US - Utah

[real cedar]

Dude, a good internet troll is a good internet troll.. it's community agnostic brother 😆... I'm trying to test that right now

[novel spruce]

I am still super new to this so forgive me if I sound ignorant, but could we designate a week or certain days to test the channels to work best. I am think like an A/B/C test, that way y'all can back up with data why LS is disfavored

[inner jay]

Thats what they did this weekend

Least with some nodes

[novel spruce]

Ah, my bad. I literally started playing with this mesh this weekend.

[inner jay]

Not a problem at all friend

[prisma saddle]

yup stared on a new fslot then mf ms sf. etc.

[inner jay]

Fslot just sounds dirty

[real cedar]

Y'all hilarious with the emojis

[prisma saddle]

lol

[real cedar]

The girls like it dirty.. don't sweat it it's new 🤣😭

[prisma saddle]

like that? lol

[inner jay]

https://tenor.com/view/clint-eastwood-no-nonsense-serious-yes-nod-gif-17723735

[leaden crow]

The first time I saw it, I read SHORTBUS.

[real cedar]

ROFL

[novel spruce]

and for what it is worth, I would be interested in setting up a rooftop node or working with my local city council to get both a HAM and Mesh router set up.

[real cedar]

They don't like non challant anymore. Thank you Andrew Tate for eliminating all the competition by telling people how not to win women 🤣🤣🤣😭

You know to be fair, I probably shouldn't be making any kind of decisions right now

I am definitely drunk. We had a damn good block party and Park jam over at Fairmont Park

But here I am remote admining FPR or at least trying to. Waiting for it to show up in my node info

[prisma saddle]

aur happy again?

[real cedar]

It might take a minute. I honestly might test again in the morning. But yes AUR is back on LF51

[prisma saddle]

what was up with it yesterday?

[real cedar]

Having the wrong chat default preset

😂

[prisma saddle]

oh right.

ya i killed off the channel name. fixed any issues there.

[umbral ice]

I swear I wanna get a yagi on a rotator so I can aim the beam directly at nodes I want to RA

[real cedar]

I just switched back to long fast to see if I could see FPR.. WHAT IN TARNATION is this channel utilization

Rofl jfc

Y'all busy af tonight 😂

Must be node info spamming in or something LOL

Clearly LongFast ain't having it

[pseudo kestrel]

I can safely say it isn't my fault XD
I forgot to swap back to LF

[prisma saddle]

@jolly goblet i see your node.

[jolly goblet]

Great, thanks! Which one?

[prisma saddle]

roof.

[jolly goblet]

Which is still in my basement. But hopefully on the roof in the next day or two.

[prisma saddle]

https://tenor.com/view/book-of-boba-fett-the-mandalorian-this-is-the-way-the-book-of-boba-fett-mandalorian-gif-24825263

[jolly goblet]

I have an update on sandwich baggie node. #1197577977781821541 message
After a three days, it reports battery of about 40%. Not bad for an 1100 mAh battery (or so the label claims). It will be retired soon.

[prisma saddle]

very cool. well done.

[prisma saddle]

my nebra roof node is in my basement too. lol.

[jolly goblet]

I usually take the overkill approach on most of my projects--much to my wife's dismay. But sometimes quick and dirty has its place. And I'm going to continue testing some cheap nodes with these xiao boards. If they only use ~250 mA⋅h/day, then even a 2 W solar panel can probably keep them going. Something that small (and cheap) can be deployed easily.

[prisma saddle]

ditto lol.

[real cedar]

Yo guys, this is kind of weird. My channel utilization is still over 50%

What's going on here

I come back from testing and y'all burned down the net 🤣😭

[reef ridge]

Idaho?

[real cedar]

Maybe I don't know. I'll just let it soak

[leaden crow]

What node your G2? That's the nice thing about meshtasticd, you could just check your log.

[real cedar]

C6J is. It's reporting 47% rn

[leaden crow]

I see 16.88% from 13 mins ago
│ 16 │ Aurora Jovialis │ !a2ebc068 │ C6J │ STATION_G2 │ sMnz7QaN9kMPjN10Py7+E3pffh+PTjorArqlhWnhgVc= │ N/A │ 41.0996° │ -111.9832° │ 1437m │ Powered │ 16.88% │ 1.87% │ -8 dB │ 2 │ 0 │ 2025-09-28 22:23:53 │ 13 mins ago │

Maybe it was a one time thing?

[umbral ice]

Shouldn’t be on LF. MHR is currently on MF51

[prisma saddle]

dang.

ya i’d let things settle. i’ll bet it’s ok

[leaden crow]

You have a chance to test anything yet? Have you seen FPR on MF?

[umbral ice]

@naive shale can probably answer that. I just moved ISR over to MF51 to see if I can see anything from further away, but haven’t been able to reach it for about 30 minutes now

Well, I tried to move it. I maxed its transmissions and then I lost it

That is an easy one for me to get to though at least lol

[naive shale]

Haven’t gotten any traceroutes off it

[naive shale]

Harrison did that to me, but turned out to have actually switched over to MF

[umbral ice]

I’ve got my node swapped over, just waiting to find it again

[jolly goblet]

I don't think FPR is on MF. I'm getting traces through FPR on LF51 as of a few minutes ago.

[prisma saddle]

ya i heard from it an hour ago.

[umbral ice]

Can you hit ISR?

[naive shale]

Nothing

Still consistently hitting Harrison when I remember to be on MF51

[obsidian storm]

mine just reported 30%

22% at LAKE

[real cedar]

I'm waiting for FPR to end up in my node list so I can switch it and test

[real cedar]

Switching over AUR must have caused everything to flood over

Hahaha

[obsidian storm]

we should disable specific portnums on our long-haul routers

[leaden crow]

The mesh is super crowded tonight. Average channel utilization on active nodes is 15.45% I've never recorded it that high before.

[real cedar]

I'm fucking dying

V5 🤣😭

ROFL

[leaden crow]

I thought we were only on v4?

[obsidian storm]

Anyone know who KD7BKO Farm is?

[reef ridge]

V4 is sitting on my kitchen table right now, lmao

[leaden crow]

That one wasn't v3?

I feel bad BW put so much work into that.

[real cedar]

Im waiting on request metadata so I can admin

Idk why it's not letting me RA

[reef ridge]

It's much nicer looking inside than mine is, and he says it was a rush job, HA!

[leaden crow]

Yeah, all his 3d printed internals are nice! Better looking inside than mine.

[reef ridge]

I used the key you DMd me, is that not the right one?

[real cedar]

Nah it's letting me now

Just max retries reached

Busy net

[leaden crow]

Yeah, I think it's struggling rn.
│ 12 │ Francis Peak Router v5 │ !abc00d8d │ FPR │ PORTDUINO │ TWkmaslgtcDTxt3z2gZNZrS9RMv1ou5F7D1G/U9ljUk= │ ROUTER │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ Powered │ **24.70% ** │ 3.47% │ -14 dB │ 2 │ 0 │ 2025-09-28 23:08:56 │ 8 mins ago │

It's at 25% channel util. That's the point it's going to drop packets.

[reef ridge]

Maybe I left something weird with the presets?

[leaden crow]

I doubt it, mesh is just busy, and a whole bunch of nodes have been added this weekend.

[real cedar]

What I'm gonna do is let some Idaho nodes show up first

Then switch to MF

After all my high end 1 watt nodes are MF here so I have a chance of admining

But I need that to complete first

[jolly goblet]

That matches a Ham licensee in Pleaaent Grove--not that it necessarily is him.

[umbral ice]

ISR and MLCE are both on MF51 too I'm guessing that @naive shale is going to leave his on it too

[real cedar]

Yup this tells me it doesn't matter if we want to stay on longfast. We have to upgrade lol

[real cedar]

Oh sweet thanks for letting me know

Did you leave LongFast in channels?

Like in your chat name

That's fine I just need to know

[umbral ice]

They are defaulted so it should auto switch

[real cedar]

Could you screenshot what it is?

[umbral ice]

I'm adding LongFast as a secondary to mine just in case

[real cedar]

Thanks

And here we go

MF test on FPR

Let me get my other nodes switched over

[umbral ice]

Just for 100% confirmation I just got back in

[jolly goblet]

Does nodedb need to be deleted when switching presets? Or, will previous entries for a node still be valid on the different setting?

[prisma saddle]

i would. so no confusion on what’s what.

[real cedar]

I can't get fpr to change

It keeps saying delivery confirmed

And returning to long fast

This is frustrating lol

Anything special about femtofox RA

[umbral ice]

Not to my knowledge

[real cedar]

Yeah that's the 5th time delivery confirmed then nothing

And then back on longfast

Alright I don't know why but remote admin isn't working @reef ridge

[reef ridge]

That's weird, I did it while I was up there and it worked.

[real cedar]

I don't know what's going on man. I've like been trying to do this since about 11:00 p.m.

And it just keeps rebooting into long fast

[reef ridge]

I can try changing it again tomorrow. As far as I'm aware there's nothing special it needs to operate though.

I wonder if it has something to do with the BBS.

[umbral ice]

I don't think so. MHR changed over fine

We'll leave everything on MF51 so whenever FPR gets changed over it will be ready. The mesh up here isn't quite as full of activity as it is down there.

I'm going to have to get a ladder and climb on my roof tomorrow to sort out why my roof node isnt responding. I might update it to 2.7.10 to test CLIENT_BASE out.

