US-Idaho

[frail hedge]

correction hayden peak is where i want to set up my first long range relay. wilson peak is where the current south relay is.

just hayden peak is a nightmare to reach

[clear flare]

hayden peak can hit indian springs easy. it also hits Mt Harrison, though its 120 and 150 miles respectively

that might be a bit too far to be reliable

[frail hedge]

we can do a main node with a say 12 dbi antenna a nice certifed one. but have a second node using a yagi to bridge say to a far away peak with enough yagi. that way you have good direction for everything within 50 miles. but reliable bridge for stuff 100-150 away.

and maybe make them bbs nodes? for message saving and resending

though if we want to group build a node station for haydon peak. i will help ruck it to the peak because going to need atleast 2 people for that trip

[clear flare]

The spot I eyeballed had some radio towers and a road 😛

[frail hedge]

haydon has radio tower and road. but it's a shit road

huh not as good as i remember

but still a solid range and coverage

[clear flare]

Bennett might be a better choice in terms of a connector

Davis Mtn has a sliver of Shafer butte

[frail hedge]

but haydon also have good point to point connections that can serve has a bridging node

[clear flare]

Haydon <-> Indian Springs has a lot of Boise TWF potential

And IF we can get a reliable connection to Harrison, on both, really strong potential to get to IF

[frail hedge]

haydon -> moutnain home -> mount harrison -> promontory mountains -> salt lake. atleast thats my old atak charting route

[clear flare]

Indian Springs down here has a lot of 0-1 hop connections

[clear flare]

I’ll need to learn how the bbs meshtastic setup works. The Utah folks were spitting around using it to get passed the hop limits

[frail hedge]

viewshed from haydon peak

everything green is direct line of sight

soldiermountain isn't a bad spot

but doesn't have a direct link to boise region. but basically everything south of shossone is covered

[frail hedge]

i hate how i'm trying to figure out how to make a new perosnial node. every way i try to do it makes it cost a fair bit. Why does the tbeam have to be to fragile WHY!!!!!

[clear flare]

I’m not a fan. I’ve broken two tbeam. The two I have now won’t ever leave their enclosure. The tdeck is pretty fragile two imo. Compared to a rak or heltec t114

[heavy pike]

My spouse ended up snapping the antenna in their device. Was a pain to replace them.

[clear flare]

Oof

[frail hedge]

Same yhe antenna all snapped off on mine

Because no way to actually secure the antenna so it doesn’t break the circuit board

[clear flare]

About the only prebuilts I’ll grab are the tdeck plus and t1000e. If I’m going DIY the only thing I’ll subscribe to are the rak boards and the t114. Or the heltec v3 in a pinch

[frail hedge]

Tdeck o want to try but rak for me just wins to easily because it’s so efficient and reliable

[heavy pike]

Mine were heltec v3. They've been decent. Upgraded the orginial antenna and signal was much better.

[frail hedge]

Heltec i want to try but here their power consumption is higher tehn rak and i don’t think they have gps

And the gps i like since hiking

[heavy pike]

They don't. They pull the GPS from the device they are connected to.

I believe there is a module you can add to them though. Could be wrong.

[clear flare]

The t114 is an nrf board so it’s pretty decent

[frail hedge]

They might have. A module like the raks do. But i know the tbeam has gps because i updated its gos antenna

[clear flare]

And they come with a gps module usually

[heavy pike]

The t114?

[clear flare]

The GPS sharing via your phone is part of the software

Heltec t114

[frail hedge]

Dedicated i perferr because phone doesn’t have gps atleast not that i can see

[clear flare]

https://a.co/d/06M18PV

[frail hedge]

And mountains mean no signal to cell towers

[heavy pike]

I've been thinking about updating to the t114 for gps stuff. Would make things easier.

[clear flare]

GPS on phones don’t need the towers.

On iOS you can update this is your settings -> meshtastic

[frail hedge]

Thats a tempting offer but i have. A feeling that housing isn’t water proof or resistant

[clear flare]

Oh certainly not. I wouldn’t use that housing. I’d use something else

But then again, that’s why I use the t1000

[heavy pike]

Also for one with a keyboard but opted not to.

[frail hedge]

Huh maybe my iphone se does have gps?

[heavy pike]

All iphones do.

[clear flare]

https://support.apple.com/en-euro/112005

[frail hedge]

Weird because on my phone never found about information that says it does. So assumed no there if the phone have no info on itself for gps

[tawdry reef]

I have a t deck that has almost lived in either my pocket or dash of the car or just tossed somewhere to test range. it has held up very well with my useage. It has an alley cat case and 8000ma battery set up.

[clear flare]

T-decks are solid. There is a crazy build on it that I've been entertaining building: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7051085

my two edc nodes are a rak19003 and a t1000e. Station G2 on my roof

That being said, this is my build for mt Harrison. Depending on how it holds out, I’ll replicate it for Davis mountain. Davis should give a good shot to Shaffer butte

[heavy pike]

That thing is a beast

[clear flare]

It looks like it woudl be fun to play with

[heavy pike]

All my devices crashed and hand to rebuild them.

[clear flare]

That's rough. I hate doing one

let alone all

[heavy pike]

Finally got it up and running. Have to reconfigure everything though. For some reason this one keeps shutting down when on battery.

[clear flare]

What node and battery? Might be too low of voltage

Probably worth putting to a meter if you have one

[heavy pike]

This one is a heltec v3 with 3000ma batter on it.

[clear flare]

I’m trying to recall how they do if the current gets too low some boot loop some shut off some manage to run still at reduced capacity

[heavy pike]

It says shutting down and stays there. I did turn on lower power mode to help things.

Its somewhat stable now

I'll do more testing while I'm out camping or at bsides in September.

[alpine crescent]

New user in Treasure Valley here! I was just researching what it would take to get a node on Shafer Butte and came across this channel 🙂

[marsh notch]

Welcome!
I'd like to know the same. I'm on the other side of the mountain, so Shafer would get me meshed in to TV.

[clear flare]

I want to try. I’m putting one up on Davis Mountain that can see Shafer, but down here in the magic valley we are going to move to LongFast 51 so that we can join get off the default and build a connected mesh from SLC up into Idaho

Big ambitions lol!

Theoretically, Prom Point in SLC to mount harrison to Davis mountain to shafer

[marsh notch]

Was thinking, if one of the ham clubs that have repeaters on Shafer had any MT enthusiasts, there may be an "in"

[clear flare]

We just had a mesh meeting and have buy in to make the change. Harrison is going up on LF 51 and then slowly over the following couple of weeks moving the rest of the magic valley infrastructure

[frail hedge]

I feel like i need to go to shafer, haven’t been since there’s nodes there already

[marsh notch]

There are? Are they public?

[frail hedge]

There’s one hidden on the map. And i think someone has another there. Atleast from what ive heard on the mesh

[marsh notch]

Hmmm... been a few months since I've played with my nodes. Nobody around here is in to it, so it's not much fun. If I can connect to Shafer, that changes things.

[frail hedge]

Prospect peak i personally found to be a nicer spot. But i think shafer have reach going towards Idaho city

[frail hedge]

In the valley we have it now connected from ontario in the west valley to boise, mountain home twin falls and poccatelo. Over 200 miles of mesh

Though we might need yagi nodes to properly bridge the gap from melba to south of twin falls

[clear flare]

Unreliable connections I find. I rarely get anything beyond node info from TV or east Idaho

And probably going to lose that when we change to LF51 😦

[frail hedge]

Ya that we getting data but not data flow. Antennas aren’t up to snuff for that what 100 mile crossing

Atleast i assume yagis would fix it

[clear flare]

Gonna see how Harrison does at 1w with a 5dbi Alfa

[frail hedge]

Though if someone has their ham license we can run more than a watt of power

[clear flare]

Can’t because then it turns off encryption and then you can’t talk to anyone but other hams

[frail hedge]

Wait really?

[clear flare]

Yeah

[frail hedge]

Why? Encrypting comms is allowed

[clear flare]

Encrypting or obscureing traffic is against fcc regulations for ham radio

It’s built into the meshtastic firmware that way too

[marsh notch]

I just ran a cross a ham club that has encrypted channels on MT. Last I read, they just have to publish the keys.

[frail hedge]

Ive heard that but a lot of guys have said it’s allowed but more of a taboo

[clear flare]

That’s a hot topic but still obscuring and still again the rules

[marsh notch]

Need to find the reference

[frail hedge]

Could always make a laser antenna instead

Though not sure what the fcc says about laser communications

Wish i was at my computer because then i could share the set up someone made that had i think 15 km range used just normal off self parts

[alpine crescent]

Any particular reason you know of why they're using 51?

[clear flare]

Not sure why they picked 51, but getting off the default makes it easier to build, collaborate, and coordinate their routers so that random poorly placed routers don’t pop up

We are plagued here by a few client_router nodes and other repeaters that are just on top of someone’s roof

[alpine crescent]

That makes sense, more intentional I suppose.

[clear flare]

I wonder if I can summon @noble jetty to answer too 😛

[frail hedge]

51?

[noble jetty]

We have many many reasons .. 1) 20 is just broke for the purposes of truly long range and state wide comms. It's unorganized and you'll hit the hop limit fast.. 2) people on 20 don't have the same goals and we respect that so we changed frequencies .. the goal of people on 20 is a bunch of iot stuff locally confined.. 3).. it's is one of the quietest parts of the entire Frequency Slot range according to our SAs

[clear flare]

Frequency Slot. Default for LongFast is 20. Changing the slot alters your frequency

[clear flare]

Thanks 😛

[noble jetty]

The other caveat of operating on 51 instead of 20 is it's a good bit more monitored and people are putting an exerted effort into an efficient and truly state spanning network. So it is highly desirable that you do not just place routers and router lates just cuz you think the spot is a good one. We usually encourage new routers so long as they are in an actual advantageous spot for improving the network.. nobody here wants to tell you how to use your device but don't harm the current topology is all people generally ask.. If your indoors or always mobile.. client mute..If a node is stationary and outdoors. Client... Stationary and indoors client mute. .. Above 5-6k feet overlooking huge and discontinuous portions of the valley.. router late after popping in here and saying Hi 🤣.. and router for peaks ..

