US - Minnesota/North Dakota border - Greater Grand Forks area

[shadow girder]

Sounds good

Yeah people have reliably sent messages farther than this with good line of sight. So I'm sure with enough effort we'll get something dialed in.

[shadow girder]

Here's the QR Code with Forx and LongFast for people with Apple phones

Sorry I should've asked what you were using yesterday Snuffy. This one should work better.

I've never had good luck crossing QR codes/scanning, between Android and iPhone

But those are the same 2 channels. Just a QR code for each OS

This one is for Android

Here's the URL for the CLI too:

meshtastic --seturl https://meshtastic.org/e/#CiwSIF__pinUfEithl9_e1TNW1ptv1cdzsCxCArG-ni5TFJ7GgRGb3J4OgIIIAoHEgEBOgIIEBIRCAE4AUAESAFQHlgUaAHABgE

[random flicker]

Thanks I’ll get it set up

Also, riddle me this one. Just picked up by my base station.

2 hops

[shadow girder]

Are there any unknown nodes in your node db too?

"Show unknown" ?

A lot of times when it happens from some ridiculous distance, it's a result of someone flying over with a node.

It'll pick up packets from one location and send them 100+ miles or so

[random flicker]

Ah, nothing showing as unknown

But that makes sense

[shadow girder]

It could be that still happened, but you didn't get a packet from the node that repeated it, itself.

I've talked to a guy flying over Winnepeg. He was in his plane doing some circles hoping to talk to someone in his area. He couldn't get anyone to respond from there, but we had a short convo 😄

[random flicker]

Oh wow nice!

[shadow girder]

Yeah that was fun 😄

[shadow girder]

Hey RandomNode I received a message from you.

Are you receiving my packets at your place? Or just if you take it out driving?

I ask because it doesn't take long until I usually start picking up packets from your node. Usually only have to drive a few blocks west, toward columbia. But I can be way south sometimes still.

[marble orchid]

Yeah, i saw a new node pop up, something like M<>M relay. sent a msg out and it acknowledged, but i haven't received anything since that

i'll be back over on the south end of town later tonight, can give it a test then

I heard PS1 briefly this morning as well sitting at my apt

[shadow girder]

Very cool. I replied twice

That node is bridged to a Matrix room.

[shadow girder]

Sounds good

[marble orchid]

through a bit of identity thefborrowing, i've come into posession of a RAK starter kit... any recommendations for a case? i do in fact have an operable 3d printer ;)

(for legal purposes, i committed no identity theft or borrowing whatsoever)

[shadow girder]

Are you looking to build a portable/handheld node? and is it a 19007 or 19003 base board?

I'm guessing it's a 19007, because that's the standard size and is more common. The 19003 is the mini.

I like Tony's cases
https://www.printables.com/model/286657-rak19007rak5005-case-for-meshtastic

[marble orchid]

Stationary -- will be up in the garage rafters. I suspect a mildly leaky roof, so don't want to just leave it dangling out lol

hmmm... lemme see ifi can figure out the model num

ah yes, 19007

[marble orchid]

that looks pretty nice... ofc i didn't read ahead and already soldered pins on the SPI port, lol. might be a weekend project to rework that, i'm not nearly as good at desoldering 😂

[shadow girder]

Here's what I use:
For my rooftop solar node I like this junction box. I don't have any nice mounting plates. There isn't a lot of spare room in that build, it's just packed in carefully.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RPNWD47/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Found this on printables
https://www.printables.com/model/804726-carlon-meshtastic-mounting-solution

If you can mount it outside and make use of solar, this is great:
https://hackaday.io/project/194509-harbor-breeze-meshtastic-hack

Someone made a custom dovetail mount, so you can eliminate the light.

(before post processing)

One that I need to rebuild, but that's what it looks like with that mount.

It's a great solution. $15 for the panel/enclosure/battery. It comes with 1500 mAh battery and a lot of people run that with no problems. I upgraded mine to 3200mAh for peace of mind in the winter.

I do have a case that I designed for under my car's seat, but I'm not really happy with it

I'll see if I can find pics or take screenshots of the model

Other options are Apache cases at harbor freight.

Larger, but heavy duty. Great for the price.
https://www.harborfreight.com/1800-weatherproof-protective-case-small-black-64550.html

https://www.harborfreight.com/550-weatherproof-clear-case-56378.html

Generic Pelican cases, but they're really quite good.

Otherwise you can search printables, thingiverse, etc. for RAK19007

If there's some way you can mount it on the side of the garage, or on the fascia along the roof, near the peak. That would be best. That's what I did with mine on the house.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BJZVK1C4/

From there, I used an old J-pole from a satellite dish

and mounted the junction box to that.

[marble orchid]

hmmm... not sure i'll be able to pull that one off. it's a long row of garage stalls, i'm near but not quite at the end of it. will look and see if i can hide it somewhere on the outside wall, but not very certain

[shadow girder]

Ah, gotcha

[marble orchid]

even with it just sitting on my desk i managed to get in touch with PT1, that's a first!

[shadow girder]

Oh just now? I caught his reply

From the hospital

That's cool

[stone slate]

I sent a reply too, I'm not sure who you ended up getting a response from now 😂

[shadow girder]

If you can hide it on the outside wall, maybe try the Harbor Breeze solar light and just leave the light on so it looks like your average security light (but with an antenna 😄 )

[marble orchid]

yeah, he sent two back. i'm surprised it's performing so well, it's about 8 inches from the t-echo that's done a whopping not-much 😂

[marble orchid]

hey, there's an idea... there's lighting on the outside already, maybe i can hide it in one of them? 🤔

[shadow girder]

Yeah sounds good. I'd definitely check that out.

I'm curious.. and I'm not very familiar with the hospital system here. Was he talking about a building off of Columbia or the Altru South buildings off of South Washington?

I have great line of sight to the buildings on South Washington so that wouldn't surprise me, but if I was receiving messages from a location off of Columbia, that would be something.

I asked. No reply yet. Maybe it was from the Columbia location and I could hear him, but he couldn't hear me? 🤔

[stone slate]

I heard the solar node

[shadow girder]

Very cool. What's yuour node's longname?

[stone slate]

e043

Meshtastic e043

[shadow girder]

I do see you in the nodedb under unknown nodes. I must not have received nodeinfo packet

[stone slate]

The solar node is actually to only one in my DB that is 0 hops away

[shadow girder]

Nice

[stone slate]

It's sitting on the ground floor of a brick building with a directional antenna pointed towards the solar node. It's probably great at receiving with the directional, but I'm guessing that the buildings on the other side of the street aren't helping when I transmit though.

[shadow girder]

Yeah LoRa hates brick unfortunately :/

[stone slate]

I have one of these hooked up to the pi hat sitting in my window #1293279408974594048 message

I've got the stuff for another node to go inside my garage's rafters to hopefully get a connection with @marble orchid and maybe a bit more to the south.

[shadow girder]

Very good to hear. I think we're only a few well placed nodes away from a generally well-connected mesh.

Depending on how people are moving around I'm often seeing 12 of 13 active nodes in my nodedb. (counting the 4 or 5 that are often my own)

Just saw "The Garage" node pop up

It's a RAK. Is that you @marble orchid ?

[marble orchid]

Yep, that's the new one!

it's not yet in (or near) the garage though yet 😂 still on my desk

looks like i picked up leaflink a few mins ago 2 hops away -- bet it's bouncing off the RAK (i'm still connected to the t-echo, SomeRandomNode)

[shadow girder]

I am curious. Any particular reason you prefer pre-2.5 firmwares? There were some stability issues with the earlier 2.5.x's, but 2.5.7 is really solid, for sure. I haven't had any issues with 2.5.8 either

If you're putting that one in the garage, you might want to upgrade to the latest and set up the admin keys so you can remote admin it easily.

The legacy admin is still working for now, but the new PKC stuff is excellent 👌

[stone slate]

I had the garage pop up too through a few hops

[shadow girder]

Solar Rak is currently 0 hops away from PS1 and 2 away from The Garage and 3 from SomeRandomNode

[marble orchid]

ha, because i'm lazy and haven't updated 😂

[shadow girder]

lol. I was just curious 😄 There's no rush yet

When you do go to do it, https://flasher.meshtastic.org makes it a breeze, it'll detect your device, enter dfu mode for you, and you can save the uf2 right to the device and it's done

(Detect device was added because of me flashing the wrong firmware when picking the similarly named Seeed Wio Tracker 1100 instead of the Seeed Tracker T1000-E 🤦‍♂️ , so now it's idiot proof too 😄 )

[marble orchid]

oh nice. will that work on the t-echo too? @stone slate and i were talking the other day about the ESP32 boards not taking OTA updates... but the RAK isn't such a board, so that one makes sense

[shadow girder]

Yep works for T-echo too

Yeah RAK you can flash OTA

[marble orchid]

hell_yeah.png

average linux experience

/s, it worked itself out and copied over

if it wasn't gonna rain today i'd go hang it up in the garage with no case lol

[shadow girder]

Yeah, too bad. It will be interesting to see how it performs.

