us - NYC metro

[jaunty harness]

hehe same, am curious how different preset would perform since you could filter out all the LongFast clients

[misty gorge]

It may work better.

[jaunty harness]

without any orginzation though don't see any move off LongFast, even if one of the Mediums performed better

[misty gorge]

but with nobody to talk to.. it's not really useful.

[jaunty harness]

we could def try an experiment with those of here in discord, but when it's warmer - i don't wanna go up to my roof for an hour in this weather 😄

[abstract iron]

https://site.meshtastic.org/

seems this was... maybe just advertised?

site planner tool?

[jaunty harness]

ahh that's been around for few weeks at least, https://meshplanner.com/ is a new one I saw in #1174474453359526050

[karmic junco]

heres what I don't understand. I have a bobcat helium running as well- as it seems to be just peachy reaching the bronx and further down south from the north shore

[jaunty harness]

oh huh, is it only using 915MHz and how wide a frequency? meshtastic is 906.875MHz for ch 0 (aka LongFast default public channel) so could just be interference on lower side of "915"

[karmic junco]

that.. I dunno

but its reach is significantly longer than that of meshtastic

even with the same antenna.

[jaunty harness]

oh wow, very interesting!!

Found some info that says LoRaWAN is using 1/2 the channel size as Meshtastic so still feels like some sort of freq/interference but really would need something like an SDR to monitor/get a better idea

[karmic junco]

Im not sure. there used to be around 3 or 4 helium miners in my area. When it became non profitable or less profitable, many of those went offline.

so Im like the only one in my grid

I didn't install it to actually make money, it was because I was playing with helium networked trackers

[jaunty harness]

heh i'm only familiar with it in passing, could be slightly diff slice of spectrum or some modulation magic that lets it works better vs meshtastic

upgraded window node to 2.5.18 and.. idk if its the airwaves are a little clearer right now or what but seems to be working better than 2.5.15

[daring moth]

Look at these crazy hop counts:

[misty gorge]

I tried to message him also. Nothing.

[jaunty harness]

haha yeah i think it was a buttdial or something

and TAK is another SI node w/7 hops

f227 is also 7 hops though they're way up by Pearl River so seeing them in 4 hops is pretty good coverage north of the city

[bronze wren]

I've brought a few more nodes online tonight. They're intended to be mostly mobile so they'll hop in and out of range a lot based on my circle of friends using them during various events.

I might see how we fair with medium over long modes as well. long-fast seems to be causing routing ambiguity in denser areas but even with 7 nodes sitting in one room (lol) I can already see lots of issues.

I also hit lots of bugs/glitches during setup. I'll see if I can find time later this month to work on setup issues but I didn't have time to dig into app or firmware code.

[daring moth]

If you have many nodes in a single room, set all but one of them to the CLIENT_MUTE role.

[bronze wren]

Yeah. I have been slowly getting settings changed.

The issue is I don't want them all on that setting when actively used outside.

And now I need to go put admin keys on all of them but the setup tool gave me a ton of issues on my first go-round. Some ended up in glitched states which failed to connect to the mesh at all.

One seemed to work but would crash itself.

2.5.18 on all radios.

[daring moth]

Setup tool?

[bronze wren]

the meshtastic apps mostly.

I've also got things connected on some for serial stuff.

[daring moth]

Oh, the Android/iOS app.

[bronze wren]

Apps seem to be ... not in a great state. Which is fine, it's a community effort but I wouldn't call them reliable.

[jaunty harness]

i use the python meshtastic for managing my nodes cfg (--export-config > device.yaml / --config device.yaml) and with a fresh device i def have to run --config a few times to get all the settings to stick as I want

[bronze wren]

Yeah. That's the thing.

It seems to not stick if I do it certain ways.

Or half-stick.

Which causes so many issues.

[jaunty harness]

interesting... i usually just see like it'll do "module" or two correctly (e.g. lora / device / power / pos) then reboot and it'll have lora settings correct but device is still funky

i've had mixed results with adding admin keys in iOS, but for the most part it's not always obvious when you change a setting and device restarts while you're onto the next section thinking it's still connected and ready for more cfg

generally though running --config repeatedly works, but I also edit the yaml down removing anything that's a default to keep it simpler

[bronze wren]

I can get the admin keys working consistently but it's slow.

[jaunty harness]

oh yeah, that relies on radios and if you had 7 in the same room it'll be unfun

[bronze wren]

Oh it was slow with 2.

It's about the same with 7.

The big issue is the extra hops it randomly adds.

[jaunty harness]

huh, when I do it with 2-3 its pretty responsive though theres some initial hesitation where iOS is like "haven't heard from this device on admin channel" and it actually has if you go back and then into the same setting submenu

also if you're using config.yaml try removing the channel_url from the cfgs as that may end up pointing to a url from the "old" cfg vs the values you actually edited (I'm not 100% on the full depth of channel_url but it would include like BT pin, privkey so they're not really something you wanted to share/post)

OH silly setup question actually.. what timezone are people using? I've found the app defaults to some weird string that ends up with my devices in UTC but if I use EST5EDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0 it's actually correct

[bronze wren]

Ok. Hopefully that is the last round of semi-manual setup work. Admins working and mutes set on most of them.

[daring moth]

I've assumed it's the same as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones#List. Or specifically: America/New_York

[jaunty harness]

yeah i'm used to America/New_York from unix but meshtastic uses the POSIX version https://github.com/nayarsystems/posix_tz_db/blob/master/zones.csv

[jaunty harness]

if you can keep a backup the devices private/pubkey, it'll save some headaches if one gets full reset for any reason and ends up with new keys (it'll have probs with messages until nodes forget and see its new NODEINFO or naturally cycles out of their nodedb)

[daring moth]

Yep. I keep mine in my password manager.

[bronze wren]

Fair. I need to manage the keys more carefully. It was fine with a couple nodes but now it's a bit to juggle.

[jaunty harness]

yeah that's where i'm at now, probably dump into private repo instead of the mess of device-firmware.version i wound up with

[proven grove]

Hmmm am I the only one that uses 3 "management" nodes? One's my daily EDC with MQTT on, the other two are stationary Pi's that I can SSH into remotely (over VPN if I need to). I keep .yaml's for each of them, just in case.

Also, fastest way to provision new nodes is a stripped down template .yaml. Get it to run with the options you want once without any errors and it should be good to go as a template. Additionally, you could just write a one liner to execute the CLI with only the options you wanted to install.

[tropic gulch]

Oh nice there's an NYC room, helloooo all

[abstract iron]

greets

[proven grove]

@twin root - think the new router_late role going to solve a lot of our infra problems?

[gritty knot]

Note that the ROUTER_LATE role has a fairly serious bug in v2.5.18, which is fixed in 2.5.19. If you're wanting to use that role, I strongly suggest running the latter version.

[proven grove]

ah crap. 1 sec, need to change my attic node back.

2.5.19 had another serious bug that nuked my configs, so I thought 2.5.18 was the solution haha

[misty gorge]

Hello from high up in Queens. I side right now.

[gritty knot]

Unfortunately not 😞. I will say that the config-nuking stuff is hopefully nearly sorted. The root cause of that has been found (it ultimately relates to filesystem corruption, and can be triggered by the Bluetooth driver). Some fixes are in the 2.5.19 release, and some are still pending.

[tropic gulch]

Generally speaking what MQTT topic are you guys in with your net connected nodes? I see there's New York but there's also NY.

[proven grove]

I'll hold off on both router_late and .19 for the time being lol thanks for the heads up

[proven grove]

I use a private broker, so I just leave mine as msh/US

[jaunty harness]

usually ignore mqtt/disable ok to mqtt - in under 48hrs fresh node already hit 80 nodes just off RF, and when ive played with it i had private broker (for bridger -> influxdb -> grafana)

I think msh/US/NY is the default but I'm not aware of a specific NYC area subtopic

still not sure if router_late will help here vs less router/router_clients/(hidden) repeaters

yesterday for a bit I had Harlem Relay Gobo Solar Node Vernon 7ae3 and oopsoo30 all direct, all routers and there's definitely one if not 2 repeaters in brooklyn as well

[jaunty harness]

don't think you saw my replies ZuMBLe but your messages came in 2/5 hops then 5/5 hops

[tropic gulch]

Nice, I think I'm going to use home assistant to host my own I didn't realize it was that easy

[proven grove]

Not sure if you plan to connect to it while away from home, but your brokers port needs to be internet facing in that case

[tropic gulch]

Did the giraffe go down?

[daring moth]

My node heard it ten minutes ago:

[tropic gulch]

Damn i must be suckin rn

[twin root]

I think it just needs some hardware changes 🙂

Not super consistent, I just ordered some PCBs for 1w nodes

Also a cavity filter.... It's so noisy up there. RF hell

[twin root]

What's it's channel util look like?

[twin root]

Ah a little hifh

High*

[daring moth]

I cannot seem to traceroute it, but it's two hops away from my node in Great Neck, NY.

[jaunty harness]

E22-900M30S? if so which one, Ikoka, Donktastic, Washtastic? I have some extra PCBs for Ikoka (v2) and Donktastics and (2) Ikoka v3 and (2) Femtofox' JLCPCB is building right now

One of the Mamaroneck nodes popped up via WOOD for me (7 hopper) - GPS seems a block off from one of the highest spots facing the coast and the way more likely location ontop of the municipal building/pd/fd building so probably put up by member of the latter

[twin root]

That's great! Meanwhile I'm .7 miles as the crow flies away from it and can't hit it lol

[bronze wren]

I can hit it 1 hop but I had line of sight earlier and couldn’t hit it at all.

[gaunt dirge]

Woah just turned my nodes on ade seeing much more than i used too

[twin root]

newest version of the Ikoka. Very interested in the femtofox as well, been following that project

[jaunty harness]

yeah same, have had the luckfox boards running one of the earliest releases with like 40days uptime waiting on the PCB - it's a surprisingly spry lil thing (until you run apt). also excited for the ikoka v3, the v2 w/o 5V is just... not being all the lil 1W node it could be. The Donktastic is kinda Ikoka v2 except w/5V for the E22, just need to swap for 5V/1A boost before I try it in the window (current boost is maxing out 400mA and E22 can take 650mA)

[proven grove]

~~The Ikoka isn't 1W, just FYI. the Xiao can't provide 5V to the E22 consistently. ~~
Just googled it and apparently I had a very old version of it.

I'm designing a reboot of it, but the Washtastic is pretty damn spot on. I've built 2 so far, just deployed 1 and the other is right next to me right now.

I also have 3 femtofox's but they're older revisions, need the latest board from Tom.

[jaunty harness]

oh nice!! yeah I'm not expecting Ikoka v3 to actually be full 1W but I also don't realistically want 1W just nice and strong. The Donk should be able to get there. Washtastic is just a little too much/full featured for a remote node, but mostly waiting for little things like the i2c pins being grounded to be worked out before building one

or I guess wait for yours 8)

[proven grove]

re: the washtastic grounded i2c: The Grove connector works fine though, so you could just throw a mounted JST PH on it.

I don't even use the Charger on it lol. I use one of Keiths boards for 2x 20aH LTO prismatics.

[jaunty harness]

(discretely wipes drool)

[proven grove]

my ONLY gripe about it is the flipped pos/neg on the inputs.

[jaunty harness]

very clean! and yeah not so much the i2c specifically as... others wait for others to work out the kinks

oh heh, I have TONS of JSTs already from 3d printing

[proven grove]

thats fair. I think the revpol mosfet is backwards too, but same deal on the Mesh-Tab. I also triple check my connections because all it took was one magic smoke incident to be enough

[jaunty harness]

learn more from mistakes than successes

[proven grove]

only way TO learn lol

for the record, I'm NOT proud of this... but there's a scary amount of lessons in this pile haha

[jaunty harness]

if you wanna make our own JSTs it's pretty easy with a decent crimper (legit Engineer PA-09 or iCrimp), get the wiring even cleaner

[proven grove]

I only have the patience to go down to PH's, SH's and MX's GTFO. My fingers are too big to make those. And the iCrimp works nicely.

and the reason I spliced the power cables to the JST's is because they were WAY too big to fit into a PH connector.

