Femtofox - Tiny, low power Linux node!

[hollow narwhal]

It could if it has a ton of traffic

It if it's well organized

No

[neon sandal]

What I am trying to understand is if I create a new private key for the primary channel and someone brings a stock node up that is not part of my mesh, will my mesh route their packets cluttering up things

[hollow narwhal]

No

If you do not posses longfast with aq== in index 0

Then no

[neon sandal]

OK so that seems like a way to stop traffic from a bigger city to flood the lcoal mesh

[hollow narwhal]

If it's in any index yes because you can decode it

There's an easier way dude

[neon sandal]

Yes exactly. I am designing this for emergency communications in this rural set o;f towns.

[hollow narwhal]

Switch to known only rebroadcast

Or local only

Your choice

Once your nodes are know. Ignore everyone else 🤣

[neon sandal]

Ok so you would do that after most of the nodes are up. But what about a new local node?

[hollow narwhal]

Then you've gotta switch back to local only. Discover it across your devices. Then out them back into known only

Either way it will be a bit manual

[neon sandal]

Thanks very much. I won't bother you anymore!! At least today. i have at least a half-million questions 🙂

[hollow narwhal]

Its best to just design your stuff to cooperate with the existing mesh and join the community or form one to make it coordinated and not a mess

It is the best way

[neon sandal]

No nodes within hundreds of miles here.

[hollow narwhal]

Lots of people start out not knowing how to do any of it and where to place stuff

Pooling resources allows you to do things like cover 100s of square miles in the rocky mountains 😂

[neon sandal]

www.nwmesh-wi.online 🙂

I am the lone ranger....

Thanks again I really appreciate the reality check.

[hollow narwhal]

Unfortunately it's gonna take me effort to reach that page. My firewall blocks newly seen pages that haven't been up for more than 30 days

Zen armor

Haha

But

Your not a lone ranger

[neon sandal]

Good idea.

[hollow narwhal]

Your an island ranger

Reach out to adjacent interest groups. Local hams. Hikers. Electronics groups. See if they want to join you. Show what it's capable of

Show them how easy it is

Coordinate the effort and you'd be surprised how fast it grows

[neon sandal]

I am the only ham in a hundred miles

[hollow narwhal]

Its explodes at some point so be ready for chaos haha

Ooooooffff

[neon sandal]

I hope so

[hollow narwhal]

In that case dude. You have a unique opportunity

Total control of placement and topology

Like yeah expensive

But kinda nice

[opaque abyss]

my local mesh went from maybe 50 to over 300 in a year

[neon sandal]

Yes exactly and my responsiblilty to understand and design it correctly

[hollow narwhal]

Yeah this year seems to be our year to do that so I'm going to be peak bagging 7 10-13,000 ft peaks from the valley floor of 4000 ft this year to year things efficiently hopped and routed

Others are doing the same south of me

I think 20 routers will be the amount of 22?

Over like 5-600 square miles

Targetting short fast

[neon sandal]

infered how many miles does the 300 users range over?

[opaque abyss]

my mesh is still longfast but we're talking about a shortfast experiment in the coming months

[hollow narwhal]

Filtered.. Too. Tightly.. Keeping the signal clean and the RF environment clean

[neon sandal]

I assume the TC2 BBS can only service one user at a time?

[hollow narwhal]

Wanna see a funny call sign
For you Linux nerds 🤣
Callsign AUR sitting on a microwave relay plateau

[opaque abyss]

https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1X6-eDr2q0YBVacVzwt59KdVutvNLHyjJ?usp=sharing

[hollow narwhal]

And it gives us weather and air quality info every 30 mins

Had to make an arch Linux joke

Oh jeez that's the question I forgot to ask @nova frost @mild hare the OS. Is an Alpine Linux image a possiblity. I swear it's not just for a mountainous mesh meme. It's cuz it's super lightweight

[opaque abyss]

one of our users figured out how to (manually) extract the splashes from heywhatsthat.com and import them into Google Earth

[hollow narwhal]

Or do I need glibc 😑

Like I'll do the heavy lifting if it's possible

[neon sandal]

Inferd it functions reliably at 300 nodes. Not just hobby level. I don't want to sell my community something that is not pretty solid.

[hollow narwhal]

Well if you want help with layout I've just deep dived so damn deep imma be down here for awhile if you need help metaphorically speaking

[neon sandal]

Well I sure would noit mind somebody reviewing the design to make sure I have not misunderstood something.

[hollow narwhal]

US is huge if your not from here

Not easy to cover all that.

Took a while but we found clues. The AT&T long line abandoned microwave relay sites already did the traveling sales man problem so I optimized it for lora

[neon sandal]

infered is my neighbor

[hollow narwhal]

If they could share that would be amazing

[neon sandal]

I need buy in from the local city admintrators to mount the BBS on old firetowers or the whole thing is bust.

[opaque abyss]

since its so manual I want to see if I can automate it first

[hollow narwhal]

Its nice that you get permission

I dont

Magnets and drones 🤣

[opaque abyss]

one of the MN users got permission to use city infrastructure, its been awesome

[neon sandal]

I have gone that way in the past. Designed a remote radio telephone system in Alaska. Still running after 15 years but there are not many humans around.

[opaque abyss]

plus lots of private businesses in buildings that have abandoned towers on top

we got a station G2 with 50 feet of antenna cabling up a tower

[neon sandal]

How do you deal with the possibility of interence to other tower users

[opaque abyss]

if the G2 ever becomes flakey in the winter (its solar) I want to see if I can get my fox up there

[hollow narwhal]

Lmao nice. I'm pissed he stopped selling

Also we rarely use 1 watt nodes. We planned our network around SNR not LOS

[opaque abyss]

if a tower has real customers they almost always just never respond to our queries

the ones that have responded say no, or want $200 a month because they're commercially using it

[neon sandal]

So hence abandoned infratructure only

[opaque abyss]

prettymuch. While theres always a bit of "dont ask dont tell" when it comes to magnetic nodes on streetpoles etc, we have a very very firm stance. No active water towers.

