Femtofox - Tiny, low power Linux node!

[forest current]

thats the nature of an unreleased feature...

[chrome tide]

I have 2.6.4 on my FemtoFox right now

webUI is an unreleased feature ?

[forest current]

"new" webui is, per your own words...

like this literally just sounds like were talking about MUI at this point

[chrome tide]

MUI is a totally different thing completely from WebUI..

[forest current]

yes but everybody talking about it like you are is not different

youre complaining that an unreleased feature, a "new" feature, is confusing and vague and hard to implement

when its literally unreleased

[chrome tide]

I'm asking for something that is standard and extremely common across the *nix industry..

How does one update a webUI..

[forest current]

literally the only answer we can give until its released is, try pulling /web from the repo and shove it on the fox and see if it works

[forest current]

no, youre asking for an unreleased alpha/prealpha build.

[chrome tide]

There IS a current release that is out, but not package. which COULD be updated to, if anyone knew how..

[forest current]

i already told you, the only ways to update the webui in general is either to install meshtasticd with it bundled, OR shove /web into /web

[chrome tide]

That's why It's in client.meshtastsic.org.

[forest current]

i dont know why youre missing that part, ive literally said it 4 times

[chrome tide]

I never said I missed it..

[forest current]

then why are you complaining

go try it

[chrome tide]

first off, I'm not complaining.

I'm asking for confirmation..

[warm geyser]

this is also why the web team is changing client.meshtastic.org to have a separate place for the unreleased stuff

[chrome tide]

Don't start saying stuff that's not happening..

client-test.meshtastic.org

I'm simply asking for a way to get what is on client, and it's like I'm asking for someone first born...

[spring juniper]

https://github.com/meshtastic/web/releases

[chrome tide]

Oh and look, 2.6 is released....

[spring juniper]

I think they just pushed a 2.6 release .... 1 min ago

[warm geyser]

get the files and put them in the right place

that's the process

normally the way you do this is by installing it along with meshtasticd, which oddly enough hasn't seen a release in the last minute

so either wait, or figure out where to get the files and where to put them

[chrome tide]

I think I can get it figured out. I have to reimage that node anyways, so might as well give it a try, and if I screw up, I have to reimage anyways.. 🙂

[forest current]

jynx

[nova frost]

It's slightly confusingly setup with the bundled webui, because (as I understand it) client.meshtastic.org (used to) run on a rolling-release basis, and then MeshtasticD would bundle whatever was current at the time, and then if you wanted the "latest release" which was effectively just the bleeding edge version du jour, you would do as you say and overwrite /web with the latest stuff.

There is this move to the test-web client thingie, which is perhaps the start of more disciplined and granular releases.

But the different parts of the project move at different paces

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Embrace the

[chrome tide]

I'm just trying to find out what folder from the release archive, I need to use. The web dev ppl don't seem to know.. Which is concerning..

I know where it needs to go, that's not the issue.. And I would have thought that the web devs would have known what files are being served to users.. But I guess they don't..

[nova frost]

Yeah, its a #meshtasticd as the end-consumers that should know

[chrome tide]

Yup, that's where I asked first, and got crickets.. LOL So I've been off discovering on my own, while asking in other channels to see if anyone else might know..

[nova frost]

If its any consolation, you can try to count the number of people who ask for help installing the local webui on ESP32, but you'll have to take off your socks and shoes to keep counting

[chrome tide]

I think that's a different bundle tho.. I haven't looked at the workflow on how the web bundle gets pulled in, but I think they are working to get it so that a web release triggers a new meshtastic package..

I can run it in a docker locally if I wanted to play with it that way. But running client-test site and trying to connect to the femtofox, via IP, it doesn't seem to work to well, it just sits there saying loading.

[nova frost]

yeah, I get that

https://github.com/meshtastic/firmware/blob/master/debian/rules

[nova frost]

When you work it out, would you do me a favour and get #web-client to update their readme.md to cover it?

It seems that they tell you how to use the hosted version, and run self-hosted in docker

[chrome tide]

I'll see what I can do..

[nova frost]

but not the meshtasticd side

[chrome tide]

Yup

[nova frost]

And that seems to be the right place to put it for documentary purposes.

[chrome tide]

Which has been my struggle so far.. LOL

I'll see if I can submit a PR.. 🙂

[nova frost]

After that, you could do a PR to add a section to here: https://meshtastic.org/docs/software/web-client/#self-hosting

if you get that one through (and the bar is fairly high for the docs updates) then you can claim a contributor badge

😉

[opaque abyss]

does the usb-c port and uart4 share the same pins?

[mild hare]

usb-c is connected to CH340 connected to UART2

[opaque abyss]

👍

trying to get proto serial over uart4 and chasing down potential "why you not working"s

for MUI

does uart4 show up as a serial device in /dev?

[mild hare]

I actually don't know and not near a fox.

I wanna say yes

because it's loaded in the device tree when we build it

[opaque abyss]

I see these (I think FIQ0 is the usb serial?)

[mild hare]

yup. that answers it. fiq0 is your debug console on usbc and the other ttySx are your uarts.

i never mess with serial on these but I wish had more time to do so

[opaque abyss]

cool, now gotta figure out 2.6 I thinks for MUI

does the software updater pull from github?

or do I gotta do it by hand

[mild hare]

in femto-config?

[opaque abyss]

ye

I presume theres a way to update meshtastic but I never actually checked

[mild hare]

you mean update meshtasticd?

to 2.6?

[opaque abyss]

yes

I'm not 100% certain thats required for MUI but it was in the same blog so might as well

[mild hare]

that's gonna be apt. but you have to switch what branch you on

Pretty sure @nova frost knows how. I'm on a side mission so haven't got to try yet.

@opaque abyss so normally we dosudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:meshtastic/beta and guessing switching the beta to something (alpha? devel?) and then sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade is how it's done.

[opaque abyss]

lets try alpha see what it do

[mild hare]

i would sudo systemctl stop meshtasticd first

[opaque abyss]

there does seem to be an alpha branch, so thats nice to know

changelog suggests 2.6+ is required for MUI, so glad I'm trying this before chasing my tail like I did with the rak

there are some messages in #mui that were made in anger

[mild hare]

touchy, touchy 😆

[chrome tide]

webui update isn't going well.. LOL

[mild hare]

Somebody mentioned that.

[chrome tide]

I just tried to update to 2.6 WebUI, and it's failing. Seems like there is an error is the index.tsx file..

#web-client message

[opaque abyss]

while I have no idea if it has enough power, the femto can power on via serial power

I have the lilygo t-hmi with a battery plugged in with a grove-grove cable to uart4 and the femto appears to be booting up

nevermind the battery died

[nova frost]

The 3.3v on the serial is the same rail as the 3.3v on the fox.

[chrome tide]

@nova frost I got it working! Stupid easy to get it working also.. I'm gonna see if I can submit a PR.. ;P

[nova frost]

Is this something that can be automated by the SFC menu?

[chrome tide]

It's possible, yes.

I'm just running commands via SSH to do it all

I'm putting everything into a PR right now..

[timid sparrow]

upgrade to 2.6 was easy and rather fast using the /alpha branch tag

[chrome tide]

@timid sparrow Yup!

The upgrade that I've been talking about for the last 2 days, is upgrading the WebUI.

[timid sparrow]

Yah I havent even used the webui much, always found it frustrating; mostly been enjoying the hosted version by the new homeassistant addon. Now with embedded linux devices I was thinking to revisit.

[chrome tide]

Well I submitted my PR.. We will see what happens with it.. https://github.com/meshtastic/web/pull/559

[fast adder]

Which add on?

[timid sparrow]

https://github.com/broglep/homeassistant-meshtastic

dis one

freaking pretty switfy
none of that BS j'son nonsense to deal with

[chrome tide]

That could be interesting..

[timid sparrow]

it also hosts a version (not sure what but not 2.6 yet I don't think) locally so that both the home assistant integration AND the webui can be proxied at the same time from a single node

[chrome tide]

@timid sparrow I'm sure I could walk you through how to update the docker to have the latest WebUI..

[timid sparrow]

pretty awesome and highly recommend for anyone who already has HA running.
It has starved off my linux native desires for long enough though.

First two foxes doing great, got the +33dBm modules too but havent tested. Need more than a single amp 5V power supply before I go play with those. I think I just have to keep things below 8dBm in the config.

I have my 30dBm modules set to default meshtastic 30 though.

[timid sparrow]

I saw your pull, I could for sure but honestly I am not too desprate haha

I have tried 2.6 once on the test domain before though. Finally nice to have things "good enough" for me to push this on a different set of my friends though 😛

[opaque abyss]

pins are swapped? Which one is actually uart4 tx?

[nova frost]

Which diagram are you looking at?

[fiery finch]

graphical is correct

tx is corner pin

Fixed the wiki, thank you

[proven pond]

is there a CAD file available for the board assembly? preferably the pro edition? I'm thinking of throwing together a case design

[idle vigil]

I would really appreciate a case for the pro edition

[proven pond]

There's actually a really nice design already: https://www.printables.com/model/1215810-femtobox-professional-case-for-meshtastic-femtofox

I wanted to give it a shot making one of my own, though.

[nova frost]

I'll dig out the step file later

[hollow dragon]

Aloha Femtofox fans! I've got mine... working on a emclosure to put it in. Going to run POE i believ for this node- good MESH times....

[nova frost]

👆

[proven pond]

thank you!!

[opaque abyss]

I tried this for a while, seems systemctl cant output to a non-file like a /dev/ entry is, or at least I couldnt figure it out

[brisk ocean]

Does this play Doom?

[nova frost]

The lack of a working screen makes it hard. Do they make serial-onky or an audio-only version of doom?

[brisk ocean]

ASCII Doom

[nova frost]

Hey, have you got one yet? If you can make it work, maybe we can add it to the software manager 🦾

[brisk ocean]

OSC sent in the mail a couple days ago. I’m looking into porting my text RPG but haven’t decided yet.

[nova frost]

Please tell me it's called Cyberpunk 2019?