[stone slate]

Just upgraded @marble orchid's antenna on his garage node. I think that's helping my setup as well

[shadow girder]

Very nice!

I think we have a meshnet now! 🥳

[stone slate]

I still need to set up my garage node, and then that might help bridge things a bit better

[shadow girder]

What Meshtastic client are you using? iOS?

[stone slate]

I'm android

@marble orchid is ios

[marble orchid]

And not loving it. I dont think the traceroute works right on ios

[shadow girder]

I still haven't received a nodeinfo packet

And you only show up if I have shown unknown checked

Is the region selected to the right of the Long name on the 5th tab?

[stone slate]

Weird. It says it's encrypted on my end

[shadow girder]

It's a really common thing to miss

Just trying to double check what it could be. An unset region is one cause

[red linden]

Alright, maybe I'm figuring this out. Hello all

[shadow girder]

Welcome!

[red linden]

I had joined discord already, but whomever just sent the local channel number really helped.

[shadow girder]

Glad you made it. Do you own the PT1/PS1 nodes?

Oh duh. I'm not following along on LongFast

[stone slate]

I did notice that my region reset after I adjusted the max transmit power. That was only adjusted earlier this week and I managed to reset it earlier today.

[red linden]

Yup, PT1, PS1, MC1, AC1, and a few others I can't remember lol

[marble orchid]

Heyo! I have somerandomnode and garage

[shadow girder]

Very cool. They're helping extend our range a lot

[stone slate]

I guess you guys needed some people in the middle of town to bridge the two of you 😂

[shadow girder]

I removed you from the nodedbs too. I'll see if it repopulates normally

[red linden]

Hello. Yes, I see those regularly. I work at the hospital and bring a node that I stick by a strategic window on the 6th floor when I'm on shift. Works great for 24 hours before I leave again.

[shadow girder]

And that's in a building off of Columbia? (I apologize if you've answered and to the people have heard me ask several times lol)

I'm just trying to understand what kind of reach i'm getting. If so, that's really good.

There's some Altru South buildings near me is why I ask.

[red linden]

Ya, the main one on Columbia.

[shadow girder]

Excellent!!

[red linden]

It works well. I'm really trying to get one permanently placed on the roof of the new hospital. Don't know how we'll that's going to go

[shadow girder]

Latest traceroute

[marble orchid]

nice! wish i could traceroute lol

you use meshtastic on the computer, right? might try setting that up

[shadow girder]

Yeah I use MeshSense. I have better luck with it than the web client.

https://affirmatech.com/meshsense

It works great via Bluetooth too

I use that to stay connected to SolarRak most of the time

[shadow girder]

I don't know where your garage is in relation to your living space, but those PCB antennas that come with the RAKs seem to be directional. You might be able to point it towards you and connect from inside your place

In vehicle nodes I point the antennas towards the front of my car so when it's parked in the garage or in the driveway I can connect from inside

Or when I would park outside a coffee shop, etc. I could connect from inside too

[stone slate]

I think I figured out the issues with my primary node. The portdunio server wasn't saving the settings as fast as I was changing them. Having the live logs open while open configuring helped me find what actually wasn't set when it said it was.

[shadow girder]

That's good to hear. Yeah everything looks good now.

[shadow girder]

Being able to display signal metrics logs in Android is a nice new feature

For 0 hop nodes

[stone slate]

I picked up JNJ7 a few hours ago. I don't remember anyone saying anything about it previously.

[marble orchid]

yeah, i see JNJ7 as well. looks like a T1000E. heard it fairly well over two hops

[shadow girder]

SolarRak heard it directly. If we don't hear from them again soon, my guess is it was someone on the interstate. I'll sometimes get a few packets from people as they drive by, often with position packets that show that's what's happening. No position packet this time though.

[shadow girder]

Err now I'm thinking that it was a flyover

Received a 1 hop postion packet from someone near Fargo around the same time

[marble orchid]

Much cleaner now!

[marble orchid]

used this one. might've picked the wrong frame component, but had to do a bit of grinding to get the usbc port to line up. nothing bad though!

[shadow girder]

It looks great! 👌

[shadow girder]

I'm curious, did you adjust the antenna on the Garage node at all while working on it?

We had a "bad" connection according to the Android app's signal logging, but it seemed to be steady for the past few days.

Now it's showing it as 1 hop away and I haven't heard it as often, so I was wondering if something changed there.

[shadow girder]

Checking it again, seems fine now.

[shadow girder]

I posted it on the meshnet, but I'm not sure if everyone got it. I made a simple static site with the QR codes and URL if anyone wants to add the Forx channel.

http://meshnet.club/gf/

[marble orchid]

no, antenna hasn't been moved since @stone slate and i put it up on ... tuesday? night. today was just detaching the sma cable, putting the case on the actual RAK board, and putting it back

i suppose i did remove the screen from the board? but don't expect that would make any modem performance differences

[shadow girder]

Yeah it's probably fine. I was able to ping it quickly this evening. LeafLink is sometimes hard to reach, other days it responds fine. Depending on the conditions in the atmosphere I suppose.

[marble orchid]

yeah, i saw someone in the msp mesh discord mentioning that the rain was blocking their signal. i don't know the absorption line off the top of my head (and too tired to go searching about technical rf stuff rn 😅 ), but it has been ... weather-y past few days

i really gotta get SRN0 hooked up to my server. i could hack up a quick script to ping grubby or someone every 20mins or so and measure trip time, rssi, all that and plot it against weather or whatever we want

[shadow girder]

That would be cool

[red linden]

What size solar panels are you folks using for stand alone nodes? A V3 specifically. Had a 3 watt panel on it but it went dead. Lack of sun didn't help lol.

[shadow girder]

I think you're mostly running ESP32, is that right? 3W is too small for that. For solar nodes it's worth considering getting a RAK. They're way more power efficient, which can be nice in the winter.

Here's a document that someone else put together that might help with planning if you want to use ESP32
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12GIY24vLKLABg2RUTPP6yMzokr44GMzJOE4p7ngaCbI/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.9lmvuqjahqxl

Right now I'm using this with SolarRak because it's what I had on hand at the time when I put up my first solar node in late '22 and it's worked great. It doesn't say for sure but I'd guess it's a 3W.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HG5STZY/

I bought a 5 pack of these for LTO nodes when they were a little cheaper. I haven't gotten back to that project yet.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L60Y6Y4/

[red linden]

Interesting, thank you. I didn't envision that there would be such difference in efficiency between models/brands.

I do a ton of qrp ham radio, and watch current draw specs religiously. Don't know why I didn't do the same for meshtastic stuff lol

[shadow girder]

No problem glad to help. Yeah nrf52 devices in general are a lot easier on the battery, it's great. RAK Wisblock is my go-to for about 90% of my projects. Solar nodes, handheld nodes, vehicle nodes (some people use ESP32 for those though too).

Some purchase links for RAK
US dealer:
https://store.rokland.com/collections/rakwireless-products/products/rak-wireless-wisblock-meshtastic-starter-kit
Direct from RAK. Shipping can be expensive, but if you catch them during a sale and put in a big order it can be cheaper.
https://store.rakwireless.com/products/wisblock-meshtastic-starter-kit

[red linden]

Hmm. Darn. Now new hardware that I want lol. There's so many new toys to involve

[shadow girder]

Yeah this hobby can be an addictive, but there's worse addictions than this 😄

I haven't ever regretted my purchases for this project though, so that's nice

[red linden]

Ya, it has been a lot of fun so far.

[red linden]

Well, I ordered a couple of the RAK units. Let's see how they do!

[shadow girder]

I almost forgot to mention this. If you're looking for a nice, easy all in one solution. @red linden
https://hackaday.io/project/194509-harbor-breeze-meshtastic-hack

They sell the solar lights at Lowe's for ~$15.

Someone uploaded STLs for a dovetail mount that can replace the light altogether. I like that a lot more.

This is an earlier version of the "LeafLink" node. I need to rebuild it and find another spot for one.

It comes with a 1500mAh battery and some people run them as-is. I upgrade them to 3200mAh Samsung's for the winter, just in case. It rarely goes below 96%

[red linden]

Ohh, those are nice. I'll have to think about that. I have a small pile of the 3watt panels, so I'm going to see what I can make work from my junk pile lol

[red linden]

If anyone is seeing hammer case (it really looks like a hammer lol) here it is. 10k mah battery, V3. Wanted something I could drop somewhere for a few days, be weather proof and tamper resistant, and rodent proof.

Currently on 6th floor of the hospital.

