US - Utah

[real cedar]

Nah I think I found a good spot . Green SNR. Should be enough with patience.

This should be doable

It's my old gps marked location labeled. "Recovery Point"

@obsidian storm @leaden crow can you see aur now

One issue with RA is when I change the mode and FS I never get delivery confirmed so I wait 7 minutes for every possible retry to get exhausted then check for trace routes and if it stops responding I assume it got the message 😂

Aur is switched

What a bitch 🤣

[leaden crow]

No luck yet. I wonder if some people do have channel config problems? I am seeing way less nodes today. I haven't seen PB's nodes at all. The nodes I do see the testing is good.

My default channel name is still blank on both meshtasticd and iOS clients. I wonder if some clients named the channel "MediumSlow" and I'm not seeing those nodes? For reference:

Index 0: PRIMARY psk=default { "psk": "AQ==", "moduleSettings": { "positionPrecision": 32, "isClientMuted": false }, "channelNum": 0, "name": "", "id": 0, "uplinkEnabled": false, "downlinkEnabled": false }

[real cedar]

I traced it fine before I left my spot. It's there

[real cedar]

Yeah I had a lot of trouble switching to medium slow but I'm finally all over

Traced AUR from. My house

We good

[leaden crow]

I didn't get the node_info yet, but I think you're right. Something just connected me to Rax nodes.

[obsidian storm]

Naming the channel doesn't matter.

[jolly goblet]

How does the antenna that comes with the SenseCAP solar node compare to the Alfa 915 5dbi? I have a few of the Alfa, but I'd need to get a rp-sma to n adapter or pigtail to connect to the SenseCAP solar. Is it worth the effort?

[leaden crow]

I haven't measured one of those, but it looks 100% like a Ziisor. If it is, they're actually pretty decent. If you have the Alfa, it's probably still better. I would recommend getting a cable and not an adapter. Especially because N is more weatherproof anyway. I've had a lot of SMA connectors end up rusty.
I think this is what you'd need (assuming it's long enough).
https://www.amazon.com/Bingfu-Bulkhead-Compatible-Wireless-Amplifier/dp/B084VB68H4

I might be wrong there, it looks like the Sensecap has SMA male on the board. I would check yours.

If it does, you'd need to find that cable with SMA-F.

[jolly goblet]

Thanks! The SenseCAP connector has external threads and a pin--which I think is RP-SMA female. Damn the mere existence of RP-SMA. Why on earth would external threads with a pin be called female?
I have some U.fl to N female cables. And there might be enough room to drill out the hole in the SenseCAP enclosure. (or I could design some sort of 3d printed gland and adapter that passes the cable through the existing hole.) Would I gain anything, or much, here--or just make the project more complicated (as I am wont to do, which comes with self-loathing for making things harder)?

[leaden crow]

The RP- means reverse polarity. They will work with an adapter, but yeah I agree it's confusing nomenclature. I would try to just get a Female SMA version of that cable. My one dilmma here is that the cable is exposed, so something slightly more durable like RG58 is probably better than say this RG316:
https://www.amazon.com/CablesOnline-RP-SMA-N-Type-Bulkhead-RF-SN501/dp/B077BKQ3W5

If I were using that one, I would use something like shrinktube or techflex

[jolly goblet]

Oh, I'm looking through my parts box. I also have some u.fl to SMA cables. I could swap out the u.fl to RP-SMA on the board, and be done with the RP nonsense. Then, I could use the cable in your first amazon link--which would come tomorrow with another order I already placed. And that has RG-58.

[broken turret]

It does if you actually set it to something. If you leave it unset, the node will automatically select the default name for whatever modem preset is in use (which in most public situations is what you want). If you manually set it, then it's stuck on whatever name you entered.

The reason the name matters is because it's used (alongside the channel key) to derive the channel hash that's sent in the packet header. That hash is used by the receiver to figure out which channel the packet belongs to. If the name doesn't match a known channel on the receiver, then the hash won't match either, and that packet is considered not to be intended for the receiver at all. As such it will not get decrypted and the receiver will discard it, even if the key happens to match a different channel name on the receiver. For a packet to be received properly, both the name and the key must be identical.

[jolly goblet]

Also, I just noticed that the mounting bracket for the SenseCAP has a cut-out to accept a type-N. I think this is the way I'll go: (a) change the internal cable to a regular SMA, and (b) get the cable you linked to go to an Alfa.

Thank you so much for talking this through with me!

[obsidian storm]

WOW. This is so unintuitive. TIL. I've been building nodes and other things and I somehow missed this.
Thanks for explaining it.

[real cedar]

I feel better now

I knew something was up

I knew I wasnt crazy

😂

[obsidian storm]

See this thread if you're curious:
#meshtasticd message

We can put whataver we want into this User String

[reef ridge]

This would probably look a lot better if I did it a second time, but this node's guts are officially done. ✅

[obsidian storm]

looks great

[reef ridge]

I just really wished the Femtofox had an SMA connection like the Nebra Hat. I don't trust the ipex at all.

[leaden crow]

I haven't had any fall out yet. I usually try and electrical tape the pigtails so that they're not putting any sort of strain on the ipex connection.
You could go nuclear and hot glue it, but I think that's a bad idea. You'll inevitably have to disconnect it at some point.

[reef ridge]

I think it might be the specific connector on the radio module, but it doesn't take much effort to dislodge it. I try the same pigtail on a different board and it take a decent amount of force to separate them.

Not that it just falls out or anything, but it's easier than it should be I think. I taped it down but I might hot glue it like you said.

[umbral ice]

Davis Mountain (the Femto) and Danskin Peak (the “trailcam”) are going up tomorrow too. If all goes according to plan and theory, @real cedar should be able to reach Mountain Home. Even parts of Boise 😄

[reef ridge]

What's that black board in the bottom left?

[umbral ice]

10w5v solar panel

[reef ridge]

Inside the case with the femtofox. 😂

[umbral ice]

Oooh lol

That is a waveshare MPPT type D

Charges 1s battery packs and I’ve got a 10w18v panel feeding it. Outputs 5v. Been trialing it with a femto for a while and it seems to hold up. Davis isn’t near as treacherous as Harrison or your peaks down there

[leaden crow]

I'm done testing for the day. I'm going to switch my nodes to Medium Fast 51 tonight instead of tomorrow morning. Hopefully if at least a few people switch tonight, the nodedb will be populated in the morning.

[leaden crow]

Added tab for MS51 testing
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmI5RfqcTUYF0zkkZmzxojrV4LfgqXtRSQzOSO0cdKs/edit?usp=sharing

[real cedar]

HELLLLL YES
I'll tell my dad

@reef ridge FPR status ?

@umbral ice So you got official permission by the way for Danskin? My dad has been to that lookout a lot of times and there's a dude that basically lives in it 24/7

[umbral ice]

Oh. No i definitely didn't was going to put it in the Tree as a trailcam LOL

I'd heard it was shut down

Similar to the Harrison one

If I have to audible I will and come up with some alternates tonight

[real cedar]

It's totally okay. Just put it in the tree. That's fine. And honestly if you talk to the dude, apparently he's extremely friendly

[umbral ice]

Might be a matter of wandering a bit down the hill and posting it a bit further away from the lookout

I'll just social engineer it up there if I have to

I'm half decent at it LOL

[real cedar]

You could do that. Just be aware that you probably want to put stickers on it and tell people it's public use and it's emergency radio so people don't you know do the redneck thing in Idaho and blow it off the mountain with their guns

🤣

But honestly yeah if you put it in the tree as long as it gets good solar and it's up there and it's secure and it has all the stickers and you leave a note in it. And you say hey if you want to use this just join our discord. I'm sure most people would just open it and be like. Oh hey this is cool

[real cedar]

I will not be driving down until tomorrow morning 🤣. That spot takes me about 30 minutes to get to and 30 minutes back and it's almost 10

[umbral ice]

I'd be surprised. I figure most folks will just leave the thing alone thinking it's a trail cam. Taking a folding extension ladder with me so I can get it up as high as I can and still keep it in the sun

[leaden crow]

I got remote admin on TR, so I switched it to Medium Fast too. I can already traceroute it.

That's no huge surprise though. Last year when we tested Medium Fast, I could still reach PB

[real cedar]

That would be best. And honestly I can't wait till it goes up. My dad wants to know when you successfully deploy it and if it remains there for a day or two before he commits to getting some radias

🤣

He said he doesn't trust Idaho rednecks not to blow it off the mountain at least in his area 😂😂😂

He's had too many bad experiences with his own cams

[umbral ice]

Fingers crossed LOL

[real cedar]

One blew a gigantic hole through the pole on one of his cams and he was like you know. This had to be .45 or higher.. what a dick 😭🤣

[real cedar]

How did your testing go today.

[leaden crow]

I would say great. The difference between LF and MS is negligible. We would get double the data rate going to MS.

[real cedar]

That's awesome! I think short fast is going to be awesome. I think we're going to be able to pull off short fast. I think we'll even be able to pull it off from fpr to Harrison

And when new NPR goes up. Oh my God

[real cedar]

Worst case if there is no tree and it got deleted by Zeus 🤣. See if anybody's at the Hut. Talk to them social engineer it.. if they're not okay. Put a pole somewhere out of sight out of mind somewhere near the peak that can see the valley cuz that's the most important part. There's basically nothing back there except for Anderson ranch and camas but being able to have 360 degrees would be ideal

[obsidian storm]

1W with a good cav filter.

Will be nice.

[mighty pike]

oo the testing is going well?

[reef ridge]

About to depart. Double checking everything I could need.

[real cedar]

Enjoy. It's a nice Saturday for a hike
Show us pics of old fpr

@ us if it's vandalized. Maybe we will take a look around for a better spot

[umbral ice]

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=QPLB7XTC MHR’s LOS calculations just in case

[leaden crow]

Going well. I ran traceroutes to TR overnight. It's a node I normally have good direct connection with. It's on the opposite side of the valley Holladay > Daybreak. Just counting traceroutes that complete:
LF: 91% traceroutes successful
MS: 58% traceroutes successful
MF: 50% traceroutes successful

I don't think traceroutes are a perfect measurement, but they are the easiest thing for me to not coordinate on both ends.