[brisk ocean]

Maybe the second one! Right now it’s a traditional d20 type

[nova frost]

Just running this on the luckfox locally would be awesome, tbh.

[brisk ocean]

That should be easy. Python 3

[nova frost]

Nice.

[brisk ocean]

Or maybe this one

The Dungeons of Castle Argh

[mild hare]

Nice! i have a txt rpg I gotta finish too!

[brisk ocean]

Awesome. You going to put it in software packages?

[mild hare]

plugin for my bbs

[brisk ocean]

Excellent. Good to have options because mine is embarrassing 🤣

[mild hare]

hey, I played hitchhiker's guide when I was kid. text adventures are amazing.

@brisk ocean

[brisk ocean]

I’m so down to play that

[mild hare]

Hehe, I gotta get time to work on it more. I have a BBS I could release with a weekend of work but I can't seem to get the time. The fun stuff got bumped down on the priority list.

I wanted to do a Leisure Suit Larry clone but worried I'd get flack for it.

[cunning scarab]

New FF card setup. Powered up and in the config menu via serial but Ethernet is not working. Is there a package I need to load?

[mild hare]

Nope should just go. Booted, got eth dhcp adress and sent a mesh message on each one before they got packaged so guessing local network issue.
You could try sudo dhclient eth0 and then sudo ifconfig and see if forcing it to get a lease works.

[cunning scarab]

I think I found the problem. I bought this LuckFox separately and it does not have the ethernet pins on the back side connected.

@mild hare I think I talked to you on Etsy earlier.

[mild hare]

were you #110 in my QC database of 109?

[mild hare]

if so, new pico has eth headers.

[chrome tide]

What is the easiest way to restore configs w/ FemToFox ?

[mild hare]

just meshtastic?

[chrome tide]

well everything I guess. since I'll be switching from Foxbuntu 0.9x to 1.0.0

[mild hare]

i'm totally the wrong person to answer that. I do everything by hand.

what else you got besides meshtastic?

[chrome tide]

I mean as long as the MAC stays the same on the ETH, the IP won't change..

The only other thing I have installed, is contact, I think..

Yea, contact looks to be installed.

[mild hare]

I havent tried it but maybe use mobile client to export meshtastic config? I know @lavish sorrel was working on something too

[chrome tide]

I have the config exported via cli

I'm gonna work on a cronjob that will do it nightly on my HomeAssistant box..

[lavish sorrel]

Mines a home directory backup script. Never settled up the nodeID changing so haven't had a chance to look back at it yet

[forest current]

I think if you just copy /home /opt and /etc/meshtasticd that should be almost everything?

But do sudo cp -aR {dir} both ways so it preserves the uid and gid

[chrome tide]

be nice if there was a way to back everything up from femto-config

[forest current]

@fiery finch might have considered this?

Could be easily done with femto usb config, except the usb would have to be formatted as ext4 to avoid having to do a bunch of permissions shit

fat32 would break it all

[chrome tide]

That wouldn't be an issue for me. But does the import script support ext4 ?

[forest current]

No sorry what I meant was, adding that functionality to the femto usb script nagu made would be trivial, but I doubt its currently implemented

A new femto-config option for backup/restore that calls femto-usb with arg for backup or restore. Femto-usb would handle cp -aR for the relevant dirs to or from the usb, checking for ext4 (or maybe just tarball it to preserve perms actually), and then a touchfile

[mild hare]

Had to clear out my camera roll.

@surreal iron stole your track.

[mild hare]

https://youtu.be/ZYUL_VIyXqM

[chrome tide]

The fume extracator is cheating.. ;P

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/mask-the-last-of-us-bill-mask-off-fresh-air-gif-4372573336932272379

[chrome tide]

I just take a deep breathe and exhale slowly..

I've wanted to 3D print one for a few years now.. Just haven't dont it..

Just something else for the wife to complain about being in the way all the time..

If it has a cord, it can't be out, and if it's something that I'm doing it DEF can't be out in the house..

[mild hare]

same scenario, but had to a bunch so just ordered one

[chrome tide]

I have a 2x2 corner or an 8x4 dining room table, while my 9 y/o daughter has the rest, but my stuff is all she complains about.. Cuz my daughter is doing "ART".....

Mind you, we RARELY sit at the table for anything..

Non-tech wives just don't get it...

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/криминальное-чтиво-pulp-fiction-quentin-tarantino-квентин-тарантино-культовое-кино-gif-12845467340017135921

I have a big pantry next to the living room. So i took out a little mini fridge we never use and put in a roll cabinet. "spend more time with us and not in the shop" "your nerd stuff is everywhere".

someone spiked my hobby with baking soda

[chrome tide]

I think my wife prefers me in the garage than in the house.. LOL

But the summer, it's 100-110 in the garage, and I can't deal w/ that..

And she won't let me get AC for it either..

Wants to put a swamp cooler in, when I have 3D Printers, servers, switches, and other electronics..

[pearl glade]

i should probably look to set mine up... at some point 🤣

[pearl glade]

I need stuff tom, just cant remember what, getting old 🙂

[fiery finch]

self install mini split?

I've installed a bunch of em. Very, very easy

[chrome tide]

Need electrician to do electrical for it, as panel does not have any spare breakers, etc for that. And my wife doesn't want me doing any installs on the house..

It's a bit of an issue for me..

[fiery finch]

Understood

You could use a mobile hvac, but they're horribly inefficient

[chrome tide]

Oh, I have a 12000 BTU that I use in there, but that barely gets it down to 100 during the summer..

I also have a portable swamp cooler that I use, along w/ a dehumidifier.. Sometimes I have to use all 3 of them at the same time. When it's humid, the swamp cooler doesn't work. I need to light a fire under my ass and organize the garage so I can start getting it straightened out..

[fiery finch]

Insulation could help

Lighting a fire like you propose will only make things hotter, WillE

[nova frost]

Micro SD card, antenna, usb otg adapter?

[fiery finch]

@chrome tide you can change the speed of comms to i2c via the luckfox-config command

maybe that might help?

default is 100k

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/karavan-gif-12021163

[pearl glade]

https://tenor.com/view/critical-role-crit-role-arsequeef-marisha-ray-gif-12846128

[chrome tide]

What would this help for?

[fiery finch]

Maybe lower speed would increase reliability/multicoms?

[nova frost]

Don't worry about it, unless you've also got problems with i2c

[chrome tide]

I'm only using I2C for RTC right now. Getting ready to make a cable for bme680..

[fiery finch]

wait it wasn't him with the issue?

god dammit

[fiery finch]

@obsidian thorn please read

ignore me wille

[chrome tide]

LOL I thought you knew about an issue I was having that I didn't know about.. And here I thought you're mesh-fu was off the scales, appears it's just you off your rocker.. ;P j/k

Once I figure out everything I need to backup to restore to a new SD card, I'll be able to switch over to foxbuntu 1.0.0

[obsidian thorn]

Interesting haven't thought about that. Do you know any set speeds that would be good? Just want to make sure its not to slow

[fiery finch]

No - I've only ever used the default

[nova frost]

The default is 100kbps, apparently

But custom speeds down to 10 are permitted

With 3x the pullup on the data lines than is needed, you have to go slower

Or, as I said above, remove a few pull-ups along the way

😄

[obsidian thorn]

Can you send a pic of the pinout what pullups are you reffing to?

[chrome tide]

@fiery finch Have you thought of a backup/restore option in the femto-config ? Josh and I were talking about a way to backup important configs and restore them.

[fiery finch]

Yeah, it's a good idea

But I haven't given it much thought

I've been very busy recently

[chrome tide]

Is there anything I need to do to make the femtofox board or meshtasticd running on the board, know that I have a BME680 installed ?

I have telemetry enabled already

I currently see this..

Apr  6 13:05:02 femtofox-1 meshtasticd[631]: //\ E S H T /\ S T / C
Apr  6 13:05:02 femtofox-1 meshtasticd[631]: #015
Apr  6 13:05:02 femtofox-1 meshtasticd[631]: INFO  | 13:01:24 0 No I2C device configured, Skip
Apr  6 13:05:02 femtofox-1 meshtasticd[631]: INFO  | 13:01:24 0 No I2C devices found
Apr  6 13:05:02 femtofox-1 meshtasticd[631]: INFO  | 13:01:24 0 S:B:37,2.6.4

I think I found it in config.yaml

now trying to figure out how to restart meshtasticd from ssh.. LOL

[chrome tide]

after rebooting, I now see BME680 being detected..

[mild hare]

bme detected in meshtastic?

[chrome tide]

Yup

[mild hare]

are you seeing metrics too?

[chrome tide]

Not yet.. :\

[mild hare]

i am not sure that works, but admit I have never tried.

i was told way back that it didnt

but trailblaze dude!

[forest current]

I think it wont show unless you enable the telemetry module

In the firmware settings

[chrome tide]

So if env sensors do not work in meshtasticd, what is the point of the 2 I2C points on the carrier board ?

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/python-powered-logo-programming-language-gif-16957606

[chrome tide]

?

[mild hare]

trying to figure out how to say it without being an edgelord. gimme a min.

[chrome tide]

RTFM ? ;p

[mild hare]

hah no.

[chrome tide]

I know I could prolly make a page that shows the sensor, but that won't report it to the client, etc..

[mild hare]

so, BME280, INAx, OLED and the base ones we normally see on a node are not the endgame.

for me, personally, 1000 nodes db size and S&F are not ehat this is to me. it's not just a high powered node. it's a development platform. I didnt come for the cookies and 30db. i came for the python meshtastic API and ubuntu.

[chrome tide]

I include env sensors on all nodes possible, for monitoring. I figured since the board had 2 I2C ports, I could drop a BME680 on one, and it would work, just like it does w/ T190, G2, etc.. But it appears there is SDK issues..

[chrome tide]

I don't know python at all tho.. That's my issue.. And I don't have the attention span to try and learn it now, which is a different issue altogether..

[mild hare]

there may be a solution that can be easily edited with some chatgpt help. high speed playback recommended.

https://youtu.be/zGqTOwp-Fdk?feature=shared

this is why I do the things.