That's kind of our only set of loosely formed rules. Outside of that do what you want with your device

If you want more info on what we found to be good node intervals ask. We will be getting full network documentation up soon on the website

Now if your particularly ambitious and want to contribute by building a router and want to go place it at any of our needed proposed sites. Just ask and plenty of us will share our best tips from experiences and help you do it

[alpine crescent]

Cool, thanks for the explanation! I like the idea of a well thought-out network rather than the cluster we see haha

[clear flare]

That's my thought too. Been my push down here in the Magic Valley

So many garbage rooftop routers that half my messages get lost to hops

[frail hedge]

Has the debate on the mesh before. Because i was going to switch all my relays to medium fast, and get other relays holders to do so as well.
But between a dozen of us talking we decided default is best for the mesh due to ease of access and popularity

Because remember the mesh only really works if everyone is on the same page. Unless we get into real difficult raspberry stuff

[clear flare]

My solution for access was to leave a jgood node on LF20 with Meshing-around doing welcome messages with links to details on how to join up. That was brought up at our meeting last night

That's the real rub tho, because everyone isn't on teh same page. Lots of bad info is out there and people think they need routers and repeaters and that just hurts everything

[frail hedge]

I suggested the same but it comes down to the reliability of that signal reaching everyone as the mesh it’s on degrades from users shifting to another frequency or range

[clear flare]

Think they need routers and repeaters on top of their house, car, or work*

[alpine crescent]

Having a good antenna on some place central (like Meridian water tower, for example) might do the trick?

[frail hedge]

I think clearer role descriptions and warnings for roles like repeater and router should occur

Because rogue elements from mismanagement roles aren’t good. And most are just because people don’t know

[clear flare]

or they aren't thinking big enough

[frail hedge]

We already have north and south relays, star radio, and tablerock putting in a lot of good work.
Still wish i know who star radio was, because that guy is just reaching everywhere some how

[clear flare]

I know I had that issue before. "Top of a 4 story building downtown? great router spot" it really isn't. Indian Springs is over 5k feet in elevation and reaches all the way reliably north of Gooding from about 15 miles south of Twin Falls

And Indian springs may get converted to a Router_Late once Harrison goes up here

[marsh notch]

I just re-flashed all of my nodes, and didn't export configs, which is ok, since I want to start over and keep learning. Seems there were quite a few changes since I last re-flashed anyway.
That said, I'm starting with a mobile node and I have a solar node I'm setting up for now.
Are there any good articles out there for best practices when configuring new nodes? I know the MT .org docs are great, but it's more a "here's everything" reference, not a "try starting out with these settings, and here's why..."
My solar node is on my property (not rooftop, but not far from it). It's somewhat elevated for the neighborhood, but not a mountain top, so I assume client is still a good plan. I intend for it to be the local node that connects to a Shafer node, since it has a decent antenna, and LOS to Shafer.

[frail hedge]

Ya relays and routers need to be basically in mountains overlooking the area. Or telecom towers

[marsh notch]

Sorry, should've paused before launcching that :SMH:

[clear flare]

LOL all good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htjwtnjQkkE

Solid video on roles at least

I leave most settings on non-infrastructure nodes as default. However if its not stationary on the roof. I'd set it to Client_Mute basically

[marsh notch]

Yeah. will have to go back thru his whole series again. Especially the remote admin part - except they completely changed that, if I'm reading things right

[frail hedge]

A good watch

[clear flare]

You basically just plug your nodes PUBLIC key into the admin portion of the node and enable remote management. If you mess up the public key then you have to reflash if you enable management mode because it locks out the settings

I've done it more than a couple of times

[noble jetty]

We (Utah) don't employ repeaters. We find them problematic at least so far. Routers and router lates tend to be out made modes for infra nodes

[noble jetty]

And that's kinda the main motivation right. Like obviously we can't expect people who want to stick on defaults and have an encrypted home iot network to be compatible with our desires so simply walking away over to a different frequency was most frictionless

[frail hedge]

How so? What problems do they cause?

Though the last time i looked at the two that much was when i tried to use that save and resend function that NEVER WORKED!! 😭 because damn would have been ao good for node infrastructure

[noble jetty]

So some of the problems with the repeater mode is you don't have as much control first off which some people don't like and the additional problem is how it functions in relation to router late and router. So if a repeater node hears that the existing message has already been rebroadcasted, it will choose not to rebroadcast

It says so in the documentation

Where as a router will always rebroadcast

[frail hedge]

Ah ok

[noble jetty]

Yeah and at that point it's just easier to keep it simple right. I would love to see two functioning frequencies. But it seems the lack of planning on 20 just hurt it from the get-go. Whereas I think 51 had the great windfall that everybody who decided to switch to it was already on board with planning, right?

What I found is you really have to plan these networks in order to make the best use of the seven hop limit. Now we have a way around that.. that we've found

And that's using BBS nodes but we got to get a couple up and see if we can actually bypass this limit

There's also a couple people testing a entirely different software stack called meshcore but I'm pretty committed to meshtastic still (partially sunken cost and laziness)

[frail hedge]

Bbs i want to play with. Because i know once you get into the pie. You can have a station with multiple nodes communicating between frequencies and ranges

Though that’s beyond my non coder ass

[noble jetty]

Oh yeah and so what we're going to use is meshing around

That's going to be our primary BBS software stack and we're about to put up two nodes that are going to relay one ideally at promontory point and another at lowe peak

In fact that multi-frequency relay is exactly what is the heart and backbone of my triradio idea

I'll talk more about it when I'm not driving if you want to know

You know, I suppose I should realize that I'm in the us-idaho category instead of us Utah

Realize every mountain peak and what I'm talking about is relevant to the wasatch front 🤣

My B

Also, I think it's amazing that you're all willing to hop on board with the idea of linking our two meshes ... I think it'll be pretty freaking awesome if we all get to short fast, which we believe is The logical jump from longfast as medium fast doesn't offer nearly as much benefit as the jump to short fast, and you really only lose about three to four dB real world from our testing here down in Utah

[frail hedge]

A year ago i suggested linking boise to salt lake because it’s entirely possible within 5-6 nodes

Because why not do that?

[noble jetty]

Well I think we can do it in less than that, but I actually have an even grander thought. So let's say my triradio idea pans out and the BBS does allow us to bypass the seven hop limit somewhat reliably over time. I'm sure it will have its own limitations... Well then there is no reason that we also couldn't connect Las Vegas and that's an active project going on between DC 801 and dc702

So imagine if someone hopped on the BBS and was able to talk from Boise to Las Vegas through salt lake City. I just think that that would be phenomenal 🤣

But baby steps lol

[frail hedge]

Would this be entirely through mesh or using bbs to link through lan and internet? Because my idea was link entirely through mesh.
Though yes it can be done in less but you would be linking through bridging stations not normal nodes. Thus points that are solely connecting point a to b with maximum signal clarity. Though you would stack a regular relay near them, to let near by stuff enter the chain

[noble jetty]

A lot of these bbs's would not have access to Internet. This would actually be through the mesh. So the idea is that we exploit how the BBS actually sends a packet

It doesn't actually send it all the way to the end user. It updates the nearest BBS node and then the rest of the nodes update each other. At least that's how I understand it

And if that pans out to be true then the BBS nodes need only be within seven hops of each other reliably

That way you could send a sort of email beyond the seven hop limit right? At least that's what I think we can do. I just don't know enough about how this stuff works and I'm just putting stuff up and figuring it out 😂👌

I know RF really well though due to my day job as an RF/Microwave engineer.. but software is definitely not my strong suit

Have y'all heard of the Nebras btw?

[frail hedge]

Hmm so thats how bbs reaches out. Because i thought of the idea of having command prompts that would bounce to the node limit and reach out. Like say you did *all that would be a measage to all people connected no matter if even 100 nodes away. And something like *node=83649 would go to a specfic node id for a user and that would only funnel through the system until nodes that see that id can send it to it.
But i aint a coder just man with ideas

[noble jetty]

Well I think they all update each other when you can figure them all properly as relay nodes

So I think they're actually might be a limit to how far that relay node could be away from you, but I don't know I have to do a lot of testing

Let me get a nebra node operational and I'll show you some of the configuration options

Let me get a picture of these bad boys too. I mean you might not be able to buy them as easily as we did, but they're pretty good for a self-contained 1 watt node

[frail hedge]

The 7 node limit i knownis a meshtastic thing. But bbs should technically have infinite range since yes they are communicating through meshtastic. But the messages are being saved and reaent through bbs thus refreshing them with the bbs network. Atleast thats how i imagine it is, since that would make sense

[noble jetty]

Yeah and I actually don't buy the reason they suggest from the developers and the reason for that is there's plenty of other mesh architectures with similar routing that have a much higher limit that managed to do this inside one lora packet

So that's kind of my frustration with that limit. I'm sure there's a way for them to change that and improve upon it, but I'm not going to go there. That's not my fight lol.

Like meshcores 64 hop limit I think?

Anyways, my true dream is that as our meshes combine and we get more and more resources behind it. I kind of want to recreate the AT&T longline Network with LORA

If the BBS lets us get around that hop limit then we can just use the BBs is the main form of communication and in theory we probably could connect from Las Vegas down to San Diego and la because I have contacts in that area's mesh Network

A few of them are coming to defcon regularly. So maybe not this year but there's no reason why I couldn't have one of them. Take a detour and try to put up a infrastructure node or two to connect Las Vegas and San Diego and then maybe we can plan a BBS there but that's all stretch goals at least from the way I see things going. It's by all means your guys's own network. I just think that that idea in general would be very cool.