[jaunty harness]

ahh, could have done like microfit on the batt and then microfit<->JST, but then you're getting even more things to crimp (but same tooling)

[proven grove]

those glue filled shrink tubes are amazing for this. they're basically like-new cables lol

[jaunty harness]

i have some but i usually end up needing a quick disconnect so they're just sitting in the pile of connectors

[proven grove]

forgot to mention that all those boards are hot plate/hand soldered. lol I'm too impatient to order prebuilt boards from JLC

[jaunty harness]

like 1/2 of the mess, rest are unassembled or used RA-01SH so essentially useless... funny enough I also have an eink weather display but mynes much smoler and had to hack together the code for it

I haven't used PCBA from JLCPCBA before, mostly was to save me having to source and then store a whole bunch of SMD part that go flying and end up lost for a week and then suddenly show up again

I will have some extra Femtofox 1.1 PCBs (3 since 2 PCBA) with my order if you're interested

[gaunt dirge]

ok just updated my nodes to latest firmware

I was suprised to see some activity on the mesh today

but by the time I answered no one was arround lol

also not seeing as many nodes now as before i updated

[jaunty harness]

been seeing your nodes grnch last few days, not sure if my acks got through yesterday

also looks like there's now another new router in town bdf9 - seems to be 4 hops away for me so no clue where it's actually located

[proven grove]

Someone's new node(s) have been adding some serious reach for the NYC/NJ mesh, I've been seeing nodes from my house... which is in Westchester.

[daring moth]

Maybe my node in Great Neck, NY? I can reach a few nodes in Westchester county.

[proven grove]

Maybe? I'm literally on the Hudson. So any of the Mamk nodes I can't even hear, but im seeing nodes in Elizabeth NJ lol

[tropic gulch]

Oh yeah N1UGK?

[proven grove]

A lot of the ones I'm getting are incomplete but yet I get their position packets lol so custom owner names don't mean much to me

[sonic prism]

Briefly connected to the mesh when a plane at 35k above NYC went by 🙂

[tropic gulch]

lol nice

[karmic junco]

I was doing something else and I saw on one of my lora32's.. "where are you pork"

I still haven't updated my boards. So the app can't connect.

I probably won't have time to really get around to doing anything for another 3 months.

[jaunty harness]

yeah seeing nodes on the sound side of Westchester (e.g. Mamaroneck and New Rochelle) last few days, previously I only remember seeing one in Larchmont, interesting to me at least cause means we're getting ~25 miles outside the city and I know the area so can mentally picture the nodes/terrain

and I'm here! Window node just getting router spammed into oblivion: WARN | 16:36:05 264671 [Position] Ch. util >25%. Skip send ERROR | 16:36:06 264672 [RadioIf] Ignore received packet due to error=-7 DEBUG | 16:36:06 264672 [RadioIf] Packet RX (noise?) : 1001ms DEBUG | 16:36:06 264672 [RadioIf] rx_snr found. hop_limit:0 rx_snr:-18.750000 DEBUG | 16:36:06 264672 [RadioIf] rx_snr found in packet. Setting tx delay:1309 DEBUG | 16:36:07 264673 [RadioIf] rx_snr found. hop_limit:0 rx_snr:-18.750000 DEBUG | 16:36:07 264673 [RadioIf] rx_snr found in packet. Setting tx delay:1155 DEBUG | 16:36:08 264674 [RadioIf] Started Tx (id=0x5230ac03 fr=0x1f9ffdc0 to=0x7c5b4574, WantAck=0, HopLim=0 Ch=0x8 encrypted len=103 rxtime=1737408963 rxSNR=-18.75 rxRSSI=-118 hopStart=3 prio DEBUG | 16:36:08 264674 [RadioIf] Packet TX: 1001ms DEBUG | 16:36:09 264675 [RadioIf] Completed sending (id=0x5230ac03 fr=0x1f9ffdc0 to=0x7c5b4574, WantAck=0, HopLim=0 Ch=0x8 encrypted len=103 rxtime=1737408963 rxSNR=-18.75 rxRSSI=-118 hopStart WARN | 16:36:10 264676 [Position] Ch. util >25%. Skip send WARN | 16:36:15 264681 [Position] Ch. util >25%. Skip send ERROR | 16:36:16 264682 [RadioIf] Ignore received packet due to error=-7 DEBUG | 16:36:16 264682 [RadioIf] Packet RX (noise?) : 1050ms WARN | 16:36:20 264686 [Position] Ch. util >25%. Skip send ERROR | 16:36:21 264687 [RadioIf] Ignore received packet due to error=-7 DEBUG | 16:36:21 264687 [RadioIf] Packet RX (noise?) : 1050ms WARN | 16:36:25 264691 [Position] Ch. util >25%. Skip send WARN | 16:36:30 264696 [Position] Ch. util >25%. Skip send

[edgy blaze]

9E79?

[sonic prism]

Yes

[tropic gulch]

Anyone see

I was reading someone was trying to set up a bulletin board via Meshtastic is this them?

[jaunty harness]

that's been skulking around for like a month or so, not sure who's it is

[abstract iron]

Hey guys I was out in central PA this weekend. I could get some pretty wild RX range with just my Muzi Works antenna and Rok.. node.

Like 10-20 miles away just being at elevation 1200 looking south into Lancaster PA from Shartlesville approx region

Pretty interesting to see non city prop

[misty gorge]

Buildings suck.

[jaunty harness]

haha yeah, lots of open space and a couple million less people potentially also using 900-915MHz

[misty gorge]

I just watched an Andy Kirby video about some new mesh software?

He basically said the routing in meshtastic sucks.

Which I agree with based on my own experience

[gaunt dirge]

I think I started it but didnt finish

there was also recently a new mesh I saw as well not sure if its the same on

[jaunty harness]

reticulum?

[gaunt dirge]

yeah that one!

not sure if its any good as I didnt try and not sure if there are any nodes locally

[jaunty harness]

yeah haven't looked into it much but seems like single dev who is gonna hit a lot of problems that meshtastic already solved

[gaunt dirge]

yeah wouldnt be suprised

[jaunty harness]

i don't think meshtastic's routing is bad, but i don't think it's perfect either - it's just super easy to setup a router thinking you're helping when you're hurting, and when someone else does the same thing within a day or two and their router also covers the same area on top of existing routers and hidden repeaters you only see in traceroute... you get the current shitshow in williamsburg

[jaunty harness]

sigh, another brooklyn router

[bronze wren]

Routing could def be better even with memory limitations.

Reminds me of early epidemic broadcast protocols before things got refined. It's nice because it's simple and resilient but it's not so much extra complexity to improve efficiency but LoRa also doesn't quite work like IP networks either so it's not like things can be blindly copied either.

Modern gossip can use the redundancy more intelligently. Certain telemetry could be more selectively repeated.

Hop counts could also be adjusted based on congestion which is something I want to experiment with so blocking greedy nodes can be a thing of the past.

Blocking really should only be used for real abuse that's breaking things not for "taking too much airtime"

Anyway .. rambling but I miss working on this sort of stuff so I will probably play more with the firmware and see how a more city adapted setup could work. Right now I'd say meshtastic is close to unsuable for me.

[maiden thistle]

Are you contributing to the global Meshsense map with v1.0.18?

[jaunty harness]

nah, feels a little weird to share the map since so much of it is other peoples nodes and they may/may not want that shared further than RF

[maiden thistle]

Ahh

[jaunty harness]

(probably fine, but not for me to decide)

[jaunty harness]

yeah, unfortunately can't escape the limits of RF (especially in dense urban env) and unorganized individuals tossing up routers with the best of intentions which stifle the clients. it does seem like MediumFast works out for big organized meshes since they leave the mess of LongFast behind, but also they also have well designed/placed infra to support it. def interested to see how your hop-clamping works out now that the bloom filter work ended up being a dead end.

[tropic gulch]

I'm ignorant, why is this bad?

[jaunty harness]

basically the router/repeater roles lack some delay logic in client in retranmissions, so 2 routers could easily re-send same packet at same time causing collisions, more realistically there's enough of a delay that they just stifle a client from ever repeating the message because they'll have already heard it recently from the router. so you can wind up black holes because router doesn't reach there and client(s) that would are muted because they already heard someone else relay the packet

the other diff is repeater won't send NODEINFO or TELEMETRY packets, so essentially is a hidden router which only shows up in traceroutes, and there's definitely one if not two (or more) in n brooklyn where we are also hearing multiple routers

https://meshtastic.org/blog/choosing-the-right-device-role/ explains the roles really well

[stoic kraken]

I live in DC, is there an MQTT channel? Originally from North Jersey

[karmic junco]

Oh I got some stuff!!

Who's Oakland garden

And Ireally odd now, I can see the Harlem node

But I can't trace a route back so I don't know how many hops

[karmic junco]

It's possible. But this is the NYC metro channel

[stoic kraken]

I'm aware

[karmic junco]

Sorry misunderstood the question. There are some random nodes out in bklyn that seem to be mqtt connected to the West Coast.

I haven't checked in a few months though

[stoic kraken]

Oh. Do you've details so I can join?

[abstract iron]

Unrelated but just checking, if I wanted to deploy 2 nodes in geographic spread places that can't mesh via RF, you can use MQTT to bridge them?

(Insert all disclaimers about not making a mess of the local RF etc--pretend this is for personal reasons)

[stoic kraken]

Yes

But people will tell you how unpure that is 🙄

[jaunty harness]

hehe, i don't care if people do - but its def not for everyone

I'm only aware of msh/US/NY but... we are a big state and that's not only NY (let alone the people in NJ or CT)

and yeah you can definitely connect clients via MQTT instead of RF, you'd both need to be setup to use the same MQTT broker (e.g. the default official one) and would need to have exchanged User IDs

and then have something to proxy the MQTT from the node (like official app always connected running on phone/tablet/desktop/whatever)

[abstract iron]

did something change in Williamsburg? all the sudden I can see a lot more nodes from my window.

[tropic gulch]

We should do a fox hunt for rogue nodes. I've wanted to build a ghostbusters pke detector with an air spy for a while now, just need two other people to also want to build it and we can do some triangulation lol

[proven grove]

I've been seeing nodes from BK and Jersey City on my home node, in the hills of Dobbs Ferry. Dunno what's changed recently, but the random position or telemetry packets I've been seeing have been nuts. Not full nodeinfo's but definitely more of those too.

[abstract iron]

I typically can't get anything. really weird, maybe a new node close to me? but I see more hops 1

[daring moth]

Look for nodes that don't list any hops, those are the nodes you can directly reach.

[proven grove]

4056 and bba6 are my two travel nodes (the owner names are pretty obvious but I'm assuming people won't always get a nodeinfo from me)

[abstract iron]

weird idk what happened...before I couldn't see anything from the window unless if it was my test node

traceroute still didn't work tho

[gaunt dirge]

Found tons of new nodes omw to work

[jaunty harness]

i'm not seeing it right now but last few days there's been a new node way up in north bronx LilyBX that I've been hitting directly, and at like -12/-100 which is better than I hit most

on the other hand haven't been able to run a traceroute in a while, even to something direct or 1 hop so either all the routers are ignoring me, or spamming over each over

[jaunty harness]

dangit, I have too much work for this to show up 😄

[abstract iron]

4h ago it went quiet again. I must have had a node really close to me somewhere

[jaunty harness]

check the ones that show a fair->good signal, if they show RSSI: 0db then ignore those because it's 99.9% a relayed packet, narrow it down to few with an actually good SNR

[abstract iron]

none now per usual. my typical experience with anything 100-900 mhz is it needs to be a pretty strong signal to get through these (coated?) windows. have a ADSB reader also and suspect that only really works because of aerial LOS

must have had somebody really close to me (now hard to tell in the list)

[maiden thistle]

This time last year I saw only 5-6 nodes

[proven grove]

Ha I saw GRAF from my little rak19003 w/ ZBM2 stubby, while at home. 2 hops away, but still, I'm impressed.