I have regular soshine rak nodes

as for the standard I2C we wait on meshtastic deities to make it work

and ports will be waiting

[chrome tide]

I'm more of a server/network hardware person, that's just getting into meshtastic. I have done coding in the past, but due to frustration levels, I stay as far away as possible now days.. I know enough about electronics, and other harmful things, to keep myself from blowing up..

@mild hare side bar, I'll be up your way fri/sat this week.. Driving up to Oregon w/ the 5th Wheel to visit family.

[mild hare]

i know you an IT dude. And femtofox is weird. People think node but really it's a server for the mesh.

[opaque abyss]

I always thought of it as a marriage between a pi zero and a lora hat

Just kinda smooshed together

[mild hare]

drive safe, and if you hug the coast up to oregon you maybe find the mythical "salmon jerky" sold at little markets and gas stations

[chrome tide]

Yup, that I totally get. Which is 1 reason I supported the project.. 1W radio is the other.. LOL

[opaque abyss]

But yes I always had static deployment in mind as soon as I saw this board, never even considered pocket node

[mild hare]

i have one 😁

[chrome tide]

We are running 5 all the way up I think.. Don't have the time to take the coast this trip.. Wife has to get back to work, so we only have 2 days to drive each way..

[opaque abyss]

Despite having some cool boards my pocket node daily driver is still a 19007 in a TonyG case

I really should get that wismesh b1 going

[opaque abyss]

...or if I get the MUI on the femto working I make the weirdest pocket node ever

[chrome tide]

For me, this was always a node that was going to be at a house. Most likely mine, since I am the IT person for the family.. LOL But I can put the Washtastic boards at the 2 in-laws houses, and be good w/ that.. They are both less than a mile from my house.. It's just a matter of getting antenna masts up, and external antennas..

MUI on femtofox, that would be so weird!!1

Need to get back inside b4 wife takes over TV.. LOL

[mild hare]

See, washtastic is a node on steroids, only problem is no S&F and no 1000 node db. But that can be solved by using a femto in range of it.

Like both different applications.

speaking of, I need a couple washtastics

[mild hare]

instead of mui, I'm headed this way for now.

Mui has some sweet features I wont get with this though

[chrome tide]

That's a kick ass 3D Printed flip..

[mild hare]

been trying to find time to make one and this guy came along and crushed it

[chrome tide]

I have MUI on 1 of my T-Decks, but rarely use it, since I'm busy w/ work..

[mild hare]

same, I need to load it on all my family t-decks

[chrome tide]

Crushed is a bit of an understatement! If it only fit note20 and newer android phones..

[chrome tide]

My other T-Deck is on something like 2.5.9 MUI.. LOL

[mild hare]

he allows remix and I have the feared STL to STEP voodoo

[chrome tide]

So when should I expect a STL for the Note20 for me to test print ? ;P

[mild hare]

i gotta do one for my pixel, but after that should be easy. I'm also going to put a tinyfox with a wio in it

[chrome tide]

Oh man.. LOL

I have one of those cyber deck thingies coming when ever they build and ship it..

[mild hare]

if I have to carry something with a screen and keyboard I want it to do linux.

[chrome tide]

I look forward to the lora board someone is making for that..

Wow, that was a bit of dyslexia right there.... :\

[mild hare]

compression fifo error

[chrome tide]

The luckyfox is nice, but 1 core kills me sometimes..

[mild hare]

same when I'm developing

[chrome tide]

And anything w/ apt.. LOL

[mild hare]

i have a trick for that somwhere. will look in my scripts when I get to my laptop

[chrome tide]

Someone mentioned some tricks to speed it up once, but the next time, it would be even slower..

[mild hare]

my installs are fast, my updates are slooow

[mild hare]

that was me

[chrome tide]

I've thought about setting a cron to do a apt update every 4 hours, just to keep it updated..

But that would also cause issues for meshtasticd..

[mild hare]

people yelled at me and we took it out

my trick is to just clear stuff so install is fast, but then next update is extra slow

[chrome tide]

I mean you can't make everyone happy.. 😉

I just run the apt update, then upgrade -y after and watch away..

[mild hare]

working on that during weekdays actually, probably take months.

[chrome tide]

My job for the last year has been solely VPN work based.. And about 60-70% of the company hates the VPN Solution we have deployed..

Migrating users for 3 different VPN Solutions, to the 1 that we have deployed.

[mild hare]

vpn concentrators with keys and radius backend, ah the good old days.

[proven pond]

@pallid basin I tossed some tabs on the back panel of your case. Nothing pretty, but it's handy!

[pallid basin]

Cool. I have a variant with suction cups on it for a window mount.

[proven pond]

Nice. Maybe I should try that. Was that version on printables?

[pallid basin]

No but it’s just holes of the proper size to force fit the mushroom end of the suction cup of choice

[idle vigil]

https://tenor.com/view/archer-you-what-huh-gif-19676334

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/phrasing-archer-gif-8049838

[fervent pier]

RTC mounts inward correct? Just confirming 🙂

[chrome tide]

Yes

[polar ingot]

Guess whos CE edition boards from JLC and luckfox order arrived today!

[polar ingot]

I noticed the 3D printed case has an OLED display. Is there any additional config for that?

[polar ingot]

enabling i2c seems to have done it.

[spring juniper]

FYI for folks that plan to load up their enclosure with bigger stuff like a cavity filter... I spent way too many hours on Aliexpress tryingt to find something durable and then stumbled on these Helium miner things that don't appear to be in much demand anymore - $60ish enclosure rak miner https://store.rokland.com/products/rak-wireless-rak-hotspot-v2-or-mntd-outdoor-enclosure-kit-weatherproof-hotspot-conversion-box-usa-only

[fervent pier]

Time for some flashing! 🙂

[fervent pier]

Not sure who builds the meshtastic CLI (black screen variant in the setup) but I found an issue in the channel importer. I gave it a URL, but it can't accept the entire thing

[nova frost]

Is it too long?

CLI is usually #python

[warm geyser]

wasn't sure if that was in reference to the femto specific setup/dialog code

[fervent pier]

it may be too long - but I got it from another node with --export-confg

[fervent pier]

This may be answered above, please feel free to link to the message if so. I was looking at this for a solar integration - do we have any method to integrate either a TP4056 or CN3791 into the setup with the existing board?

[quasi onyx]

Have it parallel between the board and the battery for example

[fervent pier]

I'd also like to be able to see battery voltage in the OS 🙂

I know I can do the TP4056 and just toss the load at the Femtofox board - that's already working 🙂 but monitoring voltage would be nice

[quasi onyx]

Afaik meshtasticd doesn't support it yet?

[fervent pier]

I'm talking about even at the Ubuntu level - I'm installing UPower right now to see if that exposes anything

[quasi onyx]

I2c then i guess 😅

Then just have ina219 for example

[fervent pier]

oh let me see if I have one of those

Our prior conversations say I may 🙂

Well well well

[nova frost]

Wotsalldisden?

[fervent pier]

INA219 board I had from the last time I asked Iris about something and went and purchased 6 of them

and I tossed them in a drawer

[nova frost]

The wretched refuse of your bottom drawer?

[nova frost]

Right, I'm having a brain failure

There are 2 analogue pins on the board

They are 1.8v max

So you will need a 3:1 voltage divider to be sure not to fry them

I'll fetch the info later, but I think you can read their analogue value from the command line.

[fervent pier]

If you have some ideas to simplify the wiring spaghetti @nova frost , it would be most grateful

[nova frost]

This is what I'm talking about:

[nova frost]

https://wiki.luckfox.com/Luckfox-Pico/Luckfox-Pico-ADC

This seems to work

I put a 10k resistor to ground, and it pulls it down to about 0.9v, and reads it as 508

reading it while floating gives 1023, and the multimeter reads about 1.73v

If I had to guess, I'd say there's a 10k pullup on there

also, disconnecting the resistor seems to crash it...

hmmm

[lavish sorrel]

It may or may not make a difference, but see if it matches the one you get when you run --info

[polar ingot]

btw I'm very much enjoying playing with the femtofox and foxbuntu. This was the push to finally get me onto meshtasic!

[proven pond]

I managed to do a foxbuntu image build on my M1 MacBook using an amd64 image. It was quite slow, but it did eventually finish. Only oddity is that the image is less than half the size of the release image so I'm wondering if I missed a step. Process was something like this:
docker run -it --name foxbuild86 --platform linux/amd64 ubuntu:22.04
then:

apt install rsync git wget sudo
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/femtofox/femtofox/refs/heads/main/environment-setup/foxbuntu-builder.sh -O foxbuntu-builder.sh
bash foxbuntu-builder.sh```
result:
```root@ad7c46d90ef4:~# ls -lh /home/luckfox-pico/foxbuntu.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.9G Apr  9 18:21 /home/luckfox-pico/foxbuntu.img

[soft cape]

Maybe you ran out of disk space? I think it needs ~30 GB free space for the build.

[proven pond]

Oh, that is a lot... I do still have 40G free it seems, though.

I'll try to capture a log from a kernel rebuild.

[soft cape]

A question to the meshtasticd(-tft) build. How was this actually built? Using cross-compile with the SDK or in an qemu-armhf VM or somehow native on some armhf hardware?

Also the meshtasticd that is in the build is 2.5.21. I'd like to have a recent 2.6.5 native-tft build 😜

[mild hare]

busy, so cant help much, but 100% it's not building the custom rootfs

[proven pond]

thanks.. I am seeing it seems to expect to run as a non-root user and maybe that threw it off

[mild hare]

did you read the guide?

https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/blob/main/environment-setup/Foxbuntu SDK.pdf

[pallid basin]

Did you ever and the Mac build instructions I sent to the page? Need to install dnsmasq maybe

[mild hare]

oof, no I didnt!

[proven pond]

will take a look.. was running it via the builder script

[proven pond]

Mac build instructions? 👀

[mild hare]

@pallid basin @fiery finch may have, but I got totally side tracked.

[pallid basin]

What vm/container engine are you running?

[proven pond]

that was on an arm VM on colima

[pallid basin]

The default image for Ubuntu on OrbStack for example does not install dnsmasq and so one section can’t resolve any dns addresses

Because the chroot envt expects the host to resolve dns queries for it

[mild hare]

Me personally I build in x86/amd64 VM because the sdk crosscompiles

[proven pond]

hmm I didn't notice any DNS issues.. will double check

[proven pond]

yeah this (what I did) isn't a good way to do it.. at best, it's very slow emulating amd64 on arm

@pallid basin did you say you posted mac instructions somewhere?

[pallid basin]

I did not because I’d didn’t have access. I sent them to @mild hare

I’d apt install dnsmasq on your host VM and try again

[proven pond]

will try that.. were you using the ubuntu:22.04 docker hub image or something else?

[pallid basin]

Came with orbstack.

[proven pond]

ah I haven't used orbstack.. interesting

[soft cape]

anyone?

[mild hare]

That's a @twilit mountain thing

we use what's in the package repo

[twilit mountain]

@soft cape I'm only packaging native-tft for the FlatPak (for submission to FlatHub) currently

I'd like to do debs as well but haven't gotten around to it

[soft cape]

how did you do the build initially for the femtofox?
#1329096340700921898 message

[twilit mountain]

So the Ubuntu builds are all done with Canonical PPA 🙂

We use github actions to build a source deb (with all the platformio components bundled inside so the build can be run offline)

Then Canonical builds that source deb on their fleet of runners for different arches. It's a combo of real hardware and qemu, from what I can tell

[soft cape]

So... how would I get a recent 2.6.5 native-tft build?

[twilit mountain]

Beta 2.6.4 should be publishig right now... but looks like it uploaded to the Alpha channel instead

[twilit mountain]

Meshtastic Daily Releases https://launchpad.net/~meshtastic/+archive/ubuntu/daily
Meshtastic Alpha Releases https://launchpad.net/~meshtastic/+archive/ubuntu/alpha
Meshtastic Beta Releases https://launchpad.net/~meshtastic/+archive/ubuntu/beta
🙂 I finally got 2.6.4 building in the Beta channel now

Still in "pending" status for now

[brisk ocean]

Thanks @mild hare 🍻 That was some fast shipping to 🇨🇦

[polar ingot]

two femto's on the same network not so happy?

did I miss something to get around this?

[frozen cloud]

I read this totally wrong

[polar ingot]

NSFW

[polar ingot]

Tried installing contact via the SFC, got and error when trying to run it "python: can't open file '/opt/contact/main.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory"

[fast adder]

Correct. You can now install it with ‘pip install contact’

[polar ingot]

then i get "-bash: /usr/local/bin/contact: No such file or directory"

[polar ingot]

reboot seemed to solve it

[spring juniper]

if anyone is looking for small wifi adapter with detachable antennas... turns out these are realtek 8188eu https://www.ebay.com/itm/123906790642 and work well

[fast adder]

It may also be possible to run the cloned repo with python3 -m /opt/contact or something similar. 🤔

[fast adder]

That’s a great price!

[polar ingot]

Cant seem to get BMP280 to send temp. anyway to check if meshtastic even sees the sensor?

[polar ingot]

can I view logs to see if it sees the i2c device?

in sfc under system info -> devices is says "i2c devices = 0x76" which I believe is the correct address, so does that mean it sees it?

[nova frost]

Linux native doesn't support a lot of i2c sensors. It's something I was hoping would change once a few of these were out in the wild.

The fact that you can see it is positive.

The alternative to making Meshtastic support the sensor would be to write a script to read the sensor and send the telemetry packet manually using the python interface.

[formal raft]

Hi ! Noob here with femtofox I'm hoping someone can help me with setting mine up. I have flashed the image to microSD and I am in the running OS fine, but I noticed my node was not showing up on my other RAK nodes I came across a "Set LoRa radio model" setting - so I set mine to the 900M30S option and my node grindes to a halt. Is there something else that I'm missing?

[nova frost]

Have you run the full setup?

From the command line, type sfc and go through the setup wizard.

Or just connect it to your WiFi or network, and use an android phone to configure it.

[polar ingot]

Makes sense. Couldn’t find that in meshtastic docs. These are going to make rad solar nodes so some sensors would be fun.

@nova frost any idea how to get around the two self signed certs from the same issuer? Probably not a very common issue, as most people won’t try and use the web interface with multiple femtofoxs

[frozen cloud]

On the router settings do you have a main network and a guest network?

That solved my problem with a similar device

[polar ingot]

Its the browser on my computer that doesnt like the two different devices with the same cert. They connect to the network fine

[nova frost]

I don't have any idea, sorry!

When I'm peak production, I have 3-4 on the network, but I've never used the web interface to manage them like that.

[fiery finch]

try different hostnames for each fox

[brisk ocean]

If anyone has issues with Etcher and the Foxbuntu IMG file, ImageUSB work fine as an alternative.

[merry shore]

I'm having a different issue with imaging... I have at least 4 sd-to-microsd adapters, and at least 2 USB microsd adapters, and I can't find a single one of them 🤬

[brisk ocean]

I had this issue last week. Just pretend you don’t need any of them. Then you’ll find them all.

[mild hare]

when Balena etcher complains about it not being "a bootable image" you can just ignore it and it works fine.

[brisk ocean]

Issue I had was it would just stop responding.

[mild hare]

oof, never had that happen. At one point I did upgrade to a name brand usb 3 sdcard adapter. was life changing.

[brisk ocean]

But this was Windows environment. Did try on 2 separate machines with fresh downloads of both IMG and app. I bet if I did on my Ubuntu box it would work fine.

[mild hare]

did you "run as admin"?

[brisk ocean]

My feeling is something to do with some etcher versions not liking 4gb img files on Win

[mild hare]

Nomdetom, Nagu and many others burn with etcher on windows.

🤷‍♂️

[brisk ocean]

I’ll try it again on a different device later for some science

[nova frost]

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's trouble-free

But firing it up again usually sorts most problems

And I only use my SanDisk usb-micro SD doohickey

The nameless ones are relegated to usb-config duty

[fiery finch]

not me. I had issues with etcher

it pissed me way off

failed 70% of the time

I burn my images with rpi image burner

[brisk ocean]

Good to know. I used imageUSB for taking custom bootable images of multiboot IT tool USBs and worked well, seems to work good in reverse too over Etcher

[nova frost]

Fair enough. The reviews of etcher these days are pretty poor, so maybe it's time for me to move on...

[mild hare]

works perfect on Debian and Ubuntu

[nova frost]

I mean, at this point I should just use a Femtofox for it...

[mild hare]

Lol, dd ftw

[proven pond]

was about to say... ```sudo dd if=foxbuntu_v1.0.0.img bs=1M of=/dev/rdiskSDCARD status=progress

does dd work on the new windows linux terminal?

[forest current]

Im pretty sure its just a frontend for dd on Linux

[proven pond]

dd with a layer of ads on top?

[brisk ocean]

Yep didn’t take long for the just use Linux reply 🤣

[proven pond]

has anyone made a nice simple curses ui or something?

[brisk ocean]

It’s a niche enthusiast device so I should use the appropriate enthusiast OS, but if people have options then it’s good thing

[mild hare]

yeah sorry to sound like an edgelord but my car has 3 pedals. 😉

[proven pond]

I feel like the UI is more than justified with how badly you can mess things up with dd, but it seems like there aren't a lot of good options

[brisk ocean]

Oh ya? Mine has 4!

One for each card suit

Side note my daughter just turned driving age and she’s learning with 3 pedals otherwise she doesn’t drive.

[mild hare]

Thank you for making the world a better place

[brisk ocean]

Thank me for my service.

[forest current]

For Linux theres gparted or gnome disks

[polar ingot]

they are both setup with different hostnames.

[nova frost]

For Meshtastic? That's Contact.

For flashing a fresh image on a Femtofox SD card? I think I did have that thought when we were starting out...

Yeah, I vaguely recall saying it would be nice if it had a "bootstrap new image" functions, but in hindsight it sounds silly.

[nova frost]

I used to have strong feelings about it, but electric cars only have one gear (early ones had 2(!)).
Even classic car conversions just lock the gearbox in 3rd and call it good.

[brisk ocean]

But then I have to make car noises with my mouth.

[mild hare]

pshhhh too too too too tooo

[nova frost]

You two need to go to bed.

[mild hare]

Armbian isn't gonna build itself.

But yeah, you right

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/carry-on-suyin-bingbing-li-the-meg-keep-going-gif-13541141834006464686

[mild hare]

Weather is getting warm. Will dream of a car node with the most confusing gps trail at Thunder Hill in Willows.

[spring juniper]

this is going to sound dumb.... but I'm getting significantly worse coverage from a femtofox vs. rak4361
I originially thought I blew the ff by not having antenna or somthing plugged in... but have having the 1.1 unit show up I'm still getting horrible RX
I swapped all the same components from rak to ff and I only hear nodes within 1.5km or so - same antenna, same pole, etc with the rak is ~35

running 2 foxes right now - one on roof with 5.8dbi antenna etc and one in the window with the little flappy rak one... same performance. basically I can see what's in my house/car and thats all. any ideas what to check? i've flipped on debug logs and everything looks normal... I just dont see anyone elses packets

[nova frost]

Are these self-built or made by an assembly service (or made by us 🤣)?

[nova frost]

What kind of rssi and snr are you seeing with the two foxes vs. the RAK from the same kind of distance?

And how are you powering them - 5vin or something else?

[spring juniper]

Made by you guys (I’m not that crazy 😬)
5v
Similar rssi/SNR for the local nodes

Another comparison is a tdeck left on windowsill is catching nodes 7km away that the foxes don’t 😕

[nova frost]

What do you see from each of the foxes on a zero-hop trace route?

[spring juniper]

Meshtastic logs look fine - packets coming in and out, decrypting private channel even when I try that

BadRX count was zero on both last I looked

[nova frost]

Ok, it sounds like the software side of things is working ok, which probablymeans the fox itself is ok.
What I'm after is a comparison of the signal strength to- and from-node for them, in comparison to another node at a similar distance.

This will hopefully say whether the E22 is putting out and receiving correctly .

[spring juniper]

1 moment....

[nova frost]

It doesn't have to be a long distance, btw. One end of the house to the other is usually enough for me.

I also forgot to ask if there's some other transmission equipment nearby, like a phone mast or ham gear or something.

One of the things about these amplified nodes is that sometimes the amplified noise is worse than the background noise without amplification.

At which point, a filter is recommended, which is kind of beyond the scope here and into #antennas territory.

Oh, one last thing (columbo style):
You're not running any bot/bbs service on it, or something that would fight the client for access? That can give a bad time, too.

I have to go to bed soon, but if you can gather some readings and let us know, that'll help track down the gremlins.

[spring juniper]

fox1 (pole mount)-> fox2 (inside) - 20ft -rssi -33; snrto:27 snrback:24
fox1 -> tdeck - 40 ft rssi -54 snr:24 both
fox1 -> t100e inside a car - 75ft snrto:36 snrback:26

i have a tried with and without $6 saw filter (currently on fox1)

also turned off all the extra services (meshing_around, etc) so cpu should be OK

no ham gear or phone mast

[nova frost]

Snr 24?

Are you using the web client by any chance?

[spring juniper]

ah yeah (meshsense) that's the to:from SNR
SNR is ~6db for all 3 of those src:dst

channelUtil is zero on the foxes.....hmmm

[nova frost]

Any chance you can connect direct using an android phone or something?

[spring juniper]

yep - what would you like to see

[nova frost]

I've not used meshsense, so I'm not familiar with it.

[spring juniper]

the snrto:from is just the traceroute metrics, I believe- they calculate the SNR db from it

[nova frost]

Basically as above - trace routes to/from your other nodes, to confirm whether they're putting out and receiving at the right level.

The android app gives readings like these:

[spring juniper]

fox1 to everything

[nova frost]

These aren't foxes, btw.

[spring juniper]

fox2

[nova frost]

Ok, and what does the tracker or t-deck hear from it compared to the others?

[nova frost]

Looks like they're hearing everything locally very clearly.

[spring juniper]

fox1 -> t1000e (farthest away)

[nova frost]

Thats meshsense or the web interface?

Those figures look screwy. You shouldn't be getting figures like that for either received or snr

[warm geyser]