And just so you guys know, one of our Utah guys is a big contributor to the project and he's also somebody who's working on the burning man mesh

So that should be interesting. I really want to follow how that's going

[frail hedge]

Using bbs or similar. I don’t see why we can’t have infinite range.
By say bbs node 1 can only send and receive to nodes 2-3, well node 3 can only do for 1-5. Limited their connections for data management.
And making people on it have a simple id and pass that lets them send and receive. Which in turn lets each message have an id to go wherever without bouncing around infinitely.
And you could have area codes for the bbs system. Therefor you can send to only a specfic region and/or person in that region using area code woth id nunber
And yes this is basically reinventing the telephone. But it’s the logical path for this

Because the problem is data management, i think. So defining all the data into something the system can account for and note. Saves bandwidth and energy, but also improves connectivity

[noble jetty]

Nebra node. It's basically a crypto miner with poe

Remove guts

Place 1 watt module

Lightning arrestor and antenna

Then you have an rpi3

• Lora

It's the perfect BBS box tbch

I am removing this module for a better one with a good filter onboard

[frail hedge]

Would be a perfect set up for bbs

[noble jetty]

I have 5x in stock

Our central BBS will be ran by a femtofox

On Lowe peak

No inet

Until we get Farnsworth peak approved and tower space

Then our relays will be promontory point and signal peak

[frail hedge]

If i set up a bbs for boise i might do it at tablerock

[noble jetty]

Table rock would be smart. I suggest Harrison as your central relay. It seems to have the most amazing LOS

I think we can BBS2BBS idk here are the docs hang on

[clear flare]

Tis the plan. I'm waiting for the femtofoxes to come back

soon*tm

July 23

[frail hedge]

Thing is i don’t need to worry to much because the 3 tvm relays guarantee connection for the area. So my home node can serve the fuction dolue to it direct lead toall relays

[noble jetty]

https://github.com/SpudGunMan/meshing-around

[noble jetty]

It would work but it's far more advantageous for the router to be the BBS node. Just cuz it's most efficient. We were gonna use the city and inet linked BBS nodes in the city as just a relat

And I think we could write custom scripts for this one

It has an api

I kinda desire the BBS to find the online BBS nodes and relay their abilities across

[frail hedge]

True, but just saying connections are extremely stable in noise area. Due to about 6-7 good quality relays

Plus bbs can resend messages people miss if they aren’t connected

Which is why i wanted store and save to work In meshtastic!!!

[clear flare]

It does, just not on public channels 😦

[frail hedge]

I think theres an option for that

[clear flare]

nah, its not supported per documentation

[frail hedge]

But the amount it save sup to os limited

[clear flare]

It works on non-public channels

[frail hedge]

Like bbs will only save the last 50 measages

[frail hedge]

Surely that can be changed

Unless you
Mean the default store abd save

[noble jetty]

It can be changed but it's very problematic on the main channel for some reason it just causes flooding

[clear flare]

On Meshtastic? Not as a pleb user like me 😛

I build and deploy and wrangle people

[frail hedge]

It should send the messages to the person directly not repeat i. Chat

[noble jetty]

So I guess the big thing that we really need to do right now is get the building blocks ready. I need to go and put up promontory point which is probably going to be a nebra and we need to link on the same frequency. So when's Harrison going up?

What's my deadline to get SLC connected to twin through prom

[clear flare]

Aug 11/12 is current estimates

[frail hedge]

Hayden peak i think you mean if talking south treasure valley. I have no idea

[clear flare]

Pending my tower escort

[frail hedge]

Tower escort?

[noble jetty]

I'll beat that timeline probably. Once I get all my stuff I need from the hacker space from @deft copper we got a lot of routers going up

[noble jetty]

Harrison has towers that can see promontory point in utah

[clear flare]

My node location is goign up on Mt Harrison on a tower. But since its a business they have to come with

[noble jetty]

Which means we have a link

Instead of me climbing cache and going through the hard way

[frail hedge]

Hayden has a radio tower but my plan was just side of the peak hahaha

[deft copper]

Still planning on going tonight? Either way, I'll try to drop off the mount.

[frail hedge]

Because table rock hasn’t even cared about my relay there. And one watt is basically background trash to real telecommunications

So hayden peak i bet would be the same. And more so since it’s like a full days hike and ride

[noble jetty]

I will not be able to. Not getting off WFH until 730

But yeah drop it off

I'll be there for sure tomorrow

If locked hide it in that massive bush somewhere safe and tell me where

🤣 I'll pick it up

[deft copper]

I will ironically, be in Idaho tomorrow.

[noble jetty]

Lol

[zealous flower]

You may find this of interest: https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/pull/7183

Early days still, but it seems to be working quite well here (we have it deployed on nine high sites currently, on a v2.6.11 base).

[zealous flower]

You may be thinking of a different role. REPEATER will always rebroadcast, just like ROUTER does. The two key differences are:

1. REPEATER doesn't send nodeinfo etc, so you can't easily see that it exists other than observing it on the air relaying things.
2. REPEATER can optionally be set to not decode payloads. This saves a (tiny) amount of power, and reduces the security attack surface a little, in exchange for losing the ability to remote admin. Don't do this - a repeater with no remote admin capability is a really bad idea.

The roles that abort rebroadcasting if they hear another node doing it are the client ones. REPEATER, ROUTER, and ROUTER_LATE are the 'always-rebroadcast' ones.

[noble jetty]

Anything without remote admin sounds like a horrible idea with our topo

[zealous flower]

IMO it's a bad idea with any topology, because the nodes in those roles tend to be the ones that are harder to physically access.

Honestly I feel that the entire existence of the REPEATER role is a bad idea, because it is invisible (i.e. the doesn't-send-nodeinfo thing). Not being able to identify the hop confuses the hell out of people.

[clear flare]

That is dope. I'd be happy to test it out

[marsh notch]

Got my outdoor unit updated and reinstalled. Dang, thought I had LOS to Shafer, just almost:

Might be able to put a node I can reach up on Casner Mt.

...which is more than clear to Shafer

[frail hedge]

Ehh none of mine are admin. But thats to force maintenance work on them. So they can run better longer, by having me have to physically go to them and inspect and update and more

[noble jetty]

You've found you need to maintain them? Most of ours plug away just fine on mtn tops. I think our goal is to get them to 10 year maintenance cycle.. as in batteries get replaced. That's really their only wear item besides solar panels haha

Or do you mean more he physical box . The mounts. The poles

[frail hedge]

All of it, because i see it as this. If they ask you telecom equipment thats stronger and more build to survive stuff then our stuff need regular maintenance. Then it’s smart to regularly check our stuff. After all my wisblock isnt some industrial harden board meant to operate in -40c and 50+ for eternity without some care. Even industrial raspberry pies need check ups. Maintenance is essential to all things

[noble jetty]

Makes sense from that perspective. I think for me it's more about the allowable risk vs the resources spent to get there. Our problem is peak prominence.. now I went to Boise state so I know Boise well. That topo doesn't suffer from the problem as much. Where as our valley floor is 4296 ft and our peaks are all above 10k most reaching 12k some reaching 14k 😂. So naturally I'm not always up for the 8000 ft climb which often is done over a very short distance as well. A couple of my scouted locations require a lot of bushwhacking and cross country far off trail kind of hiking. It's just not something I like to interrupt my other hikes and outdoorsy stuff to have to go do. I imagine in Boise you have a lot of very fortunate topography.. where you can use the benches and north end and table rock as really good relay points. Probably some good clients in the valley mounted downtown? I don't have your map so I wouldn't know but I have some guess. I do wonder if you tagged somewhere up by bogus. Lots of convenient spots cuz you ski resorts are mostly below the tree line 🤣 and it's also convenient af to get to by car?

Just differences I'd like to point out hahah

Also some are extremely remote. Like Mary's nipple. Us boys would spend quite a bit of fuel to go deal with that

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JSCQr8UA5qWTn1Ne8

Let me see if I can go gently wake remotely that router

One moment

[frail hedge]

For Tablerock it’s pretty easy, only like mile hike up hill. Melba is a few miles hike up hill. Then pearl is sneaking through private land. Only a couple hours really for each. Melba being the longest.
But it’s a means to get out and whatever rucking is good exercise

[frail hedge]

Doesn’t seem that bad, bout same for my relay in the mountains by melba

[noble jetty]

Cold times. Must be raining on the nips

[frail hedge]

I wish i had that here

[noble jetty]

Oh God damn she's getting slammed by severe severe tstorms

Lmao

[frail hedge]

It’s i think 35c right now

Also you have yours set with the temp modules and such. I plan to mess around with those because i want to make dedicated weather nodes

[noble jetty]

It's just different. I've hiked both. A lot of Utahs mountains feel more akin to Colorado than they do Idaho at least until you reach the sawtooths.. Trinity lake.. also up in the Stanley Idaho area. Def feels more like here than there. Treasure valley was mellow.. but hot 🥵🔥

[noble jetty]

That's Jacob's mine has more data hang on

[frail hedge]

Colorado has nicer hiking i agree. Idaho is hot desert mountains. Well atleast the valley. And that sucks because the sun is just death and the hot is high

[noble jetty]

So I had to make an arch Linux reference at some point in a call sign. Yeah.. keeping with my naming scheme after space weather

😂 anyways

I use the bme688

Made a baffled plug to the outdoor air

That's insulated

Extended it with a ribbon cable hahah

You can use indoor stuff as long as you make sure it's not gonna get moist

I want to do an anemometer but they cost power

[frail hedge]

I might try conformal coating my next board. Which will be meant as my personal gps node radio for outdoors. Since that i don’t see why that would go wrong

[frail hedge]

10k mah batteries be like “i still have life in me”

[clear flare]

Harrison is getting 26ah lol. i have a personal node that has 18ah but also doubles as a battery bank

[noble jetty]

Yeah I mean I have 8x 5200 mah 21700s going in the Lowe peak node

It's powering a femtofox

I still consider every watt precious

Haha

When that peak plummets in winter.. it gets very cold

[clear flare]

soon as they drop i'm scooping up like 3

[frail hedge]

I just always give more then needed. Because better to have more power storage than less i think

[noble jetty]

I get worried. I build mine into metal boxes because I want to contain a battery explosion if someone shoots the box

Cuz you know retards

[frail hedge]

But if i could i would rock a 12v system with 20k mah. Idea being its get voltage down to the right amount so even if batteries drain, die, overheated or under heat you still have stable voltage so it never turns off

But that is completely overkill for any ground station unless on a literal cliff

[frail hedge]

I worry about overheat of the batteries on summer. Because those box get like 150

[noble jetty]

Yeah lol that's precisely why I'm 3d printing an interior enclosure that shielded and insulated from the metal box. Slipping in only 8 batteries. Surge suppressing everything that enters.

It's gonna have baffled ventilation

To keep it cooler

[frail hedge]

It’s why in the future im just using titanite batteries. Because they i don’t have to worry about like i do with lipos. Plus the cells are cheap if you buy old used electric car cells

[noble jetty]

I have like retarded amounts of LTOs in house right now fully charged in 1500 mah and 1800 mah 18650 size and 48 Toshiba SciB 20Ah cells.