Another side node, traceroutes were looked bad, and then a good string of successes at the end. I was wondering if some better hop came online, but nope. All the traceroutes were direct.
1758946041|542e|fail|23
1758946364|542e|fail|23
1758946687|542e|success|2
1758946990|542e|success|2
1758947292|542e|fail|23
1758947615|542e|success|3
1758947918|542e|fail|23
1758948241|542e|fail|23
1758948564|542e|fail|23
1758948887|542e|success|3
1758949190|542e|fail|23
1758949513|542e|fail|23
1758952887|542e|success|2
1758953189|542e|fail|24
1758953513|542e|fail|23
1758953836|542e|fail|23
1758954159|542e|fail|23
1758954482|542e|success|2
1758954784|542e|success|3
1758955087|542e|success|3
1758955390|542e|success|2
1758955692|542e|success|13
1758956005|542e|success|3
1758956308|542e|success|13

[leaden crow]

I feel like this is worth mentioning. My personal observation on traceroutes is that if you have over say 20% success rate after running a bunch of traces to one node. That may seem like a bad number, but most or all of your actual messages are probably still get delivered. If you never get traceroutes back, or only get one back very rarely from a node. Some or all of your messages are not being delivered either. This is a broad generalization and I'm sure does not apply to all cases. Having done a lot of testing and optimization between dsr1 and dsr2, this is basically what I've seen.

[leaden crow]

Another thing to note, the data rate is apparent in these traces. The last column in the logs I've pasted above is the seconds it took to complete. Typical direct traceroutes on Long Fast take 4 -7 seconds. On both Medium Slow and Medium Fast it's 2 - 4 seconds.

[umbral ice]

Fueled, loaded, and on the road for the DMR and DPR deployments

[pseudo kestrel]

I'm not confident of the M* coverage in my area 🙁

I only see 3 non-Rx nodes, and I don't have metadata on any of them

[reef ridge]

Beautiful up here today. I'm at the point where I start hiking. FPR soon.

[leaden crow]

I am away for a couple of hours, but I saw your nodes before I left. My nodeInfoBroadcastSecs is 10800 so you probably won't see mine for a while.
I'll run traceroutes on RxBs when I get home.

[reef ridge]

Well, well, what do we have here.

No solar panel to be found.

A clean cut. Everyone who bet lightning loses the bet, cuz I put my money on vandalism again. 😂

[leaden crow]

Damn, that is really unfortunate.

[reef ridge]

It is, I wish I ran the cable for the solar panel through the conduit so it can be more protected, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

Found it.

[jolly goblet]

I saw your message from MAG3.

[leaden crow]

Me too

[reef ridge]

It's windy up here and the conduit I built it from makes constant loud whistling, which I did not consider. 😂

[obsidian storm]

Maybe shove some plants inside the tubes.

[jolly goblet]

Is that same thing as weeds in the pipes?

[leaden crow]

The fact that this has happened twice. I honestly think you guys should consider different placement than that shack. Now we've upped the ante with more expensive equipment. You can drive most of the way up there, right? Have you considered setting a post a little more off the beaten path? Have you looked at alternates @real cedar

[reef ridge]

Yes, I could have driven 95% of the way but stopped further back just to be safe. There's a taller peak a little to the south too which doesn't look like there's any type of trail to it.

Getting a post tall enough to not get buried in snow and a bag of concrete to set it would certainly suck to get there though.

[obsidian storm]

Maybe next time we go in a group of three

One person with the node, the next person with the concrete, and the last with the pole

[leaden crow]

Or more. I would be willing to go, just not on BW's early bird schedule. 😁

[jolly goblet]

If I wanted to donate $ to help with these infrastructure nodes, how could I do it?

[reef ridge]

On a closer inspection, I don't think the solar panel was cut. There's no taper as of wire cutters were used and the end looks rough. My guess is the mount broke and months of dangling in the wind caused it to overstress and fracture.

Maybe lightning and wind. 🤔 I'll try to turn it on when I get home.

[inner jay]

Got the RAK mounted on the highest point of my roof

[prisma saddle]

nice any heat come off that? looks great.though.

how’s the signL?

[inner jay]

Nah it's an unused vent that's disconnected. Signal is stronger than CHOP but I dunno how to properly test that

[reef ridge]

Anyone want to try to traceroute FPR and try out the BBS?

[jolly goblet]

Is it on LF51?

[reef ridge]

Yessir.

[fiery sparrow]

hey, just popping in from being away for awhile.. congrats on getting the website up and all the settings ironed out. I'm in the process of getting my stuff reconfigured.

[leaden crow]

Traceroutes are returning from dsr2 in NSL
│ 6 │ Francis Peak Router v5 │ !abc00d8d │ FPR │ PORTDUINO │ TWkmaslgtcDTxt3z2gZNZrS9RMv1ou5F7D1G/U9ljUk= │ ROUTER │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ -9 dB │ 0 │ 0 │ 2025-09-27 16:01:38 │ 2 mins ago │

Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !abc00d8d on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eb5de3e2 --> !78d9dc3b (-18.5dB) --> !abc00d8d (1.0dB)
Route traced back to us:
!abc00d8d --> !eb5de3e2 (-19.0dB)

[prisma saddle]

missed ya buddy how things been?

[obsidian storm]

just a heads up, everything is broken right now becase we're testing MF SF, etc. settings for a few days

and all the routers are MIA

[fiery sparrow]

Busy... still busy. going to be busy until I either find a new job or a new position at work.

and my guardianship work for my son is done.

[jolly goblet]

Is there a way for me to do a traceroute to a node that has not yet shown up in my list of nodes?

[fiery sparrow]

If any of you need a system admin that specializes in IdAM and works with high thruput network hardware, network management software, along with security stack stuff, send me a message.

[leaden crow]

You can do it from the cli if you have the ID. So with the ID from the traceroute I posted above. You'd do:
meshtastic --traceroute '!abc00d8d'

I don't think it's possible in any other client.

[fiery sparrow]

sounds like.... too much fun!

[jolly goblet]

Thanks! I haven't set up the cli. I'll put that on my to do list.

[inner jay]

I have a trace from CHOP through FPR

[obsidian storm]

I have an idea on this. I'm thinking we should tie it to a non-profit.

Once things slow down, I'll bring that idea up

[fiery sparrow]

I can see north and west pretty good without the routers with what's come in so far...south and east not so well.

[obsidian storm]

Yeah, so there's two routers left

NPR & I think Layton is a router_late

[fiery sparrow]

oh yeah, I'm not going to see south good without FPR

or hoisting something up in a tree

[obsidian storm]

I just moved LAKE back to LF51 to test out FPR

[leaden crow]

I ran my traces on LAKE already this morning, no point moving it back to MF today.

[obsidian storm]

I'm getting messages from IDAHO

[fiery sparrow]

I got a fart of direct signal from LAKE

[inner jay]

I saw that too!

[obsidian storm]

more than one node.

@reef ridge you mad lad

[obsidian storm]

@umbral ice you too.

[umbral ice]

Wooo!

[leaden crow]

Flooding in my nodedb, Hansen Repeater, 42.4935° -114.2161°

[inner jay]

Twin falls was 4 hops for me

[umbral ice]

Flooding meaning bad? Or just dropping nodes in? Might need to reconfigure that

[leaden crow]

No not bad, just saying I am getting a whole bunch of new nodes pop up

[umbral ice]

Oooh nice!

We are at the walking point if Danskin finally. Nearly 4 hours to drive here. Haven’t done DMR yet

[inner jay]

I just had a node in park city hit my map

[leaden crow]

WC1 or WC2 ?

[inner jay]

RO4. Downtown pc

[leaden crow]

WC1 and WC2 probably can connect parts of Park City to our LF51. The connection to them is going to be really bad right now. They usually hop through either AUR or TR and both of those nodes are on the Medium Fast test right now.

[inner jay]

Haven't had one pop before

[leaden crow]

@main stag You in Park City today?

[main stag]

I was ha! I was up at the womens epic race at Deer Valley until around noon. I didn't see any nodes when I was at DV near that photo, still was on LF51 though.

[inner jay]

Maybe it's a stale location then

[main stag]

I forgot to check as I drove away though, I wonder if that's when I hit the map

[obsidian storm]

@reef ridge Can you verify, FPR doesn't have a f ilter, right?

root@LakeMountainRouter-Meshtastic:~# meshtastic --traceroute \!abc00d8d
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !abc00d8d on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!d55a6737 --> !abc00d8d (-12.25dB)
Route traced back to us:
!abc00d8d --> !d55a6737 (-8.75dB)
root@LakeMountainRouter-Meshtastic:~# meshtastic --traceroute \!abc00d8d
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !abc00d8d on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!d55a6737 --> !abc00d8d (-15.0dB)
Route traced back to us:
!abc00d8d --> !d55a6737 (-3.5dB)
root@LakeMountainRouter-Meshtastic:~# meshtastic --traceroute \!abc00d8d
No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !abc00d8d on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!d55a6737 --> !abc00d8d (-14.5dB)
Route traced back to us:
!abc00d8d --> !d55a6737 (-5.25dB)

[leaden crow]

I need to do some more testing where WC1 and WC2 reach in Park City. I'm surprised any packets got through with our MF test today though.

[obsidian storm]

FPR can't hear LAKE as well as LAKE can hear FPR

[main stag]

Yeah I was at that junction around 6:30am and again at 12pm I think.

[inner jay]

Yeah i heard it an hour ago so it's stale. Poo.

[reef ridge]

No filter, no.

[obsidian storm]

are you still up there?

did previous FPR have a filter?

[reef ridge]

I just got back to my vehicle, but I can check.

[obsidian storm]

We're getting consistant trace routes though

[reef ridge]

I don't know if it would be one that could handle 30db even if it does though.

No way, Idaho? It worked!

[obsidian storm]

That's a TR to idaho

[reef ridge]

FPR v4 is still operational.

I literally just had to turn it on.

[obsidian storm]

So the high wind of those storms did it

Good to know that we need to build in some strain relief for these cables

And maybe UV killed the cable

[reef ridge]

Strong possibility, the insulation is brittle.

There's no filter in here, btw.

[obsidian storm]

LOL. I just saw old FPR show up in my node db

[reef ridge]

I wonder why it turned off, it clearly still has power.

[umbral ice]

Danskin Peak Router

[obsidian storm]

@umbral ice I just got a message to and from 'Second Star Labs'~

[umbral ice]

That is located here: 102 Main Ave E
Twin Falls, ID 83301
United States

[obsidian storm]

Total distance: 204.62 m

[umbral ice]

@real cedar I social engineered that node. The lookout is manned until October 5

Got permission to put it on the tree for a “Timelapse of the winter”

[novel spruce]

I can't seem to trace route it but I had at least a temporary connection to Idaho Falls as well

[umbral ice]

That is here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z4my2B481EF6ndCH8?g_st=ipc

[novel spruce]

For sure, just thought y'all might want secondary validation of the communication up that way

[umbral ice]

Appreciate it! Stoked that it’s working!

[reef ridge]

Awesome work! One-manning basically an entire state's mesh is a real feat.

