xiao nrf52 as the base

[real cedar]

A gigantic unconformity of granite lmao

[quasi surge]

lightning arrestor and be lower than the other antennas up there? 😄

[real cedar]

That's the plan. Rock anchored. Grounded to the granite was the plan

Problem is how discrete and hard to reach can we make it. Most skilled climbers could get to it. At least skilled or more than me

🤣

And I free solo a lot

[quasi surge]

the ground strap will draw attention, but aren't there still trees up top?

anyway, mount wire would also be nice

[leaden crow]

You should look at Grandeur instead of Olympus.

Olympus is both a) a bitch to hike and b) super crowded.

[real cedar]

Grandeur is one of the hottest spots on strava

😆

[quasi surge]

I've only done olympus once and it was a bear

[real cedar]

Yeah Olympus sucks but I'm going to its lower bench and climbing down the cliff

Grandeurs LOS is not as good either :/

[leaden crow]

I haven't hiked either in 10 years, but I drive / ride past both the olympus parking and church fork parking almost weekly and olympus is a zoo. It's extremely crowded. Grandeur feel like a nice, easy hike in comparison (from church fork anyway, I've never hiked it from the west side).

[prisma saddle]

eh, i cant even trace LPR guess it is a NPR thing..

[real cedar]

Oh lol well see. I was just going to take a bike down the bst with a backpack. Find a place to double lock up with FAHGHETTABOUTIT (literally takes hours with bolt cutters or saws) bike locks and take the hike.. really I guess the move probably is while others aren't around. I'm not usually down to climb down at night but will for the fun and cause

[leaden crow]

If you're not talking about the summit, yeah probably some great locations up on the bench. Unfortunately that section of BST does not connect North. It starts in an Olympus cove neighborhood with no parking and is not a very bike-able trail. https://www.trailforks.com/trails/bst-mount-olympus/

[real cedar]

I will back pack up it and depart the trails when necessary. It might be crowded but few people leave the trails. Which is sad cuz that's when you see the most wild life. Had a couple coyotes come in close one and a mountain lion. Was nice they didn't seem to find me to be a threat. I'll see if I can find those pics

[acoustic mason]

I am working on getting a rooftop solar node up in Orem. It's assembled but I need to get some time to put it on the roof. It's a Seede Studio SenseCAP Solar Node P1-Pro https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Solar-Node-P1-Pro-for-Meshtastic-LoRa-p-6412.html

The mounting hardware it comes with is meant for a 2" or larger antenna mast but non-penetrating roof mounts only have a 1.5" mast. I 3D printed an adapter for it which works perfectly. It will be weighted down by 2 16"x16" paving stones. The node is active right now but on my balcony (east facing) which is not optimal. I hope to get it on the roof shorty.

[obsidian storm]

You'll have to tell me how it works. The other person in Lehi is having issues and I'm curious if it's him or something else.

[acoustic mason]

What sort of issues is he having? Mine has been operating for a couple weeks, although I just assembled the mount in the last two days. Before that, it was using the antenna it came with.

BTW, it's long name is 'MEC Solar Base', set up as client and un-messageable at the moment (I may change that later).

[obsidian storm]

He couldn't send messages very far

[acoustic mason]

Ah. I think the problem is that there are only a handful of nodes in Utah county. However, I was able to message from work near the point of the mountain today, 17 miles away.

It's interesting though that I can't DM that far but I can send channel messages. I don't understand why channel messages get through but DMs don't.

[reef ridge]

Soldering for the first time, I think I've managed to do well so far but this last component is intimidating. Any of you do a surface mount with an iron before?

[void iris]

Just make sure it's centered, you will probably bridge some pins but you can easily just unbridge them. They're not as bad as they look

[quasi surge]

I like to drag with a small chisel

use flux

tack the corners down first

[reef ridge]

I haven't bridged any pads yet, so I haven't had to deal with it so far. 😂 I don't have any of those wick pads.

[quasi surge]

also use less solder 😛

[reef ridge]

Drag down the long side of the pad?