🤣 recovered from waste and other items

All tested great

[frail hedge]

Only annoying thing is they are a little more work to use here. Well lipos and all that basically can just go directly to the wizblock and whatever

[noble jetty]

I mean you can always use a hammer. Buck and boost converters

It's inefficient

But it works no matter the temp for the most part

I need something more robust for Peter Sinks though. It gets to -69 F there

It's amazingly cold there

[frail hedge]

True but rather make it better first time then more expensive the second hahha

[noble jetty]

It's only above freezing for like a week in summer?

[frail hedge]

Lto should still work if im not mistaken

[noble jetty]

It will charge at 0.1c below -40C so basically I need to size for more than capacity but also adequate current flow for the device haha

Cuz the 18650s have low cap.. at 1500 mah

Those Toshiba cells though

That... Might just work with 1

But they chonky

[frail hedge]

18650 are good but same problems as lipo not very outdoorsy

But atleast they light wieght

[noble jetty]

I mean. 18650 LTOs exist. They just don't have a lot of capacity

[frail hedge]

Get a lto car cell

[noble jetty]

I have 40 apparently from testing and confirmation.. legit CATL sodium ion engineering samples

[frail hedge]

It’s like 27 amp hours

And 8 dollars like i checked

For used

[noble jetty]

Like a large car audio cylindrical 60138?

I have 6 of those

😂

25 Ah each

[frail hedge]

Ones i was looking at where boxes

[frail hedge]

Perfect

[noble jetty]

Oh prismatics?

[frail hedge]

🤷‍♂️

[noble jetty]

A rectangular cell with a metal shell is prismatic

https://jag35.com/products/clearance-lev60-74ah-lifepo4-prismatic-cells

Like those

I kinda wanna get a shit ton of those for a home made powerwall

[frail hedge]

Yelp

Surprisingly cheap

Again for used

[noble jetty]

I kinda wanna blow one up

Like I might buy a few for shenanigans

[frail hedge]

I just want lto because i want to be crazy and make a balloon satielite. Because 🤷‍♂️ why not. Faa doesnt need to know who it’s from

[noble jetty]

I know nothing. I heard nothing ...

[frail hedge]

Classic johnny tight lips

[noble jetty]

The last time an unauthorized balloon entered our air space it got shot down... Eventually

[frail hedge]

Wel a balloon is easier then a rocket. Because yes i can get thousands of of gallons of lox and liquid methane. But hard to keep that a secret

[noble jetty]

meshtastic geo 2 or 5u cube would be epic though. Also that's like 27k to ride in a falcon heavy now it's kinda insane how much the cost of a launch has dropped

Cuz you'd just be ride sharing

Not covering the entire cost of the trip

[frail hedge]

Oh ya it’s crazy, to know amateur can space launch stuff with a little funding now

[noble jetty]

I seriously will build my houses battery out of used EV batteries. I will get good BMS that monitor and communicate with an open source solution and I will use bifacial solar panels haha

Like I'll go off grid for retardedly low prices

I know a source of 5 year used solar panel stock too

So they have like 30 more years to go

[frail hedge]

You’re house i hope has good fire protection because if i see a mushroom south east coming from utah. Should i assume that was your house with all those batteries

[noble jetty]

Nah I'll be a lot smarter than that. They will go in a buried concrete vault. I'll have a small heat pump hvac manage the temperature.. that do the plan

I'm not that afraid of a battery fire. I'm really not. I will not be installing the batteries in the house. I'll just eat the extra cost of copper

[frail hedge]

That smart, because sure it’s not a real concern but… if a house battery goes off. Ummm you ain’t putting out that house fire

Unless the house had one giant lead acid battery hahahha

[noble jetty]

If you only knew how many batteries exist in my place rn. But also they are all underneath a giant bucket of sand

If they catch fire it will melt the bucket

Burying the flaming cell

[frail hedge]

Ahh a sand blanket. That’s a good idea

[noble jetty]

Yeah it's inert. It won't conduct lol and I mean you know how it feels to pound sand

[frail hedge]

Hmm my dumbass just wondered how much depleted uranium can one buy and is it enough for a breeder reactor? Because you can enrich uranium at home using a chemical process. It’s not efficient but… only need 3-5%

It’s probably a good thing im not rich hahaha

[zealous flower]

What chemical process? You're trying to separate chemically-identical isotopes of the same element. The only real difference is mass.

That is why the normal process for enrichment is centrifuges. And very high speed ones, stacked... because the differing isotopes are almost identical in mass, so it takes a lot to get any kind of useful gradient.

[frail hedge]

There was a legendary video on YouTube of one enriching some uranium and showed he did it. Was like a few hram and took over 100 dollars and days. But he did it. Though homeland security raided him and forced him to take down the video and more. He got in no trouble but did, even though all he achieved was like 0.3% to 0.5% all for the sakes of showing it’s possible just insanely impractical

[marsh notch]

Will be in the TV this eve. Will leave the node on. If you see a PINENUT node, that's probably me. 😎

[frail hedge]

I will check for the node later. Also can you share a picture of the node map before you leave. Curious how much you pick up

[marsh notch]

LOL, It's a bit sparse over here

[frail hedge]

Ya might not get many connections in that spot. But if you hit one node you should hit a lot. I guess we’ll see

[marsh notch]

So far, I'm alone on on this side. If there really is a node on Shafer, I'll find a location for a node that will connect to it.
Meanwhile, I'll collect a list on my trip to town this eve just for fun. 😁

[frail hedge]

Please do share. Curious about the connections you get. Though if there is anode there i feel i must have a high dbi antenna. So you might be outside the donut

[marsh notch]

This is the node I have ready to go:

I'll put a yagi on it and point it at Shafer one of these days

[frail hedge]

Very nice. Whenever i build another relay it probably will be almost identical. To that, but still using my pressure treated pine 2x2 beams, to raise it up 8 feet or higher.

Side know 2x2 work great because you can pack like a few on your back as 4 foot beams. And bracket them together. Easy antenna tower thats sturdy to

[noble jetty]

Schaefer not having good LOS to y'all? It should. If it's anywhere near the TV Infra but if it is.. it might need a filter if it's a bit rx blind

That's like NPR to us here in utah

Lots of tower infra on Farnsworth blinds it

[marsh notch]

I don't live in the TV. I'm on the other side of Shafer towards Idaho City (Grimes Creek). I'm in the valley now and still don't see any Shafer nodes though.

[noble jetty]

Interesting. Are y'all sure it's alive.. I know the are well if it's on Schafer and your not hearing it on either side with LOS.. might wanna go check on it?

[marsh notch]

I'm not even sure there is one up there. Someone said there was. If there isn't, that's beyond my project bandwidth. I can try to get my neighborhood connected. Shafer will probably take someone with some connections.

[frail hedge]

Never confirmed only heard there was a repeater. Though possible there was but it broke or got removed. No idea honestly

[noble jetty]

Look just post one just under the tv repeaters in the bushes with a 5dB Omni.. and a soshine solar panel

Keep it all painted green and dark

Or green brown

[frail hedge]

sounds like my one at tablerock. it's spray painted in a rough camo

[heavy pike]

Could you plant a fake metal tree in the middle of the forest?

[surreal grotto]

Use Geocaching creativity as an inspiration. 🤓

[noble jetty]

No

That's too much effort

Solar roof

Bathouse

4 21700s

Low power compact node hardware of your choice

Post it high in a tree.

Not a single person will touch a bat house

Not even a forest ranger or game warden if it looks like the rest of them

Just make sure you find a way to hide the antenna

[noble jetty]

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=B7CTV9XM

@clear flare good little hike or road trip up

I'd do it for vanity

Make it's icon

🌋

😂

Big Southern Butte lol

[clear flare]

hah That's a solid location too

I should have pictures of Mt Harrison soon. Tentatively scheduled to get it up sometime around the 16th.

For records:
Harrison Interconnect - https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=EBWRSCMQ

Picabo Hills Router - https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=NJXV2RAN

Davis Mountain Router - https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=BXF53HBW

[noble jetty]

Thanks for letting me know the lay of the land. I'll get this stored somewhere for us. I think we are gonna compile a large set of surveys for Utah in a google drive or something soon

[noble jetty]

It's also just a gorgeous view. Climbed it many times. I enjoy geology

[clear flare]

Let me know how I can help. Documentation or otherwise

[noble jetty]

It's mostly me being way too busy all of July but I'm coming into a no busy at all time so I should be able to get stuff pushed out

When we end up combining meshes or rather if . Should the links work out.. we might need Idaho portion of docs written

[clear flare]

Since I’m running Harrison amplified and it’ll be near other signals, I upgraded the filter, which ended up resulting in a bigger box. I’m still hoping to get grid power so I can put a g2 up there

[noble jetty]

We just learned this the hard way but I highly suggest you get a Alfa or Amphenol lightning arrestor for the type N

[clear flare]

Easy addition

[noble jetty]

My recommendation is also a small wago blade if you can fit it for the DC lines feeding in. Your gonna be on a tower. Should put a little care into not being the lightning rod.

I think you can get cheap generic ones for really cheap

[surreal grotto]

If you guys are interested. I will be trying to make sure I am there and will bring MT and MC devices.

[noble jetty]

So I've gotten horrendously curious.. if one wanted to connect Northern Idaho to Southern Idaho in the least amount of hops how would you do it?

Would you go around and go through hells canyon and try to wiggle your way up through the normal routes? Or would you try to cut across the massive mountain ranges in central Idaho?

[frail hedge]

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=BXF53HBW

haydon with the spots above and you basically have the entire valley from west to east all covered

and having the mesh give full coverage of the valley would be awesome

[clear flare]

I’ll probably see about putting nodes on Shaffer and Hayden for LF51. I figure Davis <-> Shaffer and Castleford <-> Hayden gives a couple of different paths through, but that’s a ways away yet. I need to finish up the Magic Valley, but I reckon that between the two extra femtofox nodes and two extra G2s I’ve got more than enough hardware to cover what I need to 😛

[frail hedge]

haydon is either offroading vehicle or 2 day backpacking. Thus you gotta really over build that node since it's not really accessible. why i haven't done it even though for a year i've wanted that spot

[clear flare]

I have a vehicle to make it happen

[frail hedge]

nice, then that gives you the option of really overkilling the node.