[abstract iron]

Yes I had GRAF this AM at 2 hops. Pretty cool

[tropic gulch]

Is it on the roof of wtc or is it just someone putting it against the window in their office?

Also what does the pulsing nodes mean in map mode on iOS?

[abstract iron]

believe window

[normal osprey]

pretty sure it means that node is “online”/seen recently

those will have green check marks in the node list while the rest will have a sleep/moon icon in the node list instead

[jaunty harness]

the pulsating "online" nodes in the map on iOS app will sometimes get wonky if you haven't quit/relaunched it in a while, the green check is more reliable

[normal osprey]

yeah, i restart my app or reconnect to the node every so often to refresh things

[jaunty harness]

do you also get the filters constantly reseting? it's so wonky it'll be fine for a while and then just randomly change back to default even though opening the filters shows my choices, still have to toggle them on/off again

[karmic junco]

Humm

[jaunty harness]

feeb - did you use the stock ikoka v3 picoblade headers or swap them for JSTs? wishing I did the later, thankful I have some pigtails from Spearmint to use

[karmic junco]

Anyone else seeing the Harlem node more consistently?

Like I'm not sure what changed... It doesn't show anhop

And I'm also seeing grnch

He's in the meshtastic server

But not in this group

[maiden thistle]

Lack of foliage? 🤷‍♂️

[abstract iron]

I don't see Harlem this morning and I'm in Manhattan with a north facing node

altho I don't see giraffe with a southern facing either

[normal osprey]

she’s a fickle beast. i’m looking right at her but my node hasn’t communicated since yesterday 2:46PM 🤷🏻‍♂️

[abstract iron]

Yeah I have ZLLS up and facing wtc nothing

[normal osprey]

i’m sure the triple pane tinted glass windows kill a lot of the signal. same problem i have with my apartment.

[abstract iron]

yeah def. my office windows are more permissive than my apartment ones

lots of window behavior

I can see into Westfield from uptown view tho

[karmic junco]

I mean if I'm looking at it correctly

[daring moth]

Giraffe - WTC Repeater, that is.

[gaunt dirge]

are these thr RPi boards?

I remember someone saying they were working on RPi Lora stuff but forgot who it was

[gaunt dirge]

dang my one node discharges so quickly

[jaunty harness]

LuckFox : #1302945239689990185 (cpu is equiv to OG raspi just slight revision bump, still single core but only 64MB vs the RPI model B's...512MB IIRC)

wow, Harlem lives! Primary 932c: Hey is my node still working? Been a while since I've tested!

[daring moth]

Somebody please ask them to join this Discord, my signal strength isn't that great.

[jaunty harness]

I replied but not sure my messages are even getting out these days 😭

[daring moth]

If this is it, I received it:

[misty gorge]

I just sent that. Hopefully he gets it.

[jaunty harness]

nice, didn't see that one but saw your message earlier to Boneyard

[misty gorge]

I just sent it again

The winds may have shifted

[jaunty harness]

well its at least good to know there is actually a person who remembers it's still up there

[misty gorge]

Haha. We will hear from him in a year when he remembers again.

[daring moth]

Or hopefully he's just creating a Discord account.

[misty gorge]

Sorry for flooding the airwaves but the node popped to the top of my list again so I sent it one more time.

[jaunty harness]

heh some mesh's have people who spam messages daily (if not more often) - your 3 trying to reach one of the best placed nodes in the city seems worth the effort

[abstract iron]

just saw someone testing from wash sq park

traceroute seems to rarely if ever work?

[misty gorge]

Meshtastic routing and traceroute is like playing pachinko

[jaunty harness]

HAHA that is actually a really good analogy, it is very chaotic

[misty gorge]

I'm guessing he didn't get my message or thinks it's some sort of phishing scam. Haha

[gaunt dirge]

"Send Mesh Monies"

Damn my node is deaf here in flushing

[high bear]

thanks for sending that msg, I didn't think to check for a meshtastic discord when i got my first node

[gaunt dirge]

Are you Mr Harlem relay node?

[high bear]

no I am just "mav"

I'm one hop from Harlem Relay though

[gaunt dirge]

for some reason I thought it was a hat for a rpi

[jaunty harness]

OH, it's totally designed to be same size as rpi hat, the 40pin header is broken out to the Luckfox, but connect to one of it's UARTs and I think i2c from the rpi pins. there's another hat by same person the MeshMess which is very similar that also has UART/i2c from the 40pin to the ProMicro intended for the PCB.

actually lemme multimeter and check the rpi SPI pins to be 100%

not all the default SPI pins but def enough of that header has pins to the radio footprints so yeah, should actually work with the right config

i've only been thinking in terms of using with Luckfox but does mean the extra 3 PCBs have a possible future

[tropic gulch]

I have like three spare rpi4s, what hats are out there? Or do I need to shop spring all these custom boards? It's not clear to me what the options are

[brazen spear]

Hi I found the discord with Ray's message! I'm the one putting up new nodes.

Here are the three so far.

Will put up another two or three before the winter is done. Pretty amazing range the LilyBX reaches Vernon at over 10 miles.

[daring moth]

https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/tips/#avoid-routerand-repeater

[brazen spear]

Yes I left the one in Borough Park as client since it didn't have the LOS I was hoping for. The Vernon and LilyBX have amazing LOS and connect direct to most of the other very good nodes.

[daring moth]

BTW, from my understanding, nodes with the ROUTER role will inhibit all CLIENT nodes in range from rebroadcasting any messages on their own, thus limiting the overall reach of the network. ROUTER_LATE doesn't have this issue (but it does have a bug on firmware 2.5.18, so use the alpha until a newer beta is released). Just please don't overuse any of the ROUTER-related roles, as it'll add unnecessary traffic to the network.

[brazen spear]

Yes. If I understand correctly, router or repeater should only be used when they can connect to pretty much everyone in their area as well as important hop locations. I added routermode only to those two locations. If folks think it's incorrect I can change their settings ota or through a pi. Very glad to have found the discord! Bc a convo like this is impossible on LongFast 😅

FYI these are powered through POE but also have a solar/battery backup so they should continue to work next time there's a grid down sitch in the city.

I'd love to ask folks what neighborhood / area in the city they think needs a good repeater type node like these. We're installing them together with NYC Mesh so most rooftops on their map are fair game.

map.nycmesh.net

[daring moth]

Given that there's potential for a high density of Meshtastic nodes, with all the nodes on that map, I'm curious if it could be justified to switch to a faster but shorter range radio preset (and a non-default frequency slot) to have more available data throughput, and thus reduce the chances of packet collisions.

[pale pilot]

Queens needs more love. Something near Ridgewood or Maspeth might really help bridge BK and Queens

and that goes for both meshtastic and nycmesh 😄

[brazen spear]

Does anyone know where the Astoria nodes are? Vernon sees them well. I'll trial the next one temporarily at the top of the hill in Ridgewood next week. Might get access to a tower at Electchester which would do a lot in that regard.

[pale pilot]

I think Queens College is also one of the highest points in Queens so that might be a good spot as well. Has clear views to Manhattan

[jaunty harness]

basically don't bother with anything but https://github.com/chrismyers2000/MeshAdv-Pi-Hat for a pi, waveshare has issues > ~60chars and none of the UART ones will work

and welcome gardener!! awesome to have you here and even more awesome you're in touch with nycmesh people (I've been wondering when there'd be overlap). but pleasepleaseplease use CLIENT, even if only for a while if you can easily swap back/forth. there's quite a few existing ROUTER (and ROUTER_CLIENT on older firmware) saturating N Brooklyn along with at least one hidden REPEATER. your intentions are of course in the best of places but we have too many well intentioned people causing our poor CLIENTs to be muted / black holed

there's really good blog entry explaining the current roles - https://meshtastic.org/blog/choosing-the-right-device-role/ and there's an alllmost ready for primetime ROUTER_LATE role coming which might be more appropriate for a well placed node thats close to another ROUTER (basically has more delay logic than just auto-retransmitting)

[jaunty harness]

when it gets a little less freezing out we should def try and coordinate a MediumFast test

[tropic gulch]

HELLLLLL YEEAHHH

[jaunty harness]

welcome as well! there was a node in maspeth that popped up about 6 weeks ago, and disappeared a few days later. there's also gobo/woodbine which are sorta out towards ridgewood, and FU-R-2 a little further east but that's about as far east as i've yet to see

[pale pilot]

woodbine and fu-r-2 are constantly flashing as new devices on my app. Is it because they are on old fw?

[jaunty harness]

hrm, do you mean on the iOS/mac Node Map?

or do they constantly show up with a NEW NODE notification?

[pale pilot]

New Node notifications on android.

0xdeadbeef as well. there are like 8 nodes that just show up with new node notifications constantly, and none of them have the newer PKI firmware

[jaunty harness]

interesting... there's some code in firmware to limit the # of entries in the nodedb, 80 on nRF5280/100 on ESP32 so my window node can get into a streak of constantly pruning the oldest entry to make room for a new one

yeah, the best indication of older firmware is the green lock indicating PKI/firmware 2.5.x

[pale pilot]

gobo as well. just popped up again and it has the yellow unlock icon

it seems like the firmware is prioritizing purging the old firmware entries instead of the oldest connected (as there are a few that are 80+ days old on my list)

[jaunty harness]

huh yeah that's super weird and I haven't seen that - those were some of the most consistant for me until we got 3 new ROUTERs at start of 2025

hmmm, in the node list do they show "reasonable" values for like last seen/uptime?

if you didn't get a complete nodeinfo packet from them it might be missing and maybe that's why it considers them so old? reaaaally a stretch, just not seen that before

[pale pilot]

yeah. gobo for example shows 4 minutes as last heard.

[jaunty harness]

k, yeah sometimes you'll see like last heard as like 6months ago or an hour in the future when the NODEINFO was incomplete

[pale pilot]

fu-r-2 says 1 minute. but i get an alert for both of those nodes being added as new nodes multiple times a day.

[jaunty harness]

if you don't care about losing the nodedb you could try reseting it, i'd def say take a backup of your node's config, or at least the public/private keypair - so no matter what you can just totally nuke it, reflash firmware and reconfigure with the keys and not have issues

i did a nodedb reset recently that ended up triggering a bug w/LFS and hosed it. whole node needed to be fully erased to come back, thankfully I have config backups

kinda halfassedly thinking you may also have latent nodedb corruption or something funky with the node's fs so like that 4k of where it's stored those particular nodes is being funky, and those nodes are close proximity so makes sense they pop up around the same time (well, and they're also on older firmware which is more spammy in sending telemetry/metrics than 2.5.x)

could also ask in #android and if it's not some weird specific android thing they'll likely send you to a more appropriate channel

[pale pilot]

cheers i appreciate the insight!

[jaunty harness]

no prob! and again welcome!!

[pale pilot]

Eh... resetting the nodedb didn't help. 2 notifs for Gobo and woodbine already. Well it was worth a shot

only 24 total nodes after resetting it so far, but still its popping those multiple times

[jaunty harness]

veeeery odd indeed. you could ignore them, but then *you would also ignore any packets they would (re)broadcast

also I misremembered the 6month old date thing, that's when they lose timesync (usually rebooted) and haven't gotten a good time from (the mesh, client, gps, rtc, etc...)

[maiden thistle]

Supernode 3 in Sunset Park facing south would help the Bay Ridge and SI nodes

[gaunt dirge]

Mr Harlem Node?

[misty gorge]

Those are mine

Do you run the Harlem Relay @brazen spear ?

[misty gorge]

If you can get access to those towers we may know people in common.

[ancient peak]

Hey all - I’m new here so apologies for the noob questions that follow - I live near Lincoln Center up fairly high with 180 degree view east toward NJ, and 90 degree view toward south Manhattan. What is the best device for me to buy to contribute to the NYC mesh that would be able to take advantage of my location? Is it any device, or should I select a certain one?

[daring moth]

As long as you use a good quality antenna, and avoid nodes that use the SX127X series of chips, I think any node will do.

[tropic gulch]

Oh nice the Reddit comments work lol

[ancient peak]

Thanks for letting me know!