[stone slate]

Is there any correlation between being rodent proof and being on the 6th floor of the hospital we need to be worried about?

[red linden]

Lol, nah. This just happens to be the testing grounds. Real use will be in the woods or a barn or grain silo usually.

[shadow girder]

I was wondering about that one. Looks very heavy duty! 😄

The signal between it and SolarRak is great 👌

And that's a good distance across town

[red linden]

Ya it does great. I just built it up last night. Very impressive performance

[shadow girder]

Did you receive my message @opaque halo?

[opaque halo]

Uhhhhh one sec

I wasn't home to actually check that locally, I was VPN'd in to check so I can't see any other replies for the time being

But very cool to see

[shadow girder]

It's been a long, long wait for something this functional.

[red linden]

Long path to my couch, but it worked

[shadow girder]

The GPS issues that I had with the T1000-E seem to have been resolved in recent firmware releases. Works great now. Gets a fix indoors easily.

[opaque halo]

Nice!

Also, any leads for a car node setup?

[shadow girder]

I broke my foot in Sept, just healing up now so haven't been out much to test the combo, but from what I've tried so far the two seem to work really well.

[opaque halo]

"the two"?

[shadow girder]

Oh you were just asking about a car node itself? I've had one installed for awhile. That's Legacy (a Subaru model)

[shadow girder]

Here's my parts list if you were looking for hardware suggestions to build one
#1201214150068678807 message

[shadow girder]

Wimesh pocket's are in stock and on sale at Rokland if anyone is looking for a solid device that's ready out of the box.
https://store.rokland.com/products/wismesh-pocket

A new user in our Matrix room was looking to get started and was asking about devices. I linked them an hour ago 2 have sold since then. I'm not sure if anyone in the room bought them, but either way they're going fast. 28 left now

[shadow girder]

23 left 👀

[opaque halo]

Ooooooh

[shadow girder]

Yeah that's why I was excited last night. Up until then, the only times I'd been able to message you before is when I was closer to your location with my car node. Last winter when I was at the Alerus, I'd be able to send messages from home via the relay and Legacy would repeat them to you.

Last night was the first time I was able to get packets from my rooftop node to yours without the car node in between. My car was in the driveway.

[opaque halo]

It'll also help some with my car node when I set it up

I ordered that pre built unit, the mount, adapter, and the better antenna

And the 12v-5v USB step down, I'll already have a tap for my dash cam

(when I install that)

[shadow girder]

Very cool!

[marble orchid]

https://community.frame.work/t/lora-expansion-card/47976/26 odds i can snag one of these if someone does a production run? it probably wouldn't be a snug fit for daily use, and not sure if they have meshtastic firmware... but if they're ESP32C3 based, i can probably figure out how to flash it

[shadow girder]

That's pretty cool. You might find this one interesting too.
https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/announcement-m-2-mini-pcie-board-compatible-with-rak4631-meshtastic-firmware-variant/7082

[opaque halo]

Stuff for my car node should be arriving on Wednesday which is cool

[shadow girder]

https://tenor.com/view/speedy-delivery-mr-rogers-neighborhood-gif-14409948

[opaque halo]

Wonder how long we could keep one in the air via kite

[shadow girder]

That would be interesting to try

Looks like 180 hours is the record
https://kiteloft.com/about/resources/kiting-records/

[opaque halo]

Oooooh

180 straight hours is wild

Kinda tempting as an experiment because I think that would be more reliable than the drone concept

[shadow girder]

There's some interesting discussions on kites in this server.
#enclosures-discussion message
#antennas message
#general message

More too.

Also tethered balloons are interesting an interesting option.

[opaque halo]

Heh, I have a giant empty lot across from my apartment complex that could potentially be a big boi kite site

[red linden]

It's tough here. I'm from the rockies, so we have 14k foot mountains to play with. Easy to gain elevation.

Here, standing on the hospital, there is nothing very tall around here. Other than the occasional water or radio tower, it's disturbingly flat here lol

[opaque halo]

Yeahhhh

It's definitely rough

[opaque halo]

But if anything I might design a concept for a kite node. With so much open space out here, we do at least have the option of a ready to deploy node that can be kept in a go bag and launched wherever

Also sharing meshtastic stuff in my other school based servers

And seeing if one of my friends that owns their place would let me setup a node on the roof

[shadow girder]

Heck yeah

[dapper dome]

Hey everyone!

[shadow girder]

Hey there! Welcome!

Have any nodes in the area?

[dapper dome]

Not yet, I'm just getting into it, but I'm looking at picking up a TDeck plus and setting a repeater on my balcony since I'm at the top floor of my building

[opaque halo]

Hell yeah

[shadow girder]

That sounds perfect.

[dapper dome]

What frequency is common here? I was thinking of doing the 915

[shadow girder]

Yeah you'll want 915mhz for US

There's a range we can use if we want to set up private meshes, but most of us run on the default modem presets.

But when purchasing devices, you'll want to look for 915mhz

[dapper dome]

Is that limited to 1W transmission power? That's technically a commercial band right?

I might just pull the trigger now

[shadow girder]

ISM band

Yeah up to 1W I believe

[stone slate]

1w transmitter and a 6 dbi gain antenna is the max you can legally do

you can always use a higher gain antenna after turning down the transmitter's power though

[dapper dome]

Right on, just ordered the TDeck. I haven't decided on a kit or a pre-build for the other node yet. But it would be cool to light up the southwest end of grand forks

[shadow girder]

That would be great, there's nobody in that area yet.

I'm in the SE part of town and have a rooftop node that gets pretty good coverage.

Is your balcony facing the sun at all? Solar nodes are great.

It's sometimes nice not having to not worry about how to run power out to it.

Some recent discussion on solar nodes

[dapper dome]

Nice, yes I am facing the sun

[shadow girder]

Oops not sure if that was the right link
#1201214150068678807 message

Yeah that last one was the right one

[dapper dome]

Cool, fellow hams here too

[red linden]

Yup, very active ham nerd here.

[dapper dome]

I used to go on DRM and listen to people complain during the pandemic but never tried what I originally got into it for. Meshtastic might be a springboard for me

[opaque halo]

I still need to actually take my ham license tests tbh

[pulsar marsh]

I have flown a delta kite with a node. I had too short of a string hanging the node and it was swinging all over, antenna wasn't staying vertical. I have a lot more string and ideas for the next time

[opaque halo]

Yeah, I've been looking into kite designs
The issue is that wind gets hectic here.
I'm probably gonna attempt to build a barn door style kite that can be easily assembled and disassembled, attach a node underneath the kite, and see from there

[red linden]

Down in Fargo for today. Have my nice mobile install on (nice antenna, etc). Not seeing a single node.

[shadow girder]

Yeah mturnbull was saying there was none to be found in Fargo too.

@civic sparrow You're near Fargo, right? Do you still have a node up?

[red linden]

Ya, it's crazy. Figured there would be some activity down here, but nada

[opaque halo]

That's actually tragic

[red linden]

Okay, color me impressed with the RAKs. Much much better battery efficiency than anything else I've played with. Night and day difference

[shadow girder]

Yeah I like ESP32's for a few things. Nice to have a node with GPS plugged in somewhere to help the mesh keep time. Or if you need wifi/tcp mode for a home node. But for most projects I prefer RAKs

Solar nodes, vehicle nodes, handhelds, etc.

Speaking of different device types, if you haven't seen them yet these are fun little supplementary nodes
https://us.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Card-Tracker-T1000-E-for-Meshtastic-p-5913.html?___store=us

They're nrf52 based too, has built in GPS, temp sensor, accelerometer (I don't think that's been wired up in the firmware yet though).

Fits in your pocket. Good for 2 days on a charge.

[opaque halo]

Dang, that's cool

[opaque halo]

Lol, stuff for my car node is in Grand forks but because it's Sunday and the holiday it'll still be Tuesday before I get it

[civic sparrow]

I got stuck in decision paralysis and never purchased one. It's still rattling around in my head. I was thinking 2 wisblock metastatic starter kits. One inside on PoE, one outside on mains with a better antenna. I'm on a third floor balcony so for about 180 degrees I could get pretty far

[shadow girder]

Yeah sounds like that would be a great setup. Nice to be that high up

[marble orchid]

yeah, i'm down in fargo fairly often and usually bring SRN0 with me... it's known to not have the greatest reception (see: i didn't hear basically anyone in forks until the garage node went up), but i think i've only heard one or two nodes in fargo across half a dozen trips down or so

[red linden]

I have a Tbeam with a decently hot receiver that is hard wired into my vehicle. Gain NMO mounted antenna on the roof.

Drove all over fargo and heard nothing. I was shocked.