[hollow narwhal]

The issue with meshtastic planning is people look at it like an infrastructure network even though they keep thinking mesh. Reality is it truly is a mesh haha. So. That means with the SNR bias in the contention window. You need to account for optimal SNR for what routers should serve what area. Meshtastic will always bias to the lower SNR for first rebroadcast ad the weaker signal is an imperfect analog to distance away.

[neon sandal]

I noticed our local water tower has cell phone antennas all over it.

[opaque abyss]

Weve had very good success just asking around. Having our nodes entirely solar and no drilling helps a lot, plus we have a user with an LLC and insurance for climbing

[opaque abyss]

hell Router_Late helps a ton with that if you have a specific problem area

[hollow narwhal]

Sort of

[neon sandal]

Trouble with SNR is poor antenna positioned close nodes. Does not seem to be a good choice

[opaque abyss]

its truly dependant on the setup

[hollow narwhal]

We are have to be just as careful with router layers for us due to our unique topography

We are surrounded by deep basins and P2000 mountain peaks

[opaque abyss]

at least you have the mountains

[hollow narwhal]

To minimize hops both router and router late have to be optimal

[opaque abyss]

MN is just valleys and flatness on top

[hollow narwhal]

They are a curse too

[opaque abyss]

most nodes are at 7 hops just to hit the distance we want

[neon sandal]

The coverage planner does not account for forests so how much will my simulations be de-rated because of lots of trees

[hollow narwhal]

When you make an outdoor node @opaque abyss what do you expect it to be and do

[opaque abyss]

oh yeah trees eat up 908mhz for breakfast

[opaque abyss]

most of our solar nodes are Rak150 (or approximations with other hardware). Basic rak, no LNA, enough solar and chocked full of batteries, very high up, and almost always a client.

Routers are only for the rare and expensive G2s or Airbuddy LNA rak boards.

with exceptional placements

[hollow narwhal]

But like what environmental conditions do you think of it facing

At worst

[opaque abyss]

if its magnetically mounted, it gets 4 big magnets. We used to use 2 but lost a few nodes due to winds so we switched to 4. We expect torrential rains (waterpoof amazon enclosures solved this) and in the harsh winter months we can have only a few good days of sunlight

solar panels are usually at least 60 degrees (mostly vertical) and we use so many 18650s that the draw is negligible on each for raks negating battery heaters

we overkill solar and battery and each non-amped solar node should last 2-4 weeks on batteries alone

big nodes like the G2 get car batteries

biggest environmental challenge is lack of sunlight in the winter

[neon sandal]

So you take advantage of low charge and discharge "C" to not have to heat the batteries

[opaque abyss]

yup

a non-amped rak draws so little power (especially if we have 4-8 18650s) the batteries are fine

[hollow narwhal]

Okay so some slapping around.
Lol
So.. Us. We have to account for.. 130-160 mph winds during storms. Servere t storms. Lightning stirkes. Forest fires. - 30 F winter.. 112 F summer at 10k feet.. Oh and earth quakes

[opaque abyss]

and if they die within 2 years? well we have to pull it down more often than that for firmware updates anyway so we arent fussed

[hollow narwhal]

That's the curse

Lugging 100 lbs of concrete with a carbon bike and stuff on a MTB is fun

Haha

[neon sandal]

Do you use BMS to manage the 18650 or jjust start them all charged equally and hope for the beest?

[hollow narwhal]

So 4x 21700 6500 mah battery packs for our rak routers

[opaque abyss]

all in parallel (3.7v) and the native RAK19007 charging/solar circuitry

we dont use the rak green power module

[hollow narwhal]

20W solar

I expect to juice up as much as possible during the extra rare alpine sunshine in the winter

Extttrrraaa rare

[opaque abyss]

gotta go hard on the solar in extreme environments

but yes, do lots of parallel batteries if you're doing lithium

[hollow narwhal]

Yeah basically.. And triple redundant power is in my new nodes

LTO batteries

[opaque abyss]

since raks have native lithium charging circuits thats the cheap way. Otherwise a lead acid controller and a small car/motorcycle battery

[hollow narwhal]

Are upcoming

[neon sandal]

Ok that is helpful. I am following TC2 design with waveshare power management but they are designed for 3x18650 and I want 6x. SO I guess I will charge and test each cell and just parallel them.

[opaque abyss]

we have a battery welding guy but lots of us just use copper tape and kapton tape to keep it all bundled

I'm building out a solar femtofox node but I think I'll use a voltaic systems V75 for it

[neon sandal]

Well I have to go fix dinner but I am really grateful for this info it really helps.

[opaque abyss]

with solar raks you just NEVER want it to brown out

[neon sandal]

Becuse they won't start back up?

[opaque abyss]

if the batteries die and solar charges them back up, they are offline until you go and unplug and replug them

weve done lots of theorycrafting and testing for remote reboot systems, radio relays, photoresistors (laser pointer reboot), but in the end we just shove more batteries in

[neon sandal]

So winter is a tough time

[opaque abyss]

winter in MN is especially tough

the RAK150 enclosure is barely enough, even stuffing full of 21700s

the RAK75 enclosure simply isnt feasible here. I presume the same with mountain areas

[hollow narwhal]

This is literally what it looks like during winter storm up there but we don't have cams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P2oOcNsnnA

So use Mount Washington for analog

[opaque abyss]

yeah Id say skip lithium

go get a used car battery

and a lead acid charging controller

[hollow narwhal]

Lmfao no lifepo4 and lto are king. They do amazing but even our 21700 arctic rated cells do very well

[opaque abyss]

no magnets, bolt that bitch down

[hollow narwhal]

I have aerogel in the enclosures now

[opaque abyss]

whats summer temps looking like

[hollow narwhal]

They get strapped to a pole that's placed 4 ft deep with 100 lbs of concrete.