[jaunty harness]

The Heltec T114 v2 seems to be pretty popular, and pretty cheap for a starter device, and with a good antenna like Supermath mentioned should work very well (height helps sooo much). No need to go too crazy as you start playing with Meshtastic - just run it in CLIENT mode and see how it goes

[ancient peak]

I ordered this Muzi Works node which uses Rak and has a whip antenna https://muzi.works/products/r1-with-external-antenna?srsltid=AfmBOooQkccJdhwAjYT4ys8gCI5DSOEexfuvqmAzECBYae88QQIj3By5

[jaunty harness]

oh nice! should be good for a stationary node, Zumble's mentioned having some issues with the button on the bottom being easy to nudge when used as a portable but if it'll be stationary in your apt shouldn't have that prob

[misty gorge]

The one my GF carries turns itself on by itself or the button gets pushed even with tape on top of it.

I also ordered a R1 with antenna for myself. Should be coming soon. G2 was acting up but may have fixed it with a factory reset flash then meshtastic flash on top of that.

[jaunty harness]

oh huh, running recent firmware? the lfs bugs are hopefully squashed with latest few commits, most of the time things are fine but then blammo node is just hosed and there's LFS error in the logs, but sometimes it's a subtle blammo and seems to mostly work but also kinda not and gets frustrating

[ancient peak]

How much coverage do you typically see in Manhattan on the network?

[daring moth]

Surprisingly, I see pretty good coverage of NYC nodes from Great Neck, NY

[brazen spear]

I'll get Woodbine and Gobo updated and reconfigured I know who they're owned by. Will reconfigure BXLily to client. Still think vernon should be set to router. It really does see pretty much everything and as router it should* keep the dense North Brooklyn zone from "hop stealing".

No I'd love to know where the Harlem node is. Olmstead was suggested for Manhattan but there's so much current support in Manhattan already I feel these would be better deployed in the outer boroughs.

[jaunty harness]

OH didn't know BX Lily was also yours, it was showing up direct in N Brooklyn for a few days but has since disappeared. For updates... Woodbine is already CLIENT so only needs update for less telemetry spamming but mostly seems fine on older fw, GOBO is ROUTER_CLIENT so updating will likely change them to CLIENT and they should watch for that but it has been a fairly decent ROUTER. There's also a hidden REPEATER which I'm not sure they're also running and no idea what fw is on it but is also part of the problem. I would maybe hold off for 2.5.20 to be promoted to beta as that has LFS fixes as well as ROUTER_LATE and if they're hard to reach nodes way better to give them a solid fw vs one that could be problematic.

i'm also not saying Vernon is 100% the problem, as that went up within a day or two of oopoo30 (ROUTER_CLIENT) and then few days later Brooklyn Solar Node also showed up set to ROUTER_CLIENT and chan % has been way up and reliability way down - so having Vernon be a CLIENT, even if temp, can def help nail down which of those other two are compounding things

[gritty knot]

Hosed on 2.5.20? Or was this referring to an earlier version?

[jaunty harness]

hosed on earlier than 2.5.20

[brazen spear]

The hidden repeater was most likely vernon. LilyBX was in Brooklyn while I was stress testing the box before deploying. It's up here's it's node list

[jaunty harness]

Ahh if Lily was in BK makes sense it was good signal (vs the position putting it way up in BX)

do you know about cmd+shift+[3|4] ? way easy to do screenshots on mac (3 = whole screen, 4 = lets you choose window or click + drag selection)

[brazen spear]

Lol yeah but I have discord on my phone 😅

[jaunty harness]

HAHA fair

the hidden repeater out here I've seen for like 4-5months, I think Vernon might have been the second one I suspected was out there in last like 2 months

[brazen spear]

Yeah vernon has only been up less than a month.

So I'll change the Lilybx and vernon to client for a few days. Let you see if it resolves the issues or they get worse.

[jaunty harness]

thank you!! and like, thanks for joining discord and getting out there putting up nodes 8)

[brazen spear]

I'd feel more nervous about changing them so much remotely but I set them to be able to remotely tap the reset button with a pi script and it has serial connection so it's all good.

[jaunty harness]

nice! with serial you can do config changes and fw updates easy, and even can nuke+erase nRF58420 devices then fw and have nice/clean fresh node from your couch (just don't lose those PKI keys)

i don't think it even requires a reboot to change roles, at least it doesn't for client<->client_mute

yeah, just tested going CLIENT_MUTE<=>ROUTER no reboot

interesting.. added device.rebroadcastMode: CORE_PORTNUMS_ONLY to device's config

[brazen spear]

For firmware the web flasher doesn't actually work putting the nrf52 into dfu so I had to wire up the reset button to a gpio on the pi

OK they're set to client

[jaunty harness]

if they're connected over USB for serial you can use do meshtastic --enter-dfu then can mount blockdevice

[brazen spear]

When I was using the cli last winter it was super buggy. Has it improved?

That would be a lot easier than a jumper cable

[jaunty harness]

Ooooh yeah, been super stable for me outside of some wonkiness with —config not always applying a full config file when the node isn’t freshly wiped

It can also set precise location which iOS won’t (but android will, basically App Store thing / users unknowningly sending out their exact location)

The reset is definitely useful still in case of total lockup but yeah the python cli is good and easier to use in automation

you may also find this info from the Austin Mesh useful, basically their lessons learned from running solar nodes with an organized group https://www.austinmesh.org/devices/#solar (tl:dr; power your RAKs via USB)

[jaunty harness]

I just ran first successful TraceRoute in... week? 2 weeks?? Vernon as CLIENT either working as hoped or got lucky - will keep casually prodding at it but thanks again for being willing to try gardener

[brazen spear]

Thanks! Yeah before I built these I looked at their discord and websites as well as socal mesh which also have very developed system. Then built small solar nodes. Then these. I did it a cheaper different way than theirs with a $1 bms between the batteries and rak and $1 voltage regulator between the solar panel and the rak board. Solar nodes were like $50-60 per unit everything included. Their way is easier tho. Also I really don't know about their giant solar panels. It really doesn't seem necessary as far as I can tell. But our early mesh network doesn't put constant traffic through so I can't really call it.

[jaunty harness]

Awesome!! Sounds like you got good setup. I’ve def fried solar input on a 19007 baseboard from only ~6V and double digit mA. Panel size is usually people overkill to compensate for cloudy days but the lack of rain here past year would make them wasted money

[brazen spear]

Yeah they said the rak boards don't even like 5.5v if it's an extended period of time.

Here's links to the chips.
https://a.co/d/c7DSVcd
https://a.co/d/aed0PaI

[jaunty harness]

ahh TP4056 alreadh have a bunch, and some random buck/boosts. playing with the Adafruit 5V boost board now to get steady 5V upto 650mA off the battery for E22-900M30S radios which has been working pretty good

[brazen spear]

Can you send a photo of the LOS of the Astoria nodes? Vernon and BX and my home node all see it direct. Must be a good roof. How's the coverage across Astoria?

[misty gorge]

You're likely really seeing AMR2. AMR1 is really just my way to hit 2 and get out.

[daring moth]

Does anyone agree with that theory?

[tropic gulch]

Seems like it would be neighborhood dependent

[jaunty harness]

HAHA like 2.4GHz isn't 90%+ usage between wifi and bt

[tropic gulch]

I'm in Windsor terrace which is like the suburbs of Brooklyn, high elevation and two story single family homes I'd say 5ghz is better for me

[jaunty harness]

that's actually super low, I have soooo many 2.4GHz issues

[tropic gulch]

Ooo what utility is that?

[jaunty harness]

that's from Unifi Network Console (big fan of Unifi gear)

[tropic gulch]

Ah damn

[tropic gulch]

I stubbornly am just duct taping everything together

[jaunty harness]

haha everyone has their own style 8)

[misty gorge]

So we still don't know who harlem relay is.

At least we found @brazen spear .

[edgy blaze]

I’ve caught Harlem Relay down here in Jersey.

[misty gorge]

We saw him pop up in the mesh and tried to get him on discord but it didn't work.

Would love to see what happens if he flips his node to CLIENT

[edgy blaze]

Dang. I apparently have 20 nodes in range. Have had a bunch pop up today.

[misty gorge]

NY NJ is popping a bit. .but reliability is still shit in my opinion.

[edgy blaze]

Agreed shit. Rarely get messages. Trace routes fail.

Thoughts on that? Disparate versions? A bunch of nodes in shit locations?

[misty gorge]

NYC is probably buildings with creates poor line of sight. nodes set to router modes probably doesn't help.

But would not be surprised if the actual protocol has problems

[brazen spear]

Just added static coords with the cli for vernon but I'm out of town and can't tell if it's sharing now. Can someone verify?

[edgy blaze]

I’ve seen Vernon, but not connected now*.

[misty gorge]

i see it

it's showing coordinates now

[brazen spear]

Nice

[misty gorge]

Vernon 7ae3?

[brazen spear]

OK I trust the cli again 😅

[daring moth]

Anyone want to try an experiment? At some point in the future, all of us in this Discord channel could, all starting around the same time and for a short timeframe, switch the frequency slot of all our nodes to a random one, and set all nodes to either CLIENT for stationary nodes or CLIENT_MUTE for everyday carry nodes. No ROUTERs, at least for one part of the test.

[misty gorge]

I'm out for that.. I can't risk losing contact with my higher node.. haha

It would force me to go up to do a firmware update though.

But I'd much rather do it on my terms.. haha

[daring moth]

Can you setup remote admin? As long as you go to a spot where you're able to reach the node without any hops, and the network isn't 100% saturated, you should be able to revert any frequency slot changes, and most role changes, by using remote admin.

[misty gorge]

I can remote admin.. I guess I switch my personal node to the same frequency etc. but my higher node is older firmware.

if I crash it.. I'd need to get permission to get on the roof then climb up to it.. its too cold for that right now.

Not looking to fuck around and find out unless it's really worth it.

[daring moth]

Okay, maybe it'd be a better idea to do this when the weather is better for accessing hard-to-reach nodes.

[misty gorge]

Yeah, I think you're gonna get similar reactions from people with harder to reach nodes.

I think step one is to get all nodes in NYC to client mode.

client and client_mute

[daring moth]

Okay, fair enough.

[misty gorge]

yeah, I'm pretty confident changing some things with remote admin.. but channel is not one of them. hehe.

[daring moth]

Hopefully there's enough easily accessible nodes to do a reasonable experiment.

[tropic gulch]

I'm showing a bunch of OEM volunteers Meshtastic tomorrow if you guys could just start rag chewing in longfast around 9am that would be great lol

[abstract iron]

I'm down in South Slope tonight. Not seeing a lot of nodes down here, but I can see west into NJ

Oh and the isle of staten

[edgy blaze]

What’s your node’s name?

I can see D446 that I think is in the area.

[abstract iron]

ZLLA, ZLLS, ZLL1

D964?

pork d446?

[edgy blaze]

Haven’t seen the ZLL’s or D964

I’ve seen d446 in the last ten minutes. 3 hops away. Trace route failed.

But I’m pretty sure one of those hope is my “upstairs” node.

[jaunty harness]

heh yeah pork d446 is my current window node in Williamsburg

I also have 🫏 pork donktastic on my desk but client_mute and 4 hops so probably not seeing that one

[edgy blaze]

Haven’t seen Donktastic 😂

[tropic gulch]

I'm dongers and pizza

[abstract iron]

I can see pork d446 - says 1 hop? weird

[tropic gulch]

Can you see either of them? I'm in WT

[jaunty harness]

bbop / marl/ robo / PDB1 are all in williamsburgish, loose location has everyone stacked ontop of each other so I had to offset myself slightly

[edgy blaze]

No dongs, no pizzas for me. 😔

[jaunty harness]

ahh 🍕 I've seen! great name 8)

[abstract iron]

unfortunately not with a window one and bigger antenna, or when I was just out walking with one of those card-sized nodes

[jaunty harness]

hrmmm, yeah no ZLLA in my node DBs currently - so you're hearing me but i'm not hearing you.. or only partially hearing you and only have the !userid

[edgy blaze]

…and I should just block Harlem Relay, yeah?