those 34/24 are probably the web client (meaning the actual values are those divided by 4)

[nova frost]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking

[spring juniper]

the screenshots are the Meshtastic web client

Sending traceroute request to !11ce70f5 on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while) Route traced towards destination: !ceafb50b --> !11ce70f5 (8.5dB) Route traced back to us: !11ce70f5 --> !ceafb50b (6.0dB)
off fox1 mestastic-cli

[nova frost]

Ok, so it's sending out at higher than is coming back, which is expected.

What's the tx power set to?

[spring juniper]

software says max 22 but UI is set to 30

[nova frost]

Ok, so that's not turned down...

Hmmm

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, except to do some range tests with your own nodes and see if the home nodes pick up a remote node at similar signal strength.

[spring juniper]

OK ill go for a walk with the tdeck and see if they drop at same rate

[nova frost]

I've GTG, but I'll keep thinking.

[spring juniper]

no worries! thanks much!

[mild hare]

Hey, that second board you got was the one labeled tested at 1.5km right? that was the one I used for a day and sent?

Did you set Lora Region on it to US?

[spring juniper]

The latest board is fox1, old sus board is fox2

Both seeing same results so probably not me frying radios

[mild hare]

I wanna say software but cant think of what because I used that second board for most of a day and was hitting our furthers nodes

[spring juniper]

I also turned off boosted RX gain and didn’t see an SNR drop

[mild hare]

I'll try to think on what could be different

and you have right radio config in femto-config?

[spring juniper]

Pretty sure! I’ll triple check

[mild hare]

TCXO

[mild hare]

looks legit

guessing you went through the whole setup wizard in femto-config in the beginning? did you set region to US?

[spring juniper]

yep region is US

[mild hare]

dang will keep thinking. got me puzzled on this one because I watched that board do burnouts

Anything you think off lemme know and I'll keep brainstorming

[spring juniper]

so I reconstituted the old rak4361 this replaced and stuck it by the window as well (3db antenna instead of 5.8 it used to have)

direct connects to a node like 10k away

[mild hare]

man, we gotta figure this out

[spring juniper]

I've got a nanoVNA that agreed the antennas were fine SWR

and I ordered a cheap china spectrum analyzer that should be here this week

not sure I'll be able to see anything with the noise floor, but worth a shot

[mild hare]

nice, but my bet is software. still got the little rak pcb ipex on it?

[spring juniper]

fox2 has the pcb ipex, fox1 is the battle tested 5.8dbi one

yeah.. this has been a real head scratcher for me - beyond potential firmware issues with the m30s I got nothin'

[mild hare]

when I tested it was with fresh 1.0.0 Foxbuntu just to be sure it was same as you were gonna download. man, wish I woulda sent the microsd lol. We'll figure this out. If we strike out I could exchange the board.

[spring juniper]

what meshtastic version were you running?

at some point I pulled in 2.6+

[mild hare]

whatever came with Foxbuntu v1.0.0

[spring juniper]

hmmm I think thats like 2.5 - I'll roll back and see

[mild hare]

i wanna say 2.5.6 or something? not at computer or near a fox.

Tomorrow after work I'll experiment and see if I can find something

[spring juniper]

ill fiddle around and report back as well

insult to injury, once I brough the rak back up all the foxes can see rest of mesh

chattin' away

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/gru-despicable-me-good-looking-nice-gif-366715336862629905

And not about customer service, I just want to spread linux to the mesh as far as possible.

We'll get ya running

[spring juniper]

🫡

[mild hare]

btw, your handle, my nickname was "ugly duckling" for a few years. Porsche club invited me to autocross... in a tuned civic.

[fast adder]

probably nothing, but you could check this is the only config being loaded.

[mild hare]

@spring juniper

[mild hare]

ls /etc/meshtasticd/config.d

[spring juniper]

ls /etc/meshtasticd/config.d femto_config.yaml femtofox_SX1262_TCXO.yaml

It's many years gone at this point but.....

[formal raft]

@nova frost I'll re run the runonce script and see if this changes anything

[dire shuttle]

@nova frost, FemtoFox doesn't have any extra filtering, right? Have you put it behind one of the ACASOM filters by chance to see if it made much difference?

[proven pond]

I just rebuilt the foxbuntu image using an ubuntu:22.04 docker image on intel with a large backing disk and got the same result of a smaller than expected foxbuntu image (1.9G instead of 4G).. I still have 22G free on the disk.. any suggestions how to debug this?

[spring juniper]

My previous troubleshooting was an el cheapo ~900mhz SAW filter on one unit and zero filters on second (no apparent meaningful difference)

[proven pond]

ah it seems to be having a few issues and not entering the chroot ```[build.sh:info] Running build_firmware succeeded.
cp: target '/home/ubuntu/luckfox-pico/sysdrv/out/rootfs_uclibc_rv1106/lib/modules/5.10.160/' is not a directory
Entering chroot...
chroot: failed to run command '/bin/bash': Exec format error
Building rootfs...
[build.sh:info] switch to DTS: /home/ubuntu/luckfox-pico/sysdrv/source/kernel/arch/arm/boot/dts/rv1103g-luckfox-pico-mini.dts

[fervent pier]

FemtoFox installed in the truck

Needs a cover over the top of the board, but used the files out of the wiki for 3d printing

[nova frost]

ah, this is interesting. The closed horseshoe for the SMA connector can be put on top to retain the ufl connector.

(with another M3 through the hole to make fine adjustments to the pressure - don't go mad.

[fervent pier]

oh I hacked the snot out of that horseshoe - I drilled it out a bit and it passes through now. M3x14 screws with nuts on the back side

[nova frost]

The Femtofox doesn't have any extra filtering - it's a plain E22-30db module.

[nova frost]

I meant for it to work without nuts!

I should just publish the STEP files and leave well alone...

[fervent pier]

sorry 😦 I am kind of OCD about something bouncing around in the back of the truck needs more to hold it than plastic

Like here's the grander photo - it's got constant power from a Delta 3 Plus over PoE connected via a UniFi Mobile Router

Currently installing Tailscale also - that would be a nice option out of the box

[nova frost]

Ah, I see why you're doing it that way now.

[fervent pier]

The RAK MQTT Ethernet gateway I pulled out had roughly 5000km on it - this one will go further

If you made a lid and sides to help protect it, that would be great 🙂 It's quite naked in there

[nova frost]

I only made those for bench testing!

when you have half a dozen on a tiny desk, accidents happen...

[spring juniper]

https://www.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1ha9qo8/comment/mkp0c0i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button 😕

[proven pond]

looks like it's trying to run arm bash on my amd64 system when it does the chroot steps.. seems like something is off there

[fervent pier]

Tailscale may a bit heavy for a single core - didn't like that at all

[mild hare]

wait isnt it supposed to be only one config? not sure. not ay keys

[spring juniper]

femto_config.yaml has the webserver config but not the Lora pins

[forest current]

I have the same problem

With the MeshAdv hat on a Pi

[nova frost]

has your one ever actually worked either?

I'm getting strong "amping up the noise" vibes from all of this

like the amp is actually detrimental to the performance

I really really want to put a femto with a 22db radio into the mix and see what it can see

[spring juniper]

I forgot to bookmark but I think I found docs that said receive sensitivity:
m30s = -150db
m22s = -13Xdb

(Best case max etc caveats)

[forest current]

I have two, the one on the femtofox you helped me with, and the meshadv one

But the former may be fried from the swapped components so idk

[nova frost]

yeah, in the early days of the Hydra units (the spiritual forerunner to the Femto) there were cases where the amping was causing issues. IIRC, that was mostly on ham towers, where there was outside factors.

IDK, SDR noise survey might show up something

[spring juniper]

I was originally scheduled for an Airframes cavity filter end of April batch but he’s been quiet

[nova frost]

busy building (hopefully)

[spring juniper]

I’m sorry you’re in the same situation but huge sigh of relief maybe I’m not crazy 😝

[lapis edge]

@nova frost what ended up happening with the old issue where the 30db e22 could go deaf after a strong errant signal messed up the AGC? Seems like both of the WashTastics I've deployed had phases where they stopped picking up more distant nodes for an extended period but cutting power for a bit seemed to clear it up. Femtofox on the roof hasn't appeared to have the same issue (but it's further from my home lab and my other miscellaneous nodes)

[nova frost]

pass = I was trying to remember.

[lapis edge]

Couldn't find a resolution but here's more on the potential issue I was looking at: #1276576253343830138 message

[spring juniper]

Interesting. I don’t think power cycling has made a difference but will try

If the gain control were stuck on low I could see that matching my symptom though

[lapis edge]

This is far from a controlled test (and many other variables at play like simultaneously testing out the first 2.6 fw) but I noticed that even software resets didn't help my issue. So I opened up the case and unplugged the battery overnight. Seemed like the sensitivity was much more in line with expectations when I plugged it back in the next morning. Just a suspicion but I also had a hunch that powering the node up outside away from my other nodes could have been a factor too.

[lusty prairie]

It'll fail currently. https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/issues/375

[fervent pier]

Nice!! Thank you for sharing!

[fervent pier]

I've got my FemtoFox fully updated and noticed that if I send a message with the WebInterface, the message says it fails, but it did actually send and can get a reply, but only when I completely reload the interface do I see the received message also

I don't use the web interface much but that is an observation

Also is avahi-daemon needed expressly for MeshtasticD to work? If not, there may be a minor amount of CPU saving there. It saved 10% CPU in my instance

[nova frost]

Do you happen to know if that corresponded to a drop in power consumption?

We've generally noticed that serial and ethernet consume their own chunk of power

[fervent pier]

avahi-daemon isn't going to grossly affect power consumption but it saves enough CPU that if we aren't dependent upon it for MeshtasticD and/or Bonjour, then disabling it gives back some

https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/issues/401

[warm geyser]

avahi is useful for connecting more easily with the Android app and I think nothing else

so a toggle makes sense I think

[proven pond]

anyone who's familiar with the image build script have a moment to look at this error? I wasn't able to figure out how to fix this

[nova frost]

Literally any time I've come across an error in the build script, I do rm -r * and start again.

9/10 that either solves the problem, or forces me to rethink what I'm doing.

But that's on a wsl Ubuntu instance, so cheap and easy to go round again.

[proven pond]

I can try wiping and starting over.. seemed odd though.. I can't really see how that command the script is running would work

but I'm probably missing something

[proven pond]

has anyone been running it on linux or is it all WSL2?

yeah not sure if there's some magic that makes this work on WSL2, but I see stuff like this on linux when it tries to chroot from intel into arm ```chroot: failed to run command '/tmp/chroot_script.sh': Exec format error

[nova frost]

It didn't work on wsl until quite late in the game...

[proven pond]

ah weird.. wonder why I'm seeing this then

[nova frost]

Have you looked at the pdf here?

[proven pond]

kind of skimmed it, but not since I ran into this.. let me take another look. thanks!

not seeing anything in there that explains what happened.. it does mention it uses qemu for emulation, but something must be going wrong related to that

[nova frost]

@mild hare you got any ideas? I'm out of tricks.

[proven pond]

does it need to be a privileged container or something?

I'll try in a VM to see if that helps

[spring juniper]

no luck on the prolonged power cycles... I also messed around with setting spiModes (thanks claude AI ) but couldnt find anything clearly indicating an issue... states seemed to reset fine

[sinful yarrow]

Linux node sounds perfect for home deployment

I wants one

[nova frost]

Soon™

(later this week. I need to test them all first...)

[sinful yarrow]

PoE?

[nova frost]

Soon™

[forest current]

you need the cross-platform tools

it should be in the setup script though, so maybe it didnt pull the packages

i dont use wsl though (i hate microsoft with the fury of a thousand suns) so it could be some weird repo thing or a wsl arch limitation?

[proven pond]

this was on a docker vm on linux and it did appear to install the qemu package.. just tried it on an ubuntu 22.04 VM instead and it looks like it was a bit different.. confirming whether it worked now

aha! ```-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.2G Apr 15 19:00 foxbuntu.img

so I guess it was some issue with docker container settings and virtualization or something like that

[proven pond]

is it possible to update the boot and replace the kernel without a full reflash?

[forest current]

Yes if youre comfortable with modifying a file

In the luckfox sdk folder under output/image, theres a dotfile called .env.txt

Edit that after building the new kernel/boot to remove the rootfs part at the end of the line (youll see it, like rootfs(6G)) and then run ./blkenvflash, it will make a new foxbuntu.img thats only the stuff before rootfs, then flash that to the sdcard with dd and it will overwrite everything up until rootfs with the new stuff.

Did it many many times

[proven pond]

oh nice! the rest of the image doesn't move around?

[forest current]

Nope, the partition sizes are static

We just cant see them in gparted because of the env structure

Thats being worked on but isnt ready yet

[proven pond]

nice. I will give that a try...

ah will it eventually be possible to mount from within the os?

I guess it isn't a traditional filesystem...

[proven pond]

well since I'm only 90% madman, I'm going to flash a second SD card with the default image, then boot that and dd over the boot partition and rsync the kernel modules and see what happens

[forest current]

Eventually yes

[nova frost]

Apparently virtualbox is another approach?

[proven pond]

6999+0 records in
6999+0 records out
3583488 bytes (3.6 MB, 3.4 MiB) copied, 2.98 s, 1.2 MB/s
``` aaand panic on reboot