[opaque halo]

Should be getting my car kit today and hooked up tomorrow when I tap in my dash cam, looking forward to it

[opaque halo]

Ayyyy, got it today
Not sure where to mount the antenna base yet

And probably need longer cable lol

[shadow girder]

Ah, that sucks. Did you order the one I linked and picked a length that was too short?

[opaque halo]

I got the pre built kit and the mount you linked and forgot to order extra cable loll

[shadow girder]

In my 4 door sedan, I use a 10 ft

Err

I've ordered a few.

That might've been for a different build.

Anyway. Easy to measure 🙂 Just make sure you get the connector kit, if you need it.

[opaque halo]

Yeah or the right cable lol

Is there anywhere in town that would have it or should I just order

[shadow girder]

I buy this one specifically because I've had good luck with it + it comes with the +5pcs SMA connectors, which is what you'll need with that antenna mount since it's RP-SMA

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B38S14DS

[opaque halo]

I'm in a dodge journey now, I'll probably need the 10 footer

Where did you mount your antenna?

[shadow girder]

Just the center of the roof of my car, ran the cable down inside the drivers side door and hid the cable along the trim. The door shuts on the cable, but if you run it right it shuts in the same spot every time and I've been running mine for 2 years without problems.

But if you can find a better solution go for it

[opaque halo]

Nah that sounds pretty ideal

[shadow girder]

That's the best I could do in my car

I can take some pics tomorrow

[opaque halo]

The mount will stay on the roof? Pretty neat

[shadow girder]

Yeah it's a really strong magnet. Does well on the highway with that antenna

[opaque halo]

also if I park on the 4th floor of the und parking ramp then that's a decent height advantage

[shadow girder]

Definitely a good plan

[opaque halo]

Ye

Aaaaaand I forgot the water proof glue you mentioned

It'll be fine

[shadow girder]

I think I might've linked the silicone tape

[opaque halo]

Oh right the tape I meant

You did, I'll order it now probs

[shadow girder]

Sounds good. Cheapest stuff is on ebay, i think

Might not be bad at amazon too

They have it at menard's too but it's more expensive

[opaque halo]

Yeah it's fine

What I do think is weird is that I just noticed that my GPS is way off

I'm sitting here at Christus rex and it's showing it way the hell over yonder

[shadow girder]

Oh yeah. you're just using LongFast on your nodes?

It randomizes your location on that channel by default.

[opaque halo]

Oh interesting

Oh wait

Is that the smart location broadcast thing

[shadow girder]

No i think that's for smart detection of when to report a position.

Are you using the android app?

[opaque halo]

Yeah, I'm at a QTA meeting and messing with stuff and studying so I don't have my laptop available for it

[shadow girder]

Go to the top right menu with the 3 dot's and click "Radio Configuration" -> Channels -> LongFast

Precision location is set there

Per channel

But that's one reason why I was suggesting using a shared common channel outside of LongFast as a basis for our channels.
https://meshnet.club/gf/

We could can put less restrictive settings on Forx with people who we're familiar with and keep LongFast on its defaults for anyone who might blow through town.

Makes the map data a little more useful than giant 3 mile wide circles, without needing to pinpoint your location to complete strangers.

And in that setup the base channels are:

1. Forx
2. LongFast

3-8 are open for however you want to use them

[opaque halo]

Oh, slay

[shadow girder]

In my list the Forx is 0 and Longfast is 1, but Discord felt the need to autocorrect that. The channel index starts with 0

0-7

[opaque halo]

Yeah I just scanned it in for what will be my car node

[shadow girder]

Sounds good 👍

[opaque halo]

And now I understand what the circles meant lol

[opaque halo]

Heh just tried it now, that base is pretty strong
The cable I have is also just long enough that I could theoretically leave the node on my dash for now when I'm not driving, lol

[shadow girder]

You can if the connectors match up.

[opaque halo]

Yeah my cable currently matches

I just don't feel like having the node actually be there

[shadow girder]

You checked the pin?

[opaque halo]

Yep

[shadow girder]

Ok cool

Then you should be good.

I just ran into that every time because pretty much everything I've used for meshtastic was SMA and for whatever reason the base was only offered in RP-SMA

And they screw together, but don't make contact.

I kept emphasizing that because I had to wait an extra week the first time and that didn't make me happy 😄

But if you're good, you're good 😄 i'll leave it alone

[opaque halo]

Okay I might have been mistaken but I do have the adapter available here regardless,lol

I'll check tomorrow

I forgot that they'd screw in still regardless cuz I took a look and was like eh looks fine

[shadow girder]

It's no problem. It's really easy to overlook.

[opaque halo]

Yeah I feel silly though 😅

Yeah that mount is gorgeous

[shadow girder]

I'm glad to hear that it's working well. I received messages on both channels. Did you hear any of my replies?

[opaque halo]

Yep, sorry was driving

I'm parked on the third floor of the union parking ramp now

[opaque halo]

I parked on the 5th floor this time to hopefully get more range. My mobile node can't pick it up from in class still unfortunately but that was expected, I'm pretty sure once I get outside it'll be fine

[shadow girder]

Yeah I'm pretty sure it will too. Good signal strength to Solar Rak

[opaque halo]

Lol nice

[opaque halo]

In more likely to be parking in the 4th floor when winter actually comes in heavy but that's still a good spot

[shadow girder]

From SE GF to NW GF to N EGF

[shadow girder]

Oh yeah, 4th should be plenty good if you were on the 3rd floor yesterday

[opaque halo]

That was my thought as well

[marble orchid]

how hard is meshsense to set up? i've had SRN0 plugged in to my server for a couple days now, but only drawing power, haven't set up the server yet.... time does not permit much unnecessary work right now 😂

if it's quick, i could stand to get sidetracked for a little bit though lol

[shadow girder]

Its really easy, it's just an Electron app

[marble orchid]

Oh

[shadow girder]

I haven't run it in a few weeks because the graphics card failed in the spare computer I was using closer to the node. You're supposed to be able to run at headless, but it complained when I didn't have a display.

[marble orchid]

i have... opinions... about electron. does it have a webserver capacity by chance? this is a headless server

oh perfect

eh, i think i can fake an x11 display if it really gets bothered, thats a familiar issue (plantuml)

[opaque halo]

Hmm

[shadow girder]

Yeah, that will probably make it happy.

[opaque halo]

Might throw that on my pi

Or try to

Also

I am not sure what the prior messages to that were, lol

Which is lolzy considering the contents of what I did receive

I have also been plugging meshtastic like crazy amongst friends

I actually lead a discussion panel today with a few stem people and one of the physics professors said a hobby project he's looking forward to is getting back into using cheap lasers to measure the optical properties of snow and wanted to be able to let people monitor the change in snow as a blizzard progressed and so I then suggested the possibility of a snow node of sorts that would have a reportable reading regarding the current status, since obviously nobody wants to be outside with a contraption trying to measure the snow

[opaque halo]

Ahhhh

That would probably be a good idea

[shadow girder]

https://github.com/geoffwhittington/meshtastic-matrix-relay

Geoff and myself started working on this early last year. It's pretty cool. 🙂

[opaque halo]

I remember you mentioning it before and it was definitely a cool sounding project

[shadow girder]

My first "real" project. I was (less now) terrible at Python and was begging people in here to help me build it.

[opaque halo]

Yeahhhhh it can be rough figuring stuff like that out 😅

[shadow girder]

Geoff was kind enough to help me get it started.

https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/m-m-relay-were-building-a-meshtastic-matrix-relay/7558

[shadow girder]

On my phone. Missed this when i was pasting stuff. That would be a cool use case

I've never used it, but people are often pointed to the serial module when wanting to send data from sensors that aren't natively supported. Need a separate MCU to provide the data

https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/module/serial/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HdOiGKBtapw

Should be doable somehow though

[marble orchid]

are there any known issues with meshsense not connecting to a radio over bluetooth? i'm trying it out on my laptop (server isn't an option... long story, glibc version), and it sees SRN0, connects, then eventually gives a traceback while trying to read properties (which is also extremely slow)

it's very possible this is on my end, but wanted to ask first lol

[shadow girder]

Not that I'm aware of. The only thing I can think of is if it wouldn't connect, I would clear out the bond in blueman and initiate the pairing through Meshsense and it would work again

[marble orchid]

ahahaha... blueman... i don't think i have that 😅

idk what i do have lol

[shadow girder]

What flavor of linux are you running?

[marble orchid]

gentoo

[shadow girder]

You're on your own then. lol 😄

[marble orchid]

like i said, it's very possibly on my end 😂

i only installed it like a week and a half ago... still kinda new to it all, and haven't done anything with bluetooth yet, so i'm not even sure it's compiled into the kernel 😅

[shadow girder]

I've played with a number of the more technical flavors over the years. I stopped short of Gentoo though. In my old age I prefer Linux Mint and Meshsense has worked well for me in LM 22.