[abstract iron]

weird. I'm so far from you now.. over 4 mi

[misty gorge]

The default 3 hops just isn't the best in NYC

really.. 4 or 5 is probably the right number in NYC

but then you end up with more channel utilization

[abstract iron]

why block Harlem relay?

[edgy blaze]

I thought routers that aren’t absurdly elevated do more harm than good.

[jaunty harness]

could be you were right spot to hear a telemetry/nodeinfo packet from me that got relayed that way 🤷

[jaunty harness]

yeah, i think kinda also depends if you're trying to talk across entire city or just within a certain neighborhood

[misty gorge]

True true.. May want to keep it local.

[jaunty harness]

harlem relay is consistent and has pretty wide coverage to n brooklyn at least, but running older firmware and not being able to contact the owner is kinda not great

[misty gorge]

yeah, not being able to coordinate with the owner is the most annoying.

[edgy blaze]

Cool cool cool. Theres a nuisance one on SI, DA64. Since I have blocked that one I have had a a pretty good uptick in discovered nodes. But that could also just be organic, there are more.

[jaunty harness]

You think it’s worth trying a diff slot on LongFast vs MediumFast which on paper should be equiv but cuts our airtime in half?

OH MAN, welcome to the DA64 Ignore club

7 hops and spamming telemetry every 5 secs when feeb investigated it, alot of SI seem to running 7 hops too

[edgy blaze]

Right. That whole can of ass.

[jaunty harness]

DA64 is located (at least says it is) at College of SI so probably someone’s modified firmware experiment and don’t realize the repercussions to local airtime AND everyone within 7 hops

The mesh has also been growing lately, lotsa new nodes popping up but unfortunately lots of nodedb cycling

[tropic gulch]

Oh yeah always surprised to see how I can hit that everywhere

[edgy blaze]

Sure. I had my upstairs node set as a router, because it’s “up high” until I knew any better.

[jaunty harness]

you had the best of intentions though! i at least try and always keep that in mind 8)

Meshtastic just isn't a traditional network, and it literally changes by the minute

[edgy blaze]

On that vein, what would you say best practice is for staying current with updates?

[jaunty harness]

personally, whatevers convenient (def not asking anyone to climb up a ladder on a roof in this weather, especially having done such things myself) - ideally everyone gets onto at least 2.5.x which has a bunch of airtime improvements (lowers frequency of telemetry and also caps their retries so if mesh is busy when it wents to send client yields xmit) and reaaaally looking forward to 2.5.20 to leave alpha for beta, there's LFS bugs that can hose up your node needing to be fully wiped and new ROUTER - LATE (sorry don't wanna bother erayd who) role which is basically a better ROUTER (smarter about not retransmitting until it detects free airtime, but quicker than usual client)

we don't seem to have toooo many pre 2.5.x clients, at least not enough to be eating up all the airtime - basically they'll send a couple extra telemetry/position packets every hour, which is like .5-1s + retransmissions so not heavy burden

[edgy blaze]

Gotcha. Shoot. I’m still on 2.4.3… I’ll need to update them.

[jaunty harness]

ooo yeah, 2.5.15-18 are pretty ok but the LFS bug has been worked on heavily in what's currently 2.5.20

when you updated you'll be on the new PKI encryption so be sure and backup your node config to keep them safe (either through cli/android can full backup, or iOS just copy the private/public key pair to somewhere safe)

so kinda, update then update again, or go straight to 2.5.20 - whatevers good for you

[edgy blaze]

Straight to 2.5.20 sounds a bit more my speed.

[jaunty harness]

hopefully leaves alpha this week 🤞 though has been good for me so far

[edgy blaze]

Right. I don’t necessarily have any problems. We’ll see what’s up tomorrow though.

[gritty knot]

ROUTER_LATE isn't quicker than usual client. It's the same as them, unless it detects another node rebroadcasting. If it does, then it moves its own rebroadcast to after the regular CLIENT window.

[jaunty harness]

OH ahhh ok I misunderstood, so that would actually seem great to test for the Vernon node to get the most out of it

gardener ~ btw: literally past few weeks for me

did't have client connected until earlier this evening and it's looking 🤌

and i'm seeing less noise in the window nodes, so still seems like it's helping (anyone else in n brooklyn got some metrics?)

~8days rxGood=50260,rxBad=28738 😬 - fresh reboot and lets see what happens

[tropic gulch]

Damn I'm at NYCEM right now and not able to hit anyone

We need to get a node in one of those tall apartment buildings near cadman plaza

😿

[karmic junco]

are you sure?

[karmic junco]

its crazy I think you see more places because your in that outstrech part of greatneck that sees through the sound... Im on the inside of the bay and I can't even see you.

[karmic junco]

I thought the OEM volunteers only trained on weeknghts

[daring moth]

Yeah. Looking at a topographic map of the area I'm at, it looks like there's a 90-ish degree-wide area facing north, in which the elevation only decreases as you approach the Long Island Sound.

[edgy blaze]

I haven’t picked up anyone new this morning.

[tropic gulch]

Nope, CERT can do training on weekends etc

[daring moth]

Does this mean I'm reaching both of your nodes from my node in Great Neck, NY, without any hops?

[misty gorge]

@brazen spear Do you run the Electasic 351e node also?

[jaunty harness]

tried a traceroute? both having exact same RSSI is a little sus but they are up pretty high from those alt readings

overnight... still bursting over 25% but def less than before (where it was more consistantly 25-50% utilization)

[daring moth]

Just now, yes. Both nodes have no response.

[misty gorge]

wow..pretty sure I crashed one of my nodes just now with a bit of harmeless remote admin.

lucky is the node on the top of my own roof.

[jaunty harness]

maybe got relayed through 1c0c, or maybe lily/vernon don't hear you on their side

[misty gorge]

but still annoying.. just don't randomly fuck with your shit guys. haha.

[jaunty harness]

😬

[misty gorge]

Maybe I'll fix it tomorrow and do a firmware update on it again.

[jaunty harness]

is that with older "legacy" admin channel ?

[misty gorge]

AMR1 is probably gone right now.

haha

nah. that one is using public key

flipped the GPS setting to not present and it died.

[jaunty harness]

oh huh, interesting. does it have a transistor/mosfet to switch power?

AMR1 last seen 18mins, AMR2 10mins

[misty gorge]

oh wait.. it looks like it wiped itself and reset.

It just lost its name.

weird.

[jaunty harness]

AHHHH, so more likely LFS bug and you'll wanna do a full nuke-erase then refirmware + recfg

[misty gorge]

damn it.

[jaunty harness]

save the keys!!

[misty gorge]

I have the keys saved.

tell me more about this LFS bug.

[jaunty harness]

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/issues/5839

[misty gorge]

I've seen you mention it.

[jaunty harness]

basically some deep lowlevel funkiness in upstream library, used to seem to be BT related but since discovered BT isn't the only trigger (I've def triggered it just doing repeated --reset-nodedb)

[misty gorge]

its fixed in 5.20?

[jaunty harness]

that's the hope, they're still testing to see if all the current known triggers are no longer triggering it

[misty gorge]

soooo its fucked now?

or it was always fucked and I tripped something just now?

I just sent a rename with remote admin and it took it.

[jaunty harness]

i think it's more like its current got a bad littleFS which nuking + refirmware will fix, until it happens again

if it took the rename that's good, if it sticks across reboot then likely not having lfs corruption and just some general meshtastic/beta funkiness

some settings seem to always trigger a reboot, some settings don't, and some settings that don't in combo with others that don't will

[misty gorge]

So if I send a reboot to it right now and it stays.. I can probably leave it alone for a bit?

[jaunty harness]

yeah, that's what I'd do - without looking at the logs during shutdown/reboot to look for the LFS error message

[misty gorge]

looks to have stayed.

[jaunty harness]

nice!

[misty gorge]

Thanks for the help!

[jaunty harness]

no prob! and maybe someday soon my pong replies with reach you over the mesh 8)

[misty gorge]

that would be great!

[brazen spear]

Yes that's just at my house. Getting it ready for deployment.

[misty gorge]

Is that the node that's going to be in elechester?

[brazen spear]

Hopefully

If not, there's plenty of other good roofs to put it on. But that would be sweet. Would connect direct to vernon and LilyBX and get an amazing LOS across queens into Long Island

I also wonder about putting up a node or two in Manhattan and another in BK There are some good candidates:

https://map.nycmesh.net/nodes/162/panoramas/2

https://map.nycmesh.net/nodes/584/panoramas/1

https://map.nycmesh.net/nodes/3461/panoramas/3

https://map.nycmesh.net/nodes/1932/panoramas/1

[daring moth]

By any chance, can you install two nodes simultaneously on each future roof, so we can have some ability to experiment with presets and roles (on a separate frequency slot), without creating downtime on the default Meshtastic network?

[brazen spear]

I don't think it would work as nicely as you imagine. They would almost certainly cause interference with eachother since the filtering on the rak boards are not the best.

[daring moth]

I guess it could also enable remotely doing manual failover, in-case one node breaks or gets shutdown accidentally.

[brazen spear]

They also are not cheap and I don't have an unlimited budget 😅

[daring moth]

That's definitely understandable. Nevermind.

[brazen spear]

I mean they're inexpensive for their capability, don't get me wrong. Now if yall want to throw some $ down I'm happy to put more up. We "got" a small $500 grant to do this... although they never paid 🧐

[jaunty harness]

there's definitely cheaper options than Rak, especially if you go down the DIY rabbithole ($5 ProMicro nRF52840 + $5 HT-RA62 radio)

#1194757507013427250 in particular will give you all sorts of ideas and links to github repos w/gerbers and BOMs

[daring moth]

Or if you'd rather not go through a PCB fabrication service, and for situations where power consumption isn't as much of a concern: https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/devices/seeed-studio/esp32-sx1262-kit/ for $10

[jaunty harness]

the seeed is... just soooo battery hungry, I looooove how wee it is and the price is great for TCXO that just snaps onto the esp32

other downside is the lack of battery reading since all the pins are occupied (it still charges, just not ADC readings in meshtastic)

[daring moth]

Obviously, both options don't include a(n) (decent) antenna, enclosure, nor power setup.

[jaunty harness]

middle is xiao nRF58240 w/Wio SX-1262 so benefits of nRF over ESP32 and ADC battery works on that one

[brazen spear]

Seems like a lot of work to save $20, especially if it can't really be run on batteries. FYI I recovered an abandoned ebike battery so have like 50 spare 18650s

[jaunty harness]

oh you can run on battery, has onboard charger - just not readings in meshtastic unless you also add INA219/3221 over i2c (which... you can't because that's 2 pins you don't have, vs 1 for ADC)

[brazen spear]

Now if these were using just the small whip antenna and we could make the device for like $25 then that would be pretty cool.

[jaunty harness]

you for sure can, they should be shipping from seeed's US warehouse so can avoid CNY delays and have it quick, otherwise I think I still have one unopened in the parts pile

[daring moth]

DigiKey also sells the aforementioned Seeed Studio node.

[brazen spear]

Would love to try it out. I've got a spare enclosure I could build it in for basically no cost

[jaunty harness]

k, gotta run quick errand but will check when back in a few

[jaunty harness]

found it, one new in bag seeed esp32s3 + wio sx1262 kit

also I have spare parts if you wanna try and build a faketec (opensource version a heltec lora32 v3) or some others (faketec v2/v3, donktastic, spearmint, ikoka nano v2/v3, promeshro and uhh i'd need to look at the PCB stash but think that's it)

[tropic gulch]

I'm in front of the Brooklyn museum and it's crazy that I'm seeing the Harlem relay

Amazing coverage

[jaunty harness]

direct or hopped?

[tropic gulch]

Direct

[tropic gulch]

Unless I'm misunderstanding the UI lol

[jaunty harness]

oh huh, yaeh could be legit or could be incompelete info and iOS will sometimes show a signal even when hopped (usually RSSI: 0 is a sign it's actually hopped)

[daring moth]

Unless there's a REPEATER set to ALL_SKIP_DECODING (https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/radio/device/#rebroadcast-mode) in the mix, I believe that would be the case.