[quasi surge]

you've got about 3x as much as you need

[quasi surge]

from pin to pin

surface tension will pull solder to each pad and keep from bridging, if you use flux/not too much solder

[reef ridge]

Too much won't mess anything up I hope, just look ugly, but go light, got it. 👍

[leaden crow]

Too late, but I would prefer to solder the IC first. I think you'll manage, but sometimes large stuff (like that pot) make it awkward to get the soldering iron in there. The pot is through-hole, so it would be really easy to do last. Sometimes they give you order of operations. If not just think about what could be difficult before you start.

[reef ridge]

Yeah, I went with the easiest ones first so I'd hopefully be better at it by the time I got to the more difficult ones. But you're completely right that it would have been much easier to do the lower profile things first.

In any case, I catastrophically fucked up on the microcontroller. 😅

[reef ridge]

I don't think I'm gonna be able to save this one.

Maybe a smaller diameter solder would have helped and a different tip.

[obsidian storm]

You could bring it to the hackerspace and we could try to save it if you fail

It looks savable to me

[reef ridge]

It'd cost more in gas to get there than I paid for the kit! But it sounds like a fun thing to check out, when is hacker space?

[leaden crow]

Thurs evenings are the best. That can totally be fixed with some solder braid.

[prisma saddle]

as long as there is no magic smoke when you turn it on. all good!

[reef ridge]

Lol, you see the pins on the mc? Magic smoke will 100% leak out if I turn it on.

[reef ridge]

So tomorrow evening is good then?

I'm guessing 801labs is the right place, there seems to be a scheduled lockpicking event.

[leaden crow]

Yes. I can't go this week. I have some plague my daughter brought home from school. Even if bash isn't there tomorrow, I would be surprised if somebody isn't able to help.

If he's not going to be there tomorrow, join the 801 Labs discord and ask if someone could help tomorrow.

[reef ridge]

Can't go a month without my daughter getting some kind of illness either. 🙄
Thanks, I'll check out the Discord.

[obsidian storm]

I'll be there tomorrow

[reef ridge]

Cool, I'll check it out.

[prisma saddle]

soldering last part. the taoglas filter. bottom of it shows 2 solder points. but the board has 6. what am i missing?

[leaden crow]

The 4 large pads are all ground to the taoglas case
Defined on page 6:
https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/3/942/1/DBP.915.V.A.30.pdf

[prisma saddle]

thank you sir

first time 🙂

[reef ridge]

Nice job on the first try!

[prisma saddle]

ahh next one taoglas needs to be first. these are a beast

[prisma saddle]

pain in the butt when the sma connector is there already.. 🙁

[prisma saddle]

ugg might need to get a new filter for this one. i got too much solder in it.

[obsidian storm]

I think we can fix it. Bring it to my house or to the hacker space and we'll see what we can do

[reef ridge]

The hacker space was cool, somebody did end up helping me a bit.

[obsidian storm]

Shoot. I was here

[prisma saddle]

haha. you didn’t even know he was there?

[obsidian storm]

Nope

It's crowded today

[reef ridge]

You were? When?

I left at 7.

[prisma saddle]

one day when life is less busy. prob never happen. i’ll make it there.

i need to get me a smaller solder tip.

this stock one for my weller wes51 is a bit big for these.

[obsidian storm]

Ah. I arrived at 8PM.

[prisma saddle]

ordered some new tips, should be here today. Ill solder the other one with the new tip and fix the first later.

other than the filter all the rest i think is ok. sma from filter is off to get to the filter. so will put that back on after filter is fixed. lol. what a mess.

those with Nebras, any suggested settings than the defaults from @obsidian storm 's guide on the site? just for client mute for now. but will be on my roof later.

[obsidian storm]

Once it's on your roof, client is the right call

[prisma saddle]

right.

nothing else on these? or pretty much same as a normal client node.

intervals/etc.

[obsidian storm]

Yeah, just follow the defaults

[reef ridge]

I have no idea how I heard you, but there you are!

[prisma saddle]

hah my nebra? hmm can you trace it?

it is a 2w... (temporarily for science) but doubt that would still reach you.

had to be bouncing off something

[prisma saddle]

which node is yours?