[mighty pike]

hopping to Idaho is CRAZY

what were the results of the testing MF, SF, MS, etc? Is it reliable enough to go to something like SF or MF?

funny to think my first modem, 9600 baud, was 9.6 kbps, and shortfast is 10.94 kbps

[real cedar]

LMFAO

good shit

Better make sure you have a good time lapse that comes out of it

@reef ridge how did it go

[real cedar]

How's signal to mountain home

AWWW is that a black and white border collie

Our family has one too named Kenai

I love border collies

[prisma saddle]

ya lol

[reef ridge]

Pretty good.

Grounded with a rod.

[real cedar]

Wait which of those is harrison

[real cedar]

Epic sauce

Holy shit guys. I'm proud. Did we just achieve a major milestone. Permanently connected to idaho

[reef ridge]

I have to go to WinCo to add some admin keys because I can't hit it from my house still. 😂

[mighty pike]

I wonder if Meshtastic's general channels have a way to track the health of meshes in various regions, and if we can brag about this connection to Idaho!

[real cedar]

I'll just go do it now for fun

[prisma saddle]

pretty shure bay mesh has us beat. but once / if farnsworth hits. we will raine supreme

[real cedar]

#use-cases message

I still talked about it

Hahahah

[mighty pike]

Can we get the Idaho node to message longfast for a while? I don't see its nodeinfo

I want to try a different antenna than the one I have on my roof https://www.amazon.com/Waterproof-Fiberglass-SenseCAP-EasyLinkIn-SyncroB/dp/B09N2H166D

I can't reliably traceroute LAKE, and it's line of sight to me

[umbral ice]

Will probably take a night or so to really populate Idaho.

[mighty pike]

I can't wait

[real cedar]

@prisma saddle we need to immediately update our docs

@umbral ice has site surveys for his router infra

[mighty pike]

"1.062 SWR @ 915 MHZ is Awesome for ANY antenna under $100" so sayeth one reviewer

[real cedar]

Need to add them to infra

[umbral ice]

Need to do a PR on the community pages to add the same entry in UT to ID

[umbral ice]

Did you save them? I can grab them when I get home if I don’t fall on my face when I close the front door

[real cedar]

I didn't but you sent them to me on discord right? Was it in a DM? I can send them back to you

[umbral ice]

I don’t recall, but I did somewhere. Might be in the ID channel

[prisma saddle]

@real cedar ok cool once i have that info i can pop it up tonight/tomorrow .

[umbral ice]

I think @naive shale might be willing to do the PR for Idaho

He was my buddy system for today

[naive shale]

(Can confirm)

[prisma saddle]

that works. sounds good.

[prisma saddle]

what’s your idaho map look like on your side currently?

and we have our end in limbo. because of preset tests.

[umbral ice]

Southern Idaho right now. I suspect once folks realize that it works I bet they’ll jump on board

[prisma saddle]

cool beans.

[real cedar]

@prisma saddle I have the links to his hey what's that but we need to do it in wisp mode to capture beautiful maps like this

[prisma saddle]

i didn’t realize fpr was that high.

kk send over when you have them.

[mighty pike]

Does anyone have one of those fancy SWR meters like this, and can bring it to the space? I'll bring my antenna and can test it, find out for sure what its deal is

[prisma saddle]

@reef ridge lol how?

direct to herriman in side my house! that’s 1w for ya lol.

[reef ridge]

Mesh Saturday was a success! Next step.is surviving winter.

Also, that's a crazy traceroute path, you have your Nebra up, no?

[real cedar]

@reef ridge I got an extra dumb question for you. Because I can't tell how that Tower is oriented. Your solar panel is facing south right? Not east or west or north

😆

Because if it's not facing south you might need to make another trip

[reef ridge]

It's facing south, yeah. The enclosure is facing west.

You can see it in these pictures with Morgan in the background in the front facing one and Kaysville in the rear facing one.

Also in this picture of Batman's node, where the panel is also facing south.

[real cedar]

Oh okay cool I couldn't tell. That's awesome! All right guys. I think I'm going to spend some time trying to get some better surveys of the entire network in terms of a map..

I think the other thing we need to start doing is documenting how to send messages across the BBS link system

Like we need to make this easy for newbies to understand

So that we can actually utilize this past the seven hop limits since we are now larger than meshtastic and natively send across

🤣

Well done everybody. Well done Idaho.

@maiden wraith you'll be happy to know man that you didn't lose your node to lightning

You lost it to Murphy's law

Objectively a better way to lose a node

[reef ridge]

It can go right back into service with a new cable. Do you want it back?

[reef ridge]

Good idea, I'm not exactly sure how it works. 😅

I just realized I forgot to add people to the BBS admin list too. 😭 I wish I had some of those HaLow chips.

[ember torrent]

An anemometer wouldve been cool. See what wind speed ripped that panel off.

[real cedar]

It's time to go back up there then. It shouldn't be too difficult

Honestly you made the trip with all the equipment. Now you can just make the trip with a laptop and enjoy yourself

I actually go up there semi often. But I think my trips up there are done for the year. My car doesn't like making that trip all the time. But yeah I would find a moment where you can go up there and change that

Plus it gives us time maybe like a week to figure out that entire system. We really need to. Otherwise people aren't going to be able to chat like we intended

[reef ridge]

I added myself as an admin at least. It would be a cool feature to be able to send commands to the computer using the BBS bot.

[prisma saddle]

nope. not yet….

[real cedar]

So the wins at these peaks are often in excess of 130 mph @ember torrent during the worst of the winter and summer storms

During some of the downslope wind events, the winds at the peak reached in excess of 150 mph

Mag. We will see if yours survives one of those. Don't be too beat up if it doesn't

Even the professionals have lost towers to this kind of stuff

And remember Mount Washington had a wind speed record in excess of 200 mph. The fastest winds at any peak in the United States, but that was brief

[prisma saddle]

Lte chip? 🙂

[reef ridge]

It's a first attempt for me, but I'm pretty proud of it. I tried to move the panel and enclosure on the post and it wouldn't budge.I think the components would break before the mounting hardware does.

[real cedar]

https://youtu.be/2P2oOcNsnnA?si=V6-6oaR01ss5AatH

127 is the average on my washington

Most peaks easily are over 100

This is what all of those Mountain top towers face every winner every year

[reef ridge]

Next time I don't think it'd be a bad idea to protect the antenna, actually. Make it a PVC pip suit of armor.

V4's antenna was at like an 80 degree angle when I got to it.

[real cedar]

bad idea

more wind load

anchor the antenna with something plastic or a metal clip at the base of the metal part of the antenna

call it good

the more surface area you add the more wind load

[reef ridge]

Yeah, but if you keep it stubby it shouldn't be too much more and a thick PVC flange is more robust than the chewing gum holding the Alfas together.

[real cedar]

yeah well lets just hope the alfa makes it through the winter. If your worried go lexel around its connector

PVC attenuates RF

a good bit

that said can you at least remote admin the meshtastic part so you can change channel presets?

@leaden crow did AUR populate

it didnt in my car node

which is weird

[real cedar]

I kid but guys we basically have the military equivalent of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_16

Link 16 baby

I wored on that tthing a lot in early career days

most of my work was making it come together with JTRS or Joint Tactical Radio System

I dont think there is a place on the planet that has a radio signal that doesnt see some radio device I made or touched at this point thanks to my job LOL

[leaden crow]

I confused about what's going on with it. I never saw it in my node list today. But it must be working, because just like yesterday, I didn't see Rax nodes until you switched it.

I'm done testing for the day. I'm going to compile the results and switch TR and dsr1 over to Short Fast.

[real cedar]

Im really not sure either

God dammit guess im driving tomorrow 🤣

I really need to go update its firmware before winter

[leaden crow]

I'm not sure I can make it to the space next Thurs, but I'll definitely bring mine next time I'm there.

[real cedar]

I have a fancy VNA yeah

visualization of our interlink here LOL

[inner jay]

Oh wow

[real cedar]

So I need to know

How are we gonna show a full map of our complete mesh

With all sites

@obsidian storm @leaden crow got tools?

We are so huge we now have our grown our tooling 🤣

[leaden crow]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmI5RfqcTUYF0zkkZmzxojrV4LfgqXtRSQzOSO0cdKs/edit?gid=1028854501#gid=1028854501
Added todays results. Honestly it's about what I expected. MF still functions, slightly less traceroutes returned. I got 1 traceroute of 24 back from Rax.

[real cedar]

OH... @jolly goblet switch to client. FPR is up

on francis peak

🥳

[real cedar]

so sf vs mf is what im really interested in. I dont want us to lose our idaho link

so we shall see

[leaden crow]

It's worth testing. I do not have the ambition for SF that you do. 😁

[real cedar]

I want to be able to have that beautiful 10 kbits per sec .. like I want to be faster than JTRS-L16

LOL

so we can send images

jpgs would be able to send in fewer packets

[leaden crow]

I am interested to see if I can still reach TNU0, TR and bp_rpi. They are all on the opposite end of the valley and I have pretty good direct connection to all of them on the other presets.

[real cedar]

also I low key want to make a drone I can fly with the mesh via commands and sending gpx .. rufio and I are working on the autonomous part.. dont tell the FAA LMAO.. at least not yet. we want to prove we can do it first

and Im building one that is fixed wing that has the range to fly around the perimeter of the GSL

doing it all over mesh .. it will capture all the video onboard and store it unttil RTB

[leaden crow]

Haha, yeah but you should do that on you own odd frequency slot and not flood the mesh with drone control commands.

[real cedar]

Nah it wont flood thats the point

It sends it once as a gpx

then the drone is radio silent except for the standard position update once every 10 minutes

the idea at its core is the drone handles everything. Its got the agency to make flight decisions. We are baking in an ai with a powerful ai hat to our central computer

so it can just be radio silent except for turning on its transponder when approaching a busy and controlled airspace

the only reason we want more speed is so we could at any point just request a current image but we wont do that too often. We want it to be as radio silent as possible because we want to see if an overwatch drone is possible doing something like this with basically COTS haha

[leaden crow]

Do you think we have the largest spanning permanent mesh at this point? On the Utah end we could send messages from Scipio through the Mary's Nipple router. So central Utah. To how far North in ID?
It is almost 300 miles from Mary's Nipple to Twin Falls.

[real cedar]

Im not quite sure yet but I dont want to claim that until a) we know for sure and b) we can use the bbs to communicate from corner to corner

tthat way we can actually show its functional

So about the drone flight path. Basically we realize we have to stay in visual range of the drone to not violate rules. we found routes we can do on the 4x4 hummer ruf's got...
We will keep it off active flight plans and non drone areas.. ou of populated areas and we will drive along side it.. the entire time.. to watch its firstt autonomous flight once we build the sucker

it will take off from the flat basin behind my apartment LOL

see the advantage of the flying wing design we are building is wing space can be used for far more battery capacity. We are going to use an EDF inside an s duct for aero

its gonna be epic LOL

currently im 3d printing blade designs and testing motor efficiency

6 blade edf turbine seems better than 9 and 12

im sure the milittary will see us on radar for a moment there and be like WTF LOL

when we get the western side of the lake on the lucin cutoff

[leaden crow]

I wouldn't do that, those guys are super anxious to shoot missiles any chance they get. Remember when they used an AIM-120 on that chinese balloon?