[jaunty harness]

good point! i wish repeaters weren't hidden unless you have remote admin to them, so we could better determine wtf is actually there since traceroutes are crapshots

[daring moth]

Although the power consumption is many times higher than a nRF52-based node, I'd imagine an extra half watt per node (in the worst case scenario) shouldn't be too much of a burden on an existing NYC Mesh power setup. I might be overestimating the power requirements of equipment used for NYC Mesh, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Source for ESP32-S3 node power consumption: https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1auk2ac/heltec_tracker_power_consumption/ (take some off for because we're likely not including a GPS)

[jaunty harness]

HarukiToreda's power consumption docs is also great https://github.com/HarukiToreda/Meshtastic-Experiments/blob/main/LoRa-Boards-Power-Measurements.md

there's also hopefully some esp32 power consumption improvements coming but idk if it'll ever be as low as nRF52

[karmic junco]

Tell them you want a node on their roof. Lol

[abstract iron]

I'll try to hit your Pizza nodes on my way out of the slope today.

[misty gorge]

Which building?

[abstract iron]

no luck from top ish of greenwood cemetery or the expressway overpass

[jaunty harness]

someone's traceroute to me... through AMR2 then 7ae3 / Vernon.. even though both in Williamsburg 😆

[abstract iron]

How can you tell?

Can you see ZLLA? I'm back in wb

[jaunty harness]

i see my reply in meshsense which is where the map is from, marl -> 7ae3 -> PRK1 was their traceroute to me, my reply went back AMR2 -> 7ae3-> marl

mmmm no ZLLA at the moment, but your node might not have sent out NODEINFO recently, or it did and I didn't hear it 8/

[abstract iron]

oh I see the default is 10800 seconds

[jaunty harness]

yeah for node to broadcast on it's own, sometimes it'll send out like a telemetry/position packet and another node will see it and be like "oh hi, nodeinfo please?" and request it direct

what that kind of exchange looks like in meshsense

just didn't hear PBD1 request it

[jaunty harness]

there's zilla, and direct!

[brazen spear]

Electchester would connect direct vernon and LilyBX.

So from Long Island to Jersey would be only two hops 😎

[misty gorge]

That would be cool if you could get a node up thet

[misty gorge]

When are you planning on putting that node up?

[brazen spear]

Any thoughts on these locations?

[brazen spear]

Need access first. I'm trying to get these all installed before March when my work season starts (I'm a gardener professionally).

[misty gorge]

Manhattan nodes are interesting but it's such a hostile place for these low power LOS devices

[brazen spear]

If we can't get access then I'd probably vote for the south slope location and the lower Manhattan Grand St location. Also would like the Prospect Heights location but access is not super easy there.

[abstract iron]

yah!!! im nearby

[jaunty harness]

Grand St seems really good to me, help cover LES and the small group by Brooklyn bridge that occasionally popup/disappear, and also covers huge part of Eastern Manhattan and also Brooklyn shore

[brazen spear]

Grand St could go up within a week. Access there is easy. Just need to finish stress testing the next series of devices.

[misty gorge]

Besides Elechester, where is the next highest spot in queens?

[abstract iron]

the line between me and pork seems to be roughly about where Sunac is... with one of those flat card nodes

so yeah new to this but something up higher on grand that can get past that hotel above/near Kellogg's?

[jaunty harness]

there was one for a few days earlier this month on west side of BQE/Macri Triangle DPRK but since disappeared 😢

[abstract iron]

ya..there's so much construction and infrastructure I wonder if it would ever make sense to conceal solar nodes(??)

[jaunty harness]

ninja nodes would probably need internal antenna and small solar panel to remain ninja, the exterior antenna probably attract scrutiny

i have one these built, very small and all in one but haven't really gotten around to having it in the window a for while to see how battery does / the cute tiny antenna ~ https://github.com/fire219/spearmintastic

[daring moth]

Or just surround the antenna with a plastic enclosure.

[jaunty harness]

mmm yeah, like node inside plastic electrical box with pvc pipe off the top hiding the antenna

[brazen spear]

Google says North Shore Towers is the highest point in Queens

[misty gorge]

Thats pretty far east. But we need something there also. Haha

[brazen spear]

So apparently there's work being done on the roof at Electchester so we can't put anything up right now.

[pale pilot]

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Federal+Bureau+of+Investigation/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x528b74505fdfc722?sa=X&ved=1t:2428&ictx=111
This building would be great as well.

It also already has a bunch of RF equipment up there

[brazen spear]

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3vgxiaRLHVPRT4rHA

5940 queens boulevard would be a great one

[misty gorge]

Neither one of these match Elechester or North Shore Towers

[twin root]

pitched this a few years ago on the nycmesh slack but didnt get a material response. Glad there is some convo going on now.

[abstract iron]

pretty interesting

that could work indoors too

[brazen spear]

This would give much more central coverage of where most ppl live in queens

Might swing by there next time I'm going to the dewalt repair shop and just ring the buzzer for the management office and ask

[proven grove]

I'm still a strong supporter of any effort to try to get a node on top of Armstrong Tower. I think the holidays and work/his own business might have derailed @knotty jacinth's efforts, but I think this would be one of the more beneficial locations in the tristate area. I'd happily donate a complete node for this spot.

[brazen spear]

Wow 1000ft above sea level.

Would want to put some serious cavity filters on that thing 😅

[jaunty harness]

OH Armstrong is that tower on Jersey side of Hudson! That would be def be an amazing spot

I bet LilyBX would hit that direct too to help get packets in/out from city

[daring moth]

Has anyone contacted https://limarc.org/about-limarc/repeaters/ (or any other Amateur Radio club), to ask about putting a Meshtastic node on their existing repeaters?

[karmic junco]

Limarc is a weird bunch

I guess no different than most of the old timers

[daring moth]

I'll take that as a yes.

[tropic gulch]

Too much drama with/from them. I say wait until maybe one of the newer less aggro folks happens to reach out

[daring moth]

Do all Amateur Radio clubs in the area have too much drama surrounding them?

[pale pilot]

listen in on a UHF/VHF repeater one of these days. The ham radio community is... yeah.

[brazen spear]

Kings County Radio Club is chill. Not a lot of infrastructure tho.

[karmic junco]

Not exactly, never got around to asking them. Theres actually a node I saw a little while ago that belongs to one of the sysops

N2nfg is his call sign

Or at least I think he is as I recall his call sign being used on that repeter.

[karmic junco]

The all-star connected nodes are generally a little more willing to try one new stuff

[daring moth]

The callsign K2HMH, part of #1300525496945348648, is also pretty chill. Similarly, at least to my knowledge, there's only the single room on the 2nd floor of the building as "infrastructure". They have a Meshtastic node, but it's using a very small antenna.

[devout moth]

Hello hello from Westchester County, I just got into Meshtastic and got a MuziWorks R1

[daring moth]

I'm at a different location now, but I was able to reach nodes in Westchester County, NY, as seen above.

[devout moth]

Oh cool! I'm using the Meshtastic iOS app and I don't see any of those nodes sadly.

Acutally b304 just showed up

[tropic gulch]

Yeah I've been pretty active with all of them and have approached ham radio in the city with the hopes of modernizing social standards and trying to bring in some of the community service oriented activities out of the Stone Age and have been met with some crazy situations

[brazen spear]

Post if LilyBX shows up. That would tie you to the rest of nyc

[devout moth]

I'll keep an eye out. I have a second R1 and was going to try to figure out how to configure it as a router/repeater(?, am not sure on the terminology yet) so I have a better range facing south.

[brazen spear]

Keep it Client for now but get it up as high as you can.

[daring moth]

If you have multiple nodes in one dwelling, set the one with the highest elevation to CLIENT and the rest to CLIENT_MUTE.

[devout moth]

I was about to land to that thought process while planning my next project. (while getting used to the basics with the R1) Which is a Lilygo T Beam Supreme with Ubox and build an outdoor solar setup.

[jaunty harness]

what part of westchester? had a node in New Rochelle and one in Mamaroneck pop up down here in Brooklyn last week

[devout moth]

Mamaroneck

[jaunty harness]

oh nice!! that one said it was located on top of the town building near the library. also I miss Sal's and Walters (grew up there)

[devout moth]

Just moved here and already had a decent amount of Sal's Pizza

[jaunty harness]

HAHA awesome! A corner of the Sicilian was my go-to

[devout moth]

Woah, not sure how I picked this one up but super cool

[jaunty harness]

oh nice, d42f is at 3 hops so that's really good - would be cool to know the traceroute but you'll likely never get the reply back (lot of probs with traceroutes down here)

[daring moth]

Did anyone get my PSA? Also, how does the cloud icons have a line through them, yet someone responded to my message?

[knotty jacinth]

Im still down 100% but yes work was crazy towards the end of the year for me

@proven grove this was the last time i looked into it.

I was gonna try reaching back out to see if they’d be interested to get it up there as an experimental node etc. the tower’s legacy is that of experimental use so its fitting

[proven grove]

bba6 would be me

[proven grove]

I can make the node experimental AF. I could do a FemToFox with a E22-900M30S, LTO and Solar. We should look into Cellular backup for administration though (which I'll do shortly) but I won't be able to swing that aspect solo though.

[knotty jacinth]

yeah, the more experimental we make it I think the better lol

the whole purpose of the tower was to experiment... the call sign for the "Experimental station" is still proudly displayed there too

[proven grove]

https://tenor.com/view/hold-my-beer-beer-gif-5382187103511069297

[knotty jacinth]

I think if we do it as a community thing, they'll likely sponsor us / maybe even help us get grant $$ to cover the installation on the tower

IIRC installation is usually $500 or so because it covers the cost of the person to climb the tower, install it, climb down heh

[tropic gulch]

Looking at their field day pictures looks like it's a crop of new folks, might be enough for me to rejoin

This guy is in my backyard, too bad the (I think) Catholic Church essentially owns it and demands a pretty penny of you want to stick something on it

[brazen spear]

@knotty jacinth you make some great flipper boards! Pumped you're here in nyc!

[knotty jacinth]

NJ but close enough 😅

I can see NYC from the roof of the lab, so I consider that close enough 😉

[abstract iron]

So basically if you have multiple nodes at home, you should put them all on client mute, except for whichever one has the most optimal placement to outside? Or else any one of the nodes might pick up your local range messages and then fail to mesh them out further. Is this the routing?

[daring moth]

Yes, that's strongly recommend.

From my understanding, on CLIENT, Meshtastic rebroadcast messages after a random delay, only if it hasn't heard the same message from a second node (the rebroadcast). When rebroadcasting messages, it skews the timeframe of the random delay depending on the SNR.

[jaunty harness]

you can see it in the logs as something like this:DEBUG | 01:14:46 87533 [Router] rx_snr found. hop_limit:1 rx_snr:-18.250000 DEBUG | 01:14:46 87533 [Router] rx_snr found in packet. Setting tx delay:1232

[karmic junco]

we have to work out why I cannot see you. your literally my closest (linear mileage) contact and I dont see your node

[daring moth]

BTW, my node is not currently at that area.

[karmic junco]

we have to get you another node to keep there. 🙂

But the thing is, you also never see mine. And 2 of mine are fixed

Might as well be 3- I have a techo thats been sitting on mydesk

oddest part is whereas the other day I could see harlem easily- today, i see.. nobody

though that could be a problem with my own unit- itmight have crashed. lol

[daring moth]

It's at my parents' place, and they dislike the idea of mounting an electronic device onto the roof.

[karmic junco]

seriously?

I literally told my dad Im putting this device in the attic, he said whatever. Lol

[abstract iron]

saw a bedstuy node while out mobile with my e1000 say "windy". nothing at home tho

[daring moth]

I received the same message at Briarwood, Queens.

[pale pilot]

Got the windy in Kew Gardens as well!

[karmic junco]

I got a message from f937

[daring moth]

Me too:

[misty gorge]

which nodes are are yours again?

[karmic junco]

none of those

I am currenly on 60ab and 742C

I did just see GBS1 gobo solar node pop up, but its providing 0 informtion

[maiden thistle]

I saw GBS1 from Sunset Park in the morning

[pale pilot]

f937 shows up as OGS for me. Does that mean not everyone is getting its data?