Summer day time temps 112-115 F

Mean conditions in some places much worse

Like I've got a device built for desert peak near a military air range

131 F last year

For 5 straight days

Almost record breaking

But not there

[opaque abyss]

raks dont like above 75C (167F)

[hollow narwhal]

Raks gonna have to suck it up buttercup

[opaque abyss]

I think itd survive if the rak enclosure is underneath the panel, protecting from the sunshine

let the solar be an awning

[hollow narwhal]

Oh the panel protects the outdoor enclosure massively

And insulation

And there's ventilation for the weather station

[opaque abyss]

not sure what the angle will look like, but the rokland 10dbi antenna is stellar for our high up builds

[hollow narwhal]

It stays cool in the box look at AUR here 0.6 degrees above ambient

[hollow narwhal]

Its what we use too. We place a very tight and nice lora filter on our feed lines

Sensitivity is awesome without the noise

[opaque abyss]

what filter do you use?

[hollow narwhal]

For raks let me get you a link

https://gpio.com/products/915-mhz-ism-band-pass-bandpass-filter-with-26-mhz-bandwidth

[opaque abyss]

we dont use a filter in our standard builds

[hollow narwhal]

We filter everything

Keeps stuff clean

Keeps devices sensitive during times of a lot of talk

[opaque abyss]

I think some of our "boomer" nodes have filters

[hollow narwhal]

Lmfao speaking of boomer

That router in the desert

[opaque abyss]

can you daisy chain a filter and an LNA?

[hollow narwhal]

Gonna give it call sign BOOM and name it BOOM BOOM router since it's next to a military live fire range 🤣

Gonna troll broadcast boom boom ever so often

I'm not mature

[hollow narwhal]

Yes

But hang on

You need to be careful because an LNA is directional.

[opaque abyss]

yup its got an in and out

dont wanna send a watt into an E22

but would you want the amp after the filter or before

antenna - filter - LNA - device?
antenna - LNA - filter - device?

[hollow narwhal]

Well, it's not just that. Like, if I were to design something where I would be dealing with amplifying the signal, I would be looking at something much more complicated, an entire filter feedback chain that ensures that I make sure I do not break the amount of EIRP I should transmit with. But also maximize receiver side sensitivity and it would be something complicated. So I would just recommend not doing so because to do it right, it's painful.

Slapping an LNA in the chain could actually hurt things if you don't do it right.

[opaque abyss]

we have had a historic issue with "aligator" nodes, big mouth and no ears

[hollow narwhal]

I'd probably want to employ negative feedback, so I'd want to have some kind of diode detector see how much power is really at the antenna on the wire. Do you kind of understand what I'm getting at here? So then that feedback can adjust the gain of the LNA.

[opaque abyss]

I dont have that equipment and Im not sure if anyone around here does

but Im not technician licensed so staying under the tx limits is important

[hollow narwhal]

The problem with the 900 MHz band of the United States is that your harmonics and your noise and everything that is associated with a transmitter that is inherent to the physics of the device is likely to interfere with nearby stuff that is already at a commercial scale. So it's something that we have been cautious of with our mountain nodes because we know we're broadcasting a long distance and if we break those power limits we will attract attention and we also have to be careful because if the other guys get noisy we're gonna pick up on it.

[opaque abyss]

(also dont want to blast too much where I cant hear any replies)

Ill just ask my buddy elon to put a G2 on the moon, thatll solve it

[hollow narwhal]

So, when we were laying out our network, we were very sparing in our planning this spring with what would be a one watt node. We actually were focusing on filtered rak nodes as much as possible.

They were cheap and effective. And we also were using E-22 for the one watt nodes

[opaque abyss]

the filters and amps cost about the same

and the density of nodes around here is pretty good, I think Ill pick up a filter and give it a gander

[hollow narwhal]

I think filtering is the smartest first thing to do. Amplification is only a problem if you're trying to do something directional or very long distance. I genuinely do not believe you need amplifiers.

It's worth you trying. It's a hobby. Have fun, but realize you're flirting with danger too.

We have a very strong VHF society here, and if we interfere with them, I don't think they would hesitate to cause problems for us. If you don't have any local groups, you're good, but I'm just saying it pays to be cautious.

[opaque abyss]

we have more meshers than VHF, but we want to be in everyones good graces

Ordered a filter 👍

[hollow narwhal]

The rule of thumb is simple. Anything you can do to clean up your RF environment tx and RX do that first. Amplify last

[opaque abyss]

"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"

[hollow narwhal]

True

High quality connectors help

Ever so slightly

Lightning arrestor sand proper ground planes when mounting on towers

Be nice to the other residents of the tower don't be the lightning rod

[hollow narwhal]

@opaque abyss
So for the node I'm about to deploy out on lead mountain.. I'm putting super capacitors at the output of the charging network to the battery and super capacitors at the output of the boost converter to see if winter time pulls can be done more cleanly

Gonna be an interesting experiment

[opaque abyss]

Ooh fun

[nova frost]

Right, just caught up on all of the above. I mean, I can type a lot, but you three...

@hollow narwhal I'm sure you've got reasons for using bucks and boosts like you are off your panels, but proper solar charge controllers do a much better job than a buck at bringing in the power. We've got some top minds trying to come up with a smarter solution to solar charging than just a cheap N cheerful, but it won't be available for a little while.

For smaller nodes, I've been experimenting with an ultra-low voltage boost-only battery charger that can charge off a desk lamp.

It's way under-powered for the fox, but for a RAK or similar, it would be perfect.

downside is, it needs the input voltage to be lower than the cells, so it would ideally work off e.g. 2-3 solar cells only (1-1.5V)

but the plus side is that it can charge off a cloudy sky

[polar ingot]

So I'm working on my home femtofox build. Will be on my roof powered by ghettoPOE™ and I was thinking of putting a little 18650 5v UPS in it..... if my home network goes down, will the foxnetworking die? or will it re-negotiate once my router comes back online

[nova frost]

re: Alpine linux, have a look in #1302945239689990185 and see why the project ended up were its at. This is obscure hardware.

[polar ingot]

I feel like during my tinkering, plugging in an ethernetcable after boot never got an IP until a reboot

[nova frost]

hmmm

I feel sure that I've unplugged and replugged it while it was on, and its found it again

wifi is another matter - if my home wifi disconnects, it can;t seem to find it again.