[marsh notch]

Shafer from my place

[noble jetty]

You look to be up 21 towards Robbie creek IIRC it's been 7 years since I've lived in Idaho

I could be wrong though

But based on the moss, the sunlight, the angle.. your behind not in the treasure valley 😂

I'll happily be wrong though haha

[marsh notch]

Correct. Grimes Creek/Clear Creek area.

[noble jetty]

Hell yeah. Memories still fresh

😆

Good luck connecting that area up reliably. Your up against some decent amount of wilderness. It's very doable but clients in the canyons and gulches would be smart.

Something we are doing in Utah is we have some nodes that can see entirely down the canyon from the top.. and then a client or two for gaps. It works well

Just sometimes messages don't get out to and from the valley cuz collisions and hidden nodes

[marsh notch]

https://tenor.com/view/dumb-and-dumber-lloyd-theres-a-chance-jim-carrey-gif-11098164

[noble jetty]

Oh there absolutely is . And seeing as you know the area I would start to look at the topography of the canyon and find the spots that you can consistently see as you wind through it. Start at the bottom and top.. take a drive. Look around..

As for a strategic client or two.. make a bat house node and fasten it to a tree or two

Your surrounded by evergreens

😆 that's how I'd do it

Solar roof powered bat house nodes are cool

[marsh notch]

I've got access to enough private property for several clients and and a couple mountain tops. The mountain tops might get bat boxes. I really like that idea!

[noble jetty]

@pine tapir has the scoop on that in connect US-Utah. He was the one who first showed me. He's got a cool paint job on his .. he might have pictures

[pine tapir]

Here's a stealth node I made for a bird house to go along a very popular hiking/biking trail

[frail hedge]

What are you that geo guesser guy?

[noble jetty]

Nah your just in my old college stomping ground is all 😂

I was also very outdoorsy so I touched most areas

[frail hedge]

Ohhhh,, i like this idea. Turn node in bird houses. But i would want mine to shelter crows because cawwww

[frail hedge]

You touched the areas. Did.. did you buy the land dinner first

[noble jetty]

It's the local birds that you really desire. Something that fits in naturally with what people expect

[noble jetty]

I was firm but gentle

😆

[frail hedge]

Ya but.. come on crows man CROWS!!! 🐦‍⬛

[noble jetty]

As long as it ain't magpies it's chill

[frail hedge]

Also wonder if we can train crows in node repair hahahah

[cold widget]

Random, but anyone here familiar with be1b? Hitting them from Central Oregon.

[noble jetty]

I've hit it on our mtn tops

I think it's in Wyoming

Is there a US WY channel for connect

It seems to be in the tetons

It does not seem to be a pilot

I'm in Utah btw

S Idaho and Utah might be the same mesh soon

[cold widget]

Good to know. Wild to hit 500 miles on 3 hops. Was curious to know.

[noble jetty]

There are likely nodes in between not showing on the map (repeater mode)

[alpine crescent]

Hey, if a node goes up there, I've got a buddy in Preston who I'm sure would help get something up onto Oxford Peak, theoretically giving visibility to a good chunk of Cache Valley. (I'm saying this with absolutely no idea what that connection may already look like...)

[noble jetty]

We are close.. I think @clear flare is working on Harrison
If you'd like to see our current coverage on frequency slot 51 in utah
#1197577977781821541 message

Once I put promontory point up. We should see Idaho, cache, Harrison, oxford etc

If your on 51

[clear flare]

I'm going to get a preliminary placement this weekend and adjust as needed.

[noble jetty]

Sweet. After the 15th I should be able to make the hike and go out ours up. I'm debating doing it twice. Take a pole up. Get it sturdy. Go home.. next week later.. go put it up

[clear flare]

I'm going up and putting it up without tower access because scheduling to go up together with the guy has been tough. For now I'm just going to get it up and somewhere that it can operate and then make a second trip up to move it to the tower. I don't mind going multiple times, but I feel like I can't move forward with other things until its done lmao

[noble jetty]

I recommend a 8.5 dB rokland antenna

And a lightning arrestor ahha

[clear flare]

Already have it 😄

[noble jetty]

Noice

[clear flare]

And that

[noble jetty]

Imma put a 10 dB on prom point

Should work stupendously well

[clear flare]

actually., i have an 8.5 nebra, the 8 rokland, and a 10 rokland

I'm thinking that the 10db rokland is gonna go up on Picabo, with a G2 and an acasom filter since I should have grid power

the 8 rokland is gonna go on harrison - that's an amped rak with an acasom

The 8.5 nebra is gonna go up to Davis Mountain with another amped rak

[noble jetty]

8 rokland is the better antenna

Lowest VSWR

[clear flare]

noted. maybe I'll grab a couple more specifically for peak nodes

I have three femtofoxes that I'm going to replace Indian Springs, the Twin Falls hackerspace, and my own house with. That'll reclaim a rak and 2 G2s to try to put up at places where I can get that grid power from verizon towers

[pine tapir]

Won't that be too flat?

[noble jetty]

Probably not. 14 degrees at about 5 to 7 miles will reach the valley floor

You'll just have a larger dead donut around the peak

For example. My 10 dB on the ground can hit Francis peak from ground level 4 miles from the peak

And that's a 10000 ft placement and I'm at ~5200

The issue is when you get too close like if your going up the slopes you won't see it at all

[clear flare]

Thats when you just bounce out to another router 😛

[noble jetty]

Actually the easiest way to try and visualize this in your head.. is think about road slopes and how you might have an 8% grade or a 16% grade or whatever.. that is roughly the angle you're talking about with an antenna. So as long as you're not going up a particularly steep slope around the mountain, you should still hear it

I think the High Gain being an issue is well. Overplayed because we lack that data in our surveys to demonstrate that it's not as much of an issue

Down in the case of an urban center directly below the mountain like here at Nelson Peak.. you might have issues

So from the center of a dipole imagine a 14% grade road as straight as you can get it down to the valley floor .. draw a 360 donut at that radius. That is your dead zone

@pine tapir @paper crag

[paper crag]

Howdy

[noble jetty]

Just informing people of helpful info with gain. I don't think we should be concerned with high gain ..we.. all just need to consider the site and what it needs to see and do the due diligence above to get a rough idea

[heavy pike]

Added a solar node to the top of the western Idaho fair roof.

[clear flare]

The Magic Valley's current and planned router's viewsheds on Freq51 #1197577977781821541 message

[frail hedge]

Ohh cool. I might help out once im back in country. Though anyone know if my tvm nodes are still active? I haven't checked in a few weeks because preparing for this trip and getting married

[clear flare]

Oh congrats!

[alpine crescent]

Tvm in my node list this morning

[frail hedge]

Is tvm hq alive. Before i left i tried connecting by Bluetooth and got nothing. But i assumed just bad connection because i couldn't be bother to go outside the house

[alpine crescent]

Looks like HQ might be down. Last heard was 24 days ago.

[frail hedge]

Thats still better then over a week

I bet if you ping it, it will respond

[alpine crescent]

No luck, unfortunately. I've also got a newer node that went up about a week ago and it hasn't picked up HQ at all.

[frail hedge]

All good, thanks for trying. Appreciate it

[noble jetty]

@clear flare Mag has FPR put together. FPR 5.0 will be going up soon

Let's just hope this doesn't happen

[clear flare]

I got him the config info, but if he needs more clarity we can work through it

I’m going to attempt the last two infrastructure nodes for southern Idaho this or next weekend. Davis Mountain and Picabo. Have to schedule Picabo cause grid power off the VZW tower woo

I have a 10 db antenna I’m gonna put on a G2 for that one and then DMR is getting a femtofox. Batteries should be here Wednesday

What’s the word on Prom Point?

[noble jetty]

Currently delayed until we sort our valley problems. Right now FPR is probably going to go up this weekend. Then I'm going to try to work with my buddy to get Olympus up. I'm pretty sure somebody else is working on Farnsworth. And then I will be working on promontory. I still haven't assessed if I'm even able to get to the area I need to hike up. There's a lot of private land out there. And I'm still digging through box elder county maps

What's the status on Danskin?

I'd love to know when I'd be able to talk to Mountain home once we connect up with fpr

It's nice that you have a peak you could have driven to. A lot of ours are remote and without trails

But assuming fpr can see router, we might not even need promontory Point. It will just be a bonus

@obtuse quiver get with malice on a site survey (hey what's that) on his Harrison router. When you put FPR up if your not putting it on a tower... Make sure you have line of sight and can see harrison

If I put up promontory point that will me two redundant links ideally

You know in case one gets zeused

AGAIN

😆

[clear flare]

Redundancy! haha.

I'm fairly confident that MHR won't be the primary target in any strike

there are loads of taller metal structures around it and its' grounded to the building

[noble jetty]

I am fairly confident fpr would face such a thing. Honestly it might be more worth it to make a secondary pipe next to the main tower there. And have it constructed so that it's not the highest thing around

Promontory Point unfortunately will face being the highest thing around on the highest peak with a giant metal pole so it's more likely to get struck. That's why I'm probably going to go with a nebra and surge suppress everything on it. The big metal case should shield it

Historical data suggests it loves lightning

😜

The other peak I'd love us to get before winter but is unlikely is Allen peak. It's got a stupendous view. It can see mt Logan and I know @shadow fable has a friend in Logan he'd love to be able to connect to so being able to get Allen peak and then mt Logan would be great for our expansion plans to cover all the major metro areas in Utah which would only serve to expand our combined mesh.

I'm fairly certain however a move to at least medium fast would be required. I'd be willing to test short fast and short slow. Too but I'm taking it a day at a time and moving as quickly as I can with school.

[clear flare]

I could 100% get a trailcam node up in that tree. It's only a 40 mile hop from DMR. I'm planning on a long weekend of offroading and deploying Picabo, DMR, and I'll try to sneak in Danskin. I don't know that Danksin needs an amp, but Picabo and DMR are getting a G2 and a Femtofox

DMR -> MHR is going to be like 71 miles lol

[noble jetty]

No worries. Good luck moving! Let him know we welcome him to our discord and we can also coordinate with him if he wants to squeeze in this before the November deep snow arrives at the peaks.

[clear flare]

I'll need some pretty good notice to test anything to MHR it's like an hour and half to the base and then probably 30min offroad drive up to the site since I can't remote access it

[obtuse quiver]

Im going to put it in the same spot the old one was. I don't really feel like hiking with a post, bag of concrete, and enough water to cure it!