[misty gorge]

I don't have either of these in my node list.

[karmic junco]

Ya I'm in the bay. Horrible coverage. But I do see stuff occassoonally

[gaunt dirge]

haha I hope not, I just revived the NYC resistor one and we are trying to stay no/low drama

I wanted to put a solar mesh on our roof but might not be worht it

[gaunt dirge]

these guys are chill but def on the elmer side

[jaunty harness]

it just means you haven't gotten a complete NODEINFO packet but instead telemetry/position/message that just had the !abcd1234 User ID, so you'll see f9e7 but it should update to OGS if/when you do get a NODEINFO

[gaunt dirge]

I was in that photo! freezing my butt off

[gaunt dirge]

ah didnt know this good call

will do when I get home

[jaunty harness]

Passed a Seeed Xiao ESP32-S3+Wio1262 and Faketec off to Gardener, and wanna through together another 1W Donktastic so there's some more good nodes going up soon

[tropic gulch]

is this all OTA or is this on mqtt?

[daring moth]

I have OK to MQTT enabled, but both Ignore MQTT and the MQTT module itself disabled. How can I tell?

[jaunty harness]

I saw Ray's message but none the rest (so that at least was over RF) - does Android also show more info if you long press on a message like iOS?

[daring moth]

No, it just selects the message, to either copy the contents or delete it.

[jaunty harness]

oh dang, iOS shows received/recipient acks for your messages, and direct/hops for others ... my thinking was if MQTT it would have said so like it does next to MQTT node in the node list

[abstract iron]

yeah the message view is weird

checkmark seems to suggest direct encrypted msg?

these are kind of more obvious. cloud check means some node took it but not clear if destination got it..cross cloud nothing

no hold on msg ops

[gritty knot]

Nope. Person with a check mark means that the destination node acknowledged receipt of the message. Cloud with a tick means you heard somebody else rebroadcasting it.

https://meshtastic.org/docs/software/android/usage/

[abstract iron]

nice thx

[karmic junco]

anyone LilyBX?

Ok, sorry should have used the search. LilyBX is gardeners' node

So I have it in the node db, last seen 1 hr ago. I send a direct mesage to the unit, and I have the cloud with the check mark. THat should in theory mean that the node got it and acknowledges?

[daring moth]

That means any random other node got it and rebroadcasted it.

[karmic junco]

Oh jeeze, that means nothing then. Even on a direct message?

[daring moth]

It would need a person icon as well as the checkmark for the receiving node to have acknowledged it.

[daring moth]

I haven't specifically tried a DM like that, but I'd have no way of testing it out without impeding some LoRa broadcasts. I'm basing it on the image below:

[karmic junco]

nope you are correct. When I direct message one of my other nodes I get a person check mark

[karmic junco]

horrid that i've been able to send to pretty much nobody

[karmic junco]

you let me know the next time your in greatneck

[jaunty harness]

oh dang looks like Grand St is already up

[abstract iron]

I've got my ZLLA up in Manhattan, facing uptown

and the small card node client_mute

[brazen spear]

No, grand st is just the device configured being stress tested at my place ready to get deployed.

[brazen spear]

What is your node name?

[daring moth]

See above for @PX's node names.

[jaunty harness]

ahhh, well i'm getting great #s off whereever its located and pointed currently (SNR: -2.5/RSSI: 100-110)

[jaunty harness]

meshguy.net seems to just be placeholder... I think that used to be Brooklyn Solar Node (pretty sure was ROUTER&CLIENT, or maybe just ROUTER)

[abstract iron]

get a position?

[jaunty harness]

I got a traceroute to BSN once that went through PBD1 and Vernon but nothing solid, seems like maybe downtown Brooklyn pointed north?

[celest brook]

I've had plenty of messages get delivered without seeing the person-checkmark in response

[daring moth]

I guess that means their text response was able to go through, but not the acknowledgement functionality. BTW, the person-checkmark symbol is only applicable for DMs.

[celest brook]

I just updated the firmware on the woodbine node, lemme know if you still see this happening

[jaunty harness]

oh nice! Woodbine has been pretty solid node out here in Brooklyn - good to hear it got some update love

[daring moth]

BTW, I've set my node, currently sitting on a window on the 7th (upper-most) floor in Briarwood, NY to ROUTER_LATE. This is because channel utilization is pretty low in my area, so I think there's headroom for this good but not great position to have extra messages.

[celest brook]

I hadn't noticed that you mentioned telemetry spamming until just now though

[jaunty harness]

hehe only "spamming" in the sense that 2.5.x increased the transmission window for telemetry/position and added a little extra logic to just skip sending it when the window arrives but theres already stuff in the nodes tx queue/busy air, so now it's like every ~30mins. if we all were on older firmware it'd be more a prob but those extra few packets/hr are far from the biggest prob with the mesh here

e.g. Harlem Relay is still on older fw, it's not crazy spammy either, espeically when most of the mesh is already updated to 2.5.x (the extra couple seconds/hr for it send those aren't really hurting much since it's a few and not many)

[karmic junco]

That could be all sorts of things. My antenna could be the effil tower and you could be using the stock antenna. You'd most likely hear me, but not always possible to hear you

[abstract iron]

anyone have a favorite SMA whip? I'm using a Muzi works to get started but ready to do a comparison.

[devout moth]

Hey Everyone, is there a map/tool to help me plan to place a client node? There isn't much action up here in Westchester County, and I want to help bridge up here to you all.

[devout moth]

I saw this on reddit this morning: https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/nearson-inc/S469AM-915/4571857

[daring moth]

https://meshtastic.org/blog/meshtastic-site-planner-introduction/

[devout moth]

Big yikes, I don't know what a lot of that configuration settings mean lol

[daring moth]

Try asking in #help.

[devout moth]

Thank you

[abstract iron]

I'm new here but it seems like node planning is ad hoc. it looks like we have some of the NYC mesh crew here and I bet they do site planning to build out their mesh. then some people seem to have towers or real installs, not sure if they are coordinating. then we have random nodes like I bring one to my elevated Manhattan office building but it isn't permanent. etc

[karmic junco]

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006678141278.html

I think I might order one of these to try.

[brazen spear]

We've just been starting site planning, placing nodes in concert with nycmesh, utilizing some of their infrastructure and roof access. Please take a look at their map and Google earth and see if you can find a particular hub you think may be of good use for expanding our meshtastic network

Nycmesh.net/map

[misty gorge]

Damn it.. another router person

[devout moth]

I had to play with one of my R1 with my own pixel 1, wow, the apps between Android and iOS are so different.

The app crashes every time I play with the GPS settings on each phone. Has anyone witnessed this before? I'm going to flash them and update firmware from 2.5.15 to 2.5.18 and see if that helps.

Sorry, I should have put that last message in the help channel.

[maiden thistle]

I'm partial to Supernode 3 in Sunset Park facing the Verrazano Bridge

[jaunty harness]

haven't seen that one yet, maybe another one in Jersey like WFL0? (I think I still have WFL0 ignored right now)

oh actually I have seen it but only telemetry so only have User ID

[abstract iron]

I see that Westfield a lot when I'm down in South Slope.

[twin root]

just got em installed, used the picoblades, bought a bunch of pigtails from aliexpress and didnt have a problem

gonna dm you to pick your brain about some stuff if you have some experience with these and can give me some advice

[jaunty harness]

ahh nice! and yeah sure, not an EE pro but hit me up and I'll reply when I can

[misty gorge]

We have a Brooklyn Solar Node which is in router mode also.

Everyone wants to be king.

[abstract iron]

if only traceroute would work 🤣

[karmic junco]

I have never set anything of mine to be router mode. Lol

[daring moth]

See above for what I've done.

[jaunty harness]

yeah BSN showed up like 2 weeks ago, I got a traceroute once and it went through PBD1 and... I forget the other node

[karmic junco]

I've been busy enough that other than chatting here and there I've not touched anything. So I'm better leaving them as client mode for now, until at least I do some updates

[jaunty harness]

would be awesome if all the ROUTER_CLIENTs (and their older firmware) were ROUTER_LATE - cause then they're just normal CLIENTs except they will try extra hard and still transmit something they haven't seen retransmitted AFTER normal router/repeater then client logic (as I understand currently)

[karmic junco]

Ya. I'll get to it...eventually.

[jaunty harness]

it also seems pretty stable now, so there's so benefit to waiting 8)

[karmic junco]

I still haven't finished my bail out comm box wither

Either.

[jaunty harness]

yeah i've been swamped with work this week but wanna shuffle things up this weekend, swap the window RAK for 1W Donk and play with one of the other random DIY builds for desktop

[abstract iron]

what's 1W donk?

[karmic junco]

I still have my rak in a box

And my lto battery from Keith in a box.

[daring moth]

I'm heading to Great Neck for the weekend. Not there yet.

[karmic junco]

Eggcelent.

[karmic junco]

Did you see those wackjob ups from aliexpress

[jaunty harness]

DonkTastic is 1W DIY build https://github.com/jycannel/DonkTastic_pcb/

[jaunty harness]

hah what, like ... for nodes/raspis?

[karmic junco]

Poor mans ups for these little devices

[karmic junco]

So it's basically a dumb USB c in with two 18650 in parallel, and a fixed 5,v/9v/12v variant

Unfortunately I did have to order a few male pigtails for the output side of things.

2500mah x 2 should give about.... Maybe 20w of storage

If your wondering why I have this particular fondness for this configuration it is because they are particularly useful in mobile operations ... Like the one you would keep in your car. Most cars have accessory ports that shut off when you shut off the car, so this would keep it running for a while.

Also it was the oddball reverse uno method of cold weather operations... Using t beams instead of rak because they waste more electricity thus keeping themselves warm. Couples with a 10w panel, the heat should keep them above freezing if insulated well.

[abstract iron]

did WB nodes change around? I can see more towards porks nodes

[jaunty harness]

I just noticed that was a DM you sent / not on public channel, received though!

[jaunty harness]

hah that makes total sense. I know there's some apparent funkiness with t-beam's sx1276 talking to certain other radios (forgetting which ones) but the consensus seems to be it's not tooo big a deal in a decent sized mesh since it should still RX from a radio it doesn't have probs with. that "ups" does sound a lot like the seengreat? i think it is, 1x18650 UPS board that people have been talking good things about lately - also sounds super useful in a solar setup though maybe overkill with 2x18650s

[karmic junco]

Not overkill for esp32 chips

[jaunty harness]

hmmm, yeah true 8)

[karmic junco]

I ordered some from aliexpress and some connectors

The idea... Was kinda either a plane Jane heltec, and this 3 dollar unit (well... About 5 with all the pigtails and recycled batteries)

And one of the many solar panels I got on sale

I picked up like 10 20w panels but they are USB out

[jaunty harness]

oh dannng, that's a lot of panel! can you pop open the box on back of panel where the USB runs out and tap it before whatever janky regulator is in there, or just gonna USB -> USB-C -> UPS?

[karmic junco]

The panels were some odd spec. Like 8v open and 6.3v under load. But it will do basically 5v at 4a. Except each USB port can't support really more than 2....

I've been literally using one outside for a year just plugged into my motion sensor.

But some others hacked it open and made like folding solar panels.

The only real issue with usb connectors is long term environmental exposure.

[jaunty harness]

yeah, though you run the cable through a hole and seal that up with duct seal/sealing putty or silicon caulk then it's safe inside, then even sell little USB connectors w/solder pads so you can keep the hole to just slightly bigger than the cable instead having to fit the entire connector

[misty gorge]

Just made a contact with CAFB in Harlem.

[daring moth]

This?

[misty gorge]

He DMd me.

But yes that's the one.

[naive sinew]

Hey Ray?

Just got told by someone to join this channel on meshtastik

Believe I’m the CAFB in Harlem lol

My messages keep saying “acknowledged by another node”

They dont seem to be sending

[misty gorge]

Hi!

They are

I think that just means another node picked up the message and it's not direct?

[naive sinew]

You’re able to see these messages on the bottom?