[leaden crow]

I hate to say it, because it will probably be a PITA fixing your admin keys, but I'm guessing these were generated with the low entropy problem. @naive shale @real cedar

meshtastic --nodes |grep 'KzIbS2tRqpaFe45u13bCWA9iUb3JPb2pXS6Z4pFFhyU='
│ 4 │ Umbriel │ !74e59f1e │ C6U │ TRACKER_T1000_E │ KzIbS2tRqpaFe45u13bCWA9iUb3JPb2pXS6Z4pFFhyU= │ CLIENT_MUTE │ 41.0780° │ -112.0141° │ 1397m │ 88% │ 24.71% │ 0.23% │ -8 dB │ 4 │ 0 │ 2025-09-29 00:03:59 │ 1 min ago │
│ 82 │ Sidpatchy │ !4befea3c │ SMG3 │ TRACKER_T1000_E │ KzIbS2tRqpaFe45u13bCWA9iUb3JPb2pXS6Z4pFFhyU= │ CLIENT_MUTE │ 42.4935° │ -113.7967° │ 1281m │ Powered │ 13.58% │ 0.07% │ -8 dB │ 3 │ 0 │ 2025-09-28 15:25:40 │ 8 hours ago │

[real cedar]

Oh jeez

That's a huge pain

Big time

[leaden crow]

May be a bonus if you want to admin each others nodes? 🤣

[real cedar]

This could explain why things are not working for RA

[leaden crow]

I'm not sure, but I had that thought too

[real cedar]

Sidpatchy do you want to go first

[leaden crow]

You guys wouldn't have been on the same mesh until FPR came online

[real cedar]

Yeah

Well Umbriels Key is relatively new too that sucks. It's in a lot of routers though ugh

@leaden crow in order to fix that I have to go admin every router. Add a backup device .. check I can RA it.. then reset my key

I'll do that tomorrow or soon but not tonight

[umbral ice]

@naive shale

[mighty pike]

I've gotten the low entropy key error on one device. does that prevent transmission/receiving?

[naive shale]

Can confirm. Worked first try when I updated it.

Only difference I can think of between our RAs is that I’m zero hops

[long crown]

Someone posted on reddit a new node on lone peak: https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1nt6t2c/salt_lake_city_i_put_a_router_on_top_of_lone_peak/

[real cedar]

It's probably on LF20

It's times like these I appreciate being on non defaults because going and just doing something thinking I know the best place is why we left LF20 🤣

@reef ridge so idk where you work but if you could RA FPR to be MF51 that would be great. I'll get to trying to fix my node keys tonight 😑

For now replace Umbriels with Polaris
KWD0wc0JU86k1QOLJ6JPRiaz8pwT7++Qs4eukA4MDFA=

[pseudo kestrel]

nice to see everyone again 🙂

(67 online/ 129 total)

[reef ridge]

Before if I was in precisely the right spot in the parking lot I could hit FPR. Let's see what I can do.

I don't know where the hell these nodes I'm hopping through are but FPR can definitely yell at me from here.

Maybe I should strap a Femtofox to the roof of my car because I can't consistently get packets out.

Wait, I could bring v4 over here, it has an amp.

[leaden crow]

That looks like he zip tied it to a tree. ☹️
Zip ties are generally a poor choice for long-term or permanent tree attachments because their narrow, tight grip can easily girdle and damage the tree's bark, hindering its growth and health.

Probably the only good thing about that install is that I bet it will fail quickly. Unless he bought really good zip ties, the UV and cold will make those brittle in no time.

[prisma saddle]

ya when it dies mid nov / dec. will see how that goes.

and then we can add to that post when/if we get ours up on an actual infrastructure pole 20 feet or 30 feet above his 🙂

except on farnsworth.

[pseudo kestrel]

anyone in here have "weapons grade autism" and want to make the group $1k for new radios by finding this guys node location? xD

[obsidian storm]

he's right here

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JKQeKWLtHX4MNtr76

[inner jay]

Ninja strikes again

[pseudo kestrel]

Dang Bash! gonna go snag the bounty? xD

[prisma saddle]

lol.

[obsidian storm]

no

It's not hard to find.

the guy is passionate.

that's cool, I think he'd fit in really well with the rest of us

I'll see if I can hit him on LF20

We really ought to have a LF20<->LF51 text only bridge.

[prisma saddle]

yay new toy came.

[prisma saddle]

i agree.

[real cedar]

I'm generally okay poaching people over from 20 as long as they understand our terms

I just know there's also quite a few bad actors on 20. As in people who actively just want to be butt holes.

[real cedar]

Do you want me to make a tri radio for AUR and replace AUR with the tri radio interlink or do we want to just do this at the hackerspace where we have internet and infra that can't be touched

[reef ridge]

That was fast!

[real cedar]

We can call it the Freq51-20-Intertie

@reef ridge any luck RA ?

[reef ridge]

No, I don't got the juice to RA from here unfortunately. I need to put a node on the tower.

I'll go to Riverdale after work and add the other key.

[real cedar]

@obsidian storm @leaden crow @prisma saddle Hey, we really should get on Allen Peak. There is a radio site up there I think their associated with the Utah VHF society, the local hams, the emergency services and so on. I don't think it would be too hard to get on that set of tower infrastructure. It's even more ideal than Francis Peak router. It will also give us a direct line of sight to a couple router spots we can use to connect Logan. In addition to that, it has direct line of sight to Mount Harrison. And if we can have our infrastructure on something that is properly grounded and properly secured, we won't have to worry about our interlink failing. Thoughts? If you agree, can we make a concerted effort to try and do this by the end of the year?

This would not obsolete fpr as it would work as a team since it would see all of Ogden which FPR does not

It would be far better than me climbing promontory

[prisma saddle]

yup was.. a week maybe? rigiht from the mainland.

[jolly goblet]

How long did it take to come? Did you order directly from the B&Q Consulting Shop?
Edited: I see you just answered the first part of that. Sorry.

[prisma saddle]

a week.. ordered on the 21st..

got here today

[obsidian storm]

I've got to make friends with the Utah VHF

Maybe I should stop going to the hackerspace for a few months and focus on the ham community so that I can make friends and show them how cool it would be to put meshtastic on their towers

[prisma saddle]

My dad and bro are hams too, could see if he could reach out/etc

both gens. and have some friends that are extras.

[umbral ice]

I need to do this more up here.

ham operators up here are pretty hit and miss tho. some are pretty cool, but others are much much less so

Lots of old extras are very "holier than thou"

[real cedar]

You should.

[real cedar]

Thank you

Like Allen peak would be amazing

It would help me and mag a ton

It would give us a redundant link to MHR that doesn't need to be worried about being fucked with

[obsidian storm]

it's not hard to take a few weeks and pass the extra

so that I can be taken seriously

[wet galleon]

Hey guys!
It was me that put up the router on LP this weekend.

Im open to any criticism to make it work better for the entire valley.

@obsidian storm you are about .25 miles off on your pin, but good job 🙂

for the record the zip ties are not what is currently in place. That was a temp fixture while i set everything

[obsidian storm]

NIIICE

[obsidian storm]

I wasn't sure if it was that ridge, or the one back farther. I guessed the closer one since it would reach the valley below better than the taller one.

It's an awesome spot

what firmware did you put on it?

[wet galleon]

Its a wisblock 4631 on FW 2.6.11
Running on default LF settings

8w solar with a 12000mAh battery pack

All neatly packed into a custom ABS printed enclosure, sealed up real nice with an exaust valve on the underside

Ill probably be up there 2-3 more times this season so if there are any changes yall want to suggest im totally open to them

[leaden crow]

It looks like you used a Gizont / Muziworks whip antenna? Just an FYI, those don't hold up to UV exposure. Long term, you should probably be looking at replacing it with something else.

Also it's pretty hard to find SMA connectors that are waterproof and don't rust. If you move to N-connector antennas, you get a better antenna selection, more robust and waterproof connector.

[wet galleon]

It is a muzi 17cm
I sealed the connection with silicone
But the UV protection is a great tip.

Which antenna would you recommend

[leaden crow]

Alfa 915 at the low end.
https://store.rokland.com/collections/all-helium-antennnas/products/alfa-aoa-915-5acm-5-dbi-omni-outdoor-915mhz-802-11ah-mini-antenna-for-lora-halow-application
I ended up replacing the Alfas on my Wasatch Crest nodes for higher gain, but they are farther away from the valley. A lot of people use the Alfas on mountain top nodes.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806241790045.html

Also
#1197577977781821541 message

[wet galleon]

Sweet, noted.

Anything else u can think of to better set this node up

[leaden crow]

Haha, how deep are your pockets?
After antenna, probably the next huge upgrade you could do is a cavity filter. This is not quite as good as a cavity filter, but still good and much easier to fit in small enclosures.
https://gpio.com/products/915-mhz-bandpass-filter-kit-for-helium-miners-and-hotspots

[wet galleon]

Ohh thats not too expensive but i would have to print up a new enclosure to fit it

[leaden crow]

This is a commonly available cavity filter:
https://acasom.com/products/915mhz-cavity-filter-for-helium-network-amplifier-filter-sma-type-high-out-band-rejection
But if you go down that route, there is a better option for a little more money ($80) from one of the Baymesh (SF) guys.

[reef ridge]

Very nice! I'm curious about how you set it up, you got any cool pictures of the internals?