[real cedar]

As long as you dont enter the grey controlled area and airspace your fine. we will just get twitthin 25 miles before turning north

which is plenty of space and clearance

We wont actually enter any of the controlled air spaces and the test will occur at night

as to not alarm the general populace

tthe path grazes the MOA

[reef ridge]

How has the testing been going? For MF/SF, I haven't been keeping up on that.

[real cedar]

butt will never enter it

but we will absolutely be seen on radar for a while. LOL

unless

hmm

ive got a bad idea

bad ass

but bad

[inner jay]

Sealth drone?

[real cedar]

I could make a compound that can greatly attenuate and absorb rf

exactly

I need PU500 and graphite and iron balls but it can be made off the shelf LOL.. and since its a flying wing.. any attenuation at all would basically reduce its RCS to less than a bumblebee ROFL

[leaden crow]

Testing is good. Honestly MS and MF both basically still work. IMO MF might be borderline useable for a lot of nodes.
I have been trying to get traceroutes back on SF. So far nothing.

[pseudo kestrel]

Were we supposed to cut over to SF51 today?

O_o

[leaden crow]

Tomorrow morning, but I am done testing tonight, so I switched my stuff.
I don't think anyone else is testing

[reef ridge]

That's great! It'd be a shame to lose Idaho though. Is it possible to make hybrid nodes with two radios? Like a LF preset we can use to hook up the BBS and have local traffic on one of the other presets?

[leaden crow]

I think this is close to being a reality with the latest alpha firmwares. Honestly I don't think we switch to something that cuts off ID unless the mesh actually becomes untenable from the number of nodes.

[real cedar]

@inner jay you probably think I'm joking. I'm not. I have the iron microspheres, carbon black and graphite to do it from none other than

Wouldn't be too hard haha

[leaden crow]

We could do a long range test just between FPR and whatever ID node it connects best to

[inner jay]

Oh I believe you

[real cedar]

It wouldn't be military grade or scale but it would be crude enough to work

[reef ridge]

Tomorrow I'll drive down south again to add more admin keys so you guys can do tests.

[real cedar]

mag do you need my key

[real cedar]

i laughed so hard when this made it through customs. Its not illegal but I know it probably set off all their detectors

[reef ridge]

You're in Layton, right? That'd be good.

[pseudo kestrel]

4 Rx** nodes should now be in ShortFast51

[real cedar]

yes I am basically south of the base

@leaden crow I just caffeinated myself misttakingly

I can drive down and admin aur

move to sf51 early

[real cedar]

KzIbS2tRqpaFe45u13bCWA9iUb3JPb2pXS6Z4pFFhyU=

It's a public key so not worried about others having it

[reef ridge]

Very good. 👍 I still can't access the mesh unless I'm in very precise spots around town. I need to do some testing to find good candidates for local clients placement.

[real cedar]

We really need either allen peak and/or promontory

but prom is an extremely rough hike so I need 2 to 3 good men

[reef ridge]

Say the word, I'm down for another trip.

[real cedar]

Let me talk to all the peeps

and we can maybe make the trip

I need to go scout the condition of the road first

its not been maintained in a decade

[reef ridge]

I need to buy a quad or something if I'm going to be doing this more often.

[real cedar]

when I go scout if the route up the mountain is just praire grass and sage brush I legit tmight mini bike up it with some cans of fire stop with me

in case the exhaust you know does a bad thing

[leaden crow]

Minibike gang
Did you get yours working @real cedar ?

[real cedar]

yeah I upgraded to a 224 but now im beefing up all the internals

billet everything

chromoly push rods

if its gonna do off trail brush riding it needs to be beefier

[leaden crow]

I want to get a Ghost 212

[real cedar]

dont they are awful

people blow them on long rides

like over 20 miles do to heat. lots have thrown rods

they are designed to drag race

[leaden crow]

that sucks. I can't imagine driving it 20 miles.

[real cedar]

we did 60 with my homies on mini bike mondays

our average ride is 35 to 50 for giggles

all over the valley at night then home

[leaden crow]

I'm sure I could. I mean, I rode my mountainbike 24 miles yesterday. it's a lot more comfortable than a mini-bike, but throttle is way easier than pedaling

[reef ridge]

What specifically are you guys talking about? Is minibike just a general term for small dirt bike?

[leaden crow]

Yeah with a lawnmower engine. They are actually pretty fun and cheap.

[real cedar]

So last time we went from rufio's place in the avenues to Bell falls reservoir.. then we went along the Jordan River trail all the way back

😆

69 mi

Basically me and my buddies we build close to stock as much as possible and we beef up the internals and we build for reliability and long johns

We removed the fuel tank and put a top frame tank or inter inner frame tank so that air flow is pure over the entire motor and keeps them really cool

[reef ridge]

Ah, sweet, I put a weed whacker engine in a bicycle to get to highschool, same kind of thing, homebrew. What frame do y'all use?

[leaden crow]

This is the one I bought
https://www.calranch.com/products/outdoor/mini-bikes-atvs-go-karts/coleman-b200rsv-gas-powered-rear-suspension-minibike-196-cc-05008b200rsv

[real cedar]

He has the rear suspension. He's lucky I don't

I have the BT200x

Which means it's a hardtail

And that requires my beefed up seat that I use because the seat provides better cushioning

[leaden crow]

The thing, even with the stock engine, is suprisingly fast.

Like probably 40mph if you remove the restrictor. Only god knows how fast @real cedar mini bike would go

[real cedar]

Omw to admin aur
I can go 55

My bike is also fully outfitted with a full suite of electronics and a rocker panel that is waterproof to turn things on and off. It has a headlight. It has two trail lights that act like fog lights. It has underglow lol. It has rear tail and brake lights. It has turn signal lights. It has a magneto flywheel. It charges a 60 amp hour lithium iron phosphate battery.. which has a large capacitor connected to it to smooth out the regulator rectifier stuff.

Like for all intents and purposes. Other than not having a license plate, I have a horn. I have everything needed to be completely street legal

🤣

And as a result, the cops leave me alone

[reef ridge]

That actually looks great! No trailer needed, just yeet it in the back of the truck.

[leaden crow]

That's exactly why I bought it. I can just wheelie the front up on the tailgate and lift the rear on by myself.
I take it camping and ride all over with my 7 year old.

[reef ridge]

Think I'm going to join minibike gang, that makes it even better. My kid loves bicycle rides already. 😎

[real cedar]

Just be mindful when these engines get hot. Just go easy on them and give them breaks.. don't throw a rod. It's not worth it

[leaden crow]

I used this for 3 years and needed a replacement when my daughter outgrew it:
https://mac-ride.com/
I made some clamp on pegs for her and she sits in front of me on the mini-bike.

[leaden crow]

That's why I was saying I can't imagine riding 20 miles, but it's amazing around the campground.
I bet if I got an exhaust it would help. Stock kind of blows right on your leg.

[reef ridge]

Yeah, my imagined use case is like, the last 90% of the trip to where I'm going.

[leaden crow]

I think @maiden wraith actually got the first 2 iterations of FPR up there on a mini bike.
They are the ones that made me want one. Pretty soon this whole Discord going to own mini bikes. Except @obsidian storm he has horses. He's like the only adult here.

[reef ridge]

Just that last bit off trail was a bit rough, if I have to go again I'll definitely drive all the way up.

@obsidian storm have you ridden a horse up a mountain to put a node up yet?

[obsidian storm]

No. Mine are mostly trained for pulling carts. I don't have any conditioned for climbing mountains right now

If you would ask me 3 years ago, the answer would have been yes

[reef ridge]

I don't know anything about horses, but I guess that makes sense. I'll ask in 3 years, surely they'll be ready then. 😂

[real cedar]

What helps them the most is to remove the governor. Then remove the OG carburetor.. get yourself a new valve cover.. and then put a straight pipe exhaust on it that pushes the exhaust out into the airstream away from your body and the bike and that often is the best combination for reliability

It cools off anything that you would otherwise worry about and it doesn't keep you a lot of heat in the bike so you don't have to worry about your seat burning off

If you're going to do an over-the-Nine angle underneath the seat then I would highly suggest you get some of that really good exhaust wrapping and wrap it extra thick

[leaden crow]

I want this and a billet flywheel:
https://www.gopowersports.com/juggernaut-super-30-series-driver/
I heard they really smooth out all the vibration. But I'm not going to do that unless I do an engine too.

[real cedar]

They can. I have to caution you. You need to be very careful with your timing advance and the camshaft choice in order to keep it reliable. I've blown a 212 because of heat because of doing these upgrades and not realizing I didn't have enough cooling to do what I needed to do

I always support upgrading these things. Just be mindful of the timing advance and honestly the way I look at it these days is it's more about gearing.. Joao, I would just focus on beefing up the internals and keeping the timing advance and the compression and everything similar to stock

[leaden crow]

I'll do more research before I buy anything. Honestly I don't have any more camping planned this year. I probably won't use the mini bike until next year.

[real cedar]

Good evening aur

Lol

@leaden crow
It was not having LongFast in channels

That's why

When I switched it took only the old Freq51 and put it in primary

And it deleted longfast

LOL

When we move we need to make sure people do this

Or optionally we can just make a public encrypted channel that's published on the website that everyone uses as a primary but when you switch it removes the AQ== if you leave long fast

Not sure if that's intended behavior

Btw my RSSI and SNR remain unchanged on short fast

In this spot

[real cedar]

Overall, the signal seems to be just fine, but my Trace routes fail more often on short fast right now

SNR seems to not have budged too much nor has RSSI if anything I lost about 2 DB

Though if we're honest with each other, 3db is half the power received compared to last time so it isn't insignificant

[broken turret]

It is. It's intended to make keying on new channel creation essentially automatic.

If you paste your key in first though, then it will leave it alone.

[mighty pike]

oo thanks

[manic fractal]

Cool project.

[real cedar]

Do you let the motor rest or just full throttle all the way up

[real cedar]

Ahh okay that makes some sense but also why did my devices remove the channel when switching modes from LF to anything else?