[reef ridge]

My Nebra?

[prisma saddle]

which ever one saw mine

ya

im going to yell at it. see what happens

[reef ridge]

My handheld, MAG3. I don't think my signal can get out though. My car is parked in a "courtyard" surrounded by the all metal building, so it's essentially in a faraday cage at the moment.

[prisma saddle]

oh ha ha.

ok cool

[reef ridge]

I think if I'm getting hops from down south while in the parking lot a node on the roof here will do very well though.

Like a femtofox or something.

Or maybe someone with a client on the roof of their car is giving me false hope. 🙃

[prisma saddle]

hmm ya dont see it. what is its nodeid

[reef ridge]

I'm seeing lots of nodes but I can't trace route them from here, very annoying!

[prisma saddle]

darn ya, until fpr is back. 🙁

[reef ridge]

I wonder how accessible the FPR location is. I'd be willing to do it, but I don't have fancy hiking gear. I want it up before winter hits!

[prisma saddle]

i’m sure it will be. @maiden wraith was just busy this week. @real cedar might fix it. can’t recall.

dang i cant find my fish tape. running my cat5 for nebra roof. and my fish poles are too short. hmmm.

[reef ridge]

Cool, a drive and a mile hike doesn't sound bad.

Hiking and dragging a ladder with me sounds less cool!

[prisma saddle]

hike it on 8ft stilts ?

[reef ridge]

If there's a ledge I can reach I can just haul my ass up.

[prisma saddle]

no kitchen sink?

[reef ridge]

Sounds doable then, I'll begin gathering supplies.

[prisma saddle]

hahah.

@reef ridge tonight

[reef ridge]

I'll replace it, I thought it was destroyed?

If it's not destroyed I'd be happy to reset and keep the new node for a different location.

I can't think of any reasonable lightning strategy other than what you've already done.

[umbral ice]

Can you record it so we can observe him “hauling his ass up”? 🤣

[reef ridge]

It's what you expect, remove it, climb up, haul it up after.

[prisma saddle]

A few more for the road.

[umbral ice]

Take away all the ropes and strap a minibike to his back and that’s how I imagine @real cedar

[reef ridge]

Can't have the clap alert the rangers.

[prisma saddle]

I’m adding that just to make it funny seeming like something he would do even if the mountain was on fire he’d haul his butt up there.

[reef ridge]

100%, Ogden without mesh is a personal offense!

[prisma saddle]

ok last one

[real cedar]

Okay so your handling it then

Cuz I'd love that off my plate atm 😆 so I can figure out my route up promontory point.

[reef ridge]

Yeah, I'm more confident in my soldering ability. I'm thinking about ordering some Femtofox PCBs to assemble and put one up there so we could have more power without messing with an amp.

[real cedar]

You will need much more batteries and a much larger solar panel (30-35 W)

To survive storms on Francis peak

That said build it like a tank. Lightning has proven problematic

My other guess is I wonder how well the corroded tower is actually grounded lol

[real cedar]

Lightning is all about grounding, shielding and isolation.. if you isolate every potential line in. It's likely to survive. One unprotected is as good as none. Isolation can be 3d printed mounts or boxes that raise the parts from the outer chassis.

C6Cs wasp nest has been nuked. I left it on there though since it's inundated with poison but a great people deterrent

[real cedar]

Bringing an extra grounding rod and thick gauge wire with ring terminals on both ends that you can fasten to both sides to ground the tower to what is probably an ancient but still functional counter pose ground near the tower. I haven't asked Batman but I actually do wonder if the tower is ungrounded after it was stripped of normal use stuff. Sometimes the old copper is recovered and the tower is floating and that will most certainly for our devices because then it just turns into a gigantic antenna

If that becomes your plan I would suggest driving it below the ground until your grounding wires insulation is the only thing visible coming out of the ground. That way nobody goes oooo shiny copper. Swipe..

[reef ridge]

What do you mean by isolate every line in? Wouldn't we want the whole thing to be a self contained isolated unit? I thought we were talking about grounding the mast that it's bolted to.