[polar ingot]

yeah, im trying to avoid wifi 🙂

[nova frost]

Ethernet is the best way, I think

[polar ingot]

generally id agree

alllll the wires

a 30sec unplug of the ethernet and plugging it back in didnt effect connect-ability.

didn't reboot by whole network though

[nova frost]

@hollow narwhal forgot to say: we don't have much IO spare (like any at all!) but there are I2C port expanders that work with these, and voltage monitoring can be done with an INA219 or INA3221. Because you don't have to feed that info into Meshtastic, you could put them on a different address outside Meshtastic and have a script to monitor that. If/when some condition is observed, have it start to send out automated reports of the fault.

[chrome tide]

@polar ingot Did you get your TFT working again w/ INA and BME ?

[fallow chasm]

Earlier in the thread there was talk of a filter on the nodes. We have found a filter that looks and specs like the Airframe from a company in Texas called Broken Circuit Ranch. They have a notch filter tuned for 906.875 with a 4 meg wide bandpass that is comparable with the Airframe in specs and price. Nice thing about this filter is it is USA made so no tariff issues for those of us in the US. We have one on a node under a cell tower that was getting bad desense and the filter cleaned that right up and the receive range was noticeably better. The radio is a Station G2. We are very happy with it and others have placed orders. For what it is worth. https://www.brokencircuitranch.com/shop/p/bandguard-meshtastic-notch-filter

[polar ingot]

its was an oled, and not yet

I havent tried any new builds for a few days

Femtofox on da houseeee

ghettoPOE™ and a battery backup/ups thingy

and a BMP280 to see how hot it gets in the little box

[chrome tide]

You should add a relief valve..

[polar ingot]

probably, I wonder how sealed it really it is

[chrome tide]

https://www.amazon.com/Dusproof-Waterproof-Lighting-Breather-Pressure/dp/B0BKY2LLLV/

[polar ingot]

Ill look for some on aliexpress.... something m8 sized would be rad

my femto's often have trouble getting network time, and often think its feb 20th

[hollow narwhal]

Understood. I was getting a feel for things your answer was all I needed

[hollow narwhal]

I'm well aware I just had a budget and I had tons of these and they allowed me to do redundancy

Orders of magnitude cheaper haha

And you know it works so I'm not overcomplicating it. If I'm chasing the most efficient node of all time I'm resdesigning everything and writing my own firmware support for an apolo 4 medical MCU 😂

[nova frost]

RTC and fuggedaboutit

[hollow narwhal]

You know what? I'll go look on Amazon for those things and see if I can find something that I can just slap onto a proto-board.

I just want to be able to monitor the health of the battery, since I'm using buck converters and boost converters.

[nova frost]

INA 3221 is my bae

[hollow narwhal]

Because they are by a certain company, I can control those via UART, but I don't think you have that available.

I guess I could try to have something on I2C that converts uart

Haha

[nova frost]

there's a couple of spare uarts, but one is for interface and the other would be for GPS

I've just thrown an ina219 on a design right now, tho

single channel, so we'll see

but INA3221 can have 4x addresses, and does 3x channels (or 6x voltages if you're not picky)

[hollow narwhal]

Can the interface port be repurposed? Because I have zero need for that port whatsoever on a remote node.

If it can, that's freaking awesome. Because then I could control the bucket base converters and monitor everything and send a standard device metrics packet with that information injected into it.

I have a note at home that collects everything.

At least for the northern half of our mesh

Others fo our bowl and the south and other niches

[nova frost]

I'm not sure I fully understand the array of telemetry that you're trying to capture 😅

and it's far too late for me to try rn.

There's a couple of I2C ports with JST PH-4p connectors on, and they can be daisy-chained to impressive lengths

[hollow narwhal]

Well, since I can basically send anything I want at this point, I just want to collect. Alright, here is the battery state of charge. Here is what the buck converter is outputting into the battery. Here is what the boost converter is outputting to my voltage regulators and here is the solar panel line voltage (mind you it has an mppt but its 24V so I gotta buck)

I just want full power stats. I like stats. I like to put them on graphs. I don't know why it's just my thing.

[nova frost]

yeah, so INA3221 will do all that

breakouts are cheap, even with a tariff on top

like I said, you could monitor with a script, and only trigger on certain conditions

and use #1364090336925712445 to send the messages

so it wouldn't interfere with your BBS

[hollow narwhal]

https://a.co/d/0rf7c0Z

[hollow narwhal]

Oh dude if I'm writing something to monitor this.. Its in C. I'll interface with meshtastics Python api from there

I've lived in C for too long

Plus then I can keep it ultra lightweight

[spring juniper]

.... how often are you going to be polling the voltage lol

[hollow narwhal]

Ordered did. We'll see how they work out.

[hollow narwhal]

I haven't quite decided if I'm just gonna pull it and store it and then send it all in the 30 minute updates or just pull it once every 30 minutes. I really don't care to have super frequent updates, but considering we like to send our remote node device metrics every 30 minutes and then environmental and weather station monitoring every 30 minutes, I think probably every 30 minutes is a safe bet.

[spring juniper]

my vibe coded python voltage stats generator runs every 5mins and still doesnt seem to impact cpu

ah OK - I was just imagining a world where you were doing this frequently enough where python vs C mattered

[hollow narwhal]

I hope you realize that you're talking to a c developer and electrical engineer who has lived in c forever and you just said vibe coding to him. 😤😂

Actually, it's pretty simple. I like C more. I'm better at C. I'm faster at C. I can do everything in C. So why not just use C?

I literally hate Python. I've hated Python since it came out, and it's never redeemed itself, particularly with its stupid breaking changes.

[hollow narwhal]

Okay, I lie. It's redeemed itself on one front and one front only. Data analysis.

🤣

But that's it. That's all the credit I'm ever gonna give it.

[spring juniper]

I've dabbled 😉 with them both myself and still felt like letting Claude do the dirty work was a fine option

[polar ingot]

Is there a way to message a node and get its info in a reply? like "hey whats your voltage?"

[spring juniper]

--request-telemetry?

Connected to radio
Sending device_metrics telemetry request to !b3796a3d on channelIndex:0 (this could take a while)
Telemetry received:
Battery level: 53.00%
Voltage: 3.74 V
Total channel utilization: 3.43%
Transmit air utilization: 0.15%
Uptime: 88394 s

[polar ingot]

oh fun, but only CLI?