I think that may be something to do with my kernel build though.. I think it kind of worked?

[proven pond]

yeah flashed over the everything-but-rootfs and it panics in the same way still... wonder what I did to ruin the kernel

[proven pond]

compiled the default kernel config and dd'd that over the partition in the same way and it worked

[forest current]

uhhh why did you dd to a partition

you need to dd to the disk

sudo dd if=boot.img of=/dev/mmcblk1

you overwrote the rootfs partition explicitly, and also how did your system even see the partition on an env disk 🤔

[proven pond]

I did just the raw boot image not the partial image minus rootfs and somehow it did work.. not sure how

[forest current]

oh wait derp you did it from the femto OS

[proven pond]

yeah heh

[forest current]

oh i meant do it from your desktop

oh well

[proven pond]

yeah I did what you suggested after I bork'd the install and it restored it perfectly!

I was curious whether I could just flash the kernel itself and copy some ko files

[forest current]

without digging too deep i think no because uboot is also part of the equation and is built using the same kernelconfig

[proven pond]

maybe flash that too then? I don't really know anything about uboot...

[forest current]

yeah i had to learn all about all this stuff a few months ago when i dug deep into femtofox development

i learned a lot about the kernel, and some about uboot, although its still pretty complex and im not an expert

but doing the steps i said (which you say worked), thats what you are actually doing

everything before the rootfs is:

env + uboot + kernel + (bullshit partitions we dont care about and arent used)

[proven pond]

right good point...

[forest current]

env is basically the partition table and directives for uboot

env is the environment for uboot and also has the spl code that the processor looks for to know its bootable
uboot is the bootloader (think grub but more arcane)
kernel is kernel

[proven pond]

gotcha... is there an initrd somewhere too?

[forest current]

not really because ram is very limited

[proven pond]

ah right

[forest current]

embedded works differently, and i think much of what an initramdisk does is handled by

uhh

fit images

think thats it

fun fact, the luckfox kernel is literally android

[proven pond]

huh crazy

the same kernel they use?

[forest current]

makes sense because android was forked to be linux for very low resource devices

yup, the current foxbuntu is android linux kernel 5.11

[proven pond]

newer than my phone... apparently i'm running 5.10.209 😅

er wait this is 5.10.160?

[forest current]

soon ™️ once the new sdk is finished, it will have 6.1 (and id have to go back and look through my code mess but i think its mainline)

[forest current]

i may be misremembering but i thought it was 5.11, could be 5.10

but its def 5.1x

[proven pond]

oh nice is luckfox working on a new release?

[forest current]

no, we are

me and @mild hare

[proven pond]

oh cool

[forest current]

between the two of us weve almost got the new sdk working which will improve the femtofox (and allow the partition table to be manipulated via gparted, etc) and also work for the luckfox lyra

which i have big plans for

me and @twilit mountain , been working towards a dual-radio luckfox for a while

[proven pond]

oh very nice!

128MB of ram on that lyra.. that would help

[forest current]

and the processor is significantly faster
and can have 3x spi devices instead of just 1
and can customize the pinout for busses
and has 2x usb

the only thing thats not better than the mini is the size, but its the same size only twice as long so really not a big deal

about the same power consumption too

[proven pond]

what.. how is that even possible...

[forest current]

chinese magic

of course once you start connecting things to it the power consumption goes up but

you could attach a usb drive or usb power, and a wifi dongle, and a screen

or screen and keyboard + wifi dongle

opens up a lot of possibilities

Femtofox Communicator

[mild hare]

Cyberdeck >

pew pew shots fired

[forest current]

im imagining something more like a tmobile sidekick, but with full mobile gnome 😛

or something slimmer but an actual linux os

or even just MUI

[proven pond]

all of that sounds awesome to me

[forest current]

imagine what the pinephone should have been including the lora backplate

[opaque abyss]

I want to stuff the MUI into a star trek tricorder

Late TNG flippy kind

[forest current]

what about a Powerglove™️

or that thing from Fallout

the possibilities are endless!