[real cedar]

Solar panels are on the outside. They transmit electricity .. this is a path for lightning. Gps antenna is a path for lightning. Lora and ble antennas are paths for lightning. You should rf lightning arrestor all antenna lines that feed from anything on the outside or wall of the box

Somewhere someone has to have created DC line surge protectors

[reef ridge]

Oh, I see what you mean. Spacers inside the container to improve isolation, lighting arrester on each line that could act like/is an antenna to the mast, and from the mast a grounding line.

[reef ridge]

Why do you think it needs such a large panel? On the github page the high-end average consumption .4 watts.

[real cedar]

You have the complication that you're going to need to be able to charge a relatively decent sized battery pack in less time than you can afford if you were down lower. My fear on Francis is the sheer snow depth does reach the top of the tower by the way.. which means you need to account for having a partially shaded panel or snow-covered panel a good portion of the time. So having 35 W losing all of the inefficiencies that you would get in winter. So probably about 40% less. You would at least come out with a 20 to 25 W panel. And I asked in the femto Fox thread.. how many batteries should I size? And they said for a week of backup power for when you lose solar.. you will need 1 18650.. 3500 mah per day on average when transmitting on a relatively low usage Network. It gets worse as the usage goes up.

So say a storm comes through and for about 5 days you have cloud cover on the peak and you have snow covering your panel. So even when the sun does come out it's not as efficient. I'm just saying you might want that thing to survive the winter 😂. Especially if we can run a BBS on it

[umbral ice]

I built MHR under the premise of little to no sun for 2 weeks at a time. 432 total wh. MHR is a femto with a 25w solar panel.

[real cedar]

By the way, if you go around and find transmitter stations near the ski resort or various equipment, that's out there that's approved to be there. Most have 30 to 40 W panels and I don't imagine they're very high power equipment

[reef ridge]

AH, the snow, Guess I wasn't being conservative enough on the buffer.

[reef ridge]

This was where I was thinking, around a 20w panel with an 80wh bank of 18650s.

[umbral ice]

I did a 3s8p pack of 5000mah 21700s

[reef ridge]

What is 3s8p?

[umbral ice]

3 series of 8 parallel batteries. Comes out as a 12v battery.

[reef ridge]

Oh, describing the configuration of the bank, got it.

[umbral ice]

This was my build. I added an Ethernet bulkhead so I could plug in a network cable if I ever needed it. The Renogy is limited so that it won’t overcharge the pack, but using the USB load to power the fox. It’s sitting on the Acasom cavity filter. The pouch is just an attempt at another layer of safety. I’ve also got it sitting in the shade of the solar panel.

[reef ridge]

Is this the same one you posted a while back? This is more or less what I was planning on my head, including the Ethernet bulkhead.

[umbral ice]

Yeah it is

[reef ridge]

What is the thing with a blue LED?

[umbral ice]

USB ports tied directly to the battery in case the load ever kicks the bucket. If the battery tips too low the load shuts off, and it doesn’t come back up I was using it as a test to see how the battery charged from a lower voltage and just never pulled it out

I used to use it to power a G2 with a PD port lol

[prisma saddle]

So. 3 more nodes popped up today. got my dads roof node up. tallest thing in grantsville. it hits layton router so far.

would it be useful to have a router in tooele? i might be able to get the ham club there to put one on their 100foot tower.

i’ll be meeting with them on the 17th teaching meshtastic to them. prob at min do one with client role.

fun times.

[pallid isle]

Is it worth getting the t deck

I really don't see activities on the there anymore just alot of testing messages

[umbral ice]

I like it solely for the fact that I can use it without my phone

Also: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7051085

[reef ridge]

It depends on what you're goals are. In some places the mesh has a more active socialization component, especially the bigger ones. I think most of us here mostly like playing with the technology and chatting is secondary to that.

[real cedar]

Hmmmm. What if one used parts of the t-deck to create a filtered ebyte 1 watt in the same package.

Like with a femtofox instead 😂 or pi z 2w

[umbral ice]

Now that would be neat

[real cedar]

Oh wait here even better. The t-deck is an esp right?