[spring juniper]

I don't think I've seen it in the iOS app..... or the webUI

[polar ingot]

well thats a good start

[spring juniper]

are you trying to see if the node is publishing the i2c voltages?

[polar ingot]

can an ina3221 be used as the device battery? I know the 219 can, but i didnt figure out how to do it with the 3 channel

[polar ingot]

just to get info instead of waiting for the next broadcast

[spring juniper]

dood

yeah so I got this to work with the udp thing pre-2.6.7 i2c update

fox would report ina voltage as the battery

for like a minute

then it got replaced with the regular V

I could spam the UDP update and it would overwrite it

but I have yet to figure out how to get it to stop setting it back to 0.0v

[chrome tide]

Man, now I have to make another I2C cable for Femtofox.. LOL

[spring juniper]

now..... post 2.6.7 i2c update.... I posted a screen shot a few days ago of it working straight out of the box (no UDP)

I've never seen those voltages again lol

[polar ingot]

@chrome tide oled screen working in 2.6.8.146

[spring juniper]

logs are filled with ch0 ch1 ch2 voltages in the PowerTelemetry updates

[chrome tide]

I'll have to update

[polar ingot]

yeah, in the docs it says something about setting the i2c address to use the i2c device for battery voltage

but it didn't seem to work for me

[spring juniper]

so this is a 9 line response for "I'm not sure, and if anyone gets that to work please let me know"

I tried two INAs (0x40 and 0x42) on 2 different foxes, setting the ina219 address didn't seem to make a different to any of it, and the logs still reported the ina3221 3x channels

[chrome tide]

INA3221 should have no issues being used. I haven't tested tho.. One I get another I plan to tho.

[polar ingot]

maybe I don't know how to config it correctly

[chrome tide]

Hmm, shouldn't need to be configured. Other than setting the ADC port on the INA3221 board

Should be A0 bridged, if I remember correctly..

[polar ingot]

yeah, it works correctly

but I want it to use the voltage for the device battery

https://meshtastic.org/docs/configuration/radio/power/

here it says "Device Battery INA2xx Address"

which I assume means it doesnt work with the 3221

[chrome tide]

I think for 3221 it's a matter what What channel you connect everything to, as there is a dev specific pattern to use..

I think ch1 is supposed to be battery, then ch2 is solar, and ch3 is device

but I don't remember right now, as I have been drinking..

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

[polar ingot]

hahaha, channel 1 is always battery

and eitherway, it should still give out SOME info

[chrome tide]

It's the kid's b-day party, so I'm celebrating also.. LOL

I mean it works on my RAK19007..

Granted thats a different platform all together..

[polar ingot]

well the power metrics log is working great

but the "device metrics" has 0v for battery

[chrome tide]

If INA3221 is detected at meshtasticd boot, then it should work..

[chrome tide]

What does [PowerTelemetry] show in logs ?

[polar ingot]

All the voltages

No volts

[chrome tide]

Oh, that's different than Power Telemetry I think..

[polar ingot]

yes

but according to docs, you "should" be able to use an i2c device to give the node battery status

"If an INA-2XX device is auto-detected on one of the I2C buses at the specified address, it will be used as the authoritative source for reading device battery level voltage. Setting is ignored for devices with PMUs (e.g. T-beams)"

[chrome tide]

Yea, THAT works on RAK..

So it's going to a meshtasticd related issue

[spring juniper]

May 10 21:53:13 ff1 meshtasticd[1355]: INFO  | 21:51:31 0 INA260 found at address 0x40
May 10 21:53:13 ff1 meshtasticd[1355]: INFO  | 21:51:31 0 1 I2C devices found

10 21:53:13 ff1 meshtasticd[1355]: INFO  | 01:52:31 60 [DeviceTelemetry] Send: air_util_tx=0.041972, channel_utilization=2.518333, battery_level=101, voltage=0.000000, uptime=60
May 10 21:53:13 ff1 meshtasticd[1355]: INFO  | 01:52:31 60 [DeviceTelemetry] Send packet to mesh

[polar ingot]

but perhaps thats only for ina219?

[chrome tide]

Ok, so meshtasticd still sees the device as a 260 not a 3221..

[spring juniper]

It says this, but on my other unplugged node the EnvTelemetry module actually says "grabbing data from ina3221"

[chrome tide]

What does dmesg show ?

Or what does i2cdetect show ?

[spring juniper]

3221 at 0x40

I wonder if it's ignoring it because it thinks it's plugged in

I'm running 5V in to the fox

I doubt anyone is to a rak

May 10 21:59:04 ff1 meshtasticd[1355]: INFO | 01:58:03 0 PowerFSM init, USB power=1
I think I remember 0.00v being code for "plugged in"

err no that must be battery = 101

[chrome tide]

Not sure about that.

[polar ingot]

@chrome tide maybe i was mistaken about the OLED, seems not to function. It just stayed on after i upgraded but it doesnt ever update and after a powercycle is off again

[chrome tide]

boo

[quaint elm]

Even if it overhears another rebroadcast of a packet, RL will still rebroadcast it (providing the hop_limit is > 0)

[dense latch]

is there a video of someone soldering a femtofox ce with the e22-900m30s? (wanna check how deraged it would be to try to make one myself )

[nova frost]

Yep. Bear with me...

[dense latch]

about that, what fume extractor would you recomend for someone that's on a cheap bastard budget?

has anyone tried one of those openipc socs? I'd imagine they're more power hungry but I haven't looked at any actual measurements yet

[nova frost]

Not the big module, but close.

[nova frost]

An open window, a fan and some tumble dryer/Aircon ducting?

Or a sheet of cooker hood filter

[dense latch]

insane cat rules (but she's my insane cat so she gets to stay)

[nova frost]

And a couple of cheap 3dp fans

I bought a mains-powered fume fan ages ago, that's basically just a 150mm fan or somethibg, with a moulded hood and a sheet of activated carbon in front.

The main thing is to direct the airflow away from your face

[dense latch]

but yeah, I'm over thinking it, I'll probably just keep using an air purifier on the table, it doesn't do a good job but it gets like half of the fumes off my face which is a start

I'll see if there's any way to duct it so it can get the other half

[nova frost]

The rosin in the flux is vapourised and then condenses as tiny bits of irritant, sensitising, carcinogenic dust.