[leaden crow]

@real cedar @reef ridge
I'm anxious for your MF test. I can't even get admin commands to WC2 today. My roof node and AUR are at pegged channel utilization. I'm afraid I might have to switch those in person and who knows when Crest will be snowed in for the season? Could be tomorrow.

[obsidian storm]

How would you feel about adding it to our more coordinated network of LF 51?

[reef ridge]

I'll be down in Riverdale at 1800 or so. I really hope there isn't an issue here, but I was able to RA when I added @real cedar's key so I'm betting on the entropy issue.

[wet galleon]

Yeah totally would be cool with that if most of the established infrastructure in the valley is running on that frequency

[obsidian storm]

Ok. sweet. Let me get a DM with you.

We have some contact requirements we have for routers

[jolly goblet]

I'm working from home today. Mine just came too!

[obsidian storm]

We've had people put up a router before and disappear, for primary infrastructure we want people contactable

we'll probably move from LF to MF sometime in the next 1-8 months.

[wet galleon]

Totally get that.
Its currently running in repeater mode because i didnt feel comfortable setting up router role without knowing how it would effect infra

[obsidian storm]

repeater is way worse

[wet galleon]

Lolz

[obsidian storm]

hear, we wrote this guide:

https://freq51.net/advanced-configuration/router-deployment

[real cedar]

If there's an issue I will make my way up there guys

[obsidian storm]

specifc to utah

[real cedar]

It's not irrecoverable

[wet galleon]

Whelp 🤷
Ill remote in and change that then hahaha

[obsidian storm]

what kind of battery cell did you use?

[real cedar]

How well can it see the avenues. One of my dudes was building a router for olympus

But if this surpasses it we can use that elsewhere

[wet galleon]

Using 4x nitecore 18650s
The cold temp ones

@real cedar it does not see the aves unfortunately

[real cedar]

Fuck

Okay I'll figure that out

I'll talk to the Dean of the school of engineering and see if I can use their buildings. For some reason nobody has been able to get something up there

[real cedar]

Nitecores are good. If you ever want to build more routers a lot of us have a shit ton of Recovered cells to give out

[wet galleon]

Hell yeah
I have the ability to put up a node on a tall building at the VA campus.
I would be super willing to do that as well

[reef ridge]

I wouldn't mind going up again but I can give you one of the spare keys if you'd like.

[inner jay]

The VA would be a good spot

[real cedar]

Okay we will build my friends node to go there then

[rustic bolt]

i have a node that just needs bats and is good to go

im moving so i would rather it be here

[leaden crow]

Whats the possibility you could get power to it? A Nebra would be way better than a solar powered node.

[wet galleon]

No power up there unfortunately.
It would have to be solar powered

[real cedar]

I'm taking that g2 TYVM haha

If I have to build promontory point .. the G2 uses less power than a femto

[prisma saddle]

what tx db do you have yours set as. in the app ?

[real cedar]

Put Polaris key in and change to MF51 if I can't admin I'll point a Yagi with my car node. We will be fine

[real cedar]

@wet galleon good. I want it to be solar powered @leaden crow ... On the VA. I want as many infra nodes as we can to be completely solar powered so if and when there is a black out etc.. the network still function. If loss of power nukes our infra nodes or most of them what's the point? 🤣

[reef ridge]

I was talking about the physical key to the lock on the enclosure. 😂

[real cedar]

@reef ridge oh. I'm retarded. K yeah drop one at the space I'll add it to my massive keyring

I love that I still carry a ton of physical keys

Now that everyone's going electronic I like to feel like the hold out 🤣

[real cedar]

We don't need it though? Like a rak would do fine. It's only ever gonna see the city LOL

[reef ridge]

Meshtasticd, my beloved. It's great, might as well use it when you can.

[real cedar]

Cold temp is nice but not necessary. One thing dagron and I figured out is due to the small charge current even in winter we rarely exceed 0.5C charging so we never really harm the lithium batteries

I have a lot of safeties on mine. Each of my batteries has a protection circuit and there's nickel fuses to kill a battery if it goes into some kind of fault. But I got risk adverse about causing a wild fire ahahah

Current vote btw.

[leaden crow]

Remote firmware updates and admin. 1 watt is going to work way better in surrounding commercial buildings.
I can't vouch for their infrastructure, but hospitals have backup power for their infrastructure, including communications. If you could tie into that.
Plus it's not like we've got a shortage of Nebras. I would donate one of mine.

[real cedar]

That's true. It just really sucks for my buddy. He now has this extra device he never intended to have in his apartment and was eager to build a router

Or infra node

And I keep having to tell him nope sorry let's try this instead 🤣

Maybe I'll have him put a rak on stansbury

[leaden crow]

I have way more hardware than I have opportunity for placement too. I guess that's the good thing about such low cost infra.

[real cedar]

Yeah that's true. Well I'll plan on VA until I know we can get power but I super doubt. The moment we ask the Uni for power it's gonna be a whole debacle. I'd rather just him ask can we put a sensor on the roof LOL

Like I go to school there. The moment anything is more than placing something on a pole it becomes drama and many mole hills turn into mtns

[leaden crow]

Whoa that got buried. This is the link to vote in case anybody missed it.
#1197577977781821541 message

[wet galleon]

I can set up a pole on the VA building I manage no problem.
That will get us tonsssss of coverage

[real cedar]

Also stansbury. Jacob indicated he wanted to but I haven't heard from him in a bit. If his plans on that are dead.. I plan on taking over that with my buddy

[real cedar]

But I'm assuming not power or Internet or PoE

That's what dagron wants to know

[real cedar]

It did.. but a ton of people voted. Current MF51 is in the lead by a good margin. LF51 🤣😭 told you someone would vote for it LMFAO

[leaden crow]

If you found a way to get power, we could get a pretty amazing 1 watt node up there.

[real cedar]

I have a way to power a nebra node with solar

It's not hard. You take. 30W solar panel. You put in a 3S3P pack

[leaden crow]

Yeah, but I don't think they are trolls. Honestly LF for some reason is substantially worse in like 1 weekend than it has been.

[real cedar]

I'm not suggesting they are I'm just suggesting id troll that way

For giggles

[leaden crow]

You'd be that one guy voting for Short Fast.

[real cedar]

Nah I voted for MF51

I want the Idaho link

[leaden crow]

I'm just saying, if you were trolling

[real cedar]

Oh nah I'd go big or go home

SHORT TURBO BABY

[leaden crow]

That's why I didn't make it an option

[real cedar]

https://youtu.be/6rAONOjXbDw?si=CPUh_5dibqWm9Azg

🤣😭

Buys 100 Xiao nodes to make it happen LOL

Tags all the purple street lamps

[leaden crow]

I probably have more incentive than most to stay on LF. I'm worried how much it's going to degrade connection to my WC nodes. They basically only became usable when I went from 4 > 8dB gain antennas. Now if we go -5dB preset, I'll have to buy the 45" bigboys. 😁

[wet galleon]

Yeah i may be able to get POE up there but its unlikely.
Probably would be easier just to set up a self contained solar node.

[real cedar]

K @leaden crow do you want me to make a solar powered nebra or a solar powered rak. Up to you

[real cedar]

I'll fix this issue by adding 3 nodes to BCC

I got a get to Brighton and get that all setup SOON

[leaden crow]

That is the real answer, I just won't place any more before winter. Next Summer I want to place at least 1 more for better Millcreek coverage. Eventually it will be good, even if MF temporarily causes a setback.

[leaden crow]

I personally would not try Solar Nebra, especially when Femtofox exists. Honestly, if you've got hardware to immediately throw at it, just get it done. We can upgrade later if it ends up being a really key node.

[haughty moon]

I think that the faster modes will be more tempting if they allow for, or we make a way, to allow more hops

That and a better next hop routing

[leaden crow]

In at least one sense they do. If everyone configures 7 hops, that will cause more network congestion. The faster presets will deal with that better. When the data rate is 2x or 4x faster you have less collisions.

[real cedar]

Actually I will place it during winter

I know that sounds wild

But I don't know the height of the snow on the trees

And I don't want the birdhouse node to get buried are blasted

I ski and back country there all the time. It only makes sense. But I gotta be careful

Every good spot is extremely avalanche prone terrain

I'll probably go during the stormiest times to avoid people noticing me but that only increases the risk a lot 😆. Oh well I'll be in my element at least

[real cedar]

K solar powered Rak it is

@wet galleon standby .. Ill let my buddy Xandor know

[real cedar]

Why 🤣 it's only 24W maximum potential usage. I've got one at home. They are easy to solar power.

What I want to do is perfect that node.. by adding a INA3221 and weather sensors with a weather attachment 😆

I guess I love the challenge. 1 week of backup power is basically 3S 5P.. 3 - 4 days 3S3P

You hook the renogy solar pwm 10A controller to the panel. The bat... Then you take it's regulated 12V10A output rail to the nebra.. voila

Voltage monitoring .. you just add the ina3221 to the mix and hook it up to i2c.