[misty gorge]

Yip

Yup

[naive sinew]

Oh nice

Can you see me in the long / fast channel?

[misty gorge]

I also sent you a message on longfast

[naive sinew]

Yeah for some reason it came through on dm

[misty gorge]

Is that the iphone app?

Maybe an iPhone user can help you with that.

[naive sinew]

I have 2 running right now yes one android one android

[misty gorge]

Glad to have another node user in here. Do you see "Harlem Relay"?

[jaunty harness]

got your test down here in Brooklyn ~30mins ago

and yes, welcome!

[naive sinew]

Nice - yes i see Harlem Ray

[misty gorge]

@naive sinew tell us about your setup.

[naive sinew]

That’s how I dmed you

I just have 2 Rokland wismesh V2s

[misty gorge]

Do you have any idea who that is? We'd all like to know.

[naive sinew]

Harlem relay i mean - and no i have never gotten a message back from him

[misty gorge]

He sent a message from the node last week or so. But could not make a contact to get him in here.

[naive sinew]

Nice. Is it fairly active?

[misty gorge]

The node seems to be in a decent position.

Are you high up @naive sinew ?

[naive sinew]

Yes near city college

[daring moth]

I think he was asking about your elevation. 🙂

[naive sinew]

5th story running it out of my window

Ray could you see my additional messages in long/ fast?

How do open relays work? In theory could talk in the long / fast of Harlem Relay all over NYC?

[misty gorge]

I did not see any additional messages from you on longfast.

[misty gorge]

One of the other guys here are really good at explaining it all.

[naive sinew]

Seems like messages are pretty inconsistent

[jaunty harness]

In theory… Harlem Relay would hear you and rebroadcast out to everyone that can hear it. Reality is if you’re low Harlem Relay may not actually hear you

[naive sinew]

Ahh i see

Even if it’s saying acknowledged?

[jaunty harness]

ROUTER/ROUTER_CLIENT will hear a message and attempt to retransmit it. normal CLIENT has some delay logic so a relay would retransmit it first and the CLIENT hearing it was already retransmitted would then not attempt to retransmit itself

[daring moth]

Excluding DMs, acknowledged means another (random) node has rebroadcasted the message that you've sent. That other node could be one of your own nodes.

[naive sinew]

Gotcha yeah cause I’m seeing it on my other node

But i guess you guys aren’t

[daring moth]

I'd recommend setting all nodes in your apartment except for one to the CLIENT_MUTE role.

[misty gorge]

@naive sinew "the winds must have changed" because my node hasn't seen yours in 20 min now.

Cool that we made a contact though.

[naive sinew]

Just set it as CLIENT_MUTE

[naive sinew]

agreed - i want to put a node on top of city college

[misty gorge]

When in client mute it won't participate in rebroadcast.

[naive sinew]

Reckon that could unlock most of manhattan

[misty gorge]

That would help you and everyone else a lot.

[jaunty harness]

CLIENT_MUTE will stop that node from trying to retransmit messages it hears, but it will still receive them fine and send out it's own information periodically like a regular CLIENT

[misty gorge]

If you have access there are guys here that can help you build a node.

[naive sinew]

I was thinking of asking them - and if they say no dropping one by drone

😂

[misty gorge]

@naive sinew if you have legit access @brazen spear may be your guy.

[naive sinew]

Yeah could be done I’m sure

[naive sinew]

So its that easy to disconnect?

Being higher up helps I’m assuming thats why you asked

[misty gorge]

Yea the contacts are inconsistent because of the buildings

[naive sinew]

Figured. So then if i put a repeater on top of city college

[misty gorge]

You're on west side of Manhattan though

[naive sinew]

Would that allow the network to communicate better and more consistently?

[misty gorge]

I'm in Queens!

We had a short conversation. That's pretty good.

[naive sinew]

Agreed

Maybe if i move windows I’ll transmit better

[misty gorge]

Strategic nodes placed high. All nodes set to correct settings

[jaunty harness]

it could be good, but it could also be detrimental - right now stick to CLIENT and lookup how to do remote admin so you can access the node's settings over the mesh if it does warrant switching roles

[misty gorge]

I never got a traceroute

[naive sinew]

And then in theory if we have enough nodes placed high enough we can communicate all over manhattan

[jaunty harness]

if you are hellbent on using a infrastructure role (it's your hw and public airwaves, also not your dad) ROUTER_LATE would be first to try, it has additional logic to ensure retransmission but after all CLIENTs had their chance

[naive sinew]

Explain that to me again like a child - how would ROUTER_LATE be advantageous?

[misty gorge]

Doesn't sound like his node is actually on any very optimal position.

[jaunty harness]

we currently have multiple ROUTERs covering N Brooklyn and it's deminishing the mesh because CLIENTs hear them retransmit and don't also retransmit

[jaunty harness]

ROUTER_LATE basically will ensure retransmission, but has longer delay before it attempts the send making way for ROUTER/CLIENTs to do their usual retransmission. so it's like an extra guarantee to be retransmitted but allows the mesh to be a mesh

[naive sinew]

Do you guys communicate regularly on the mesh?

[misty gorge]

Good looking units

[jaunty harness]

we try, but there's a running joke across most meshes that Discord is where we go to talk about how we are/aren't talking on the mesh 😄

[naive sinew]

😂

[misty gorge]

It's way too sporadic. The only node I can probably regularly talk to is Harlem Relay which is not monitored. Haha

[jaunty harness]

the mesh is chaos

[naive sinew]

So realistically i need to place a better node? How can i talk to more people lol

[jaunty harness]

height is great for your to tx and others to hear, not always the same in reverse as a high node will hear a lot

[misty gorge]

If you got a high up node near you, it would open you up. Probably more west than east though

[jaunty harness]

the other thing you can try is bumping up your hop limit, which is a bit in your transmitted packets that says "retransmit this through 3 other nodes" and each node that retransmits will deincrement the counter by 1 until it's 0

[naive sinew]

Makes sense - would my theoretical node placed on top of city college better connect me with Harlem Relay? And thus the rest of you?

[jaunty harness]

like Zumble uses 5 and I usually hear him, I've been playing with 4 and just bumped to 5 so maaaaybe he might hear me back 🤞

[misty gorge]

@naive sinew bump to 4 or 5. It's not unreasonable in a dense city. Maybe start with 4

[naive sinew]

I’m at 3 so I’ll bump it

[jaunty harness]

the thing with the hops is we sometimes see nodes that are like 100miles away because they have their hops set to 7 and if the mesh is working well enough at the right time(s) their packet(s) will reach us

[naive sinew]

Ray i just saw your message

[misty gorge]

Which one?

[naive sinew]

“Talk to me pork”

[misty gorge]

Hahahhaa

[jaunty harness]

LOL

I didn't see it 8(

[naive sinew]

Just tested on 5 hops

[misty gorge]

Nothing yet.

Did you get any acknowledgement that any node picked up your packet?

Turn off your 2nd node.

[naive sinew]

Yeah it says acknowledge

Ok hang on

[misty gorge]

Make sure it's not the node next to you acking

You want a node outside to pick it up.

[naive sinew]

It’s on mute though

[misty gorge]

Ah okay.

The 2nd node is on mute.

[naive sinew]

Yeah

[jaunty harness]

two nodes in very close proximity (e.g. couple feet) can also mess with each other's RF

[misty gorge]

Okay.

[naive sinew]

Let me move one

[misty gorge]

Best to turn off one.

You don't need two next to each other.

[jaunty harness]

oh NOW you tell me (looks at 6 nodes right next to each other - only one is powered)

[naive sinew]

Hahaha ok

I turned one off and moved the other to another window

Still getting an ack

[misty gorge]

I just sent another test.

[naive sinew]

I saw that!

[naive sinew]

Talk to me corncob

Just went back

[misty gorge]

Nothing yet

[naive sinew]

So i could be receiving fine but not transmitting?

[misty gorge]

What nodes do you have on your list?

[naive sinew]

Boneyard, manhattan tower, WM2D

K2XAP

Astoria meshtastic

Woodbine solar node

C638 is 21 miles from me

[jaunty harness]

Boneyard is close to Woodbine, both are in N Brooklyn - are you seeing the hop counts for how far away they are or seeing SNR/RSSI #s indicating a direct connection?

[misty gorge]

I can see Manhattan Tower kinda regularly. Not as regular as Harlem Relay

[naive sinew]

1 hop from harlem relay

[jaunty harness]

yeah, that's what I was sorta hinting at with the height thing - you could be hearing Harlem Relay great but it may not be hearing you and the ack is coming from another client. you can try and run a traceroute to Astoria Meshtastic and see which nodes your packet passed through at the moment, but traceroutes are also extremely unreliable

[naive sinew]

Not seeing hops for bone or woodbine

Think I’m direct connect to Boneyard

Woodbine is unknown as of 6 hrs ago

[jaunty harness]

sometimes you hear them but not enough information in their transmission to determine the hops or direct and what you see in client apps is a lie that self-corrects over a few hours

this is Meshsense a 3rd party client app, but I can see from it only having SNR (-10.25) but a blank RSSI (- next to it) that it was actually relayed through another node

[naive sinew]

Damn you are a great resource pork!

Thanks for that

[misty gorge]

You likely see the Astoria nodes because of Harlem Relay

[jaunty harness]

hey noo prob! just a nerd that is fascinated and enjoying Meshtastic 8)

[misty gorge]

That's why we want to get in contact with Harlem Relay

[naive sinew]

So i think because im slightly depressed elevation wise im not getting outgoing reception

Consistent*

[misty gorge]

At least we can kinda confirm that Harlem Relay is in a pretty good location

[naive sinew]

What happens when you get in contact with him?

[misty gorge]

We get him in here. And shake him around for having his node in Repeater mode.

Or router or whatever

[naive sinew]

Wouldn’t you assume because you’re picking it up it’s in a good location? Or i guess it’s possible like me, I’m in a bad location but getting sporadic transmission

Wait so - would having a “repeater” in a good location help us? Why shake him around?

[misty gorge]

If that node was in client mode it would do the same thing. But other nodes around would also repeat messages

[jaunty harness]

also keep in mind that other nodes aren't constantly advertising themselves to the mesh (well, older firmwares do but it's not too bad) - like once every... 3 hours? they'll send out NODEINFO saying "sup, it's me Cool Node abcd! as well as periodically sending out "telemetry" (some nodes have temp/humid sensors, also includes nodes battery % and channel usage) and "position" (e.g. how some nodes show up on the map, some dont' becaues they don't share position)

[naive sinew]

Are you guys familiar with the units i bought? Are they quality if so?

[jaunty harness]

RAK is very good stuff you done well

[misty gorge]

Many of us use the rak board thats in your unit.

[naive sinew]

Yeah i read the board was good and did not want to build the casing / print it

[jaunty harness]

my first was a RAK and it's still a champ 1.5 years later

[naive sinew]

I’m usually a build not buy kind of guy but this time was different

[misty gorge]

Astoria units are RAKs and been up 1.5 years or so in the elements.

[jaunty harness]

niiiice, yeah for $30 you can get the baseboard + wisblock cpu+radio, the particular cpus they use (nRF52840) are basically the most power efficient option

[naive sinew]

And sorry for all the dumb questions - i have read and watched a lot but you know how people never answer your exact questions

That and I’m an idiot 😂

[jaunty harness]

and you can build it up a bit like lego, or get a complete unit like you did

haha the only stupid question is the one you didn't ask

its'' def a lot of confusing stuff all at once, but the more you learn about Meshtastic the more the pieces click

[naive sinew]

Yeah its clicking thanks to being in here 20 mins

[jaunty harness]

and if you like building there's a whole part of the hobby that's people designing their own boards and others building those designs (like me) - and they're cheap! like $10 you can solder two things to a PCB and have the equiv of a RAK, but it is definitely not beginner level way to start playing with Meshtastic

[naive sinew]

Ok so then again just to finalize this. If I want a “Manhattan wide” reliable network it means strategically placed nodes in CLIENT within at least line of sight of each other most likely across where i want coverage?

I saw that on YouTube