@obsidian storm @leaden crow
We are gonna need to figure out how we are gonna do the unencrypted channel since it's removed when people switch. Perhaps we can consider an encrypted primary at that point that everyone uses as their primary or we can punch in ShortFast AQ== either way we are gonna have to enter something so why not make a fully encrypted primary on switch? That every node uses so there's no confusion. Since at higher modes there is not default channel

[real cedar]

They do cool. Pretty fast and I imagine you'd have to turn the screws on the carburetor in order to get it to start again at altitude

The nice thing on mine is I have a full mikuni so I can just adjust it

Problem is if I adjust for altitude then I'm going to be lean going all the way down

[real cedar]

Yeah I need to do some tuning. Which carburetor did you go with?

It came with high altitude Jets?

[leaden crow]

Anybody else have any luck on Short Fast? I can't even get my node list to populate properly.
I ran 36 traceroutes overnight. 1 of them was successful.

[vital hemlock]

I just swapped mine over within the last hour. List started populating more quickly than MF

[haughty moon]

I have 3 active and 2 inactive

[vital hemlock]

Can you trace to either of my bp_ nodes?

[haughty moon]

I haven’t gotten any successful traces

[vital hemlock]

Ah, you don’t see my nodes yet

[real cedar]

I had some luck but not as much

SNR and RSSI are fine

And I can send messages

But traces are like 20% success rate

[leaden crow]

They showed up when you sent the message

[real cedar]

Aur is I can talk to but can't trace from up north much

I think everyone put shortfast aq== in primary

And send messages

When I did that everything lit up for me and I was able to have a successful Trace route to AUR

I have no idea why that's the case

[haughty moon]

I have blank for name

[leaden crow]

I didn't have to do that, My default channel works with no value set in name.
I got messages from bp and TNU

[real cedar]

But because RSSI and SNR are good I wonder if this is a software issue?

Also earlier having it blank is good but apparently if I said it to something then I can't talk to you on the same channel

At least according to how it was explained to me and bash earlier

😑

Which might actually explain the lack of the ability to trace route as well

Remember they have to have the same primary in order to respond right? At least that's what people were finding when we put the Freq51 channel in the primary instead for routers

[vital hemlock]

I’m not getting replies though

[leaden crow]

That sucks. I got 3 test messages from you and sent 2 replies.

[vital hemlock]

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

[leaden crow]

Did you see Tanu 👍

[real cedar]

It might be without the greater client network that shortfast simply doesn't work and we will have to settle on MF

[vital hemlock]

I will say, in the past we’ve observed a certain “time to convergence” of sorts. In a few hours it might be improving. Or, not. 😄

[real cedar]

So I say we do something real quick.
Let's all ShortFast as the name
Set. I set aur to the default key of long fast for that and let's see if some things improve

I'm genuinely curious if this is all the difference it makes. Apparently there is something in software and erayd explained it. Once something is named it makes all the difference and unfortunately I put that into aur

[leaden crow]

bp# and dsr1 are close to best case scenario IMO. They are both 1 watt nodes with good antenna / positioning. Normally I have good direct communication, and historically we don't have very many nodes in between. This means to me that any not as good nodes are going to have problems on Short Fast.
I had TR check. The only message of the 6 sent in the past 15 minutes he got was Tanu 👍 and according to the map they are really close.

[real cedar]

Yeah shortfast just may not be doable in our environment. At least MF was stellar tbch

I had more success than LF

Up north

MS was dog shit 😂

[leaden crow]

That's weird, I would almost chalk that up to some outside variable. MS and LF were about sixes for me. With MF definitely a little worse.

[real cedar]

I will say my local cluster up here is doing fine and we're some miles apart in terms of where these are all located and all the SNR remains green and I'm able to trace them

How many buildings are in the way?

[real cedar]

I wonder if it was the slow and long intervals that made it hard for me to trace aur from up North when we went to medium slow

At least that might be my guess

It makes me wonder if the best and fastest rate we can support is short slow but what worries me there is. Our issue seems to be the amount of air time so slow modes would hurt us

[leaden crow]

I will continue to run traces on the nodes I see today, but IMO SF is infeasible. We need to determine the next step, but IMO before we plan a switch we should have the long link between FPR and ID do a test. It might be that only works on LF or MS.
Honestly MS would still be a huge improvement. It has double the data rate of LF. Baymesh MS has over 500 active nodes, that is close to 10x the size we have been.

[real cedar]

I dont think there is much of a range difference between MF and MS. Maybe we should have malice and mag test MF between the link

I think the longer symbol time will significantly hamper the city users when we get tall 70 of tthem online

thatts what I really worry about since they are our main users

its only 2 dB link budget difference

[haughty moon]

What if we had two devices on the routers and did a crossband repeat? long fast bridge and short fast for the nodes

Filter out unnecessary packets

[leaden crow]

If they are going to test one preset, might as well do 2 or 3 tests at the same time.

[real cedar]

We are asking for more complexity LOL I think we should settle on the fastest mode FPR and harrison can see one another on and if they can make that hop. then the normal users by in large should be able to communicate

the idea of the weakest link lol

[leaden crow]

Haha, I don't need to tell you this, but dB is a logarithmic scale. 2.5 dB is not an insignificant amount. I'm worried about 100 mile connections.

[vital hemlock]

I don’t see any of the routers right now.

[real cedar]

AUR is my fault

I named the dumb chat

LOL

[real cedar]

I know.. its half the power as much as before but looking at the trace route theres room for halfing the power of long fast and medium slow

[leaden crow]

It's possible @obsidian storm hasn't switched POTM and LAKE
Does someone on LF51 see LAKE still on LF51?

[obsidian storm]

I'm just waking up

I'll switch right now

[real cedar]

damn bro

you partty hard?

😂

[obsidian storm]

Na Just stayed up way too late binging some Korean TV show on Netflix

[real cedar]

Ive got no room to talk I stayed up late driving down to admin AUR after caffeinating myself

So dagron what I mean is. if we subtract that amount of power here. thats still in the yellow SNR category for MF but we should test

[vital hemlock]

I’m wondering if lake will make the difference for mine. If I could see lake I could see aur

[real cedar]

I think what twill happen is the SNR and RSSI slip into the orange category between the two. My best guess .. which means there is a slight chance a thunderstorm in between or snow storm in between could kill the link temporarily but thats always possible anyways

@umbral ice btw I never asked. Can you remote admin Harrison?

[umbral ice]

I’m not close enough, but @naive shale can semi reliably

[leaden crow]

It's worth continuing to test, we lose nothing doing so. The last 2 presets I tested between just me and TR on an empty mesh before everything else switched. What worked fine on MS / MF, basically broke down on SF. I won't try to make a decision for this whole group, but to me that is a deal breaker.

[real cedar]

@leaden crow @reef ridge and malice.. do you think its worth taking down FPR temporarily and switching it to an MF test so we get data on that link too?

That way we can evaluate this witht more than guesses LOL

[leaden crow]

I don't think we need to rush to do this test. If we get NPR 2.0 in the next 2 weeks. It might make sense to wait until it is online for that test.

[obsidian storm]

LAKE is switched. POTM is being stubborn, so just a bit

[umbral ice]

Worth a shot. Can anyone test the BBS list on FPR? I dropped a message on MHR to see if FPR is grabbing them

[vital hemlock]

Is lake 6737?

[umbral ice]

I can’t get a direct response from here

[real cedar]

I dont see it as rushing. Us northerners are used to shit quality links you know since its been awful for a year or two

ROFL

whata day more

[real cedar]

It wont unless mag gets it programmed properly

[leaden crow]

That is the other thing. Remote Admin to TR was first try on MS. I had to try 4 times on MF until it succeeded.

[umbral ice]

It looks like the schedule was working to call for the links

[vital hemlock]

For the record, MS worked better for me as well. MF was hit and miss

[real cedar]

TBF my nodes all had 10 dB antennas on them and so does C6C

so I probably had a better MF experience as a resultt

LOL

[leaden crow]

yes !d55a6737

[vital hemlock]

My roof is a 3ft either 9 or 11db. Don’t recall which

[leaden crow]

@pseudo kestrel How was your experience on MS vs MF?

[real cedar]

ooff.. well thats nott awful. it took me twice for aur with my 1000E ... I dont mind that level of degradation.. I just dont like the total loss of SF

LOL

thats kinda major

TBF it often takes me 5-10 tries to RA on LF most days

[leaden crow]

dsr1 is this Rokland antenna
8.5 dBi N-Male Omni Outdoor Helium 915 MHz Antenna (Large Profile 40")

[real cedar]

oooohhhh I love that one

such a good antenna

[leaden crow]

@real cedar
I've got to take some measurements, but I decided I'm going to order one of those Gizont for dsr2. If you want in on the Aliexpress order, let me know what you want.

[real cedar]

show me which one that is again?

like im def game to replace the alfas. they arent doing good for me

[leaden crow]

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

[real cedar]

and I want to go give AUR a far better antenna

[real cedar]

rip :/

what do I search ahhaha

[leaden crow]

weird. try in incognito window?

[real cedar]

i did lol.. i figure ill just search for it

[leaden crow]

Gizont 915 MHZ Helium Antenna Fiberglass 915MHz LoRaWAN Outdoor Waterproof Fiberglass for HNT Hotspots Miner Bobcat Linxdot RAK Nebra

[real cedar]

thanks

[vital hemlock]

I’ll need an antenna for my second Nebra, I was going to use an Alfa. If these are good I’ll go in on it, if you’re considering a group buy. Otherwise I can grab one myself.

[real cedar]

whats their gain. I must be blind

[leaden crow]

Scroll down to see gain

[real cedar]

i wonder if adguard is blocking CHYNA

hang on

[vital hemlock]

I still need the radio for the second Nebra. What db are those @leaden crow ?

[mighty pike]

if Rokland is good maybe I should try this 10 dBi 45" one https://store.rokland.com/collections/802-11ah-wi-fi-halow/products/10-dbi-backcountry-n-male-omni-outdoor-helium-915-mhz-antenna-48-for-rak-miner-2-nebra-indoor-bobcat-hotspots

[leaden crow]

WC2 was really spotty with an Alfa, just switching to the 45cm Gizont bascially made it function.

[leaden crow]

The prices jumps if you go to the 80cm. I think becuase it includes different hardware.

Honestly the 55CM(8dbi) is probably good enough, and I think a great price at $22

[obsidian storm]

I can't get to POTM on MF from my house. I'm going to have to drive

[real cedar]

those are all my 10s

[leaden crow]

These are great. When I bought my 40" Rokland I was debating between these two. I did some napkin math and thought the 12-degree vertical beamwidth of the 45" could possibly be bad from my roof to the mountain top nodes, so I ordered the 40" to be safe. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Rokland has the 40" in stock now.