Now for weather I need to create a baffled NPT plug to allow the sensor to grab outside air without being you know screwed over by high winds and precip

[obsidian storm]

I still think LF51 is the way to go for the winter

[real cedar]

The vote disagrees with you 😂

[leaden crow]

You swayed the vote. 😁

[real cedar]

I plead the 5th 🤣

[obsidian storm]

I can't even talk to POTM from my house over MF51

it's pretty bad

[real cedar]

What about new POTM

Have you done that yet

Or is it not up yet

[obsidian storm]

it won't be any better

[real cedar]

https://a.co/d/80S3NxM

Here's my trusted 30W panel btw. It's a bit bigger but it's solid for a nebra

[real cedar]

I mean look I'm only voting MF51 IF.. it doesn't hurt our Idaho link

Otherwise I'll compromise and say MS51

But I feel we are at the density limit of LF. LF was horrible when I switched back

I basically couldn't talk all night waiting for the flood of node data

[obsidian storm]

better than not being able to talk at all

[real cedar]

I had more luck with MF51 and AUR

It's you guys and POTM that had more difficulty

Like I literally was tracing fine on short fast to AUR from Fairmont park

I can't explain why but my results did differ

[obsidian storm]

LF52 was amazing

[jolly goblet]

It strikes me that the poll didn't have a hard deadline for the implementation. I think you have some discretion in when you pull the trigger.

[obsidian storm]

You can't compare LF51 to MF51

You have to compare LF52 to MF51

[real cedar]

That's not really true know why?

Empty mesh will never compare to full mesh

And when we add people

The entire network is gonna change and we can't predict what that will do

Anyways Devon is giving me her old station G2 node. She's moving and she's making a donation to our needs

I'm gonna give it to rufio

He's our IRC <--> mesh bridge

[real cedar]

We are waiting for new NPR. Also when I'm done testing with FPR. And I put FPR back into normal mode. You can feel free to return to client on LayPR

It's already up there but I'm gonna test it's link

See what's gonna be a real PITA to explain is if MF51 works to Harrison but didn't to POTM.

[leaden crow]

Because it's only a poll. That is only step #1, well maybe #2 after initial test. I got kind of anxious there. Probably should not have started a poll until we tested FPR > ID. Step #3 we discuss implementation. That discussion may end with a decision we don't try until next year.

[real cedar]

It's okay. I'll get the testing done in time.

Once we know we will know. Mag gonna RA it for me

I'll fix my stupid keys

That's gonna take me some hours tonight

Then I'll start a 24 hr test of the link

Ngl though we can make LF51 work it's just everyone would/MUST observe our talkiness limits if we end up stuck.. Also there's a way to fix the Idaho link on MF. I'll just add 2 to 3 more 1 watt off grid routers with high gain antennas 😆

Black Pine Peak

Promontory

APR

That would solve the MF link problem.
I'm still racking my brain on why I had better results than you two. You both had high gain devices. I had some shit tier T1000E lol in comparison

I hate it when I can't explain something. It makes me want to do more testing but that's the engineer in me

[real cedar]

@leaden crow @obsidian storm
#general message

We are doing something very wrong

There's no way they got a short fast to 254km and y'all couldn't talk over 20

Like we clearly need to figure out what's causing this

[wheat kestrel]

I'm a total radio noob just starting to tinker with this stuff, so maybe this is a dumb question. But as far as the preset poll goes, is there a reason that faster data rates are needed? For my use case of emergency grid-down communications it seems intuitive that more range = better as long as the same however many characters go through. What are you trying to send that long-fast is not enough throughput? Is it just to handle the amount of traffic? Does the reliability increase on the shorter range presets?

Just trying to wrap my head around why we'd want to switch

[real cedar]

It's the density limit not the data rate

The issue is how much air time a device needs to talk

And on LongFast that's Long

Therefore limiting the number of devices you can have speaking on the network

The devs quote that number around 50-70. We have found it's closer to just about 110

[wheat kestrel]

ok that makes more sense, it changes the amount of time it takes to send a message?

[real cedar]

@leaden crow @obsidian storm @reef ridge @prisma saddle @umbral ice

My dudes. We did our testing all wrong. We screwed up. Erayd just confirmed it
#general message

Our traceroute issues were our fault

[leaden crow]

I'm betting noise / interference. This is why I want SDR on nodes.

[real cedar]

Not SNR or RSSI

Nope

Go read what erayd said

[leaden crow]

Is it nearby any other transmitting equipment that might be operating in that (or nearby) frequency range? Cell towers can be an annoying one.

[real cedar]

And how long resends and rebroadcasts take

[real cedar]

Well at least two of our test devices werent

But this was our fault

Trace routes get AUTO DROPPED when the hash mismatches

[leaden crow]

The last time I did a waterfall, I had tons of background noise at 915 at my house.

[reef ridge]

Oh, I thought we already confirmed the names had to match. Did we just forget to set them?

[real cedar]

When you left your primary blank but I named it MediumFast and ShortFast

Y'all couldn't trace because your hash mismatched

🙁

Sorry I wish I knew earlier

[leaden crow]

That was your problem, not mine. I never changed my channel names

[real cedar]

How do you know your hashes matched

[real cedar]

Also except that's just it. I had awesome and mostly successful TR on MF and SF to AUR.

You had a drastically different experience to POTM.

[leaden crow]

I could traceroutes back from POTM, I don't think it had a hash mismatch problem.

[haughty moon]

I thought blank=default?

I ran blank for the tests

[real cedar]

I ran LongFast MediumSlow MediumFast ShortFast for tests

I put the name in on AUR

[leaden crow]

correct, if you leave it blank you never have to worry about changing it when you change presets

[real cedar]

Shit can I do some more testing with Just AUR with you and I then

I'm assume you have LOS

[leaden crow]

Yeah, I usually get 0 hop to AUR, but it's inconsistent on LF51 probably because of channel util.

[real cedar]

Erayd is willing to help
#general message

He doesn't buy our testing results either haha

[obsidian storm]

We need something better to actually test live.

[real cedar]

I'm open to suggestions

[obsidian storm]

we should build a test

a coordinated testing suite

[real cedar]

We really should.

[obsidian storm]

and logging suite.

something that connects to a central server and reports everything

and we can analyze there

[real cedar]

I think we need to be more scientific. I'm sorry I'm adamant but physics is literally disagreeing with our results LOL

[obsidian storm]

tell me why I can't talk to POTM on MF then

[real cedar]

915 Lora can go so much further than 20km on its fastest settings without meshtastic firmware LOL

[real cedar]

That's the million dollar question isn't it

I mean I said it in general. 5dB less total link budget should not cause this

Especially since your SNR and RSSI was good IIRC you just couldn't TR

To be clear here I'm not upset at the results I'm skeptical of them. I trust y'all's data. But the data doesn't pass the RF eng sniff test at all. I got a second opinion at work today and the grey beard laughed and said go do a lot more testing that makes no sense. (He has a Lora (non meshtastic link) operational from snow basin to toele operating on 8 / 256 4/5 250 kHz... And that link has no issue with PCB antennas

[leaden crow]

I'm curious what this looks like for other locales. I have no basis for comparison but 915 looks bad to me. Especially compared to 900-902.
https://temp.ӂ.net/rtl_power_work.png

[real cedar]

Also, the Arizona mesh has a medium fast link working over 130 mi and their mesh is MediumFast default

[leaden crow]

So what are the reasonable explanations?
Our hardware is garbage. Our software is misconfigured. We have much worse background noise than those places and/or we specifically selected a bad frequency slot?

[real cedar]

Look I'm feeling like the retard right now. I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong and what we did wrong in our testing. 🤣

I think our most reasonable explanation is software misconfiguration

[leaden crow]

My config is as KISS as possible.

[real cedar]

I genuinely think it's that and I think what I might do is I might make a hike to AUR since we can mostly see AUR very well from everyone's place and I will upgrade the firmware totally reset it, have it on the most basic of settings and then we can test again

How does that sound?

It's also just a rak node with a 5dbi antenna.. so it comes the closest to the average node on our Network

[haughty moon]

I’d be interested in testing MF again

[real cedar]

All right. I'm going to go get it configured. I'm not going to upgrade its firmware. I don't want to deal with any trouble. I'm leaving work now

I'm going to get this configured with the most basic of settings and we can retry

I'm even going to blank out the channel so that the hash cannot possibly be the issue

[haughty moon]

Whatever we decide I think we just need to make a configuration table and follow it for the test

Wether it’s blank or something else for the name

[real cedar]

Yeah I'm just going to get this node configured as basically as possible. So that at least I can eliminate a lot of stuff

I'm with dagron on the simplest explanation.. the fewest number of assumptions or Occam's razor points to software

[ember torrent]

How does that apply to LF51? Sometimes i type “longfast” sometimes i leave it blank. Haven’t seem to have any issues either way.

[haughty moon]

That’s what I thought, but we keep getting different answers and want to eliminate variables

[real cedar]

Well as one of the contributors has pointed out to me, if you leave it blank, the hash is okay. It's based purely on the key. If you do not the hash will change and packets will be dropped

That is exactly how it was explained to me

If you want more explanation, I would go to the general channel and ask because I don't know 😂

[ember torrent]

I also do LongFast sometimes. 🤣🤣🤣

[jolly goblet]

Is the timestamp on that correct? Was it last November?

[umbral ice]

If you have the default channel settings in your channel 0 slot (Default or Primary) it should have AQ== as the PSK. If you dont ever touch it, when you change your preset (LONG_FAST/MEDIUM_FAST/etc) it will automatically assume those correct channel names

If you move it to a different slot, you have to name it correctly LongFast/MediumFast/etc and have the AQ== PSK

[ember torrent]

If it is blank, it names it, “primary channel” if channel 0. “Channel 1” if on channel 1 etc.

The hash might be different.

[umbral ice]

On iOS, I that is correct. I don't know how Android takes it

[ember torrent]

It’d have to be the same across platforms.