[opaque abyss]

If any of those motorola warehouse wrist computers didnt run Windows CE we could do a lot with that

There are android ones but they havent hit ebay for cheap yet

[opaque abyss]

Slap a MUI in this bad boy

[forest current]

BigChungusFox

[opaque abyss]

Firmware multitap? Please just make python do it

Who cares about cpu overhead when you have a nuclear powered arm computer

[proven pond]

well I finally got zram installed on my femto.. that was 1 of the things I was trying to compile with the kernel.. wondering if that will help a little with apt stuff

[forest current]

oh nice, i dont remember if we ever got that working

may want to look into the config though, as the memory device is split into 16 blocks

[proven pond]

I think it's working, not sure if it's helping

[forest current]

default config it probably isnt

[proven pond]

ah hmm

[forest current]

zram can get pretty granular

[proven pond]

NAME       ALGORITHM DISKSIZE  DATA COMPR TOTAL STREAMS MOUNTPOINT
/dev/zram0 zstd         13.8M 13.7M    4M  4.6M       1 [SWAP]

[forest current]

but ideally youd have it use i think 50% of ram for zram but then split among 16 memory devices

yeah looks like its just using the first block

64/16 = 4M

and i guess its using 100% of that device lol

i dont think its difficult to configure but i havent delved deep into it

[proven pond]

that might be a coincidence.. I have it using about 14M of ram and it was using less earlier ```NAME ALGORITHM DISKSIZE DATA COMPR TOTAL STREAMS MOUNTPOINT
/dev/zram0 zstd 13.8M 8K 511B 20K 1 [SWAP]

will read up on that though

[forest current]

not sure about the second one but your first paste looks like 4M COMPR (actual size on ram device, compressed hence zram) and 13.8M uncompressed/usable ram

[proven pond]

yeah I think that's right

[forest current]

i think from when i was looking into it, if you have multiple ram devices and you dont configure it it will only use the first one, which checks out if its using all 4M of /dev/ram1

if you run an fdisk -l youll see what i mean

or ls /dev

[proven pond]

oh.. a bunch of /dev/ram devices

(16)

[forest current]

yup because of the ram chip being used

its actually measured officially in sectors (idr what the official term is)

but like 4*16M

the processor handles parallelizing it

[proven pond]

you think zram isn't utilizing them right by default?

[forest current]

correct, i think with default config its only using /dev/ram1 and is ignoring the rest

[proven pond]

that seems possible with how slow it's running and how little zram is using

[forest current]

so if you tweak the config to use 50% ram and all 16 devices, you should get total of 32M compressed ram with 32M free, and the 32M compressed is usable (depending on factors) as like 96M or something

but the 50% is spitballing, maybe its optimal to use more or less percentage of physical ram for zram, i forget from my reading

obv you cant use all of it as zram starts after pid1 so some things probably need physical ram due to order of operations

[proven pond]

yeah I'm not sure how little I can leave behind and have it still be usable

not sure I'm seeing the zram config you're referring to

[forest current]

it will largely depend on its boot order, i think. you can move it earlier in the boot process by modifying its systemd service file

one sec let me find it

[proven pond]

other than total size

I see compression streams, but I think that's about CPU threads

[forest current]

https://thedroidguy.com/how-to-configure-zram-on-ubuntu-linux-1263231

ah its zramtools

and zram-config

ok here is what ai says

[proven pond]

oh that's very interesting thank you

will give it a try

[forest current]

reading through it it all seems to check out

just make sure you do the math correctly in the script it suggests

[proven pond]

heh yeah that could go south quickly

[forest current]

so instead of (total ram) / 16, you would want to start with (total ram / 2) / 16

that way youre allowing 32M for the early boot stuff

and then late boot can use zram per the swappiness rule

also due to the low power of the processor, i recommend using that l4z algo instead of zstd (you dont want it to crawl), which will make it a little less efficient but still fast enough

[proven pond]

I hope I compiled lz4 in...

assuming that was separate

[forest current]

not sure tbh

i dont know what the core cryptos are these days

although id imagine its part of the zram module (if not somebody done goofed)

[proven pond]

shoot looks like it might not be in.. well at least now I know how to compile the kernel

[brisk ocean]

Looks like it’s an issue with Etcher and Windows 11. Works fine on Windows 10. Works fine on older versions of Etcher with Windows 11. So if flashing the IMG to an SD, use Etcher with Win10 or use imageUSB (or older Etcher version) with Win11

[proven pond]

I think lz4 isn't supported on zram maybe due to kernel version or something? I got it using about half of my RAM with lzo and tweaked some sysctls, but it's still pretty slow.. maybe need more cores to use this

Hit:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports jammy InRelease
Hit:2 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports jammy-updates InRelease
Hit:3 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports jammy-backports InRelease
Hit:4 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports jammy-security InRelease
Hit:5 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/meshtastic/beta/ubuntu jammy InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
50 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

real    5m8.638s
user    0m0.053s
sys    0m0.474s

[proven pond]

(that's no faster than without zram FYI)

[mild hare]

@proven pond I do all my work on the sdk in a VirtualBox VM with an Ubuntu 22.04 guest. I looked today and VirtualBox runs on MacOS. Also gave @nova frost the info from @pallid basin to add to our wiki. I recommend VirtualBox just because I know it works.

@spring juniper I can't find anything that would make it dead like a desensitized radio. Remind me Friday evening and I'll send you another femto with a prepaid return label so I can check it out. Make sure it's the v1.1 please.

[forest current]

may be slow but the real benefit of zram here is instead of 64M (like 32M usable) you get maybe 128M

[proven pond]

yeah, might be better for different use cases than apt. it probably saves some wear on the SD card as well

[forest current]

plus if you get the mini B (with the nand flash chip) weve already got it working to use that as an ubifs storage device, which can also be used for swap

preserving the sdcard even further

(and getting more memory)

so between physical ram, zram, and nand swap, we could theoretically bump the mini up to having maybe 256M memory

way better than 64M

[proven pond]

the issue is the newer arm macs so the performance might be pretty bad in general running intel ubuntu on there.. I just gave up running it on my mac

I didn't try running a full intel VM, but running the intel binaries with emulation on arm was super slow

[proven pond]

So I looked into some apt settings and discovered there's this Cache-Limit setting that it uses to store package information. I tried setting it to a limited amount of system RAM and it wasn't enough for apt to run, but it failed more quickly. Then it ocurred to me to comment out a bunch of the default repos we probably aren't using (universe, multiverse, backports and their associated updates and security repos). Now check this out: ```femto@femtofox:~$ time sudo apt update
Hit:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports jammy InRelease
Hit:2 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports jammy-updates InRelease
Hit:3 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports jammy-security InRelease
Hit:4 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/meshtastic/beta/ubuntu jammy InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
48 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

real 0m11.280s
user 0m0.024s
sys 0m0.060s

this may also help a bit since the default is for it to grab 20 megs at startup ```femto@femtofox:~$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00-limits
APT::Cache-Start "2621440";
#APT::Cache-Limit "20971520";

[forest current]

Hey thats really helpful!

@mild hare good data here

[proven pond]

apt is suddenly usable now

here's my current sources.list for reference.. not sure if we actually need any of the ones I commented out, but it seems functional

[spring juniper]

I’m ok holding off unless you really want it back… after researching other threads on the subject it seems likely a software issue and all the upcoming 30db builds would run into it as well. I’m also open to trying some diagnostics with SA / NA gear I ordered to see if I can get a consistent comparison to other boards in my collection

I ordered another cavity filter (this one out of Texas) so we can compare those too before sending back

[forest current]

software issue as in the meshtastic firmware?

[spring juniper]

Maybe whatever’s doing the SPI controlling? From some of those old posts it didn’t sound like anyone was confident the Semtech code was even working right

[mild hare]

ok, I'm super curious to what you find. Lemme know though, I have a board set aside for a swap

[spring juniper]

I’m pretty new to this part of radio HW testing but I’d like to use something (maybe this zs406 thing can) to send a consistent test signal to each radio and try to get the rx rssi off the board .. if the fox is significantly different maybe that can lead us down a path

[nova frost]

You could use the Meshing Around app to do that.

Set it up using sfc and software manager

Type ping from each node, it'll send the rssi and snr each time

[spring juniper]

that’s a good relative test for sure but I also need to justify my impulse purchase of the analyzer too 😁

[nova frost]

Yes, this is a hobby that tends to grow legs, arms, antennas, tentacles and any other appendage you can think of...

[lavish sorrel]

Looks like this little guys finally ready to move up to the attic and take over the base-node role for my house.

[nova frost]

That usb hub is epic

[lavish sorrel]

thank you, sensei.

[nova frost]

Flux on, flux off

[polar ingot]

More foxies coming! I love the after dark boards from oshpark.

[lavish sorrel]

had to get creative with the usb "port" pins because the the pitch on them is like 2.0mm, whereas most others are 2.54mm

[merry shore]

So top thing on the hub board -- gutted wifi stick I assume? What's the bottom thing? Thumb drive? Bluetooth?

[proven pond]

@forest current I cranked the kernel update hackiness to 11 ```(ansible) ubuntu@foxbuildvm:~$ ansible-playbook -i inv.yaml push-kernel.yaml

PLAY [update femtofox kernel] *************************************************************************************

TASK [copy kernel modules to /oem] ********************************************************************************
changed: [femtofox]

TASK [copy kernel modules to /lib/modules] ************************************************************************
changed: [femtofox]

TASK [run depmod] *************************************************************************************************
changed: [femtofox]

TASK [copy kernel image] ******************************************************************************************
changed: [femtofox]

TASK [flash kernel] ***********************************************************************************************
changed: [femtofox]

PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************************************************
femtofox : ok=5 changed=5 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0

[forest current]

amazing

[proven pond]

it works 😅

I have some suggested modules for the kernel I can PR.. for nftables firewalling and for zram if you're interested

[forest current]

@mild hare im interested in the zram (pending further testing with what we talked about earlier), and nftables would be great. referring to OSC as he controls the git repo

[proven pond]

fyi with the zram stuff, I totally locked up my system when I tried with 16 devices (I'm assuming due to there being 16 compression threads?), but I was able to get it to use about half ram with one device and can share the settings for that

could test with other numbers of devices to see if it helps performance, but I suspect it might not matter with one core

[forest current]

hmm

[proven pond]

also happy to find a way to PR those apt tweaks if you'd like

[forest current]

the apt tweaks would ideally go in the chroot script

[proven pond]

overwriting sources.list with a fixed version feels a bit off to me, but maybe that's easiest?