Oh, that's a good point.

[clear flare]

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=QPLB7XTC

This is MHR's LOS profile

Here is what it can see of Francis Peak

I don't recall where the FPR4.0 was

[obtuse quiver]

Hmm, I'm not opposed to moving to the red blob. Do you think it would be visible from the road?

[noble jetty]

The big thing if you don't go on the tower is you need to drag a solid pole up.. and embed it like a mother fucker. There's a lot of side by sides up there and people are assholes 🤣

[clear flare]

Looks like the FRP coords are right on the edge of visibility depending on how tall it is. MHR is about 20ft AGL

[obtuse quiver]

Yeah, that's the hard part. I don't have a UTV or anything like that.

[noble jetty]

Do you have a car?

I can drive a focus all the way to Francis. The gate is open. That will get you 90% of the way

[obtuse quiver]

I drive a stock Suburban, so I should get fine 90% of the way too.

A 20 foot post might be a bit much to drag up depending on how much it weighs. 😂

[clear flare]

Alternaive spot if an option?
https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=U1NCF3RX

I don't know those mountains at all, but it looks much more clear of LOS than the shack

at least to MHR

[noble jetty]

What have you decided to do. Your gonna want to have everything gathered together to make the jaunt and honestly I'd do it in the extra extra early morning hours being at the peaks just before dawns first light. You can get most of the way under cover of darkness. Just remember if it's not on the tower it will gather FAR more attention

I'd do it on a week day but IDK your PTO situation

[obtuse quiver]

Planning on early morning Thursday or Friday. I'd like to get LOS to the other repeater so I'll do some scouting when I'm up there. My buddy has a flagpole he'll give me and I'll throw a shovel and pick in the back of the truck. Or maybe there will be a decent tree, I dunno. I'll see how it looks but if I can't find an accessible spot away from prying eyes I'll put it on the shack.

[noble jetty]

I would bet on the main tower being your primary Mount and your backup. But yes, if you want to do some scouting just make sure you print the map of everywhere you have line of sight to Harrison.. that way you can go see if it's actually going to be a good location. One thing I would suggest is trying to be off trail and as close to the peaks as possible. Just because hay what's that says it can't see that Peak doesn't actually mean it's true. The map and the red blotch are a bit offset.

You can generally trust it north to south but east to west on the Ridgeline the higher you are the better

[clear flare]

Would it help for me to grab a screenshot of the MHR contact QR code to preload for trace routing?

I don’t know how well that actually works

[obtuse quiver]

Sure, couldn't hurt to try.

[clear flare]

Its in your DMs

[clear flare]

Danskin lookout tree node is ready. Davis mountain Femtofox is going to be ready to go by Friday and Picabo’s G2 should be assembled (it should be the easiest as it gets grid powered). I’m also going to try to get up to ISR tomorrow or Thursday to replace.

If time permits, I want move the old ISR trail am up to the Big Southern Butte

If ALL that can happen, southern Idaho will have all the high elevation infrastructure it needs and there with be ingress into Boise and East Idaho

Regionally, I’m trying to keep the areas to 3-4 high elevation routers.

And the dot the buttes with clients or router_lates as needed

Lots of work to do lmao.

Though, with grid power I’m wondering if I ought to just run the Raspi node on Picabo. It’s 1w and would be easy to setup with BBS

[noble jetty]

Hell yeah man let me know when. I'll get my parents nodes when Danskin is there.

FPR going up tomorrow or friday

I'm building prom this weekend

[deft copper]

I would put a Nebra anywhere you have power. Can't beat them for the price.

[clear flare]

If you have one you want to ship me 😄 I’m currently solo sourcing all of Idaho for freq51

So I’m using the stuff I already have, but at the very least they aren’t Heltec v3s LOL

It’ll all be filtered across the board except Indian Springs, but that one is an amped rak

[deft copper]

Do you already have a hat you could use for it? I would consider donating one of mine, but it might be a while before I have a hat for it.

[clear flare]

I don’t unless I could somehow repurpose a meshadvpihat or mini

[deft copper]

It is not impossible.
#1367293403867516979 message
I would probably wait until we have another batch of Nebra hats, but I have no clue how far out that is. It could be a month or two.

[clear flare]

Could be a spring upgrade, which I wouldn’t be opposed to

[noble jetty]

Talk to @pine tapir he might have some hats. As for Nebras.. he's managed to land deals on them. I'd ask him

[pine tapir]

@clear flare what device did you put on Mount harrison?

[clear flare]

A femtofox. MHR has no grid power

A few traceroutes around the magic valley from the updated Indian Springs node

[pine tapir]

awesome. we're worknig on fpr right now.

*francis peak

[clear flare]

Awesome! From my front porch!

Unfortunately, I may have neutered Idaho and cut off East from West lol

[clear flare]

Hollar if there are questions about BBS configs

BBS is live 😄

[pine tapir]

@clear flare Indian Springs Router v2

is that one of yours?

[deft copper]

I see it too. Did new FPR hop to ID?

│ 5 │ Indian Springs Router v2 │ !9cac1cd6 │ ISR │ RAK4631 │ cVTVj2yDMfAk9B+z1ww7eWyLv6zFf5w6ZO3s6bjwaWI= │ ROUTER │ N/A │ N/A │ N/A │ 100%
│ 6.08% │ 3.17% │ -7 dB │ 3 │ 0 │ 2025-09-27 16:32:55 │ 2 mins ago │

[pine tapir]

I just got a message "Hello from Twin Falls"

only 4 hops away

[clear flare]

Yeah amped rack

From one person down there

Is FPR 0d8d?

[deft copper]

Yes

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

[noble jetty]

Holy shit

#use-cases message

Well I bragged for us

[obtuse quiver]

I'm so happy that we made this happen. I didn't even know Meshtastic existed two months ago and now here we are!

[clear flare]

Super exciting. Especially with all the naysayers in some spaces up here. (“Mount Harrison will attenuate too much it won’t be worth doing”)

[noble jetty]

Well the best way to deal with naysayers is to just do it and prove them otherwise.

😂

But hey what an achievement. Let's build on it. Let's get this BBS link working before the winter

I'm going to go get Olympus router up here soon and I'm going to still try and put promontory up

I just need two or three good men for that one

[alpine crescent]

Great work, guys!!

Are we thinking of switching the TVM routers to 51 at some point as well? What locations would still be needed to make that work?

[clear flare]

I floated it, but was told the TVM folks preferred to stay on the default channels. We just tested MediumFast and ShortFast connections from UT to ID and had some pretty impressive successes.

I’d love to see the TVM collaborate!

[clear flare]

If you wanna read through what we did our convo started here tonight: #1197577977781821541 message

[obtuse quiver]

Why do they want to stay in default, it would be so cool if they switched. 😭

[clear flare]

So that new folks can find them is what I was led to believe. That being said, there's nothing stopping @alpine crescent and @frail hedge from doing some freq51 routers along side. They can coexist 😂

[alpine crescent]

That was actually really exciting to read through! 🤓 😆

[clear flare]

It was very exciting! Lots of big leaps the last couple of weeks

[alpine crescent]

Kinda what I was thinking. I'd have to get some education on more serious node construction though. I've just got a Rak in a harbor breeze solar panel on my roof haha

[clear flare]

Oh boy are you in the right place for that! Lol

[willow raft]

(oh no, multiple essays incoming)

[obtuse quiver]

It's dead easy, my friend! I didn't know anything until I did it.

[noble jetty]

We welcome everyone to switch to 51 yes. I think MF51 will be overall the chosen mode but we are doing an SF tonight

@obtuse quiver FPR showed up but won't respond 😭

Did we some how make it crash rofl

[obtuse quiver]

Nevermind, I spoke too soon. 😅

[noble jetty]

https://tenor.com/view/oops-gif-10031223162004539162

[obtuse quiver]

Can you force MeshtasticD to reboot?

[noble jetty]

I can try but I'd have to go get closer with my car real quick but I don't know if you left that nodes stuff in it

It's literally not even showing up SNR wise

Does it sleep when it doesn't hear radios for a while

[obtuse quiver]

No, I didn't configure it to do that. Let me check out the Foxbuntu docs.

[noble jetty]

Can I send a command

Via text message

I'm getting acks in its DMs

[obtuse quiver]

It sent Node info while I was driving home, so it must be thinking at least.

[noble jetty]

@clear flare @willow raft can you smack it from the north?

[willow raft]

I'm not getting anything ATM

Been poking it for a while

[noble jetty]

Well fuck

Donkey Balls

Cock munch 😭

[clear flare]

How about MHR?

[noble jetty]

Waiting for its node info

[willow raft]

I haven't gotten its node info yet :/

ISR just showed up a few minutes ago

[noble jetty]

Yeah maybe we just let it all sort itself out overnight huh?

See what's up in the morning

Like ultimately short fast might be just on the edge of what we can do. So medium fast might be legit. I mean it's 3 to 4 kbps per second shared

That's already triple what we got. I think that's an acceptable compromise if short fast isn't working in the morning

[clear flare]

Might be a good idea. I’m mildly concerned that I wasn’t getting meshing-around responses from MHR earlier

[noble jetty]

That MF51 test though...

God seeing our message and trace routes

That was epic

130! Miles

[clear flare]

It’s wild hahah

[willow raft]

Same here, does Femtofox do a full reboot when triggered over the mesh, or is it just the Meshtastic service?

[clear flare]

Just the meahtasticd service. I’m wondering if the reboot caused the meshing around service to not** reconnect

[noble jetty]

Oh that could have been it. We did Force a reboot before

[obtuse quiver]

Maybe I should go up and add a chrontab to have the machine reboot every day.

[noble jetty]

Please do

That's a very solid safety

[willow raft]

IDK what init system they're using, but it should be possible to modify the unit file to ensure that the meshing around service always restarts

[frail hedge]

ya i personally want to switch over to mediumfast, but as locals pointed out that could leads to breaking the mesh without having people properly informed.

But i think it's better to have better signal ability and quality. thus medium or short is more ideal. since long works but it's just bad at signal speed and data

[clear flare]

Probably. I’m nearly Linux illiterate tho lmao. I’ll bring you up there with a ladder and a long ass usb cable and we can do that.