[umbral ice]

On the base level yes, but having played with both devices, I can tell you that android doesn't show as Primary

[naive shale]

I'd never count on that with the two apps

[leaden crow]

Yeah, I'm thinking I will dig up my SDR and do some more recent waterfalls. I also can't remember if I turned off my meshtastic radio or not when I recorded that.
I think I turned it off for part of that test, you can see where the noise on 915MHz mostly disappears part of the time

[real cedar]

Yeah so I've fucked up. That's on me. I'll totally take the fall for it. I don't care. Let everyone blame me and feel better.. but apparently putting the name and manually is stupid. Don't do that.

Do what bash said which is to erase the name and let it take whatever is the default and then have the key AQ== in the primary slot

I'm doing that right now on every single one of my routers

And then I'm turning off mqtt and ignoring it and we will deal with that another day. This is going to be as basic as possible and it's not going to have any other channel in it. And it's going to be rebroadcast all

Not core port num

This should eliminate any possible chance of the meshtastic stack interfering

Now, if someone else wants to modify those scripts that dagron uses to make us a test suite, I would love that. Alternatively, I guess I could chip away at that. I just got home from work

[ember torrent]

Someone post this “hash” showing a name? Without the dashboards, i dont know how to.

[real cedar]

The channel hash is in the actual packet. It's not often displayed but when @broken turret is out of work and out of his team's call, he should be able to help us and talk to us about this

I swear that man has been like one man army helping our mesh so much 😂

We ping him a lot haha

[ember torrent]

Ah. Sounds like a fancy name for a variable

[broken turret]

Meeting ran over a bit sorry, but am available now. Where should I read the backscroll from to get caught up? You guys are very chatty; there are a ton of new messages since I was last here 😂

[real cedar]

I mean you can basically start here. We're trying to figure out exactly what is the best method to name the primary channel. So that we never have a trace root problem or drop packet problem

Right now we're kind of settling on blanking it out

In the app and letting it take the default

[broken turret]

IMO this is best. Leave it blank, and let it pick up the default from the modem preset. Makes any future change easier, makes getting existing users across easier, and minimises the number of settings that need to be touched.

[real cedar]

The other thing is resuming our old conversation.. @leaden crow and @obsidian storm literally couldn't talk to POTM on MF. It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't pass the sniff test but I trust their data and I don't know why they were unable to talk to their router

Like by all accounts you guys were able to make short fast work over 254 km

[broken turret]

And you can always verify the name in the app if needed; the app will display the default name if the actual setting is blank.

[broken turret]

IF the channels were correct, then my instinct would be either antena setup or noise.

What's the RSSI & SNR on each end of that link?

[real cedar]

I believe he posted a Google doc one second

[leaden crow]

I have meshtasticd debug logs for each day of testing, but I haven't written anything to parse them.
My traceroutes all only return SNR.
I could give you the text output for every traceroute I ran and my logs.

I compiled this spreadsheet, but it's mostly just number of success / failures each day on a different preset
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmI5RfqcTUYF0zkkZmzxojrV4LfgqXtRSQzOSO0cdKs/edit?gid=222483863#gid=222483863

Also, my first hop for any of these tests would be ~15 miles away direct LoS

[broken turret]

One thing to note - if you change roles to ROUTER, it will default the rebroadcast mode to CORE_PORTNUMS_ONLY after you save it. So load the device settings again after any changes to the role, and double-check that dropdown; you may need to correct it.

[real cedar]

I changed mine to ALL

[broken turret]

Mmm, I'm keen for RSSI as well, so traceroute isn't really enough on its own.

[real cedar]

I hate core port num only

Haha

Like AURs entire purpose was me and rufio's hobby needs

At high port num

[broken turret]

Looking at that spreadsheet though, those are some awful SNRs. Particularly outbound.

[real cedar]

I'm wondering if it's more to do with the devices that we're trying to transmit to the router than the router itself

[broken turret]

Something's badly wrong if you're getting that over 20mi.

[real cedar]

It's a really awful SNR for something that shouldn't have that bad of an SNR given the link budget only lost 5 DB

[real cedar]

That's why I couldn't explain it with interference. I sat down with my buddy at work today and he was like to be interfering that much. They would literally be receiving complaints from every other RF neighbor in the area. Like for some operator above one watt to be disturbing you that much would literally be a violation of FCC rules

So that's why I kind of quickly eliminated the interference idea

[leaden crow]

It's an RPI with Nebra hat w/ taoglas filter, 1 meter of LMR400 to Rokland 40" antenna

[broken turret]

I hear you on that. It's a good way to protect a mesh from junk traffic (e.g. if you have someone going nuts with ATAK etc), but it kills private channels etc. I like that the CORE_PORTNUMS_ONLY option exists, but I prefer to avoid using it whenever possible.

[broken turret]

Any chance of a photo of the setup? And lat / long of each end?

Assume you've put both the antenna and the filter on a VNA to look at the frequency characteristics?

[real cedar]

I know you set your node up correctly with good quality parts. This is why I have called in the Calvary. I don't get it

Haha

[broken turret]

What happens if you try another node in the same place, with completely independent hardware (i.e. not using any of the existing setup, so you can rule it all out).

Any chance there could be corrosion or loose contacts on any of the connectors involved?

Has the centre pin of the male N connector retreated, or the flanges of the female one splayed?

[leaden crow]

Shouldn't be. I actually added the lightning arrester this month and reconnected everything.

My results didn't change significantly before or after

40.672154, -111.822083
about 1400 meters elevation

[broken turret]

What does the VNA think of the antenna?

[real cedar]

What gets me is that he had really good results on medium slow and when he went to medium fast it's when everything broke

So like clearly his node is receiving and doing well

[broken turret]

Looking at the SNR results, I'm not surprised. He was already marginal on that. Likely the others lost just enough margin to tip him over the edge.

[leaden crow]

Really good, I don't remember exactly when I tested it but 1.1-1.3 SWR

[real cedar]

And that's just it. My SNR values with my t1000e were better than his and he has a one watt node

[broken turret]

Measured at the antenna, or at the node end of the coax?

[leaden crow]

Antenna only

[real cedar]

Oh shit, that's something I never considered before. Did you get off brand coax or on brand coax

One mismatch could hurt you pretty bad

[broken turret]

Do you have the VNA handy? A quick measurement from the node end of the coax would help to rule out a bunch of issues there. Or if the coax just happens to be an evil length or something.

[leaden crow]

The other end would be
40.535638, -111.988301
Probably like 1350 meters

I'm not at home, I can test it tonight

[broken turret]

How close is the antenna to that metal flashing? If it's too close, it'll detune the antenna downwards. Was the antenna measured once installed?

[real cedar]

I'm going to go test mine. I have a similar coax cable to him with lmr 400 except mine is from amphenol

[leaden crow]

Yeah it was measured installed, but probably a year ago. I'll test it again tonight

[broken turret]

When you do, can you also post the smith chart for it?

[leaden crow]

yeah

[broken turret]

Thanks 🙂

[leaden crow]

My RV node is a RAK with Alfa, it performs worse

But I will turn that on and do that tonight

[broken turret]

Do you have something handheld?

[leaden crow]

Yeah, mutiple T100OE and a t-deck

[broken turret]

Hmmm, this ground clutter will not be helping. What's the elevation above ground of the end that isn't yours?

[broken turret]

I'd try the T1000-e, held at roof level. And see what that gets.

Hold it by the bottom edge, with the antenna edge facing the remote node.

[leaden crow]

It is a pretty tall house, maybe 20 meters or so off the ground

The mast is PVC

[broken turret]

Have you guys measured the antenna while adjacent to the mast? Have found some brands of PVC have weird additives in them that can muck with the signal.

[real cedar]

Oh geez, that's an alfa pointed upside down

[leaden crow]

No, but I can do that

[broken turret]

Most I've tried have been fine, but not all

[real cedar]

We figured out it's not a true dipole and when you point it upside down the lobes get pointed downwards and the antenna gets biased downwards

We talked about this last week at the hackerspace

[broken turret]

That will not be helping, then.

[leaden crow]

It is a pretty low gain antenna anyway

I really don't think his end is a problem

[broken turret]

Mmm, you having poor results to every test site does point that way a bit. Handheld tests will help determine that.

[leaden crow]

Almost every node I hop through for these tests is on the West side of the valley, and I seem to have similar SNR

!eba4d26b --> !eba81f55 (-16.25dB)
Route traced back to us:
!eba81f55 --> !eba4d26b (-3.0dB)
1758811851|No Serial Meshtastic device detected, attempting TCP connection on localhost.
Connected to radio
Sending traceroute request to !eba81f55 on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eba4d26b --> !eba81f55 (-16.0dB)
Route traced back to us:
!eba81f55 --> !eba4d26b (-2.75dB)

That's a different RPI, 1watt node

It does look like my outbound is bad

This node is much further away
Sending traceroute request to !4f76af73 on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Route traced towards destination:
!eba4d26b --> !4f76af73 (-14.0dB)
Route traced back to us:
!4f76af73 --> !eba4d26b (-13.0dB)

[broken turret]

Do you happen to have a tall HF mast, fishing pole, etc. that you could tape a T1000-E to the top of, and climb on the roof and get it as high as possible? That will help eliminate nearby ground clutter. Won't address the middle though.