Why not use a station g2s board

[umbral ice]

Shoot, just use the G2 and slap a full size touch screen with MUI on it

I imagine though, you’d have power issues if you wanted it pocketable.

[leaden crow]

I wouldn't. I find mine frustrating to use. I'm hoping the Cardputer Adv + hat is a better standalone device, but they sold out almost instantly. Also are apparently charging $30 for tariff + shipping.
I have the OG cardputer and it's a fun toy on it's own. You can run way more than Meshtastic on it, and I think Meshtastic will run from M5 launcher.

[reef ridge]

Does that cute little T-Lora Pager work for Meshtastic yet?

[reef ridge]

After a week, I'm a bit disappointed with the performance of my rooftop node. The standpipe I bolted it to is lower on the roof and I think the chimney it's nearby isn't helping either. I want to move it to the peak of the roof. Anybody do this yet? I want to buy a mount to put up but I don't want my roof to leak.

[prisma saddle]

had that same thought. i was told. just get silicon put it on the roof and sandwich it and the mount and on bolt holes. it won’t leak.

so. i’ll try sometime need to get mine above roof line. once wife lets me on the roof. lol.

[reef ridge]

Everyone says the proper way to do it is to go under the shingles, but that sounds terrible. 😅 I'll install a safety anchor so I can go up more regularly without worrying about falling.

[untold bobcat]

yes, since 2.7.6

[quasi surge]

#1202833898376138752 message

this is very interesting

[reef ridge]

Reducing the spread and bandwidth to improve performance. 🤔

[prisma saddle]

ah now that’s pretty much a masterpiece. makes a big difference to have a tiny pointy pen.

[leaden crow]

I don't think you need to worry that much about it leaking, roof sealants are pretty amazing. If you saw what a hack job most satellite / solar installers do..
I made this mast that bolted to one of the roof anchors the solar installers left on my friend's house. The anchor ended up being so flimys and poorly attached with nails, that I just built a new mast that used the nail holes from the anchor. Replaced it and used a ton of sealant.

My friend had to go reseal all of the other anchors on his roof. I'm surprised some of them didn't leak because they used so little sealant and they were just nailed on top of the shingles

[manic fractal]

I think the key it’s talking about is your public/private key, not the channel encryption key. They don’t do a good job of differentiating between the two or explaining that. They had a problem with the cryptography using the same keys in multiple nodes. So if you upgraded the firmware and it saw an old “bad” key then it forces you to change the encryption key. Just know that all of the nodes on the mesh will retain your old deprecated key until they update their node databases. They won’t recognize your node until they all update to the new key. I’ve been dealing with this for a few weeks. Changed my key. New nodes after the change would recognize my node but nodes pre my firmware upgrade/new public key wouldn’t recognize it presumably because they retained the old public key in their nodeDB. Haven’t really seen this explained well in the documentation. It might be a good idea to manually delete nodeDBs and let them rebuild every so often until all of the nodes have updated and the crypto problem isn’t an issue any more. I wish there was some in app function to alert the mesh as a whole to a new key but that’s probably not advisable from a crypto standpoint.

[reef ridge]

Very reassuring, thanks. 👍

[prisma saddle]

Hmm feel like the mesh is diminishing. prob cause there is so much on it now. 🙁

[reef ridge]

What do you mean by that?

[prisma saddle]

maybe nothing or my settings. or just npr crapping out further. just having issues tracing routers. etc.

[leaden crow]

NPR has definitely been spotty for me. I'm not sure it would make any difference to you, but my roof node was off all day for upgrades (switched to filtered Nebra hat and added lightning arrester).

[prisma saddle]

mine is filtered. prob it
e to pull it down w and check it all. been a month or so up there. eventually will be a 1w neb.

the the current project is my dads node on grantsville. placed it on fri. here is his range. we picked up lpr right away.

[leaden crow]

I just tried traceroutes to NPR and they failed. Ran a few others and they all succeeded.

[prisma saddle]

anyone have one for lpr? but can’t trace or talk to anyone in 51.

[leaden crow]

You mean KR1P? I just tried to traceroute it from both SL and NSL and both failed.