String instrument players inhale a lot of it, too

😉

[dense latch]

so you're telling I might as well take up smoking again?

[nova frost]

Main thing is to avoid blowing air on your stuff and ruining the temperature profile curve by leaving hotspots. If you can 3d print something, or maybe put a slit in a bit of 2" tube and a fan at one end, that would make a draw-off for the fumes without making a draught

The best ones are just a thin slit that sucks the smoke right out of the air

[dense latch]

I have a shop vac but it doesn't have a carbon filter, only a standard hepa filter that's probably useless at this point

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/smoking-quit-cigarette-looks-like-i-picked-the-wrong-week-airplane-gif-16826578

[dense latch]

is there a chart with the power consumption and stuff? I'm curious to see how it would compare to anything openipc or even thingino might support

(and I could possibly buy a used solar camera premadae so I'd only need to find the gpios and solder the lora modules)

[nova frost]

There's a hackaday post with the power consumption during tx. Power consumption baseline is affected by how much extra stuff you switch on.

But yeah, it usually bumps around at 50-70mA at 5v, with everything off except lora

[dense latch]

and we need 5v for the 1w radio, right?

[nova frost]

For the full 1W, yes

@winged snow can you pin the message linked here: #1329096340700921898 message

[hollow narwhal]

Yeah that's the part I forgot to include. Meant to but forgot

Lol

[warm basalt]

There is a kicad plugin that generates stencils
https://yaqwsx.github.io/KiKit/latest/stencil/

i've used it for some of my work 😄

[polar ingot]

You could solder it by hand easy too. Tin one pad (not gnd) then get it melted with your iron, slide the chip into position and remove the iron. Melt the solder again and reposition if needed, otherwise move on.

I try to heat the pad on the board and the edge solder pad at the same time (jam the iron in there) and add solder watching it flow to both

[nova frost]

Oh, the first e22 boards I ever did, I did by hand like that.

Hang on

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-solder-castellated-mounting-holes/all

This is the best guide that's not a boring youtube

But - and I can't emphasise this enough - use flux!

[buoyant ermine]

@nova frost https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DAM005-210-130-60mm-aluminum-amplifier_1600432244186.html

$20 with mount kit. Would be a fantastic plarform to make a version of the Femtofox that drops right in

Even for solar use, these enclosures are fantastic...

[chrome tide]

Not for the desert tho.. 120f in the shade..

[nova frost]

At that price, I could shove a load of sodium ion cells in a second enclosure...

[buoyant ermine]

It's really big enough you should be able to shove whatever in there. A guy in Florida shoved a full Pi5 and cavity filter in one already lol

[nova frost]

🙂‍↔️ Florida man...

[neon sandal]

Ok I scanned over python and I see that db_admin.py is just a python program. I ran it but it doesn't offer what I need. But tell me if this is the right direction. I write a python program, import functions from db_operations... No there is no function you have for Bulletin or mail dates. So I am going to have to figure out sqlite3, open it to search the date fields etc etc. Sound correct?

I think I can use db_admin.py and just add a function to scan for dates and then use the delete mail function. So I can base it on db_admin.py, it opens the datebasse and does all the work for me. Me thinks.

[spring juniper]

ive been working on a similar case trying to build an overkill solar node... so far my takeaways are buying a 3d printer and realizing how much I dislike CAD

[dire shuttle]

3D CAD can be terrible and also not-terrible. Happy to hop on a screenshare if you want some advice

[spring juniper]

I'm mostly coming to terms with "what do you mean I can't 3d scan with my phone and edit a perfect .01mm model in like 30 seconds"

[nova frost]

Honestly, unless you're banging out several, a sheet of hardboard or acrylic sheet plus a sharp drill bit will do the job.

Or am I spoiling your fun?

[dire shuttle]

I've actually never tried the scan-and-print workflow

I'm pretty comfortable in Fusion at this point and usually it doesn't take long to model up something that already exists

[nova frost]

I used to be good at keeping a notebook of measured objects and the key positions. These days I sort of lay out a rough set of sketches in a V1, and then redo it all with better ordering for V1.1

I've also never done the scan and print thing, because solid edge is not great with imported geometry.

[buoyant ermine]

That’s one of the RAK encounters yeah?

I have two of those in the field.

[obsidian thorn]

How many hr of sun per winter month do you get?

Here where I am its about at most 1 sunny day or most commonly 1h of sun a month

[nova frost]

Yeah, your solar nodes are gonna need a Mr Fusion

[obsidian thorn]

My existing node with 0.6%airtime lasted about 48 days with 16kmah battery on a rak

In the capital guys they only lasted about 27 days

With more battery and 4% airtime

Some of them have started doing stuff with lead acid batteries

[nova frost]

Remind me where you are (roughly)

[obsidian thorn]

Latvia

[nova frost]

Imma dig out the spreadsheet later

[obsidian thorn]

https://shademap.app/

There is a view for yearly sun

But the clouds are dense

[nova frost]

Riga

English midlands

[obsidian thorn]

Yup you are right they are very close to each other but at the same time here its worse

[nova frost]

In the nicest possible way, yes. 🤣

I still think it's viable, with a combination of over-panelling and over-provisioning

But I think a solar Femtofox might be a stretch.

[obsidian thorn]

Fox in a tree

Already scouted a nice tree

[merry shore]

Is there a dimensioned drawing anywhere?

[opaque abyss]

In Minnesota USA (we had like 5 good sunny days last december) we have a solar G2

I think it has a 25W panel and a used car battery

[nova frost]

Yeah, this is what I was saying - big panel, big batt

[merry shore]

I like big batts and I cannot lie.

[neat frigate]

https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/05/12/luckfox-pico-86-panel-an-86-type-smart-home-controller-with-a-4-inch-display-ethernet-rs485-two-relays/

https://wiki.luckfox.com/Luckfox-Pico-RV1106/Luckfox-Pico-86-Panel/

[nova frost]

We have competition... From light switches 😅

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/xmen-black-bird-jet-gif-10115122

[nova frost]

LA Center, can I get a ground speed check, please?