[noble jetty]

If you switch all of your infrastructure nodes over to medium fast 51, the only thing that's going to break is people who don't listen

😂

[willow raft]

lmao

[obtuse quiver]

I was learning it as I went, but I think I set up systemctl correctly. 🤔

[noble jetty]

I mean it might be worth a trip up to get everything finalized and get your BBS config in there too

I would get everything going and make it failure resistant on your next trip. And hey we learned something and you can back up all the configs so we can replicate that across the network

Most of all, we learned that short fast does work when the router is on and not crashed

But medium fast might be a good safety in terms of range and speed trade-off

[clear flare]

I’ll just drag @willow raft up with me, climb a ladder from the roof and then drop a long USB cable down to you haha

[noble jetty]

Based

[clear flare]

I suppose that’s the perk of me, @willow raft and @unique spear owning alls the infrastructure in southern Idaho LOL

[frail hedge]

ya i know. but need to way to keep people on the old system updated as well. since you can miss messages

[noble jetty]

Yeah, one thing that we're going to do is we're going to give two week notice so we're going to be sending out a daily notice that says hey we're switching. This is the next configuration. This is when it's expected to happen

And we're getting it out on all channels including the internet community so that nobody is left uninformed unless they really did try

[obtuse quiver]

I kinda just want to buy another enclosure, build out another grid and just hot swap the guts.

[noble jetty]

You want to build an fpr V6

Can we put V5 on Allen Peak?

😜

[willow raft]

I suppose I have one of the Luckfox boards that the Femtofox uses, so I could tinker with it there

[clear flare]

Might not be a bad idea to have a v7 ready to go as well redundancy lol

[obtuse quiver]

I still have V4, it's a very nice node.

[noble jetty]

See now you're just tempting Zeus

[noble jetty]

Yeah I bet you could actually put that on Allen Peak if you could get in contact with those people

If it's a very nice node, you might as well and it's all functional and apparently didn't get zapped it just dealt with Murphy's law

😆

[obtuse quiver]

Needs a more robust solar panel mount, but yeah. 😂

[frail hedge]

ya thats what i would do. just default frew, set to mediumfast. short fast not yet because need to make sure mediumfast can work

[noble jetty]

😆 in defense of Batman he was in a hurry

The prior one literally did get zapped right off the mountain

🤣

[frail hedge]

what you mean zapped off the mountain. lightening?

[noble jetty]

We pretty much figured out short fast can work over 130 mi. So if you can't make it work in the city you have other issues and you have to do what we're doing which is to nail down where the source of interference is coming from and how to fill in the gaps.

We're probably going to go to medium fast 51

[noble jetty]

Yes

[obtuse quiver]

His rush job puts my earnest best job to shame. 😭

[frail hedge]

i thought shortfast struggled beyond like 10 miles

[noble jetty]

No, we even have other meshes as examples who got over 254 km on a link

That's in california

[frail hedge]

then why you using mediumfast?

[noble jetty]

Well, here's the one caveat that assumes we don't get a massive snowstorm in between us. You see what I'm worried about is while it works on a clear day like it did today perfectly clear. What happens when we get a massive winter or summer storm

Medium fast might be more reliable and incremental steps might be smarter

And winter is coming

[frail hedge]

ahhh. so all about that los again. but with smoke alarm logic. anything in air means AHHHHH

[mellow girder]

https://tenor.com/view/got-game-of-thrones-winter-is-coming-nikolaj-coster-waldau-gif-4536538

[noble jetty]

Well it can mean that or it could actually get better. You see the thing is humidity can do strange things. It's just like with radars where you get something called ducting. Now I have to be careful what I speak because I know exactly how the military gets over this. But the bottom line is you can actually get a channel that forms between the bouncing of different humidity level layers

So one of the interesting things is you can end up seeing something in a spot where it's not actually there and the same thing for communications where you can end up communicating over a much longer range than traditional when you have the right conditions

[noble jetty]

Admittedly, this is a Utah problem more than a Idaho problem seeing as some of our ski resorts got almost 1,000 inches two seasons ago

[frail hedge]

similar to bouncing off atomo for ham radars?

[noble jetty]

Sort of similar except this is going to be a tropospheric phenomenon more than a ionospheric

[frail hedge]

ahh, dam planet always getting in the way. first my childhole to china now this

[noble jetty]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_duct?wprov=sfla1

[frail hedge]

oh tropo not topo

hahhaa

[noble jetty]

So what's interesting is snow? Is the phenomenon, snow and ice that creates it in the troposphere. So a snowstorm can often increase your range where a rainstorm can decrease it

Or you can end up just losing the link all together

So that's kind of why I'm thinking you know medium fast might be the smartest joint decision on 51

And then we go from there

[mellow girder]

https://tenor.com/view/frequency-dennis-quaid-gregory-hoblit-scifi-aurora-borealis-gif-23031203

or if you have the northern lights. you can talk to the past.

😉

[clear flare]

I use a ouija board for that

[frail hedge]

i use the bones

i also use the bones to figures out what management thinks

[noble jetty]

I wish I could see the Northern lights every night

[mellow girder]

tru dat.

[clear flare]

@alpine crescent lemme know if you want to get something up somewhere I’m more down down to see if I can help you figure out something 😄

[frail hedge]

i just want to see the night sky... i need to fine a dark area i can reach

annoying how basically the entire valley is too bright

[clear flare]

I got a node on Danskin, but I’m wondering if Bennet mountain south would be better

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=XNTJ8LDX

it would have visibility of more routers in southern Idaho for redundant links instead of relying on a small window to Davis

[noble jetty]

The problem is it's a private road all the way up. You have to ask permission to go

And all of its private land

Dan skin is likely the best option but if you can get a RL or Client on Bennett that would be awesome

[frail hedge]

yes.. um private land.. yes we all ask for premisison. cough cough

[noble jetty]

Dude I have a close one for you. I used to live in Mountain home. My parents are still there if you go out to the wind farm on the old Oregon trail road

It's extremely dark

[noble jetty]

I wouldn't fuck around up there. I've seen the guy's house. He'll know you're coming for miles

And he will see you go all the way up

I've heard he allows people to go up there, but I would definitely ask permission first. He's one of those booney gun nuts out by camas

[frail hedge]

i looked at a dark map, and as of now the entire valley has some light pollution. it's only once you go north or south into the mountains where man doesn't exist and the skinwalkers do does it get actaul dark

[noble jetty]

I mean some isn't all that bad. It's probably better than Boise. I'm going to tell you that

[frail hedge]

ah ya lived private land. ya ask for premisison. but empty that wned by bankers.... who would know

[noble jetty]

I've taken a lot of astrophotography out there

Oh if you really wanted to be dark, you could go by the Bruneau Dunes

[noble jetty]

Yeah he lives on it and he has a house perched up where he can see all of his land at all times. It's a cool house. It's definitely this huge cabin. Definitely a wealthy dude and I'm sure if you asked for permission and you told him what it was about he would probably be open to it but I would still ask just because it's lived.. there's a domicile on it

It's basically the same thing. I told Malice about Danskin Peak and the lookout. I told him there's people in it that man it until about the end of October and he went up there and sure enough there were people there and they let him install it after he social engineered his way

[frail hedge]

ya thats different because up near pearl where my north node is. it's all banker owned land and they can't even contacted. but they also don't fence thigns off

[clear flare]

The marked spot is actually BLM land and there are apparently BLM right of way roads all the way there. At least according to onX.

Definitely doesn’t mean to not be careful and take precautions lol especially if he’s as crazy as you say

[noble jetty]

I don't think he's crazy. I think he's just very conscious of people coming near his land. I know he monitors it. He's apparently friendly like that's what I've always heard. It's just he asks a lot of questions

😂

But yeah if you want to go put another router up there no sense in not doing so. Having both Danskin and Bennett would just improve your mesh

I mean I can think of the long line right there. Bennett Danskin Schaefer

Now if some madman wanted to go tag the trinities that would be funny as hell. Get that mesh out to redfish Lake 🤣

[alpine crescent]

Yeah I'd love to do what I can and would appreciate the help! We probably only need one, maybe two solid nodes to reach yours down past Twin.

Life's a little crazy the next couple weeks, but I can do some mapping out.

[clear flare]

Awesome! Are you familiar with https://www.heywhatsthat.com/ trying to find good spots?

[alpine crescent]

Yup, I've definitely played around in there a bit! Where exactly is your ISR node?

[clear flare]

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=BQ73HE9X

Sometime soon, Davis Mountain will be going up

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=A94BC9TW

[alpine crescent]

Sweet, I can work with that 😎

[clear flare]

and here is Mount Harrison (MHR)
https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=B6HIRX43

aaaand current Danskin Peak:
https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=MTX6FTFP

Danksin is currently isolated though because Davis Mountain isn't up.

[willow raft]

Danskin is redheaded stepchild until it gets moved

[clear flare]

Or supplemented 😄

[willow raft]

Indeed

Wish we could test where it’s actually hitting without spending a whole day on it

If anyone’s in the mountain home area we’d love your help :)

[clear flare]

We'll get to it. I'm honestly less concerned about that or Davis than I am about MHR at this point. Were you able to get to it at all yesterday?

or this morning

I have to leave my house to get to ISR lol

and been working

[willow raft]

Nothing on MHR as of yet. I’m definitely hearing it from home, just not getting out to it

Should be able to go back to where I was last night

[clear flare]

So you're getting nodeinfo, but can't trace it or dm it?

[willow raft]

Yeah

4 hours ago roughly correlates to when I left for work

[clear flare]

Ok, well we'll change it back to LF51 I'm thinking tonight. I'll swap ISR back as soon as I can, maybe that'll revive it

[willow raft]

Hopefully

[noble jetty]

Supplement don't move

You can always make it a client or RL

More nodes = more coverage

[noble jetty]

Yeah switch back to LF

We are stuck

We got your node info and your messages

[willow raft]

It's not in a great position on top of Danskin is what I meant

[noble jetty]

It's all we needed to know

[noble jetty]

We did a hey what's that of it. It seemed extra good

I need something to hit mtn home well

[clear flare]

We will get it. I think that Bennett Mt South is a good one for it. Just see if I can get in touch with that guy

Danskin can reach it too, so more is better there

I’m curious about the other direction that Danskin can see

I’ll plant the other trailcam node I have there as soon as MHR is stable again

[alpine crescent]

Poking around in some free time today, it looks like Lucky Peak might be an accessible start for access to the Treasure Valley with LOS to Danskin.