[mighty pike]

oo

[real cedar]

Antenna Height and Gain: 35CM（5.8dBi）/45CM（7dbi）/55CM(8dbi)/80CM(10dbi)/100CM(12dbi)/115CM(14dbi)

damn

How much are those 8 dBs

OOF

60 bucks

rokland cheaper

[leaden crow]

If that is the case, I would be hesitant to switch it to SF. You might be hiking to get it back to LF.

[vital hemlock]

I can’t get a node info from Lake. Weird

[real cedar]

Oh I read that wrong

[real cedar]

welcome to the club

I have to drive for SF

[leaden crow]

Yeah, I would not consider the 80cm at that price, get the Rokland instead.
55cm = $22.55
80cm = $65

[real cedar]

I find it weird though I mean guys we are talking extremely short links. It does not make sense for MF to fail on them

[real cedar]

and you vouch that the 55s are good?

[obsidian storm]

I want in

[leaden crow]

Caveat, I bought the 45cm for WC2 because I could fit it in my backpack. The SWR was great.
I am just assuming the other sizes will be as good.

[leaden crow]

I don't mind order a few, but I don't think we'll get any sort of discount on shipping or price. C6 can't do Aliexpress so I offered for him. You might get it faster if you're not waiting for me.

[vital hemlock]

Yup, no worries 👍

[obsidian storm]

we won't save on shipping ?

[real cedar]

alright

92 bucks aint bad

wanna get me 4 55CMs

[vital hemlock]

@real cedar the devs have talked about strange modes they eventually got rid of, but some penetrate trees better. For example. I attribute it all the magic of radio weirdness.

[leaden crow]

Yes, but I am not ordered until I get my measurements from work. I'll try to do that this week.

[real cedar]

I dont mind MFs intermittent failures. What I really want to know before we ever switch is can FPR and Harrison see each other on MF if they can then the valley is likely to be fine when people fill in the dead zones but if FPR and Harrison cannot then MS might be all we can do

which is rather limiting but at least the data rate goes up LOL

[real cedar]

how would you prefer to be paid. Ill pay you in advnace

[leaden crow]

Not in advance. Before I order I'll sent you the total and then we'll figure it out when they arrive.

[obsidian storm]

the fact that they're fiberglass is a big deal

[real cedar]

True.. I forgot about tariffs. I was gonna send you the amount + taxes and 30 bucks for shipping but forgot about orange swans retardation

[obsidian storm]

tariffs don't matter with aliexpress

they bundle that into the purchase price shown

[leaden crow]

Shipping does go up. It's $5 for one, $11 for four. Also, it will actually charge me tax when I checkout, it doesn't show that on the estimate.
I think it will be ~$110 for 4 of the 55cm. I can do more. I will post again here when I've got my measurements and I'm ready to buy.

[obsidian storm]

right. I'll buy on my own.

[real cedar]

oooofff

https://store.rokland.com/collections/802-11ah-wi-fi-halow/products/low-profile-6-dbi-n-female-omni-outdoor-915-mhz-antenna-for-helium-rak-miner-2-nebra-indoor-syncrob-it-bobcat

that basically comes close to tthis

hmmmm

I might need to rethink

also their 8 dB came down from 49 to 39
https://store.rokland.com/collections/802-11ah-wi-fi-halow/products/8-dbi-omni-outdoor-915mhz-fiberglass-antenna-for-lora-halow-application

[leaden crow]

Yeah, that is an annoying N-female, so it doesn't work where I bought pigtails for Alfas. I don't want to have to buy more adapters or pigtails.

[real cedar]

i have lots of adapters haha. but you right
https://store.rokland.com/collections/802-11ah-wi-fi-halow/products/5-8-dbi-n-male-omni-outdoor-915-mhz-antenna-large-profile-32-height-for-helium-rak-miner-2-nebra-indoor-bobcat

theres that

price goes up though not low profile

I gave this one to bash for NPR new

but honestly I kinda wonder if an 8 would work fine on NPR

we both talked at the hacker space and came to the conclusion higher gain doesnt hurt us like that random person stated

[real cedar]

yeah scratch my ali order. Rokland cheaper in the end LOL

[reef ridge]

Why would higher gain hurt anyway? Just for the angle of the radiation pattern?

[leaden crow]

#antennas message

[real cedar]

this explanation is a graphic that I like but does NOT explain why my 10 dB down the in valley can transmit to FPR so close to the side of the mountain

cuz IF that were true my antenna shouldnt work at all

[real cedar]

Well the explanations I see are half the story

they discuss the main lobe

but none of the rest of the donut

They address only the beamwidth of the main 10 dBi gain lobe but most antennas have many lobes.. some smaller in gain say 8 and 5 as they get smaller and those are offset at a greater angle

so while you may no get the ideal gain. It should not just delete the RF signal outside of the lobe. thats not how physics works haha

[umbral ice]

https://store.rokland.com/products/rakwireless-8-dbi-outdoor-fiberglass-helium-hotspot-antenna-us-868-915-mhz

this is what’s on MHR and DMR

[real cedar]

and malice and all sees there router just fine or at least through a hop or two

Like I can appreciate people going over the theory but theory is a fraction of the story

[mighty pike]

What's the best way to go from the RP SMA board type connector all the way up to N Type?

[real cedar]

😂 theres no free lunch in rf and theres no absolutes

[real cedar]

a decent quality adapter

or bulk head

what device?

[mighty pike]

it'd take two adapters probably, from the board to SMA male or female, then the coax cable to the antenna N-type

but it'd be a rokland antenna, N-type male, to a rakwireless

[real cedar]

explain the RF path.. is it Board --> Ant or Board --> Filter --> Ant

[real cedar]

Ahh thats easy. We can do what we did on AUR

hang on

[mighty pike]

ye just board to antenna, as I know nothing of filters

[real cedar]

https://www.amazon.com/urcianow-Bulkhead-Waterproof-7-8Inch-Enhancer/dp/B0C58V276R?crid=2NT8IYM6U0L9&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.N27VChASqnuCfxISmLQILAjr7PSRccE43yhMaVtm3BorqoMyzXLGu1lVo2E4-NCel6mBi4aILen1pP_YhsjnMZVciCd608xflJGV1dnsgzxW2l3I1u6xc6F1TMkANihqQDr5fGVZJCjiwWdqiS5BquvQ_r0hj-Q9QMlTIjyQpadEIG50ilYyag0hoiSbon4rr-YW3fby7fk8sPiF7w3mIarFag5PYiXrR60LESCQdRc.a0z30pQi6BG7lQJFwWlC1yJ2Tudsp3kv4creju7jka4&dib_tag=se&keywords=sma%2Bto%2Bn%2Bbulkhead&qid=1759082245&sprefix=sma%2Bto%2Bn%2Bbulkhead%2B%2Caps%2C160&sr=8-3&th=1

I thought these would suck being generic

[leaden crow]

If you bought the one Malice linked, I think it actually includes the pigtail you need.
1pc RP-SMA Male to N-Female Pigtail

[real cedar]

they work well

[mighty pike]

actually I ordered the 10 dBi 45" one https://store.rokland.com/collections/802-11ah-wi-fi-halow/products/10-dbi-backcountry-n-male-omni-outdoor-helium-915-mhz-antenna-48-for-rak-miner-2-nebra-indoor-bobcat-hotspots

[vital hemlock]

@obsidian storm do you have ShortFast as the default channel? I’m not sure why I can’t get its public key or other node info

[mighty pike]

I see, and then just an SMA female to the board connector

[real cedar]

there are many ways to skin this cat. Look at OneLinkMore.. I figured out who their OEM is

they sell slightly less well toleranced amphenol connectors

basically B grade amphenol

[leaden crow]

I think his Seeed might have the hole for bulkhead style N.
Honestly once the antenna gets that large, I would consider mounting it with the brackets and not on a bulkhead or panel mount.

[real cedar]

https://www.amazon.com/stores/onelinkmore/page/488B7182-4897-4C0E-B487-C202BC8DB548?

[mighty pike]

o mine's mounted on a pole with the U-joint adapters included there, and I"m swapping it to a larger one. So the connector wouldn't need to provide mechcanical support

[real cedar]

Once I found out I ordered a lot of their stuff

all have been quality

[real cedar]

dagron your gonna cringe. You know my bulkhead on AUR isnt screwed in LOL
The bulkhead is JB welded to the plastic 😭

with their extreme variant

think it will hold a 8 dB on a windy day

cuz I got a couple 8 dBs on hand

In my defense this was not because I intended it to be jank. It was because rufio stepped on the antenna last minute and we had to improvise rapidly ontop of ensign peak

😭

[leaden crow]

Is the enclosure plastic? I'd be worried at some point it will crack and you'll get water intrusion.
One of the reasons I like mounting the antenna inverted. Even if wind strain causes some cracks around the bulkhead, as long as it's not bad enough to fall out, they will just be drains at the bottom of the enclosure.

[real cedar]

It's covered in lexel

[leaden crow]

Probably good enough until it gets hit by a hurricane like the solar panel on FPR v3

[real cedar]

See the other issue is I fucked myself here

The entire enclosure is jb welded to the pole

I will be needing a sledge hammer to remove it

The screws that mount the box are also jbwelded into the pole

And there's concrete through it's center ROFL

[leaden crow]

Lol, probably not. JB weld is great, but it's bond to polymers can usually be broken.

[real cedar]

You know you have a point. I'll soak it in MEK

Anything living under that pole is so dead though

You know what I could do

I could remove the existing antenna. Get an outdoor rated N-to-N connector.. and mount the 8 DBI to the pole instead..

Removing the stress and strain on the enclosure

Here I was thinking I wouldn't have to hike up there again 😂 guess I might as well update the firmware too

[leaden crow]

This mast I had to remake a couple of times. It was JB welded and I was able to hammer out the steel part without destroying it.

[real cedar]

Anyone got outdoor rated lmr400 N Male to N female to recommend

[leaden crow]

I only have an Aliexpress one I used on dsr1. It seems fine, but I have nothing to compare it against. I avoid using it wherever possible because it's so difficult to bend.