[leaden crow]

yeah

[real cedar]

Well shit I'm glad I called in the Calvary now you got me questioning my node builds too and I'm going to do some measurements tonight

[leaden crow]

I'm sure mine are not perfect but this is like V4 and has performed better than anything before

[broken turret]

Honestly looking at the path, my instinct is that it's all the stuff on the ground that's causing issues, rather than the node. But given that the results are poor for every other tested neighbour as well, that definitely warrants investigating the node too.

Do you have a decent attenuator & spectrum analyzer handy? Not a TinySA.

[real cedar]

The exclusion was my t1000e. It had no issue speaking to either router and it didn't have these awful SNR numbers. All of mine were positive

Varying between two and eight

The only thing that was weak was the return signal from the t1000e

But even then it was near zero

[leaden crow]

No, I only have a NanoVNA.

[broken turret]

T1000-E is a bloody good design. The antenna is obviously a very compromised one, but it performs extremely well for what it is.

[real cedar]

Yeah, it's just got a weak transmit power if that could be up to one Watt somehow. I mean oh my God. What an amazing design.

That said yeah I didn't have the issues they had because my test unit was that card

[broken turret]

Roger. Any kind of power meter that can cope with LoRa?

[real cedar]

And like I felt weird. I felt like there was something I was either doing right or doing wrong because I know they have really well set up nodes

[broken turret]

Reason I'm asking about SA / power meter is if you have one, you can use it to rule out a damaged PA on the radio. And reason not a TinySA is they are too slow to measure LoRa properly (although they are still better than nothing - but you can't get an accurate power reading from them).

[leaden crow]

I have multiple hats with E22 modules, I can easily swap another one

[broken turret]

Those E22 modules are fantastic, and work very well in my experience.

We have them on our gen 1 bridge hardware.

@leaden crow What time of day are you likely to be doing testing? Happy to try and be available at that time if the timezones permit. I'm on UTC+13 here (so currently 11:18am).

[leaden crow]

I'll be home from work in ~2 hours.

[broken turret]

In that case, yeah... I'll defintely be available. Working, so may be a bit laggy with responses, but I'll certainly be around. Feel free to DM me if you want to get my attention; DMs will ping my phone, but channel mentions will not.

[real cedar]

We are UTC+7

Mountain Time

It's currently 4:30 pm here. Most people don't get off work till 5:30 6:00 pm

[leaden crow]

I'll try to collect everything before I message you

[broken turret]

Lol, that's -7, not +7. But yeah, a helpful timezone for coordination 🙂

[broken turret]

Up to you :-). I don't mind being messaged though, and I am likely to have questions once the data starts rolling in. Would hate for you to get the results, pack everything up, and then for me to be that guy who wants just one more result from the roof that needs the gear to come back out.

[real cedar]

ROFL yeah my had

Ugh I can't admin AUR remotely on LongFast now.. 😑 man I'm going to just have to make a hike. I need to upgrade the firmware. God I hope I still have the fucking key where I'm going to be cracking a lock open.

And I need to put a better antenna on it

[broken turret]

What happened to it?

[real cedar]

Nothing. It's just our Network utilization is enough to actually cause messages for me to have to queue, which means remote admins is just going to fail with maximum retries reached every time

Like we've reached the limit of LongFast

There's over a hundred devices online

[haughty moon]

i have 140 active in the last 12 hours

[real cedar]

Yeah that is definitely the limit. Like it's 73 it wasn't too bad but I literally can't speak on the mesh anymore because my usage is pegged at 37%. Literally all day according to my jovialis logs

[pseudo kestrel]

I'm at the VA enough to know that it's a dark spot on F51 most of the time, that'd be really cool to see some good coverage over there

[haughty moon]

my home node is getting hammered too. lots of nodes with default names as well

[real cedar]

It spiked to 53% 😭

[wet galleon]

I manage a couple buildings over there and can put one on a pole on one of the buildings by sunny side park

[real cedar]

My buddy Xandor has a node for you

He's waiting on the core module

Then he can hand it over

[wet galleon]

Rad!!

[jolly goblet]

I live not far from the VA. I still have my eye on putting something on Mt. Wire. I can see the old tower from my dining room, taunting me.

[pseudo kestrel]

I'll happily supply the compute resources, plenty of room in my cluster

[real cedar]

I would highly recommend against it unless you intend it to be vandalized. There's teenagers on saurons up there all of the time

But you know for the sake of testing I guess go put one up there. I just wouldn't put a lot of money into it

My buddy and I go there frequently enough. It's a nice little hike. The issue is lots of teenagers and people like to climb that and they also like to do drugs on top of the tower. 🤣😂😂🤣 And I don't need to tell you what happens when people are drunk or worse and see a box

[obsidian storm]

There's POTM. I'm going to figure out how to fix this

[pseudo kestrel]

I have direct connection to AUR and channel util is sub 15% according to my nodes if you wanted to park near my place to try and get into it

[real cedar]

Damn are you driving there now

[obsidian storm]

I can physically see it from where I am right now

With the naked eye

[real cedar]

Man, it wasn't part of my evening plans to go drive to aur to do some more remote admin work but now you're making me want to.

[obsidian storm]

I'm going to see if I can RA

Did I just ack to myself?

[real cedar]

I think you did

LOL

[obsidian storm]

Ah. Ok

[real cedar]

Wait, are you that close to point of the mountain and you can't remote admin it?

Well I guess I'm driving to go admin AUR again. I'll do so after dinner

The only way I'm going to be able to do this is if I get close because otherwise my package up here are getting canceled by channel utilization

😆

I'm going to start charging gas money 🤣 jk jk

[ember torrent]

Leave it. Only helps the south mesh folks.

Aim for the stars.

[reef ridge]

@real cedar post that key for me again.

[real cedar]

For now replace Umbriels with Polaris
KWD0wc0JU86k1QOLJ6JPRiaz8pwT7++Qs4eukA4MDFA=

[real cedar]

Hey you are is the most critical node for me. Like if every other node died I wouldn't care but that one I will. It's the only one that facilitates one hop communication between me and my buddy when we're working on our hobby 😂🤣

Why do you think I installed it a la douchebag mode? I mean the amount of concrete poured into that thing. Good luck getting the pole out like you're going to need a freaking giant dozer

😂

[reef ridge]

Alright, should be good to go.

[real cedar]

God damn that was fast. Okay can you switch it over to mf51?

And see if you can communicate with Idaho

@umbral ice @naive shale

[umbral ice]

Standing by

[real cedar]

If you don't mind and then if you're able to successfully communicate, report back here and I mean do things like testing of sending a message to each other.. don't just rely on Trace routes. I think that's an awful test now at this point 😆

As you can see we have found out the hard way on our end.

If you can get a message through to each other then the link works

@reef ridge when you're done testing put it back on longfast so we don't interrupt people that much this time. We just need a short-term test to show that we can get a message through on medium fast. If we can't then we have a lot of investigating to do.

When you do so, please grab your SNR and RSSI numbers to fpr. We need that too

[reef ridge]

Hmm, keep running into max retransmission error for LoRa settings. I'll try moving locations again, guess the Costco parking lot isn't cutting it for this one.

[umbral ice]

It did to me and it moved over anyways

[real cedar]

That's probably happening because of channel utilization being so high right now

[naive shale]

Just outside twin on the interstate

[real cedar]

Hey I got a question. How far is your medium fast link going to those things right now? How many miles

[naive shale]

No copy on FPR

[real cedar]

Well he hasn't switched it over yet. I'm still Trace routing it and it's still on long fast

He's repositioning

[umbral ice]

MHR is 30 miles give or take to SidPatchy I think

About 35-40 miles to ISR

I’m about 15 from ISR

For reference me to MHR on MF51

[real cedar]

Okay yeah so that alone invalidates our results of being unable to talk at a shorter distance than that

@reef ridge I'm looking at fpr it's still on longfast if you're having trouble. Just want to let you know

[umbral ice]

I see FPR

[reef ridge]

I can physically see the shack but still having trouble. Tells me channel utilization is a little high still.

[real cedar]

Can you trace route

Or at least send a message to it

Let me put umbriel on medium fast real quick

I'll help out

[umbral ice]

Im getting a general ack, but don’t think it’s FPR sending it

No successful trade routes from me yet

[reef ridge]

Looks like it's on Medium Fast now.

[real cedar]

Yeah hang on. Let me get my devices over

[reef ridge]

V5 seems to be pretty hard of hearing compared to v4.

[real cedar]

I've got extremely strong MF signal to FPR

No issues whatsoever. Strong, loud and clear

Let's see if I can trace somebody

[reef ridge]

Nearly identical.

[obsidian storm]

I can't find point of the mountain.

[real cedar]

What's your node right now? Mag

[reef ridge]

T114, MAG3.

[real cedar]

Yeah we're on medium fast and we're have green SNR and our RSSI..

I can trace FPR just fine

Let me try tracing you

[reef ridge]

I'm actually getting better TRs than on LF.

[real cedar]

Successful Trace route to mag

MF

[umbral ice]

You getting anything in the MF channel?

Sending messages

[real cedar]

Yeah we are currently tracing each other right now just fine

Is your channel info blank

Also mag is your channel info blank for the name

[umbral ice]

Its defaulted yeah

I see C6J and FPR coming over

[real cedar]

Make sure you're both blank. Defaulted and AQ== and reboot for good measure

@leaden crow MF works for IDAHO TO UT 🥳🥳🥳

So this is a down south issue which adds more to the puzzle @broken turret

Now I really want to help bash and dagron and figure out what's going on here

[reef ridge]

MF is working much better than I expected!