[alpine crescent]

I also looked at Bennett, which looks like it would have decent LOS to both Lucky Peak and ISR.

[clear flare]

luck peak does look nice. There's a tower on it already. Have any idea who is there?

[marsh notch]

Probably not immensely helpful, but I can confirm that there are some fire/leo repeaters on both lucky peak and shaw.

[clear flare]

Good info to have tho. How much snow/how accessible is Lucky Peak through the winter?

[marsh notch]

Been a decade or two since I've been there, but it's southern exposure, so probably year-round access. Not sure if that's road access though. Might be gated, but can't say for sure.

[alpine crescent]

I might plan on going on a drive up there in the next week or two to see what road access looks like. I think they close off the road to the public at some point in the winter, but I wonder what kind of contact point I can find for the area to get more consistent access.

[marsh notch]

It's the Boise River WMA, so Fish & Game.
idfg.idaho.gov/visit/wma/boise-river has access maps.

[frail hedge]

Ya i wont be able to do much now, besides change relays to mediumfast and such. Because im now broke. Aince just found out i don't get pto after i just had a 2 week vacation to get married which cost more the planned.
So ya.. im just able to hand my relays over or set them to another setting. Because i got no to spend now

[clear flare]

that's rough. but congrats at least on part of that

[frail hedge]

Finally win at getting the girl. But universe says "no no no, you can't just win without damages" fml

[alpine crescent]

Looks like they close motorized access from Nov 15 to May 1.

They also have a non-commercial special use request form on the site that I can submit to try and get authorization to place a permanent antenna.

[clear flare]

On that tower that’s up there? That would be cool, especially if you can get grid power

[willow raft]

I FINALLY got Harrison updated with my new keys

and working

the working part was the annoying bit

[noble jetty]

So

We aren't getting your node info yet

But your getting ours?

[clear flare]

We are yeah. I saw your message earlier too

[noble jetty]

Could you send a message or two?

And then DM my node and let's see if we can get some node info over there and back

[clear flare]

Max retransmit reached DMing C6U

Sent a couple out to LongFast

[noble jetty]

RIP CITY

Nothing on longfast for me yet

Longfast might just be saturated on that link. I guess I'll give it a window of 36 hours

But medium fast will fix that problem

[clear flare]

I think so

MHR quieted down a bit an hour ago

But I can get to MHR

Well, I can trace it at least

Lemme grab a different node

Still nada :/

I don’t understand why I can trace MHR with 1 hop but can’t get FPR to trace. Or anything else

I’m assuming that it’s calmed down some. Last I saw from an hour ago MHR was at like 22% chutil

[noble jetty]

We were doing really well when we had medium fast

It's the link that's congested

Think about it. None of your nodes can see our end when they immediately transmit. None of ours can see your end.. there could be a lot of collisions

[clear flare]

That makes sense.

Suppose we may just have to hang tight until MF. Things seem to be ok on this side of things. Would a second pair of routers help I wonder? Alternatively, given our size, we could move to MF early and just hang tight till you guys move over. Assuming that happens sooner than later

[noble jetty]

what might help are more redundant links

to various entry points yeah

helpers in between like at Black Pine Peak

[willow raft]

BYI is on LF51 without a doubt :/

Really wish it wasn’t a router as it screws up propagation really bad in Burley

CLIENT_BASE should hopefully help mitigate this though

[clear flare]

Maybe, but it has the potential to negatively impact everything else too.

I found the email from the guy I suspect owns it. Do you want to email him? 😄

[willow raft]

I am kinda thinking it's at this antenna site if its GPS coords are even remotely accurate
https://maps.app.goo.gl/hWfLGoHdDGHQcMFt6

And honestly it's a decent spot, can see Harrison and Kimama, looks like maybe even Indian Springs too

https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=WKA6SH77

It'd be an actually useful ROUTER_LATE

but ROUTER just screws stuff up

[willow raft]

I'd like to get a node on Black Pine Peak at some point anyway to give that empty ass strip of interstate around the Idaho-Utah border some coverage
https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=SW8HT6AJ

[clear flare]

Please do 😄

That hike is a bit beyond what I'm capable of this year lol

But if you wanted to take your brother and make him pack stuff 😄 😄 😄

[willow raft]

Might be the same here honestly

idk what the route looks like

[clear flare]

Alternatively, https://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=MDBEX451

This is a VZW tower we could hook on to

and it's got LOS to NPR at 136 miles

so maaaybe with a well built G2?

Might try to use the G2 build I was going to put at Picabo for this instead

Then this could pipe back to Kimama too

[willow raft]

When I figure out why it's not connecting to anything

I'll have to head up there this weekend

[clear flare]

Though, I don't know what kind of impact, if any the lake would have on attenuation

[willow raft]

Which lake?

[clear flare]

Salt Lake 😛

[willow raft]

Ahh

that is the lake indeed

[clear flare]

It's not as good as Black Pine Peak for sure tho

[willow raft]

I need to make a list off all these heywhatsthats so I don't have to keep making new ones

[willow raft]

It'd seemingly do a lot more for connecting up Eastern Idaho than BPP

Maybe not, both are pretty solid

[clear flare]

Yeah, but we need Kimama to do some more heavy lifting here 😛

[willow raft]

BPP does hit Kimama too by the looks of things

[clear flare]

If we can get NPR <-> Cotteral/BPP <-> Kimama that should ease the link on MHR <-> FPR

[willow raft]

Indeed

It honestly looks like BPP might see multiple of the SLC routers, but I'm not sure where they are all at

[clear flare]

freq51.net has them

[willow raft]

Shiny!

Yeah, pretty sure it could

Assuming they have the link budget over those distances

Kimama will definitely be my project for Saturday, will probably throw a new antenna up while I'm there (assuming it's still in working condition)

if it's not in working condition I'll swap it to my backup Kimama

[clear flare]

I think I'm gonna reach out to my VZW contact and break apart my current roof node to prepare Cotteral. By the time I'm healed and conditioned enough to attempt something like BPP I'll likely be travelling a ton for work

So I think goals before the end of the year is gonna be Cotterel, Davis, and Bennet Mtn South

[willow raft]

Hmmmm https://www.amazon.com/Hexa-Boost-Antenna-Outdoor-Omni-Direction/dp/B0953Z1QF3

SWR is actually amazing per this review

[clear flare]

https://store.rokland.com/products/8-dbi-omni-outdoor-915mhz-fiberglass-antenna-for-lora-halow-application

This is what’s on MHR

[willow raft]

I do like that one also

[mellow girder]

Hey, when you guys are ready we can PR up the ID routers too https://github.com/801labs/freq51 thats the https://github.com/801labs/freq51/blob/main/src/infrastructure.md page

@willow raft

[willow raft]

I will try to get that done started today

@clear flare when you get a sec can you send me the coords for Harrison, ISR, and Danskin? IDK if I can get the exact coords from their nodeinfo

[mellow girder]

No rush, just letting you know its there

[willow raft]

I wanna have it for a single-source of truth tho :)

[clear flare]

Lets only get live infrastructure up there we can do more PRs as they go up. I'll get the images for it.

[clear flare]

This is MHR’s map

If you need to split that in east/west to make it fit you can

KBS

ISR

[willow raft]

Opened up a draft PR for now

https://github.com/801labs/freq51/pull/16

[noble jetty]

Honestly I love that area.

Please do

Try a bird house node

https://www.printables.com/model/890830-meshtastic-birdhouse-node

It will blend nicely

Even at a peak

Especially since that one is forested

My suggestion is modify this design. Make the back thicker.. have a slot for a vertical Alfa antenna. Run the cable in the wood.. and have it all mounted embedded in the rear so you don't need an antenna sticking up

Wouldn't be too hard to cad up

@clear flare

This is how you can get more discrete with lower gain antennas

It's how I would cover your wilderness areas

[clear flare]

I bought one of those (the panels and battery) and it was DOA 🙁

[willow raft]

I kinda wonder about a design more like this, probs gives more freedom in picking a solar panel

Just wouldn't be as snow resistant due to roof angle

[noble jetty]

Shiiit. @pine tapir do you have that link to a good set of panels

I'd modify the design personally. I'd want a slightly steeper roof

More node room

And room for 4 batteries but that's me

[willow raft]

@mellow girder PR is ready for review

[pine tapir]

https://a.co/d/3tlRoWF

[pine tapir]

Merged

@willow raft can you squish the images?

Their file size is pretty large

https://tinypng.com/

[willow raft]

Yep! I will take care of that later today.

[clear flare]

My dad is retiring from driving a school bus after this year and is hella stoked about building bird houses LMAO

[noble jetty]

That's hilarious! Hey, it looks like we are probably likely to move to medium fast

We solved some of our issues down here or at least we have reason to believe that we won't have those issues

We'll keep you posted on when we're going to move and how we're going to plan it

[clear flare]

I’ve been lurking lol

We are going to be much easier to move over

So we can go first or wait. Either way is good by us

Hopefully that’ll ease the link up for MHR and FPR and let us through until we can get some more redundant links up

If BPP doesn’t happen before snow, we’ll test Cotterel and see if it can hit the new NPR - though with the line of aircraft and the lake I am not super optimistic

Bennett and Davis are my two priorities coming up for deployment.

[noble jetty]

Let's try to go at the same time

Could you get all of your maps and stuff over to bash or over to us all perfectly screenshotted

So we can add it to the documentation

[clear flare]

Sidpatchy did a PR for it already. its live but bash asked him to shrink the maps. I redid them to bring them a bit more in line with yours.

I used the landcover setting, but because of the distance ours covers vs yours it makes telling anything apart on the map difficult.

I'll drop them here tho so you can see

MHR East

MRH West

ISR East

ISR West

KBS East

KBS West

SSL

[mellow girder]

@noble jetty ya it’s on there already 🙂

[clear flare]

Those are full size tho. I gave them to Sidpatchy shrunk down

I can't tell you why there are lines through MHR and ISR

I tried multiple browsers and another computer and it still did it

[noble jetty]

Idaho has buttes

[clear flare]

Not shadows from buttes

like straight horizontal lines

[mellow girder]

i like big buttes and i cannot lie.

[noble jetty]

Oh that's just an artifact

[noble jetty]

BIG SOUTHERN BUTTE ROUTER

[clear flare]

I'm putting a node on every butte I can find lmao