[real cedar]

I was hoping for something like Amazon so I could get it in a day or two. I'm getting impatient as the winter approaches. I want to get all of my stuff knocked out so I don't have to get my snowshoes out this winter

Look if I'm going to be back country skiing. There's places I want to be and you know let's be honest most of the peaks we put our stuff on ain't prime back country skiing area

🤣

I'll take a look around. Worst case I might just have to go to Mauser or digikey.. I know it's unethical but I might use my work account but with my credit card for the fast free shipping I get with digikey

😆

Free 3-day is nice and discounted 2 day

Look I see those trees getting colorful. I know what that means 😭

@mighty pike you said you needed to measure something

What do you need measured. I have an SA and a VNA at our disposal

[mighty pike]

oo sick. basically the performance of one of my antennas, to see what the SNA is at 915 MHz. I got it off Amazon and suspect it's not the best

hence why I bought the rokland

but there are also those fancy radio diagrams with the looping lines, and I'd like to know wtf that is

[real cedar]

That is a Smith chart

I use them often

I can teach you their basics

Just not over discord 🤣

[mighty pike]

oo sure

[real cedar]

Here
https://youtu.be/pXWbdxOAuDs?si=s77qJ4tRUWWAAijh

Start here to understand it

[vital hemlock]

I haven’t seen a packet from it since 11:10 AM. Weird

[real cedar]

I was unable to do this on AUR

It reset back to original name

Last night

Followed your steps exactly

[obsidian storm]

That's about the time I switched it to Short fast 51

[leaden crow]

He probably got the initial node_info it sent out when it was switched. I saw it 1 hour ago too.
│ 5 │ Meshtastic 6737 │ !d55a6737 │ 6737 │ UNSET │ N/A │ N/A │ 40.2784° │ -111.9486° │ 2321m │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ -2 dB │ 2 │ 0 │ 2025-09-28 11:10:32 │ 1 hour ago │

[mighty pike]

I always thought that the Smith chart looked like some kind of 2D projection from a higher dimenison, like the way a hypercube looks when it intersects 3D space

[real cedar]

Weird

Y'all having way worse luck than me on sf

I heard AUR 20 m ago

And I have all it's telemetry all night

Just not great TR success

Also have all of rax

Haven't heard BP though

I guess the reason why I'm wondering why you guys are having issues versus me is because my hop is so much longer than any of yours

The Hop from the only device that can see AUR is c6c which is over 45 km from AUR

I don't know how to explain. This is more what I'm trying to say

Have you guys heard from my devices all night because if you have heard any of them even within the last few hours which is probably when they last sent node data.. then you are getting a connection

I also just successfully remote admin to AUR from my house. But it took 11 tries

[leaden crow]

I just pretend I'm playing Tempest. Pew Pew

[mighty pike]

hah

[real cedar]

It is exactly that.

You're not wrong

😆

[mighty pike]

o really?

[real cedar]

But I can't go into the math that actually made that possible on discord

[mighty pike]

it must have something to do with the relationship between resistivity, capacitance, and industance. Like, the chart we see is a slice representing what our physics has set for that relationship

neat though, doesn't look too bad to use the chart. Though in the photos I saw of real vna meters, there wasn't just a few datapoints but long lines, so it must be measuring over some domain, like, time or a variable load

like the green line, maybe that's showing various intersections of the resitivity and reactance over some range

o, frequency domain. so it must be saying that a little before 850 MHz there's no reflection in the line, and again at three other points. and I guess whether the ratio is positive or negative causes it to vary, but it's not clear to me why it stops there

[vital hemlock]

I have direct line of sight to lake, it’s a bummer I can’t trace it either, even with 1w. Strange.

[mighty pike]

I was having trouble with line of sight to LAKE too, and it turned out to be my adapter to go from SMA inside to outside my enclosure. That improved it, but I'm still at like -13.75 dB, which seems poor

I can't traceroute LAKE right now

[leaden crow]

LAKE is on a different preset for testing, you won't be able to reach it today unless you're also on Short Fast.

[mighty pike]

o

thought testing was over

[leaden crow]

This is the last day. I'm sure bash will switch it back this evening or tomorrow morning.

[mighty pike]

I'll try shortfast from my roof to lake

[leaden crow]

Actually that would be helpful, any data points we can get.

[prisma saddle]

wonder if we will need to Lf to them and bbs between to connect mf to lf. ? don’t know of mf will reach them?

[prisma saddle]

wow. how would that be. lol.

[mighty pike]

so far no luck on SF with direct line of sight to Lake, 10.15 miles away. Rakwireless w/ https://www.amazon.com/Waterproof-Fiberglass-SenseCAP-EasyLinkIn-SyncroB/dp/B09N2H166D?sr=8-3

though it's probably more an indictment of my setup and antenna than it is SF

if it helps, traceroutes for longfast to LAKE from my node (FoxR) show SNR like -12 to -14 dB

[real cedar]

@leaden crow You know what it might be

You might have more interference than us up north

And there might be a source of interference in the city. And that's probably why SF is only working up here

Although I can see Lake as well, but I think that's because it has a direct hop to aur

In any case, I'm probably going to have to switch over early today and put aur back on long fast

[mighty pike]

lake is online on SF right? here's my line of sight to lake but no response on traceroute

[prisma saddle]

ya looks like we need more in between.

[mighty pike]

I'd be happy to run a 1W on my roof on SF

I just need the board. I have PoE up there already

[prisma saddle]

this is the easiest way when avail. https://ebay.us/m/VYH5X6

[mighty pike]

oo cheap.
Bash recently put out a call for interest in nebra boards, and I said I'd like one. If he's working on that I can wait

was a helium network miner really a worthlessly underpowered device mining crypto with an ultra-low proof-of-work, powered off solar and also providing a mesh network? Because that's what I gather from the name alone

was the idea to incenvitize building a mesh network, as eventually it'd pay for itself, if it took off?

[obsidian storm]

the board group-buy we're doing is for these ^

so the board needs one of those.

[mighty pike]

do you have me down for that group buy already?

[pseudo kestrel]

neither was fantastic, but I believed MS was better than MF

here's the current list with the SF51 setup

[real cedar]

I'm in fairmont skate park @leaden crow no problem trace routing to AUR and POTM

Did it improve since LAKE?

[prisma saddle]

gonna try mil client node has los to potm. see how good it is. herriman.

[real cedar]

Yeah SF is working on my T1000E

But I'm also mobile on bike

Been in the same spot for 20 mins

At the local park jam with the uprox boys

[jolly goblet]

I have a Station G2 and Callboost cavity filter on order for a roof node. And, I'd had my eye on that antenna as a possible solution for it. However, I am a bit confused by the Rokland listing. The listing says, "One antenna to suit both 868 MHz and 915 MHz." And then, further down the listing it has a specifications table that has two columns--one for each frequency range. And in the "Antenna Dimensions" it lists "1300 +/- 25mm" for the 868 MHz and "900 +/- 20mm" for the 915 MHz. How is that possibly one antenna for both?

And to complicate matters, if I go the RAK site directly (https://store.rakwireless.com/products/fiber-glass-antenna-1?variant=43034794721478) it gives me the option to buy one or the other--suggesting it is not one antenna for both bands. Can you shed any light into my confusion? Thanks!

[real cedar]

@vital hemlock maybe it's y'all's location specifically

Idk

I'm struggle bussing to figure out if it's something on your radios or mine but I've got flawless results in town here

I'mma hook my laptop up to my spare rak in my bag and do some analysis with the rak from Fairmont

[leaden crow]

I am about finished testing with SF. I've run traceroutes on every node I've seen today (one every 5 minute for an hour) and I'm on the last node. When that's done. I'll switch all my stuff back to LF51 unless someone else has any remaining testing they want to do.

[real cedar]

The view from here doesn't have good LOS either

[real cedar]

I mean I don't have much I just don't know why my results are so drastically different 😆.. radio I guess

[leaden crow]

You might want to actually email Rokland. It's possible RAK offers 2 versions of that antenna. One tuned to 868 MHz and one tuned to 915 MHz. Rokland is in the US, so it's possible they only stock the 915 MHz.
The other possibility is that it's an antenna tuned right in the middle, but has a pretty flat curve and is still decent for both 868 MHz and 915 MHz. The first antenna I bought more than 2 years ago is like this and it's fine--SWR is ~ 1.6 at 915 MHz

[real cedar]

Yeah imma get some of those 5.8 dBi

They are more expensive than the 6 but have a desirable connector

Less wind load too

[leaden crow]

You would know probably more than any of us. It would be amazing to have that onboard SDR on multiple nodes and be able to compare the interference at different locations. I think I'm going to put my SDR permanently on dsr1.

[real cedar]

Your a genius I have an SDR on hand

Hold my beer

Where are you located and where is BP

Roughly

I'll run the SDR with the laptop in the bag recording my gps loc

[leaden crow]

I am in Holladay and BP is somewhere West Jordan / Taylorsville I think.

I really do think we have some probably localized interference on 915 after this test. At some points in time I would see 5-6 successes followed by 5-6 failures from one node. Not sure what else would cause that on an uncongested mesh, and the only way I can think of troubleshooting it is an SDR (inexpensively anyway).

[pseudo kestrel]

This is what my "powerful" stationary home node has seen throughout the SF test

[leaden crow]

I saw different nodes, but also not very many. Most of them I never got full node_info.

[pseudo kestrel]

it looks like I never got enough packets to get a location for AUR or CHK6

[prisma saddle]

Making sure i got settings right. short fast. fs51. and def channel ShortFast. ? @real cedar @leaden crow

[real cedar]

@leaden crow the LTE interference here is unreal

I have to filter to the sdr to see the lora

-89 dBm is HUGE power for lte

Like cell phones usually see -129- -110

[leaden crow]

I have a cell tower half a block from my house, I'm sure that's not great for me. I do have the Taoglas filter on dsr1 right now. I plan to upgrade that to Murata at minimum. In any case, we are not likely to fix that. I don't think every node in the valley is going to get a cavity filter.

[leaden crow]

That should be correct. I never changed my channel name, if you just leave it the default (empty) you shouldn't have to worry about it.

[real cedar]

Yeah it keeps getting worse. I see our Lora signal but it's trampled heavily

We must be in the middle of an LTE band

Let me see if I can decide which NO or MVNO

@leaden crow it's not the cell networks. It's SLC

It's municipal radio

Licensed

I'm also seeing some radio that's unencrypted passing SCADA data. I'm guessing utility conpanies

Point is the spectrum is busy

[obsidian storm]

I do now!

[real cedar]

@leaden crow mag gave me remote admin to fpr. I say we test MF and if I break it I'll go up and get closer ROFL and switch it back.. only if @umbral ice can coordinate

[umbral ice]

We are ok to try. If it goes sideways MHR will be stuck until next weekend when I can get up there with a laptop. MF51?

[leaden crow]

If that is the case, maybe you should do it on Friday or something?

[real cedar]

Uhmm hold off until Friday this week

So we can rapidly fix it

😆

No hurry I'm just eager to figure it out and get people switched

[umbral ice]

Yeah it’s a 2ish hour drive to get up there for me LOL

[real cedar]

As Machiavelli said. If your gonna cause pain. Be swift.. and quickly move on 🤣

[umbral ice]

Nvm then

It was done

LOL

@naive shale pulled the trigger hahah

[real cedar]

Bros my SDR has a huge antenna and it's generating looks from cars on my bike

[real cedar]

Really?