[lusty prairie]

what am I doing wrong? https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/wiki/Building-Foxbuntu-(WSL)
I got a fresh 22.04 in vmware and I did the SDK Install. Used Balena Etcher to write ~/luckfox-pico/foxbuntu.img to a new Lexar 32gb sd card. On another Lexar 32gb sd card I was able to eth -> ssh in using the released img file found here https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/releases But with the one I compiled the DHCP doesn't assign a new ip address

I'm compiling as my assumption is it'll have TUN installed so I can get tailscale installed https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/pull/404

[mild hare]

how big is your compiled image?

[lusty prairie]

994,041,856

[mild hare]

needs to be 3-4gb

[lusty prairie]

what's the trick then, what am I missing?

[mild hare]

not sure because I dont use wsl, but there is another doc I can link u that may help

1 min

[lusty prairie]

It's a linux vm not wsl

[mild hare]

oh sweet

[lusty prairie]

i got 22.04 server up and running just for this

[mild hare]

perfect

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

you see that doc yet?

[lusty prairie]

nope, looking it over now

yeah nothing sticking out looking it over

[mild hare]

you doing it in your ~/ ?

looks like it

did you select the pico a when prompted for board?

[lusty prairie]

yeah 1 0 and then I had to pick 0 as 1 wasn't an option

[mild hare]

?

I thought it was 1, 0,1

been a few since I've done it

[lusty prairie]

yea but there wasn't a ubuntu option only 0

how do I get back to that so I can screenshot it?

[mild hare]

in luckfox-pico dir: sudo build.sh lunch

[lusty prairie]

that symlink?

[mild hare]

wuuuuut

should be ubuntu. ok I'm at work but give me a few and I'll try to sneak to a terminal

@lusty prairie x86/amd64 vm right? not arm? dont want arm.

[mild hare]

wth??? I just did a fresh pull and build and same result as you

somebody broke something

[lusty prairie]

ok glad to know I'm not crazy

[mild hare]

thank you for catching it

looks like pico sdk (luckfox's repo) is the problem. going to poke around

[twilit mountain]

LOL first one to get the MUI working on the lightswitch wins?

[nova frost]

Also worth noting this is a significant escalation in the light switch wars.

[neat frigate]

they also removed ubuntu image building with adding this device to sdk (buildroot only images now) - https://github.com/LuckfoxTECH/luckfox-pico/pull/274

[neat frigate]

Delete the Ubuntu rootfs submodule - https://github.com/LuckfoxTECH/luckfox-pico/pull/274/commits/8be0248e04e6352e1665fc50c471c3b7736c2668

[lusty prairie]

Pin the repo to the commit before and see if it builds?

In roughly 4 years 22.04 will be outdated though

[mild hare]

I tested last night, it did

I also forked everything

[lusty prairie]

any change this can be updated as it can't be built currently without a lot of effort?
https://github.com/femtofox/femtofox/releases/latest

[mild hare]

dont think so. But I'll fix the repo soon

[twilit mountain]

2* -- Ubuntu builds are only supported for 5 years

[lusty prairie]

https://ubuntu.com/security/esm pro which is free for 5 boxes gets you to 2032

[neat frigate]

Yes, that is actually the main concern with the version of Ubuntu rootfs being out of support April 2027. Also there were some enhancements with the latest buildroot version for mipi dsi display support and they don't have it in a git tree but repo sync. The lyra ultra board don't have sdcard but only emmc, so I did a upgrade to 24.04 and read the emmc contents to image over usb for now

[neat frigate]

Yes, i use this for my local server boxes

[mild hare]

read a post about running a certain orange pi armbian image on rk3506. if I ever get time to try it I'll post results in the sbc channel.

I bet it just needs some mods to the dts.

[neat frigate]

Yes, that would just have to match architecture and point to another env for dts, but would be a modified image rather than a actual supported compiled image ?

I did see another sdk for rk5xx also

But it did not offer pre-compiled rk3506

[mild hare]

Armbian uses patches for the sdk so making an sdk would be trivial if it worked. rk35x is pretty well supported on armbian. i'm tired so maybe wrong, but if I remember rk3556 is super close and only thing needed to modify would be dts/dtb that can be done in runtime. sorry kinda spamming our femtofox people with off topic stuff. Meet in sbc and I can share what I know? I have a working lyra again so I can get back on that wagon.

[mild hare]

Grab a fresh foxbuntu-builder.sh from the repo and you should be able to build.

[fervent pier]

Can foxbuntu-builder.sh be used on macOS without changes or only in WSLv2?

oh nevermind I found the Mac guide

Got my replacement LuckFox units in today so I'm back in business!!

[nova frost]

Wait, what?

Replacement?

What happened to the originals?

[fervent pier]

In the Mac guide, we need to add sudo apt install dialog also.

Then in the primary guide add chmod +x foxbuntu-builder.sh somewhere around step 4a?

[fervent pier]

Uhh.... overvoltage is the primary guess

[nova frost]

oof

oh, I remember now

[fervent pier]

yeah

But hey - we are going to give it another shot! I managed to buy a total of 7 boards, so I have a couple spares

[nova frost]

I was debating adding a buck-boost on the input for the next iteration.

For this reason, amongst others

[fervent pier]

Just to make sure any overvolts get tamed?

[nova frost]

well, and to allow running straight off a cigarette lighter or battery

(within reason)

[fervent pier]

so would it require 12v or 5v going forward? Or accept either and step it down to 5v?

[nova frost]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Flexible, I think

[chrome tide]

The board is 5v no ?

[nova frost]

yes

Just kicking some ideas around in my head

[fervent pier]

I like the ideas!

[nova frost]

current board is really space constrained (lol)

[chrome tide]

If it's for a car, and you want to power it from ciglighter, just get a ciglighter charger I would say.

[nova frost]

yeah, it just frees up some options

[fervent pier]

I did find my issue in the end @nova frost - the SeenGreat board is powered off will pass power from the USB rail to the 5V rail without going through the board. When you power the board on, things are momentarily unpredictable with a volt meter I've seen voltages sag down to <2 volts and exceed 10v.