[real cedar]

Malice I'm sending in that chat

You getting mine cuz I got yours

Just not your node info yet

[umbral ice]

I'm just not reaching well right now

[real cedar]

Yeah I got one of your messages but you got all of mine

See if you can get into a better spot

You guys want to risk short fast @reef ridge

How much do you guys want to gamble. I'm feeling like a gambling man tonight

[real cedar]

Actually go into your channel settings and make it blank. Like erase every character in the name of medium fast. It's supposed to be a red unlock, not a yellow

[reef ridge]

Lmao, I guess I'm already here, a little more driving to Layton won't hurt if I can't talk to it.

[real cedar]

Come by my place

😆

I got direct line of sight

I'm on the Clearfield Layton City edge

[reef ridge]

I do too right now, I can barely see the silhouette of the shack, but You're probably a little closer than I am.

[broken turret]

I don't know what "down south" refers to in your area sorry... can you precis what the down south issue is?

[real cedar]

I've got 10 DB to that shack right now

[real cedar]

So we're up north. Anything that is referring to up north is basically north of the city of Centerville in Utah.. when we say down south we mean the core of the capital where the Salt Lake area and south from there

The Metro area runs north to south along I-15

For example, I'm about 37 mi from Salt Lake City due north

Bash and dagren are south of Salt Lake City, about 15 mi

Or more?

Let me get a map

[reef ridge]

Should I do the same then? The name defaulted to MediumFast.

[broken turret]

Meaning that shitty signal is a general issue in the area, not just for @leaden crow ?

[real cedar]

Yeah it seems so.. here's a map

[broken turret]

He is going to run a test from an intersection on the same signal path, about 4km (ish) further away, but higher. That will help distinguish loss from ground clutter vs noise.

[real cedar]

Anything west of I-15 is considered West.. anything East is East. Anything north of i-80 is North and anything south of i-80 is South

Those are basically the sectors when we refer to them

[broken turret]

That is incredibly helpful 🙂

[real cedar]

Yes, the name should default to that but erase everything and if it's already blank it's already blank and then just go from there. We want to ensure that value is blank

[real cedar]

Yeah so something in the city is screweing with dagron and bash a lot. Or it's a software misconfiguration on the northern router of aur and the southern router of potm

[reef ridge]

Alright, we should be good as-is then.

[umbral ice]

I drove and am getting some acks at least now

[real cedar]

We ready to do a short fast test

This is the gamble

[haughty moon]

im putting CHK6 on MF51 if you guys want a south west node

[reef ridge]

Can you get anything out in the channel?

[broken turret]

What does your frequency look like on an SDR waterfall?

Anything stand out?

[umbral ice]

Trying

[reef ridge]

If @umbral ice can't TX on MF SF surely wouldn't work either.

[real cedar]

@naive shale could you try sending on the standard channel?

Make sure you've blanked it out and defaulted it so you can talk

[real cedar]

My SDR at home doesn't indicate anything. But when I was in Salt Lake there was some stuff on adjacent bands

But nothing that stood out to me is terribly odd

[broken turret]

Depends. If you have LoRa interference on MF (e.g. smart meters etc), then changing to SF can fix. The two settings are orthogonal to each other. If it's any other kind of noise, then yeah.... SF will be slightly worse.

[naive shale]

Sent a couple messages on MF

[haughty moon]

got you 3 hops

[real cedar]

I received

Yep, I received all your messages

[umbral ice]

Making a change testing again

[wet galleon]

Swapped from repeter to client for now
Ive got 0 hops from my LP node to my house.
Simply Lovely.

Ill switch over to freq51 later this evening.

[real cedar]

It looks like I received all of your messages. So what's going on here?.. we're able to communicate on 130 mile link but bash isn't able to talk to POTM

My head hurts

[haughty moon]

maybe the next thing is a different freq slot

[umbral ice]

Getting any of my recent tests? Last 60 seconds or so sent 6

[real cedar]

I really don't want to have to coordinate everybody on to another frequency slot. Our frequency slot is clear here up north. Someone with an SDR in Salt Lake City needs to tell me what their airwaves look like

I suspect this is a software configuration problem.

If the RF link between a one watt radio and a 5db Alfa antenna and a 1 watt radio and an 8 DB antenna communicate just fine over 130 mi.. then this is not an RF channel issue because here's the thing Francis Peak can see Salt Lake City so any noise radiating from the city would also be received at Francis Peak just at a lower power

If that makes any sense

[haughty moon]

yeah thats true

[real cedar]

Yeah I'm getting your messages malice

It looks like bi-directional communication is there

Let me send some and see if you get any

[broken turret]

Not necessarily a software problem. Local noise can mean much worse SNR if you're close to it. Depending on the kind of noise, it can also muck with the AGC.

[obsidian storm]

I think POTM got a bad RA and didn't come up

[real cedar]

Oh no!

That's not good

[obsidian storm]

I can't get a TR or any comms from POTM at all

[real cedar]

Bash by the way, medium fast is working from Idaho to Utah

It's pretty crazy

[haughty moon]

the 100+ nodes on LF51 are on the same freq, the different modulations 'should not' interact on the same slot, but i think there's unneccesary noise from all th enodes

[broken turret]

Is it still on the old preset? I've had the odd one do that sometimes.... it'll ack the change, but not actually save it, and comes back up on the old setting.

[real cedar]

We're going to do a hail Mary here and I have the ability to recover francis Peak.. mag is on his way to my place and we will convert it over and do another test

[obsidian storm]

I have tried a bunch of different presets trying to find it

[real cedar]

We're feeling like gambling 😂

[obsidian storm]

I think I'm going to write a script to search anything that it might have defaulted to. I forget exactly what the original preset was

[broken turret]

Yeah. Orthogonal noise, so they should generally coexist nicely unless there is a lot of it.

[obsidian storm]

I might have fumbled the settings or something.

[broken turret]

I have another meeting now - back in maybe half an hour.

[real cedar]

There's also a ton of noise coming up north from Ogden because of the rail yard being very close to the frequency

So we do have a lot of noise we're contending with on this link to Idaho

But yet we're still able to use medium fast

[umbral ice]

If @naive shale can change MHR, I can get ISR. Is @reef ridge still in place for FPR?

[real cedar]

Mags driving to my place then we'll switch over

Not sure about your buddy

[umbral ice]

ETA? I’m standing out in a field lmao.

[naive shale]

Should be able to. What’re we changing?

[real cedar]

I mean to be fair. I'm standing out in some grass..

[umbral ice]

Haha

[real cedar]

Switch to short fast defaulted blank..

We will get it changed on our end once he arrives. He shouldn't be too far away but he's got to get down the interstate

[umbral ice]

SF51?

[real cedar]

Give him about 15-20 minutes here

[umbral ice]

Sending it lol

[real cedar]

By the way, I was able to trace root all of you guys all the way through

[umbral ice]

Nice!

[real cedar]

Out of the 10 I sent I got nine of them back

90% success rate medium fast

Let's see what happens with short fast. Hopefully he arrives soon

I'd hate to have you standing in a cornfield looking like a weirdo with a yagi in your hand for too long

🤣

But then again it's Idaho

[umbral ice]

SF trace for ISR

[real cedar]

Is that short fast because those are really good numbers

[umbral ice]

It is

[real cedar]

Like that SNR is really fucking good. It's positive coming from whatever device you have in your hand

Damn what's your handheld client? I want it

😆

[umbral ice]

Rak with a decent whip lol

[real cedar]

That's it. I'm doing the same thing. I've been thinking about doing that for a while. Solar powered rack with a decent whip... I'm going to that. I'm so done with the freaking tracker. The tracker can be my on me always but I'm going to carry another one with me

For remote admin

Because one of my struggles is the tracker card, isn't that great for the remote admin capability

[umbral ice]

Mag safe on the back of my phone with a 2000mah battery

[real cedar]

Oh dude, that's a sweet conformal case

[umbral ice]

https://www.printables.com/model/1417561-magsafe-meshtastic-node

[real cedar]

Mag must be getting close to my apartment. His SNR is retardedly high

Like so high he should be standing right next to me but I don't see him yet

😆

Oh his GPS is live. That's so freaking cool. Okay yeah he's 2 km away

[umbral ice]

SNR Flex

ISR has an airbuddy amp in it, so I'm sure that helps

@naive shale any luck on changing MHR?

[naive shale]

Was having trouble getting connected on android because my Bluetooth was off

Please hold

[umbral ice]

Lmao

[real cedar]

No hurry. I'm still waiting on mag 😆😜

You guys are awesome for running this test. This was the test that was going to make or break any of the modes anyways

[umbral ice]

When it’s swapped over, DM MHR the word ping. It’ll respond with your hops to it

Great way to test without someone on the other side

[real cedar]

I will do that exactly

Here's to hope that it'll work. I have a massive antenna on the note that I wish to have ra fpr.. Joao if we aren't able to communicate down here.. I'll just turn that sucker on and it will freaking get blasted with my RF power

And then I'll turn it off before someone at the FCC gets a notice about me

🤣

[umbral ice]

The FCC never noticed SSL with a G2 at max tx with a 10db antenna for 6 months

But then again, it is Idaho lmao

[real cedar]

@umbral ice we are on short fast

Stupendously good signal on short fast

It's screaming for all our nodes

[umbral ice]

@naive shale how goes it?