[marble orchid]

yeah... i trialed arch for a couple weeks during covid, but it had a blocking bug on a piece of software i needed non-negotiably (LaTeX), so that got stopped in its tracks. i guess the theory is i should've gone and fixed it myself, but homework existed as well

gentoo has been surprisingly easy, or at least.... not as horrible as i expected going in blind. the documentation is outstanding

just recently got a new laptop and decided on gentoo for it as a "rolling but stable" distro... 99% of my linux usage has been pure debian, but i've been getting tired of being perpetually a year or two behind any new features for any software unless i go compile it myself

so i figured i'd just adopt the system of compiling everything myself anyways 😆

[shadow girder]

Yeah it is annoying having older releases in the repos in general, but with Mint being Ubuntu-based, a lot of that is taken care of with PPA's which helps some.

[marble orchid]

yeah, ubuntu and anything downstream of it is a lot more user-friendly for sure. i got turned off it recently because of the esm-infra stuff... i get that <name of company i forget> is for-profit and needs to make money, and giving things out for free doesn't really server that --- but do not put ads in my apt update output. that's what i get on my aws ec2 now and i do not like it

originally left windows for linux in the first place because of update BSery, i do not intend to stay for more of it lmao

[shadow girder]

Yeah I hear you there...

snapd sucks too

[marble orchid]

oh yeah i disable snapd out of the box on everything that has it. packagekitd too on debian, or gnome will start nagging you about updates every 4.3 seconds. you gotta mask it too, just a systemctl disable packagekitd and something (idk what) will turn it back on at next boot

[shadow girder]

I haven't tried it yet, but someone in the Matrix group has been developing this. Looks like it has bluetooth support too.
https://gitlab.com/kop316/gtk-meshtastic-client

[marble orchid]

intriguing... lemme go compile meson rq and i'll let you know how it works in 2-5 business days (#gentooproblems)

[opaque halo]

Mmm that longer cable gets in tomorrow, then I can finally permanently install my node in my car lol

[opaque halo]

Based on my current map, I think the next step is getting a node around that corner of south Columbia and 17th

Was there any update on this project?

[shadow girder]

Yeah we'd be in good shape if we could get one in that area

And especially on that tower.

[opaque halo]

Truly

[shadow girder]

I saw your vehicle node come online about an hour ago. Get it all finished?

[opaque halo]

Yep!
She's kinda in there, the cable in the trim is a work in progress kinda but it should be good now

No constant power hookup yet but I'll monitor how long it lasts, I use the car regularly enough that it should be fine when I do get a proper plug for the outlet in my center console

[shadow girder]

Great to hear! I'm curious as to how long it will last too. I'd guess almost 2 weeks on a full charge

[opaque halo]

Yeah I'm unsure. It died on its own in a few days I think but it also wasn't on a full charge

[shadow girder]

Huh

Oh yeah, if it wasn't full.

[opaque halo]

Er not on its own. I left it on and it died in a few days

Should be fully charged though so we'll see

[shadow girder]

I just saw a t deck come online

[opaque halo]

I've been too lazy to install the dash cam stuff and I realized the protection circuit it came with is only directly to the cam itself so I don't particularly want to just tap in my connector for powering the node just yet without looking more into it

[shadow girder]

Ah yeah, no need to rush into that since it'll last on battery for awhile anyway

[opaque halo]

Ye

And the cheater solution would be to just put a battery bank in there that'll accept the higher wattage output from my car port when it is running which would then more than guarantee that thing stays powered, but that would not be the elegant move

[shadow girder]

If you really want to nerd out you can put one of these in your window to keep it topped off 😄 I have one in my car too 😂
https://www.ebay.com/itm/404806303921

[opaque halo]

Heh

There's an idea tbh

[shadow girder]

I think the numbers are a "little" inflated, but it is a good unit

[opaque halo]

"100A"

[shadow girder]

The suction cups that come with it are garbage but I went to Menards and picked up some better ones with hooks and it stays put nicely now.

[opaque halo]

Yeah I expected that much

But for under $30 that's not bad at all

[shadow girder]

I use it to keep the battery topped off if I'm not driving much. It's also nice to be able to charge power banks and whatnot while parked.

[opaque halo]

Would also be handy just in general

[shadow girder]

Yeah I looked around before purchasing and it's decent for what you get

[opaque halo]

Good in general cuz I do have one of those power stations that I'll have for car camping in the future and a plan for having solar power is always good

[shadow girder]

I haven't used the cheap charge controller at all. Just the built in USB ports and the cigarette lighter adapter. For what I need, it works fine just like that

[opaque halo]

Yep, that's kinda how I see it

Especially cuz there's already a BMS circuit of sorts in the unit

[opaque halo]

So a couple of things

I'm noticing that if a node is plugged into power prior to being turned on it tends to like lock up and isn't happy

And I'm also lately noticing trace routes not go through

Any ideas?

[shadow girder]

What firmware version are you running?

I think 2 of your nodes might be running pre-2.5 firmware. I'd upgrade to 2.5.13, it's solid

Then see how things behave from there.

[opaque halo]

Ahhhh yes I do need to do that

[shadow girder]

Yeah even early buggy 2.5 releases were more stable than some of the 2.4, in my experience.

But now it's running smoothly

[opaque halo]

I'll do that probably Sunday night or on Monday, my weekend is already spoken for and I don't think playing with radios is what my partner was expecting lol

Also the power thing is happening in my car node setup which I had presumed was running the latest

But I'll check all that again later

[shadow girder]

Hmm I'm not sure about that. I haven't run into that myself. You might want to connect it to a PC sometime and run

meshtastic --noproto

While it boots up to capture the serial output. Maybe you'll see something strange in the logs

The car node that is

[opaque halo]

Gotcha, I'll try that when I get the chance to troubleshoot more

[marble orchid]

iOS app? i have the same issue, i think it's the app. have seen @stone slate 's work on the same node from android

[dapper dome]

I got my T deck this week and I want to rewrite the entire UI

[shadow girder]

Ah, yours was the Tdeck that I saw a few days ago.

You're welcome to work on your own of course, but a new UI is already in the works
https://github.com/meshtastic/device-ui

[shadow girder]

I asked on LongFast by i'm not sure if anyone received it. Is the mesh time off for anyone else?

New messages showing that they came in 5 days ago

A few days ago it would say new messages were 2 days old, etc. I think it's drifting farther off.

[opaque halo]

Oh tf

I haven't seen that personally

Not that I noticed at least

[shadow girder]

I think it's because a few nodes on the mesh have outdated firmware 😉 & nudge

It's not just you though

I think the person in EGF has a couple that are running pre 2.5 firmware too.

The devs have been fighting with getting the mesh time corrected for awhile. It's been affected a lot of meshes in the last few months.

It's just my first time seeing it here in the last week or so on our mesh, so I figured I'd ask if anyone was was running into it on their end too.

It's not a huge issue. Mostly cosmetic I think.

[opaque halo]

Hm, oopsies lol

[shadow girder]

Like I said it's not a huge issue. Everything still operates fine.

[opaque halo]

Driving out to devils lake, not expecting to pick up many nodes lol

[shadow girder]

Good luck 🫡

[opaque halo]

Definitely no nodes 😔

[shadow girder]

I talked to J-Tech last night and set him up on Forx. I'm not sure if he's a Discord user or not but I sent him links to find this thread.

[opaque halo]

Noice

[shadow girder]

Yeah, really nice to see more growth. I'm gonna hit him up in a bit and see if he has a spot for a solar node and if so, if he needs any gear and/or wants any tips.

It'd be really cool if he was located in the North/Central part of town.

Can't get a traceroute to come back so I'm not sure what path the packets are taking

We were exchanging messages fairly reliably last night though. So that much is good.

[opaque halo]

That's all good to hear

[marble orchid]

Does this get me the nodedb high score? :)

[opaque halo]

Lol the heck

[marble orchid]

been in seattle for the last week or so, brought SomeRandomNode with me and just stuck it in my pocket everywhere i went. plus flying thru MSP i heard a lot of those guys

[opaque halo]

Heh I bet

[opaque halo]

I must also say, that magnetic mount antenna is definitely the real deal

Held up perfectly up and down the highway

[shadow girder]

Beats any record I had by at least 4

[shadow girder]

I'm glad to hear it

[shadow girder]

Ok, i'm done screwing around with keys. Sorry for the ugly nodedb entires 😇

These are the 🔑 's I'm keeping, final answer.

[opaque halo]

O?

[shadow girder]

Yep.. It's the last time I restore my keys manually through the app. I factory erased my T1000-E and restored the keys backwards 🙃 In the Android app, public key is shown at the top (because it's assumed you'll be working with that the most, copying and pasting into admin key fields I suppose).