[leaden crow]

lol

[umbral ice]

Yeah

[real cedar]

Damn I'll go switch for when I'm gome

Don't undo it

[umbral ice]

Ok

[real cedar]

🤣 you guys are doing work for God and country lately

[umbral ice]

It’s still early. Worst case I’ll make it up there and fix it while there is light

[leaden crow]

I'm not seeing any new nodes on SF. I'm going to collect my test results and switch back to LF51.

[prisma saddle]

ya i see. nothing in sf.

100% los.

[umbral ice]

Solid 0 hop on MF51

The good news is that if FPR <-> MHR is solid, I’d trust MHR to clear any other routers on it on this side

Not much out here is farther than that distance

[naive shale]

That TR was with a Seeed T1000E soooo basically anything should do better than it

[mighty pike]

what a view!

[broken turret]

If a custom channel was removed, it's likely because you scanned a config QR code, or opened a config URL, and selected the 'replace' option. It will also vanish on upgrade from a pre-2.6 version firmware to something >=v2.6. If the channel vanished on its own in any other circumstances, then this will be the result of either corruption of the stored settings protobuf in the device's flash storage, or a bug somewhere.

If a default channel was replaced with the new default channel corresponding to the modem preset you just applied, then this means that the channel name was empty, which signifies that it should use the default name for whatever modem preset you're on - the apparent channel name will be updated accordingly (e.g. LongFast -> MediumSlow etc).

[broken turret]

If you're migrating from the default channel on one preset, to the default channel on a different preset, then you normally do not need to enter anything. The only thing you need to do is change the preset, and the frequency slot & channel name will update automatically.

The only exception to this is if you've manually overridden those settings, in which case whatever you entered manually will stick.

[leaden crow]

SF results
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmI5RfqcTUYF0zkkZmzxojrV4LfgqXtRSQzOSO0cdKs/edit?gid=1995134565#gid=1995134565
Over the next couple of days I'll work on parsing my meshtasticd debug logs and see if I can find any useful trends in SNR RSSI values.

[real cedar]

If FPR MHR is solid @leaden crow I say we put up with eh MF difficulties and add and fill clients to fix the problems

I think that's a reasonable compromise

[leaden crow]

I think we do a poll. I'm not willing to decide for everyone. Also, what I don't want to do is fragment our mesh and have people want to stay on LF51 because MF doesn't work for them. Obviously this is not written in stone. I would just like other people's opinions.

[random meadow]

No Long Slow?

[leaden crow]

The problem with that one is that it's even worse for a crowded mesh. We would have worse channel utilization and collisions than we do now. Unless you are only trying to do long range tests, it's probably a bad idea.

[mighty pike]

ShortTUBO, I wish

[reef ridge]

Lmao, I wish too.

[mighty pike]

dang people prefer longfast for distance over datarate? I'd love to send more data.

[reef ridge]

MediumFast would be great, but I think it would be better to add the fill clients first to avoid breakage.

[mighty pike]

I'd risk voting for MF with the guess that I can make my node in Lehi get to LAKE. And can LAKE hit POTM, and POTM up into the valley, reliably on MF?

Not sure the results of the test for my area

[wheat kestrel]

what kind of data are you guys sending over meshtastic?

[pseudo kestrel]

MS51/MF51 seems to be the most consistent in my section of the city

[vital hemlock]

MS feels like the safest bet, we can enjoy the improvement over the winter. But I’d support MF as well. And if we do go MS, we can always try MF again next spring when we have even more nodes (I’m guessing).

[umbral ice]

Making multiple changes can suck, but at the same time a slow progression to make sure that gaps get filled as it builds is kind of nice

[leaden crow]

IMO If it's the will of everyone here, would could probably get by on LongFast over the winter. I'm slightly concerned about what will happen with the influx of nodes / traffic when we connect ID, better connect Tooele, etc.
I also want to clarify this statement: Obviously this is not written in stone. Where the public consensus ends, is when our routers reach a point where their channel utilization is over 25% consistently. The people who control those nodes will want to switch, and it's done at more risk in the middle of the winter. FPR, NPR, LAKE, WC those will not be reachable at all in the winter. So if a config change or something else breaks them, we are just SOL.

[inner jay]

Only issue I see with moving to a different preset is that not everyone that is on 51 is on here to know to switch over so we may lose nodes

[vital hemlock]

“Most” of the folks on 51 are here

[leaden crow]

We have the benefit that we have done this once, and everyone on LF51 now is not on a default preset. We can take time to send a bunch of notifications. Ultimately we could lose some nodes for people that just forgot about their infrastructure, but sometimes that is not all bad. LF20 had nodes on old firmware that do the whole mesh a disservice.

[inner jay]

Well I don't think I'd have too much trouble switching over given my location so whatever the mesh moves to will likely work for me

I assume the routers are running the latest stable build

[prisma saddle]

which worked the best ? but ya think we def fill in the holes.

other than lf

[leaden crow]

MS is the safest bet, Link Budget wise. If MF works well for everyone, we get 4x data rate.
It's not a clear answer. We don't get a complete test unless everyone switches.

[manic fractal]

Between Discord, a few broadcast messages leading up to the switch, the website, and maybe changing the names of a couple of the more visible nodes to the new preset or the website, then hopefully everyone would at least be aware of the change even if they choose not to switch.

[prisma saddle]

Well if we do stay on lf. continue to build it out before winter. then comes spring and snowmelt. test again and see if we can move or what gaps we need to fill. city clients etc are easy. mountain router not.

[inner jay]

I have a guy in utah county thats into the mesh but isn't on 51. I'm forwarding the info along to see if he wants to join up

[prisma saddle]

sweet get him on! and we all here to help if he needs it.

where in uc ?

[inner jay]

I think he's near PG but he moved recently. Figuring that out

[prisma saddle]

pg is good. need more clients out there.

[inner jay]

My brother lives by Provo airport. He's interested too

[prisma saddle]

sweet!

[reef ridge]

Too bad Discord doesn't give us ranked choice polls.

[leaden crow]

I made it a 3 day poll. I'm kind of waiting to see what happens with FPR > ID since one end already got switched to MF for testing.

[inner jay]

Yeah he's still in PG. Pretty close to downtown

[acoustic mason]

Utah county has a lot of nodes on 20. It would be nice if the mesh matured a bit here. It's hard to get messages from Orem to anywhere else reliably. I'm only picking up a handful of nodes and most are at the north end of the valley.

[inner jay]

Well with luck we'll have some roof nodes setup in PG and Provo with LOS to LAKE at least

[acoustic mason]

I have a Seeed Studio solar roof node ready to go up in central Orem but I live in a condo and so I want to be on a more stable firmware before I sneek it up on the roof. 🙂 I doubt I'll be able to get up there very often.

[mighty pike]

I'm in Lehi and feel the pain of getting up into the valley on freq 20. on 51, as long as I can talk to LAKE, and LAKE to POTM, I can get up there

[acoustic mason]

This is the roof node waiting for the right timing to go up.

[mighty pike]

oo looks great

[inner jay]

What are you on now?

[acoustic mason]

It's up and running on my balcony now but is severely limited in view and facing east...where there aren't any other nodes yet.

Long name: MEC Solar Base

[acoustic mason]

LF 51

[inner jay]

I meant firmware

[acoustic mason]

2.7.5. I'll move it to 2.7.10 or newer in a bit and set it up as client base before it goes up. But I'd really like it to be on the next stable release before doing so but I have no idea of the timeline for that.

[mighty pike]

I saw MEC T-Echo 02 and MEC SenseCap 01 33 hours ago, but no solar base

[inner jay]

Yeah I dunno when any of the 2.7 releases will be labeled as stable

I know the RAKs can be updated over BT. Not sure about the Seeeds

[acoustic mason]

I take both of those nodes with me to work so either drive or ride my bike from Orem to the Adobe area and I'm sure everyone sees my nodes pop up in their node list as I traverse the valley.

[acoustic mason]

I had read that too but not sure how. And I still think I'd need to be closer to it that 50+ feet once it's up on the ridgeline of the condo roof to update over BT.

[mighty pike]

o sick. I'd do the same, I worked at Adobe up until like two months ago

I put a node in the window there sometimes

[acoustic mason]

Cool! I also own the MEC UV North Base node in Lehi.

It's on the Social Climb/ADI building.

[mighty pike]

oo

[inner jay]

I need to talk to my boss about putting a node on the office roof. It would fill a hole off 90th

If i could get away with it I'd climb the cell tower a few buildings over

But I'd likely have to filter something fierce

[prisma saddle]

ya tha would be a fun one. lol i’ve thought of that but found may not do much cause of the many signals.

[inner jay]

Hijack one of the service antennas 🤣

What i really wish I could do is convince my neighbor with the 100' ham antenna to let me piggyback his tower

[prisma saddle]

why can’t you ? what’s holding him back?

[inner jay]

....I don't speak that much spanish

That would be one nice tower to use

[prisma saddle]

dang ya!!

ummm google translate? or take a solar node and point lol.

[inner jay]

Also has something to do with my crippling social anxiety with such things 🤣

Neighbor also has something going on

One on the right almost looks like infrastructure of some sort

[prisma saddle]

dang lots of fun there maybe the other one?

[inner jay]

If it is a HAM tower, would that put off any conflicting frequencies?

[prisma saddle]

hmm possible 33cm band. .

dunno.

[inner jay]

Odd. If it is HAM it's not showing on the license map

[prisma saddle]

uhf

[obsidian storm]

I'm just turning back LAKE to longfast. Try again in 15 minutes

[prisma saddle]

@obsidian storm . you got any on that since your a hammy. still working on mine.

[inner jay]

Holy F I'm surrounded

[prisma saddle]

your missing out lol.

that’s about how my are is.

lol.

[inner jay]

Watch this, thats a repeater tower for entire neighborhood lol

[prisma saddle]

lol.

[inner jay]

Whatever it is, it's not on any official map. State or federal

Not even arcgis

[real cedar]

Really.. long fast. Y'all insane 🤣

I will put my own routers up and leave if I gotta be subject to that horrible data rate 😭😆🤣

[inner jay]

As I said before, I'll go wherever the mesh does lol

[prisma saddle]

agreed lol. mf at least.

and fill in the holes.

[real cedar]

Did I know it's just joking and trolling. He gave them the option and that's why they're choosing it

I've done so many discord polls that is exactly what it is 😂😂😂😭

It makes me laugh though

[leaden crow]

Man I hope not. This is a pretty specific group, we shouldn't have many trolls. I think the problem is that LongFast is still working. The question none of us can answer is for how long.
Have you been able to test MF yet to Idaho?

[prisma saddle]

how awesome would it be to see the convex hull in most of the state?