[haughty moon]

i have fpr 1, -92

[real cedar]

Noice on SF

[naive shale]

Wasn’t having any luck at home, headed down the street and am trying again

[reef ridge]

She's SCREAMIN on ShortFast.

[umbral ice]

ISR consistent for me

[real cedar]

Uhhh oh

[umbral ice]

I have faith

[naive shale]

Instantly got through now, theoretically is updated, waiting for my node to restart to verify

[real cedar]

Heck yeah

[naive shale]

Not getting any responses on SF, switching back to MF to see if it’s still on there

It was 🫠

[real cedar]

Rofl

Happens

[umbral ice]

Don’t mind us. Just a bunch of weirdos standing in random places with radios

[inner jay]

https://tenor.com/view/the-simpsons-homer-simpson-nerd-yelling-insult-gif-7884166

[haughty moon]

at least we arent talking to ourselves in this case lol

[naive shale]

First try part 2 is in progress

[umbral ice]

Holllly

Instant

[real cedar]

Excellent

[naive shale]

Yaaay

[real cedar]

Yup

I just got a trace too

[umbral ice]

You gotta dm that straight to MHR

[real cedar]

Hmm I can't trace sid

Can someone trace me

I can trace mhr

[umbral ice]

I couldn’t trace you. Can’t get passed MHR

[real cedar]

Are you guys getting !pings from me

I'm sending them

[umbral ice]

I see them yeah. You see my test messages?

[real cedar]

Yes

Okay so the link works

Let's do another test

Everyone clear the node data on short fast

[umbral ice]

Node db?

[real cedar]

Yes NodeDB reset

It's in settings

[umbral ice]

Yep got it

[real cedar]

We are gonna see if we can get eachothers node info

[umbral ice]

MHR is gonna take a while I reckon

Won't be able to swap it back till tomorrow if that happens I think

[real cedar]

Okay, here's an idea. Go turn your note info up

Node info broadcast to 600s

Node info 600s on MHR ought to do

[naive shale]

Whereabouts is that in settings?

[real cedar]

Or since it's just us. 60s

It's there in device config

3600 is as often as it allows

[naive shale]

Should be updated to 3600

[real cedar]

We did a dumb

We cleared before fpr got set to 3600

I guess we are doing a 24 hr ShortFast test LMAO

[haughty moon]

😆

[real cedar]

But it was working .. we got messages through

We saw yours too malice

[umbral ice]

lol

You can try requesting the node info?

If it shows up unknown

[real cedar]

From the mobile app?

[broken turret]

If you guys message in the broadcast channel, you can then manually exchange nodeinfo

[umbral ice]

Yeah

That

[real cedar]

How do we do that

Just send on shortfast

[broken turret]

Yup

[real cedar]

K let me try

[broken turret]

Then in the chat, long-press the node short name, and tap 'exchange user info'

I have found that feature to not be the world's most reliable, but it is better than waiting

[umbral ice]

Seeing your tests at least

[broken turret]

Another option is to reboot your node, which will force it to send a nodeinfo packet about a minute after it boots. But you'll all need to coordinate that, so you do not accidentally have people in the middle of rebooting when an important nodeinfo packet goes out.

Depending on which fw version you're running, I think there may be a backoff interval on nodeinfo. So the 'exchange user info' thing may not work every time.

[naive shale]

Might as well update my administration keys while I’m looking like a weirdo

[umbral ice]

Wait

Not until you swap them on MHR

[naive shale]

I’ve got another node with my current keys sitting here

[umbral ice]

OK lol

Just don't lock yourself put. Its more ladder carry exercise if you do lol

[real cedar]

No node info exhange

Oh we are absolutely spamming

[haughty moon]

i am getting all of yours lmao

[umbral ice]

I was able to pull ISR

But can't get anyone else

[real cedar]

ROFL

Alright so @broken turret here's the schtick

[real cedar]

We can RA FPR from 40+km

We can talk all the way to idaho

We can traceroute all the way to idaho

ShortFast works for our long link

So what's going wrong with @obsidian storm and @leaden crow s tests?

[real cedar]

Noice

POSITIVE DB to FPR

On short fast

[broken turret]

Working with @leaden crow via DM at the moment to figure that out. Based on initial figures, my instinct is some strong local noise source. He's trying a few different sites. Testing from a site that's a bit higher and a bit further away showed some improvment, but still pretty bad. RSSI looks decent between his place and the remote end, so it's not getting unreasonably attenuated by clutter (it is getting attenuated a bit, but not enough to cause problems).

[real cedar]

So if we bring the whole mesh over to SF it should fix their issues though right?

With enough local nodes?

[broken turret]

He's at the purple X currently

[broken turret]

Depends what's going on. Hard to say at this point. But a strong relay site in the middle of all that mess may help significantly. Like maybe a station G2 with a filter on it. Those things have a good LNA, and can shout.

[real cedar]

You know I can try and fill in the blanks for them if we need to just place more devices in order to move to short fast. I'm very down to do that

Hell I'll fund most of it if I have to 😆

Because the speed at which we're getting messages to Idaho is insane right now

Like everything is just so freaking instant

[broken turret]

Mmm, the speed is definitely a nicer user experience 🙂

[umbral ice]

I still have yet to get a trace route from beyond MHR

[naive shale]

I can’t get anything further than ISR

[umbral ice]

Which, isn't game breaking, but its nice for POC

[real cedar]

@naive shale @umbral ice Alright I got the trace routes I need to Idaho. Y'all are freaking champs. It's gonna take time to populate node info for FPR

We are gonna try to use the sentry feature

Stay on the slot

[umbral ice]

Move everything back to LF51 for now?

[real cedar]

Not yet

[umbral ice]

Ok

[broken turret]

Do any of you guys own a station G2?

[real cedar]

We are gonna use the BBS to try and force a node info exchange

[umbral ice]

I have like 3? Lol

[real cedar]

I have two of them and I have another one coming Thursday from a friend who's moving away

[broken turret]

While you're on SF, it would be interesting to see what happens if you take it up a tallish building in the middle of SLC, put it into ROUTER_LATE mode, and see how well @leaden crow can hit it.

Will give a good indication of how well (or not) strong infill coverage in there will or won't work.

If you have a bandpass filter handy, use it.

[umbral ice]

I can't seem to be able to get command responses from MHR

I wonder if all the meshtastic reboots caused it to hiccup

[haughty moon]

can you guys see 339C (CHK6)?

[umbral ice]

Haven't yet. How many hops are you set to?

[haughty moon]

7. I was making it to FPR, but havent seen it since the fiasco

[broken turret]

@real cedar Do you have a map of the SLC area that has your current high sites on it?

[real cedar]

I mean go take a look at our frequency 51 documentation here. Let me get the link

https://freq51.net/infrastructure

That doesn't give you the exact elevation but whichever router you have in question you can look at it's line of sight and I will give you its elevation

Standing by

@umbral ice @naive shale are you okay to run a 24-hour short fast test

We still don't have node info so we're going to have to do that ourselves

[umbral ice]

Sure

[real cedar]

I figure it'll be a good way to know if everything is working

Sweet! Yeah everyone go have dinner and we'll just keep it on short fast between our links

Considering you got our freaking absolute massive spam session. I know the link is working reliably and I got Trace routes from my end. What I think was happening and the reason you couldn't trace route sometimes was because we were colliding. FPR and MHR see entirely different geographic areas which means a ton of activity on this end is blind to a ton of activity on that end if it's instantaneous

And thus we had a little bit of a hidden node problem there if that makes sense

This makes me really optimistic though looking at the trace route data and looking at my S&R and my RSSI.. we have a fuck ton of link budget room. I mean I'm about 40 km from that Peak and I have a negative 49 dbm RSSI

That has to drop almost 100 dBm before. It's a problem

[broken turret]

That will especially impact traceroute reliability. If you find that a location request works, but a traceroute doesn't, I suspect that will be a useful indicator of collisions. Traceroute elicits a lot more response traffic.

[real cedar]

Yeah so my Trace routes were getting through but theirs weren't and I think it's because we are sending it at the exact same time

Sorry about that @umbral ice I was over eagerly punching the button

😆

But this also bodes well, even if we don't choose short, fast and instead are very conservative and choose medium fast. We were both getting Trace routes through on medium fast reliably so. Either mode should work for us. It's just we might have to do more work to fix the valley which I'm totally willing to do and I'll help bash and dagron and get reliably with erayds help

Short fast is seriously fast though. We tried spamming both of us at the same time and it didn't even budge from 0.1% 🤣

[broken turret]

So, The issue issue with @leaden crow is pretty conclusively noise. On testing from further away in the same line, he's getting excellent RSSI and awful SNR. No issue with signal strength, plenty of issue with actually pulling that signal out of the soup.

[umbral ice]

Haha all good!

[broken turret]

I have suggested he try a yagi. If the noise is in a different direction than a decent high site, he may be able to null it out somewhat.

If he's already using a bandpass filter and it's still that bad, then more filtering is unlikely to help much unless you get into expensive filtering.

[real cedar]

That would work really well. It would null everything out except in the main beam pattern

@broken turret rufio's SDR shows a clear band on ch51 hes in northerner SLC

In the avenues high up

So you're right, it's an ultra local noise source, otherwise he would have seen it

It has to be stupidly local 😆

[broken turret]

What's the noise floor on his SDR?

[inner jay]

Where is Dagron's node?

[leaden crow]

Holladay