But my private & public key were saved alphabetically. 🤦‍♂️

So I broadcast my private key as public.. lol Had to regen

[opaque halo]

Lol oop

[shadow girder]

Not too terribly serious though. Just stupid/embarassing and some extra work.

[shadow girder]

Aha! They're displayed backwards when using meshtastic --get security too. Displayed alphabetically when using meshtastic --export-config

Yes, it's important to double and triple check if manually restoring keys.. but imo that should be uniform.

[opaque halo]

It definitely should be uniform

Also just realized that my car node is apparently not broadcasting its position which seems strange, I really need to do that firmware shenanigans this week and then stay figuring out the quirks I've been noticing

[shadow girder]

Yeah there were issues with a lot of the earlier releases, but the recent firmware is really stable now. Things started to stabilize at 2.5.13

2.5.15 is the latest alpha. I have it on most of my devices and it runs great.

[red linden]

I have been having buring hell with the charger built into the RAK boards. Multiple boards just did not work for me.

I went with an outbound charger and it instantly works perfectly. Pretty impressed with these. Cheap, very small, working great.

[shadow girder]

That's good to know. Are those TP4056's too? I ordered these but haven't had a chance to use them in anything yet.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/152767978459

Oh those look slightly different. Similar though.

[red linden]

Ya, the ones I posted are solar chargers. I have a bunch of the ones you posted as well. They work great. But not for solar lol

[shadow girder]

Oh, gotcha

[red linden]

And these chargers will handle up to 1 amp, so with a few hundred mah of solar, they are quickly charging my 10k mah battery, even in the cloudy conditions.

[shadow girder]

Very cool

Found them dirt cheap on Aliexpress too. 5 for $5.31 shipped
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806731788657.html

I'm gonna order a handful. Thanks for the tip.

[red linden]

Wow! That's a good find.

[shadow girder]

That's teamwork 😎 🤝

[red linden]

For that price, I just ordered 10 more lol

[opaque halo]

That is a good find

[red linden]

Here's another component that may help others. L7805. They are a voltage regulator. I had some solar panels that were putting out over 7 volts in bright sun. This critter will take up to 30 volts and stabilize it at 5v almost perfectly.

Picked up 30 of them for like $10. If you are having some over voltage from cheap solar panels, these are a super cheap way to regulate how much your radios are seeing.

[shadow girder]

I hadn't heard of those either. Very cool!

[pulsar marsh]

I really do need to test the output voltage of the panels I'm settling on before they blow up nodes...

[red linden]

My experience is that if any of the cheap 5v panels with a USB connector have a big fat end, there is a voltage regulator in the connector. If you chop it off, boom, 7.5 volts.

So it's worth checking. I already blew up a RAK node

[red linden]

Frustrating device. But it has a lot of potential!

[shadow girder]

Yeah, I'd bet it will kick ass when the new UI is ready

[dapper dome]

I just got one of them too and accidentally sent out messages because I couldn’t figure out what I was doing

Works well when tethered though

[opaque halo]

finally updating my node firmware, lol

[shadow girder]

It's a Christmas miracle! 😄

(lol. I couldn't resist)

[opaque halo]

lmao

Main node flashed, mobile node flashing, gonna grab my coat and grab my car node real quick

Hmmm, seems to not want to flash my car node

[shadow girder]

What's the issue? Can't get it to enter DFU mode?

[opaque halo]

ah now i got it, didnt realize it was a different process on the rak

seems the main node isn't detecting neighbors though

[shadow girder]

Hmmm

You can try scanning the QR code and use "Replace" when it asks about channels
https://meshnet.club/gf/

[opaque halo]

those are set up, i think its just being lsow

it did eventually pick it up

[shadow girder]

Ah cool

[opaque halo]

just means its time to go run the node back out to my car lol

seems to be working

alright off to planning the next mission

[shadow girder]

Sounds good. Have a good Christmas ⛄

[opaque halo]

probably gonna setup a solar node to leave somewhere semi secure

[shadow girder]

Ah, planning your next Meshtastic mission. That's even better than a Christmas mission, imho

But sometimes they can overlap too

[opaque halo]

i dont do much for christmas, my polycule and i already had our get together on saturday and ill be going to my partners families on the 11th lol

[shadow girder]

I'm not very big into the Christmas rituals either. I ate some lasagna with my mom and sister earlier. lol

But I finally fixed the map plugin in meshtastic-matirx-relay. That had been broken for months. That was my Christmas miracle for today.

[opaque halo]

lol noice

[pulsar marsh]

Do you guys use any particular online map? I've been putting my nodes on meshmap.net to promote the network, hoping that it'll convince people to buy radios if they're on the fence.

[shadow girder]

Nah, as far as I know that's probably the best map option for something like that. What I was referring to was a map plugin that generated a map and sent it as an inline picture to a Matrix room. Only a handful of people see those usually.
https://github.com/geoffwhittington/meshtastic-matrix-relay?tab=readme-ov-file#core-plugins
(For the record that map plugin is zoomed way out because another dev didn't want to put his home address in the README.md. It's more usable in practice. lol)

If you're trying to get the word out, you might catch some people by dropping comments in youtube videos too.

I'd guess there's North Dakotans who might watch those and pass because they figure nobody else would be using them. That was the case here a few times.

People joined and said they didn't expect to see anyone

I was hoping to see some new nodes pop up after Christmas 😄

[pulsar marsh]

Hmm maybe I need to put some really subtle messaging in the node names, like "Solar 1 Buy a Heltec already!"

[shadow girder]

That's a good idea. Or a website with local mesh info

Or both

[pulsar marsh]

is that meshnet.club your group's domain?

[shadow girder]

Yeah that was the other thing I was going to suggest. I registered it to use with my matrix homeserver. But we're planning to expands its usage.

Was waiting until after Christmas

I haven't decided on a framework yet. Maybe wordpress or a forum or something

And make it easy for people to add regional info

[pulsar marsh]

Is that Matrix group open to people outside Forx area?

[shadow girder]

Yeah, it's for anyone

I'm the only one from our area in it at the moment

I'll send you an invite code. You can register on the meshnet.club homeserver if you'd like. I'm looking for people to help build it out

If you're interested

I mean the Meshtastic Matrix community is pretty large already. There's people from all over. But we're going to rebrand over to meshnet.club fully so there's no confusion, that we're not an official Meshtastic group, just a community group focused on Meshtastic

[pulsar marsh]

I've been trying to link over MQTT between Steele and Bismarck but it's been painful. But now we might have a sporadic RF link all the way from Dawson. At first I thought it was a plane flying over but now i'm not sure

[shadow girder]

I have some experience with MQTT, might as well install a broker on the meshnet.club vps too.

Are you using the official Meshtastic server?

I saw you joined some of the matrix rooms. I sent you a few more invites

[pulsar marsh]

Thanks!

[pulsar marsh]

Yep I'm using the official server, was considering running one at home unless I get good RF based links

[marble orchid]

anyone happen to know if the same radios we have here are the right frequency band for the UK? not sure if the UK falls into europe bands (which i'm pretty sure are different... but not an expert 😅 )

[shadow girder]

Europe uses 868 or 433

(I think that's what they are)

Yep. EU_868 or EU_433

Are you in the UK?

[marble orchid]

not yet, lol. will be for a few days soonish, wondering if it's worth sticking my techo in my backpack or if it would land me in trouble

(though admittedly i probably won't post exactly what dates my apartment is empty, not keen to share that with <this server member count> of my closest friends :)

[shadow girder]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you can use 868mhz with our radios. You'd want a different antenna though for sure.

I think in general 868 is used more anyway. 433 is more congested in a lot of areas, from what I hear.

[shadow girder]

Might be worth asking in #general . I don't want to give you the wrong info.

[marble orchid]

yeah, i'll be in manchester, fairly populated lol

[marble orchid]

i actually just found that there's a UK Manchester channel in here just like ours 😂

[shadow girder]

Perfect! 😄

[marble orchid]

New personal best

[shadow girder]

PSA: If you have any (or many) nrf52 devices it's worth taking the time to update to 2.5.20. There was a nasty LFS bug that looks to be fixed in this latest release.
https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/releases/tag/v2.5.20.4c97351

The issue is still open currently, but the fix has been out for a few days and the reports are good.
https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/5839

With yesterday's heatwave I was able to get out and flash LeafLink

[pulsar marsh]

I've been running it for a day now too and haven't had issues 👍

[pulsar marsh]

I'm rolling the dice, I installed 2.5.20 on my backyard RAK solar node. Last week it became unresponsive and the serial log said "Could not open / read /prefs/db.proto", which had me thinking it was the LFS bug finally appearing.

[shadow girder]

It's firmware update day here too 😄 That's what i'm working on at the moment. Flashing the bulk of my spare nodes.