[prisma saddle]

yup that one

[prisma saddle]

i’ve been able to hit it maybe once. def not a good connection from here to there.

[obsidian storm]

I'll do some diagnostics and see if I can figure it out

It's pretty bad in my area too

We're nearby

[pseudo kestrel]

tMy node saw it ~30 minutes ago, but I can't get it to respond to traceroutes

[prisma saddle]

yup same i get the broadcaset/etc.. just cant trace

[prisma saddle]

Hmm what do i look for if one of these nebrahats does not broadcast anything? have a node right next to it that it sees. but nothing outside my house.. guess a pin or something could not have a good connection. ill go back over everything tomorrow.

[obsidian storm]

Show a picture of how it's soldered and connected

[prisma saddle]

should i go through the filter?

[reef ridge]

What do you mean? Maybe a dumb question, but do you have TX enabled?

[prisma saddle]

yup

[reef ridge]

Oh, so what do you mean it won't broadcast?

[leaden crow]

You built from these instructions?
https://freq51.com/equipment/nebra-miner.html

Did you uncomment this line?
CS: 8 # Newer version of MeshtasticD do not need this? If issues uncomment this line
in /etc/meshtasticd/config.d/NebraHat_1W.yaml

[prisma saddle]

yup. other nebra is fine. i’ll have to try this hat in the working one. and working hat in this one.

i think the hat has issues.

[reef ridge]

Also, why not use the filter?

[prisma saddle]

nope i could uncomment and see

[prisma saddle]

just didn’t. i’ll try that too.

[leaden crow]

IME that always needs to be uncommented

[leaden crow]

I would just keep testing without the filter, should work either way

[prisma saddle]

thought so. just be less dbs with it.

ya i’ll uncomment and try.

[leaden crow]

If you are in a really low noise environment the filter can be nothing but insertion loss. Really it's a good idea to test and see what your SNR and success rate is with and without it.

[obsidian storm]

Can you get better pictures of the solder spots?

[leaden crow]

I changed my mind about this. Is your working Nebra hooked up that way? filter installed, but running off the ipex on the ebyte module?
I won't pretend to understand the wizardry of these filters. On mine the input side has conductivity to ground, but the output side does not. I wonder if that is affecting the antenna output before the filter? I have not tested this configuration. You should test from the SMA output.

[prisma saddle]

will mess with it today and see. hopefully i did not overtighen the alfa on it to..

[umbral ice]

Built my first antenna lol. Not perfect SWR for LF51, but I imagine it’ll do the trick. See if I can get a 0 hop to MHR with it

[prisma saddle]

ha ha nice fletching!

[umbral ice]

It amused me. Was part of an old set of cheap arrows when I started shooting

I do wonder what happens if I were to leave a broadhead on it though. Probably mess with the radiation pattern pretty terribly. Maybe I'll print a non-metal one

[prisma saddle]

keep it for "emergencies" lol

[leaden crow]

Built in, remote tree installation device. You'd have to be Robin Hood to get that yagi pointed perfectly.

[umbral ice]

Just need to mount the node directly to the arrow and tie power to it. Some Green Arrow level shenanigans

Grapple arrow? How bout Mesh arrow

[real cedar]

Happy Monday folks how are we doing today

[reef ridge]

Pretty good, just ordered the Foxes. 👍

[prisma saddle]

good you?

[prisma saddle]

more fox? or first ones?

[reef ridge]

First ones for me.

I don't know what I'm going to do with 5 of them, but I'll have them. 😂

[prisma saddle]

ha ha ya. fun to play with. i dont know what ill do with my 2 yet. but im sure they will come to use soon

[reef ridge]

If all goes according to plan one will be the new FPR.

[reef ridge]

Y'all need any more routers down south? 🤔

[obsidian storm]

Yes. Utah county needs some on the east mountains to peer down into the bowls

Particularly in Springville

[prisma saddle]

yup good place for sure.

and i need to figure out the thanksgiving point bowl. bro lives there. but still nothing even though lake is up. think he is too much of a bowl.

need something in there to bring in

[keen glen]

One on the peaks/foothills by cedar fort would be helpful for west of Utah lake, EM city center is also in a bowl, and can't hit Lake.