[forest current]

either that or sed commands lol

but a fixed sources.list is probably easiest

[proven pond]

might be easier to read at least

[forest current]

id say make the PR for apt, and for nftables (if tested and working), and hold off on zram for now, needs more testing

like 8 devices instead of 16, or 4 devices at 100% fill, etc

[mild hare]

I use ansible playbooks at work. this is great lol.

[proven pond]

I might try to push a new option to just rebuild the kernel and modules for that workflow if you like

it's so nice and fast

alternatively, I guess it's really just two commands?

[mild hare]

feel free to propose but gotta warn ya I'm not skipping nights of sleep anymore to smash things out like I used to.

[proven pond]

if you want a short one, I just pushed the apt fix PR

[lavish sorrel]

Wifi Module: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256808032065542.html (and confirmed working, also allows for an ipex add-on)
USB Hub: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807749228883.html (4 port hub)

The bottom is just a USB drive with an OTG adapter because I didn't feel like shoehorning a usb-a port onto a board that tiny.

[lavish sorrel]

Soooo... you're saying I shouldn't expect anything lyra related before 2026?

[mild hare]

lol. Wont be that bad.

waiting for a lyra in the mail. burned my last one. was tired and hooked the uart to the power and the power to the uart.

[forest current]

RKUARTRKUARTRKUARTzzzznsjdjsksk

[opaque abyss]

https://tenor.com/view/star-trek-william-shatner-agree-agreed-yes-gif-4477489

[warm geyser]

time for a classic game of "child, cat, or passed out on the keyboard"

[lavish sorrel]

I thought he was trying to imitate the noise the Lyra made when OSC hooked it up to power.

[warm geyser]

that may be true, haha

[lavish sorrel]

Seeing the UART repeated strengthens my belief lol

[mild hare]

My generation called the latter "waffle boarding" because of the shape of the keyboard imprint on your face.

[formal raft]

Got it working! No more hanging system.
Just wanted give you my experience

Balena etcher and Rufus wouldn't allow me to flash the SD card. I had to use raspberry pi imager

2nd reflash nothing worked, no network comms

Reflashed 4 more times and eventually got it running

Ran sfc and set lora radio model, and lora region and all working as expected!

[nova frost]

So you're saying it was probably either a bad flash to the SD card, or a bad SD card?

[formal raft]

Might have been a bad flash. Was a brand new SD card, still using the same as card.
The very first time I ran femto-config I did not set the Lora radio but I did configure a lot of other settings, only set the Lora radio at the end

[brisk ocean]

Silly Ballerina Easter

[nova frost]

Is that a code-phrase? Have you activated the Spring Soldier?

[idle vigil]

Be careful if you are in the Northern Territory I guess

[quasi onyx]

Mmmm

[dire shuttle]

... there's a web interface for meshbot?

[fervent pier]

There's a web interface for Meshtastic yes

[dire shuttle]

I mean, yeah

But every time I connect to meshtasticd, the bot gets disconnected and I have to restart the service

Or so it seems

Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me but shrug

[fervent pier]

oh it does make sense - you can only have a single API connection to the radio; the bot or the web interface

[dire shuttle]

No, that's what doesn't make sense to me

Holding a session open is not a big ask, you have to store very little

[honest bear]

New batch available for order tomorrow? Or when is the next US batch 😅

[nova frost]

For meshing around? Have a chat with Spud in #1255754522303922217

Probably the bot is getting disconnected and panicking.

But yeah, one thing at a time.

Bot + outside app = bad time.

[dire shuttle]

The thing that I think is weird is that meshtastic D doesn't want to hold a second session open

I can kind of understand that if you're talking about the node itself

I can kind of understand it from a standpoint of the principle of least surprise. It could be hard to get a bunch of people to agree on what the natural thing to happen is when A sends something to the node and how do we let the user on B know about that without inventing a whole special flow for that

[nova frost]

The natural thing is to get confused and take a nap, obviously.

[dire shuttle]

Dude, sold.

I'll see you in 20

[spring juniper]

RX debugging episode 70:
took the t1000 out for a walk and did traceroutes from fox -> t1000 and rak-> t1000
.......drumroll......
Fox had better reception

rak still sees my 4-5 long range neighbors the Fox can't

if USPS doesn't hose me I should have a fancy cavity filter tomorrow

[forest current]

yeah thats expected since the fox has a 30db radio

also just more salt in my wound because the two 30db radios i own (one with a fox) are trash lol

[spring juniper]

getting to the T1000 i agree, but receiving?

shouldnt the rak and fox receive ~same ?

[forest current]

no because the fox (not actually the fox but the radio on your specific board) is a 30db which has a PA (tx) and LNA (rx)

so reception is also boosted

beyond what the rak has (sx1262 boosted gain, native, not LNA)

[polar ingot]

I love soldering. I don’t love cleaning my desk

[feral vortex]

I used to like soldering back when I had good eyes. Now, all of my solders look like I sneezed liquid metal all over.

[spring juniper]

Got it - sorry yes, I thought the HW was better on the fox as well just that in my real life results don't match.

[mild hare]

pcbs arrrived, waiting for luckfoxes

[quasi onyx]

Ooooooo

[brisk ocean]

Just train your nose to sneeze lots of flux

[brisk ocean]

I understand. Half of my soldering work is swearing at the pile of stuff I keep pushing out of the way.

[nova frost]

Did you double-check that your usb lead will fit for flush mounting? The gap between the fox ears was widened for the release version, but it's still a tough ask.

[feral vortex]

I'd love to see PoE as an option on this thing. power and network/updates over the same cable

[forest current]

speaking of, @buoyant ermine how did that Ultra work out for you?

[buoyant ermine]

did you all get it fully supported software wise? I haven't looped back in a bit. Been busy making uSB sticks, pi hats and NRF52 stuff before the tarrifs shut everything down.

I think I open-sourced the hats I'd made for them, and can update the design is there is any intrest from non-US based people in using the ultra.

Granted the original design hat is probably easier to make on a hot plate if resorting to smuggled ebyte modules and OSHPark for boards

[forest current]

i havent touched it since i got it working as i have a lot of open projects and almost zero motivation recently, and didnt hear anything

guess well just add it to the list for the new sdk to actually test against @mild hare

[mild hare]

@forest current @buoyant ermine So Lyra SDK is obviosuly RK3506(?) but it does have most of the goodies for RV1103/RV1106. RV1103 is based off RV1106 software-wise. And since I'm gonna need that pico support we'll end up with ultra support.

Pretty sure the only difference between RV1103 and RV1106 is some DTS file(s)

My replacement lyra arrived yesterday so I can get back on it soon.

[dire shuttle]

Ebytes have a receive boost?

[forest current]

the 30db does

its only 30db because of the PA/LNA, otherwise its just the sx1262 22db inside

[dire shuttle]

Their datasheets don't seem to reflect that. Bottom is for the 900M30S. If you look at 125kHz SF=7, they're 3dB apart.
Double isn't nothing, but it's not an 8dB increase either.

[polar ingot]

I did not check, but also never had any intention on using usb.

It does fit however, with room to spare

[dire shuttle]

They do clearly mention a PA and an LNA though

[polar ingot]

Since it’s not gigabit you can always use a cheap/diy injector on the unused pins. Like this:

[feral vortex]

Yessir, thats what we use on our repeater nodes now.. but.. Not that we've tested all of them.. but the ones we use consume more poer than the femtofox itself. So, not ideal if you are connecting it through a "PoE UPS" such as this: https://amzn.to/3GaCuhI. My thinking was that, most people are likely running the ethernet cable anyway.. and a setup like this would give like a week worth of "grid down" power, and remvoe the need for having batteries up in an enclosure directly in the sun. That said, I do agree that it's an option, and it's one I use today with our raspberry pi +meshadv hats repeaters. so it's workable even if PoE isn't added.

[nova frost]

That is both terrifying and gratifying to see, thank you for sharing it.

[nova frost]

And this is good to see, too

I won't share photos of my mangled board where I used side cutters to make the usb fit...

[nova frost]

I'm pretty sure the unused pins were left completely non-connected, so if you wanted to bell them out and solder on the underside, you could

Let me check the schematic later.

Not sure there's not something else that prevents this.

[proven pond]

I just ran into this while looking to make a PR for nftables modules. Opened a PR to address this first so I don't break things even more

would be awesome if menuconfig had a jump option from search and automatic dependency resolution.. I haven't had to compile kernels in a long time...

@forest current FYI I put up that apt PR and it should be good to go as well. I can do the nftables one after this tun fix merges in

[proven pond]

Oh, you can jump! There's numbers in the search results you can press. Didn't know that. https://docs.kernel.org/kbuild/kconfig.html#menuconfig

[polar ingot]

I think it’s 802.3af spec or something. 10/100 leaves some free wires. Only good up to like 350ma or something. You used to find cheap splitters all over, one end had a DC female to inject dc and one had a dc male to plug into the device

[nova frost]

yeah, don't go connecting it direct - you'll release the magic smoke:

[merry shore]

Batteries on the ground end instead of up the tower also means you can hard power cycle the node if needed, either by unplugging the ethernet or even remotely via software with fancier PoE switches

[merry shore]

That looks like a "passive PoE" splitter, which I don't think has any official 802.3.blah spec, and is just putting DC on unused pairs with zero smarts.

The 802.3af and 802.3at are "active" PoE with a negotiation protocol (kinda-sorta like USB-PD), are always 48V AFAIK, and can coexist with gigabit where all 4 pairs are used for data.

Those splitters are larger since they have some brains in them

[polar ingot]

Either way, I think the "dumb" passive splitter would work for a lot of situations. When I get my omni antenna I'll try it out for a roof mounted node

[fervent pier]

Here’s my PoE powered with built in “UPS” so it stays running even if network / PoE drops

[quasi onyx]

Oh nice

[spring juniper]

USPS hosed me <shocked face>
but I had time to play with TinySA
considering thats inside my basement I'm guessing it's pretty noisy up on the roof antenna...
fingers crossed on cavity filter fix

[fading river]

same issue here but reboot and reistallation of the software did not solve it :/