[shadow girder]

Yeah, sounds like the LFS bug :/

At least you're able to get at it to reflash it. I was most worried about the one on my roof & another in a tree.

[shadow girder]

Was there a lot of nodes in the NodeDB? I think that was one of the main triggers of it.

[pulsar marsh]

Only about 40 nodes around here to be in the DB, pretty sure it wasn't more than that. It had been running for 30 days

[shadow girder]

If anyone has a tdeck the new device-ui is available to try in a 2.6.0 test .bin
https://github.com/meshtastic/meshtastic.github.io/blob/master/firmware-esp32s3-2.6.0.aad9e35.zip

Next hop routing for DMs was added
https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/pull/2856

I'm going to wait until 2.6.x is reported stable before i switch all of my devices over, but i thought the tdeck users might be interested in the new t-deck-tft .bins

If you upgrade to the 2.6.0 test firmare it'll wipe out your settings so you'll want to back up your keys first.

[opaque halo]

Ooooooh

Can't wait to see it

[pulsar wagon]

Hello is any one near fargo ?

[red linden]

There are a bunch of us in Grand Forks, but fargo is shockingly desolate. I have never heard a single node in fargo

[pulsar wagon]

Well some one has to be the first I guess that's me

[opaque halo]

Yeah when I drove to Fargo with my car node I didn't pick up any

[pulsar wagon]

My node went up yesterday, going to look at setting up a solar node on my roof next

[opaque halo]

Nice!
Hopefully I'll pick it up the next time I drive down

[pulsar wagon]

Message me when you do maybe we can see if it pulls up I plan on taking it traveling with me

[opaque halo]

I'll try to remember to lol

[red linden]

Are you Heltec Orange HPN? I'm in Fargo currently with my big mobile setup and this is the first node I've seen down here ever

[pulsar wagon]

I'm not

It's a heltech v3

NaW1

[red linden]

I saw you on my mobile node in Grand Forks just a bit ago.

[pulsar wagon]

That's me NAW1

Back in Fargo now but glad to know it's working

[shadow girder]

Harbor Breeze Solar Lights are currently on sale at Lowe's
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Harbor-Breeze-60LM-Solar-Flood-Light-0-6-Watt-Black-Solar-LED-Flood-Light/1002689960

[opaque halo]

Sidenote, I got my orgs faculty advisor to say he'd probably let us put a mesh node on the roof of whitmer hall

[shadow girder]

Very cool! That would really help out in that area

[opaque halo]

Yeh, what setup would be best for up there?

No guarantees on being able to mount any kind of fancy antenna (I actually find it very unlikely we could)

[shadow girder]

Hmm good question. I think even a simple Harbor Breeze solar light hack (running a rak inside) would work

The big question is, how often would you be able to access it? A few times a year for firmware updates anyway?

A lot of people get permission once, but sometimes return visits become a problem so it might be good to confirm that they're ok with you returning to update it once in awhile.

Here's a simple pole mount for a harbor breeze node
https://www.printables.com/model/1092716-harbor-breeze-pole-and-board-mount

It'd be a nice compact setup, no big fiberglass antenna

could zip tie or hose clamp it to a pole somewhere

[shadow girder]

If you want to build something fancier, you can start with a junction box and build it out however you want. I like the Harbor Breeze project because it has everything you need minus the rak, pigtail, antenna, printed mount, and optional larger battery (they come with a cheap 1500mAh 18650, i put 3200mAh's in mine just in case).

And they only cost ~$60 total

However you decide to build it, I'd recommend using a rak for the node.

[opaque halo]

Well I'd be able to access it next year but after that is the tricky part

[shadow girder]

That's cool. Even a year helps. Enough time to teach someone else how to admin it and pass the torch

[opaque halo]

This is true

Cuz there's a freshman that just got voted in as our treasurer that is also an electrical engineer that I'm good friends with so I should definitely be able to make it happen

[shadow girder]

Perfect

[opaque halo]

Cuz our advisor has wacky stuff going on the roof for his lab that's getting setup rn, and that lab was not cheap so he's gonna be able to hook us up for at least a few years

[opaque halo]

Heh

So I work over in Fergus falls for an internship

And I got the amazing feeling of running into people that actually know about and use meshtastic nodes for the first time lmao

[shadow girder]

That would be cool! Good to hear

Meshtastic was just featured in Wired. I'm hoping that we see some new devices in GF as a result
https://www.wired.com/story/youre-not-ready-for-phone-dead-zones/

[opaque halo]

Oh that's good

[shadow girder]

How's the meshnet in Fergus Falls? Do they have well-placed infrastructure nodes in that area?

[opaque halo]

I didn't get a chance to actually check yet

My coworker was just telling me about it because I mentioned it when he brought up ham radio

[shadow girder]

Oh, that's cool

[opaque halo]

Yeah, one of the techs in my team apparently used to keep a node in their workshop

The coworker I was talking to uses nodes to monitor his little fish house

Really well setup too

[shadow girder]

That type of stuff is neat to hear about

[opaque halo]

According to him though he lives too far out of town to really pick up the stuff in the city unfortunately

[opaque halo]

Right?

It's really nice to find people that not only know about it but who's eyes don't just kinda glaze over lol

[shadow girder]

I'd bet! Most people that I tell about it are thoroughly uninterested. "Why not just use the internet?" 🤦‍♂️

[opaque halo]

Lol right

[shadow girder]

An announcement from Meshtastic about a firmware issue:
https://x.com/TheMeshtastic/status/1933176983388651543

Meshtastic (@TheMeshtastic)

📢 Firmware 2.6.11 is out. We recommend updating as soon as possible.
🔍 Full details: https://t.co/c7wxStni9l
💻 Easily update using the web flasher: https://t.co/Ycu7bDluJL

X · Jun 12, 2025, 2:58 PM

[opaque halo]

How even

[shadow girder]

https://hackaday.social/@JP_Bennett/114671397635948228

Jonathan Bennett (@[email protected])

-# ↩ Benjamin Kelley
@benjaminkelley Hey, just a quick note. Meshtastic did use established standards: x25519 and AES-CCM. The problem fixed here is twofold: The chosen crypto library uses a non-standard way to get entropy from boards, and devices were getting cloned as a manufacturing step.

hackaday.social · Jun 12, 2025, 4:44 PM

[opaque halo]

Oh I never saw that reply

Sorry I accidentally gave kixqk ideas in the wrong channel

What do we think the optimal height would be for the kite node

Cuz I could always use a fishing rod to fly it

[shadow girder]

That's a good question. I haven't looked into it too much, but I know there's been some people who have experimented with it. If you search this Discord you'll find some discussions on it. Saw this as a recent search result
https://old.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1lnsgga/kite_node_is_my_new_favorite_thing/

[opaque halo]

Ah I wee

See

I'm curious not sober so apologies lol

[shadow girder]

I think you probably want to get it as high as you can legally get it

[opaque halo]

God that would be glorious

We could cover the whole city with that

Especially if we had like another one somewhere about a mile away at about half the height

Two nodes and the entire city is covered

[shadow girder]

Pretty much

[opaque halo]

We could do so many iot things

Especially with mqtt

[shadow girder]

Yeah MQTT is cool. I've dabbled a bit. Haven't done anything crazy yet. I want to play with it in HomeAssistant some day. Still haven't gone down that rabbithole yet

Looks like fun though

I saw this a few days ago, meant to drop a link. Heltec's new MeshTower
https://heltec.org/project/meshtower/
Probably cheaper to build something with a rak, but I know you were asking about solar options awhile back. This is a new ready to go option anyway.

[opaque halo]

A moored balloon could be an option

We could literally hit up the faa and give them our specs and just be like "literally as high and for as long as you are comfortable granting, with the focus on longevity and staying at least 700 feet

I wanna know what the upper distance on that would be

I'm more than 5 miles from the airport I believe

And we could even find a spot further away from it

[shadow girder]

Definitely would be something worth pursuing. It would be cool to get all of Grand Forks area connected, but at a certain height you could probably connect most of the county/counties 😄

[opaque halo]

That's why I wanna test the upper limit

Also would help if I actually put the antenna back on my car roof

Here's something curious

[shadow girder]

Maybe a flyover, they show up in weird places sometimes with no nodeinfo

[opaque halo]

Has to be

Cuz that's 60 miles away from work

And I've never done that

[opaque halo]

I have purchased a kit to put a node in the air via tethered balloon

After I get the rak setup for the best way to take advantage of the height vantage I'll start testing getting it up in the air

Cuz I imagine the standard node mode isn't the optimal solution

[shadow girder]

I'd guess that ROUTER_LATE would be a good role to use for that. Maybe ROUTER, but from what I've seen that's only recommended for stationary deployments. ROUTER_LATE repeats all packets in the same way that ROUTER does, but does so after a short delay.

Either way, very cool! It'll be interesting to see what happens!