[obsidian storm]

This one still confuses me. I'm going to test this

[prisma saddle]

ya me too. he is in a townhouse.. so cant put stuff up. im thinking he just needs to put one in his attic then.. or put one on the roof no matter what..

[reef ridge]

Lots of good places for FemtoFoxes then! Actually, I guess I should have researched if there were any better/more efficient 30dbi radios first.

[obsidian storm]

I got him.

I couldn't send a message from his house. But the next street over I got a direct connection to Lake

There's too many thick townhouses in the line of sight between his house and Lake mountain.

If he gets something on his roof, he'll have no problems at all

[prisma saddle]

right i think he can see potm and lake. if cant do more than that. cool. i’ll tell him to bite the bullet and do it.

[obsidian storm]

I just threw my mobile node at a nearby office building into Router_Late. I'll leave it here as router_late until 4pm. He can test and see if he can connect to the mesh with it like this

[leaden crow]

It's amazing to me how much worse being in an attic is, vs on the roof. dsr2 is a 1 watt node with acasom cavity filter and alfa antenna. It should be much better than it is, but it's kneecapped by being inside the building. I wonder if your brother could get away with a node mounted to the exterior of a west facing window with something like this?
https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Camera-Suction-Action-Mounting/dp/B0BYDQTXD1/

[real cedar]

Actually that couldn't be really useful. I couldn't get enough of them last time but they are the lowest power BBS node

[prisma saddle]

ya going to try and see if he can toss something to his drain pipe on the roof.

[prisma saddle]

thank you sir!

[prisma saddle]

works when using the filter.

[reef ridge]

Couldn't or could? I'd be happy to donate some to the cause.

[obsidian storm]

I wonder if your cable is bad

anyways, it works with filter (which is better anyways)

[prisma saddle]

prob..i just took it out and pluged the hole

[reef ridge]

Hopefully you didn't damage your radio if it is. 🙃

[real cedar]

I couldn't grab enough. I've only got 1

They sold out after :/

I'll let you know and will compensate

[obsidian storm]

I wanted one just to play with

and I missed it 🙁

[umbral ice]

I have 3, MHR, then one planned for Davis and then a 3rd that is currently not planned. Wanna trade a G2 for it? 😉

Or rather than Davis maybe it’ll go Danskin or Hayden if I can’t get it on Danskin

[prisma saddle]

interesting. got it from mil house that has direct los of potm for Layton

@obsidian storm @leaden crow

[pseudo kestrel]

If I can get some cash put together, I'd like to buy a femtofox off of you @reef ridge 🙂

[reef ridge]

Sure thing, I'll update when they come in.

[inner jay]

Hey all, just popping in to say hi. Grabbed my first mesh device that'll arrive tomorrow and I'm looking forward to learning about this tech!

[solemn sedge]

Welcome!

[prisma saddle]

welcome!! we are here for any questions. you seen the node roles video?

if not take a peek https://youtu.be/htjwtnjQkkE?feature=shared

and we have some good starter info here https://freq51.net/ @inner jay

[inner jay]

I have! I've been reading up on all the documentation including the freq51 site

[solemn sedge]

Problem solved!

After scratching my head over a minimally responsive rooftop node, I discovered the culprit was a bad feed line. There’s a temporary stubby antenna installed until I replace the coax. The lesson for me: always check the feed line!

[reef ridge]

Welcome aboard, it's a rabbithole for sure!

[prisma saddle]

https://tenor.com/view/alice-rabbithole-falling-tumbling-bye-gif-5308157

for sure everywhere i go. i’m looking and thinking. could i put a node there??

[inner jay]

Lol I've already scoped out antenna locations around my property and I haven't even started yet

[native bridge]

How does one acquire the freq51 channel encryption settings? Just finished reading over freq51.net

[reef ridge]

We use the default channel name and key, just on frequency slot 51.

[prisma saddle]

oh the freq51 channel itself for neighboor info/mqtt youll need to reach out to @real cedar or @obsidian storm

[obsidian storm]

This is only for routers

Afaik

[prisma saddle]

ya something like that.