[opaque halo]

Hmmm guess we'll see!

[opaque halo]

Finally seeing progress on the rak order lol, balloon should be here soon too

[opaque halo]

Balloon arrived, apparently ups is being weird about the rak shipment so I'll have to pick it up tomorrow

[shadow girder]

Great to hear that everything made it to town!

Maybe too early to know until you start working on it, but when are you hoping to launch? Sometime next week, or later?

There's someone on the mesh who isn't in here, I'm sure he'll be interested to know about this. I'll pass the details along.

[opaque halo]

No idea when tbh
I'm gonna take a look at the balloon today and see how complicated it is

I'll probably do a couple tests where I fill it and keep it low to the ground to try to get a gauge of how long it can stay up

[opaque halo]

Okay I'm never ordering a single thing from rak again until that Cheeto finally kicks it

$50 outstanding balance for the import to pick up from UPS, UPS is giving me the run around about where the package is before they're willing to do more to find it,
I'm not coughing up extra money for a package they pretend they don't know the location or

[shadow girder]

Damn :/ sorry to hear that

[opaque halo]

Yeah, not quite sure how to proceed
Luckily I can kinda do initial testing with my current hardware

I'll probably email the manufacturer again cuz they've been emailing due to the extra fee

[shadow girder]

I can donate a rak if you want. I have one that I've flashed quite a few times while chasing a firmware bug, so i wouldn't mind letting it go.

If you want something to get started with in the meantime, while waiting to sort out the other issues.

I'm busy this afternoon, but you can think about it and let me know. I'll put it in in my car so it's easy to handoff whenever.

[pulsar marsh]

Damn, I was gonna order more from rak but that sounds like a headache. I got my package from Heltec direct with no tariff headache, $201

[opaque halo]

Rak said just pay it lol

[shadow girder]

That sucks.. I used to find it cheaper to order direct from RAK too, but I haven’t ordered anything since the tariff wars started. It doesn't help you much now but if you need to order more in the future Rokland is a US based RAK distributor
https://store.rokland.com/collections/rakwireless-products

cc: @pulsar marsh

[opaque halo]

Yeah that's probably my move in the future

I paid it, at least I should finally get it tomorrow

Otherwise I'm just gonna start bribing people to write angry letters to every ups executive and every member of Congress
Not because it'll fix anything, it'll just make me feel better to annoy them

[pulsar marsh]

I like Rokland, I'm just cheap

[opaque halo]

https://youtu.be/1_lbvqCQnMY?si=sraymiFWUInGIJaL

Bro was making wildly long distance contacts from a window seat on a plane

Balloon node may be a lot more successful that I had originally expected

[shadow girder]

Very cool. Yeah, with as flat as it is out here I'd guess you might be able to connect us to Fargo and Winnepeg at the least.

[opaque halo]

Fargo would be wild

[reef sable]

I got W0R2 hooked up to a Windows 11 computer on a serial port and W0R7 connected to the same machine via Wi-Fi

[reef sable]

Step 1 to take MeshTastic more places.

wall mounted where we keep car keys - https://www.seeedstudio.com/Physis-T1000E-ChargingPuck-p-6466.html

[opaque halo]

Heh, nice

[opaque halo]

lol, updating to the latest firmware cleared my channel config

[shadow girder]

Ah yeah that'll happen if you're upgrading from a pre 2.6 release. I'll have a QR code in a sec

Forx + LongFast here. Hopefully it sets Forx as primary and LongFast as secondary. It's been awhile since I've reconfigured one.

And the URL if you prefer
https://meshtastic.org/e/#CiwSIF__pinUfEithl9_e1TNW1ptv1cdzsCxCArG-ni5TFJ7GgRGb3J4OgIIEQoHEgEBOgIIEBIRCAE4AUAFSAFQHlgUaAHABgE

[opaque halo]

ooooh, much appreciated

i didn't realize it cleared it from my first one before updating my other one

so i was like, oop

[shadow girder]

Yeah that's annoying, but at least it's a one time thing.

[opaque halo]

yeah, and as long as someone has the qr code its an easy fix lol

[shadow girder]

Did you happen see my reply to your base station message about an hour ago? I saw your message and replied but can't get your nodeinfo to exchange. You'd think that would be set automatically with the QR code, but sometimes I've had to go back and re set region to US manually, I've also had to manually set LoRa -> Frequency Slot 20 too (although that's probably not an issue in this case since I could hear you)

[opaque halo]

Hm, I'll re check

My base station is fine, I'll recheck my car in a sec (I did not configure remote admin stuff yet lol)

[shadow girder]

Sounds good. They'll likely exchange nodeinfo packets on their own eventually then.

[opaque halo]

Yeah idk what's up with it

[shadow girder]

What firmware release are you on? The latest stable is pretty old and I've had a lot of luck with the recent alphas. 2.7.12 was pulled due to ESP32 related issues, but 2.7.11 is good.

I'd update and try factory resettting it then setting the region first, then scanning the QR code again, then check to make sure it's still on LoRa frequency slot 20 (for good measure)

And then see if your nodes exchange messages/nodeinfo without issue

if it still doesn't work right after that you can use the uf2 sketch to erase the flash. that takes care of stubborn problems

but it's important to back up your keys before you do that

https://flasher.meshtastic.org/
from here to use the erase sketch, select the rak4631 and then the trashcan icon on the far right

then follow the instructions. 4 is easy to skip/miss (because it seems like the process could be done after 3), but it's important

[opaque halo]

ill try that later if my nodes keep it up

[reef sable]

Backing up configurations & saving keys!

[opaque halo]

New devices in finally, gonna go through updating all my existing ones and then figuring out how I want to proceed

I'm gonna setup at least one solar node with a better setup antenna, almost wondering if I should disguise it into a flagpole

And I can finally proceed with balloon testing kinda

[opaque halo]

quick question for the rak boards with an on board solar jst, is the board suitable for onboard charge management that way?

i also really prefer the web client for setup cuz i don't have to wait for the reboot for every single setting change im about to make

[opaque halo]

alright, everything should be working correctly on my end of things.
i have an antenna coming in tomorrow for the garage node, and im gonna start plotting out my air node final setup because i might just let it run in the air off a charged up portable bank but a solar node wouldn't be awful

[shadow girder]

Most people use a charge controller, gives you more flexibility with your solar panel.
Here's some discussion:
#solar-power message
#solar-power message

CN3791 or CN3163 are popular I think

I stockpiled those Harbor Freight lights awhile back and they come with a charge controller which works well enough so I've been using those up.

[shadow girder]

Yeah hiding one in a flagpole would be cool

Just saw I received your message from your car node on Forx on the SE end of town.

[opaque halo]

Hell yeah

I need to go set that back up in my car

[opaque halo]

sigh
The batteries and enclosures I ordered won't be here until tomorrow

[opaque halo]

I also may have forgotten to calculate the helium requirements for this 🫩

[shadow girder]

Yeah, I suppose that could add up quickly.

[opaque halo]

Gonna start searching for welders on bumble ig

[marble orchid]

think i gotta tear dwon the garage node for 24 hours or so. apartment inspection and i'm not exactly certain i'm supposed to have this stuff plugged in where it is 😂

[shadow girder]

That's understandable. "Well placed Meshtastic node ✅ " probably isn't on the checklist 😄

I'm can definitely tell that it's offline though. It's a lot quieter this morning on this side of town.

[marble orchid]

oh not just that -- i was siphoning power off the garage door motor 😂 the whole setup is completely indoors, so no solar power available

(i'm pretty sure it's still metered to me, so i'm pretty sure it's legal and i'm not theft-of-servicing. just in case any lawyers end up reading this chat)

[opaque halo]

Heh, nice one

[marble orchid]

alright, hopefully it's back up. Updated to latest firmware too

[shadow girder]

Hmm. I haven't seen any packets yet over here yet

If you upgraded from a pre 2.6 firmware it'll wipe your config :/

Not a huge deal if you had a basic configuration. It will have wiped your keys and you'll probably to set the region to get it back on the mesh again.

[marble orchid]

ah, yeah, i think i went from 2.4 or 2.5 to 2.6, i'll have to reconfigure when i get home tonight

[shadow girder]

Sounds good.

If you want to run the latest, 2.7.15 has been running well and will probably make it to beta this weekend too
#alphanauts-testing message

[random flicker]

Been gone too long, I forgot this channel was here. Was wondering why so quiet on the Red River page. Finally have a node up on a 40 foot tower just south of Larimore. Using a 10 dBi antenna, running 2.6.11, and long moderate.

Also have a Rnode setup (same type antenna) if anyone is messing around with Reticulum.

The Meshtastic node is running Mesh Bridge (https://github.com/IceNet-01/Mesh-Bridge-GUI) and I will shortly have a long fast node up as well.