The solution is to make sure the board is always on prior to plugging in an external power source

[nova frost]

ok

good to know

[fervent pier]

The SeenGreat board is a real nice solution - single 18650 battery could run the setup for a couple hours without much sweat

I've had it working on my truck on an RPi3 since my LuckFox died and no issues; so we should be in good shape

[fervent pier]

Need to solder the 5 pins and ready to go

[lavish sorrel]

~~Can someone remind me how we're supposed to install contact now as doing so from the software manager in femto-config leads to "can't open file '/opt/contact/main.py'" ~~

I remember this being a thing a few weeks ago

EDIT: I went to the GitHub and RTFM.

[chrome tide]

Welp, I'm about 50% ready to sell all my mesh gear..

[nova frost]

To fund the buying of more mesh gear, right?

[chrome tide]

Nope, to be out of the mesh all together, and not have to deal with it anymore..

Asking for help on something that multiple ppl have setup, and being told to go else where for assistance in getting it setup, after I was told to use it by this discord..

[nova frost]

Oh

That's not good

[chrome tide]

I have enough discord servers in my list already..

[nova frost]

What are you trying to do?

[chrome tide]

If the community is unwilling to help someone, I'm unwilling to participart anymore..

Get MeshSense working.

[nova frost]

Ah, ok.

[chrome tide]

Everyone tells me I need to put in a Access key, but no one knows how to get it appearently..

[nova frost]

Hmmm

Like an API key?

[chrome tide]

🤷

[nova frost]

A password less access to something for meshsense to use to access something...

[chrome tide]

Yea, I tried to pub and priv keys of my node, and nothing..

This is all I see..

I'm running it on a rPi 5 4GB, and running headless, which requires me to log into the rPi and run the command, and stay logged in for it to stay running..

Which is the dumbest shit ever for running a headless system..

[nova frost]

Hmmm

I think this key system is their solution to the one at a time problem

So you have a main server running meshsense, and then use client or admin keys on other machines to control access to the boss supervisor

[chrome tide]

All I setup was a fresh rPi 5 image, booted, logged in, installed the packages required for running headless, and launched the app w/ the command that was provided on the headless FAQ section. I know nothing else that needs to be done, as there are no instructions on how to get it setup or working..

[nova frost]

I think you need another instance with an API key from your headless node to access the info

[mild hare]

Man, you gonna make me google Mesh Sense. Heard the name a couple times, but that's it. Got a link? What is it?

[nova frost]

But, I'll be honest, I see shit like this, and I do this ↩️

[chrome tide]

I guess what got me started down the MeshSense path was my G2 keeps rebooting, and devs say it's cuz of protobuf only having 1 thread..

[chrome tide]

https://affirmatech.com/meshsense/faq#headless

[chrome tide]

Yea, the fact that they don't have shit to tell you how to set it up, is off putting for sure..

But when I'm told by meshtastic ppl in #firmware to use it. I figured someone would have some knowledge on how to set it up and get it working, since the company that made is clearly doesn't offer any help..

[spring juniper]

Oh hey I know Meshsense pretty well if you have Qs

you set the Access key on the server in settings

[chrome tide]

Where do I get the access key from ?#1329096340700921898 message

[nova frost]

Oh, an expert has appeared! 😅

[chrome tide]

That's all I see..

[spring juniper]

then you can have other machines connect to that server:port instead of getting clobbered with on the single thread

settings wheel top right

[chrome tide]

Everyone says "Oh, you just need to put in the access key." But no one tells me where or how to get it..

[chrome tide]

I don't have that address box..

[spring juniper]

scroll down til you see this

[mild hare]

"Privileged Access Key
Enter a secret key you would like other browsers to use to enable access to the Connect / Disconnect actions." So do you just make it up?

[spring juniper]

Yup

[chrome tide]

How fucking hard is it to say you just make it up ?! I've been asking that since yesterday, and everyone is like 🤷

[spring juniper]

LOL

the "key of your choosing"

[chrome tide]

So how do I set that key then ? Cuz when I put anything into the Client Access Key box, it tells me it's invalid..

[spring juniper]

did you do a headless setup or running the full app

[chrome tide]

This is the command I run.. dbus-run-session xvfb-run ./meshsense-beta-arm64.AppImage --headless --disable-gpu --in-process-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer

[spring juniper]

if youre running the full app on a Mac or whatever it is in /server/ mode by default and you can edit it

ah got it

[chrome tide]

Running on rPi 5 4GB

[spring juniper]

lemme check on where that config is for headless

To run MeshSense without a GUI, use the --headless flag. Additionally the ACCESS_KEY environment variable can be used to specify the privileged access key for remote connections to gain full permissions.

https://github.com/Affirmatech/MeshSense?tab=readme-ov-file#headless-usage

ACCESS_KEY=mySecretKey in the example, just set that to your prefererred string I think is all you want

[chrome tide]

Holy crap! It's working!

Wait a pain in the ass that was..

@spring juniper Thank you for sheding the light that was needed!

[spring juniper]

🫡

[mild hare]

@chrome tide damn it dude, now I have another cool thing to check out...

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/squirrel-gif-27315551

[chrome tide]

That's what you get.. ;P j/k

[spring juniper]

Meshsense is pretty damn cool but it got nerfed a few months ago

[chrome tide]

nerfed ?

[spring juniper]

it was .... aggressive ... in making traceroute maps

to the point where some meshes were reporting like 60% of traffic was now traceroutes

[chrome tide]

Oh wow

[spring juniper]

so they throttled that down a lot - still quite entertaining /u seful IMO but less of a "near real time mesh map" which it kind of was back in v3

[mild hare]

ah so it's like TheDude or HP Openview or Lansweeper or whatever and is constantly polling devices and generating traffic?

[chrome tide]

Seems so.

[mild hare]

makes sense

[chrome tide]

So I just need it connected to 1 node, and it sees everything, or ?

[lavish sorrel]

mesh sense

[chrome tide]

I'll play with it and figure stuff out..

[mild hare]

There is another app I tried that was like this, forget the name. It just needed to access one node.

[lavish sorrel]

I'd point it at your strongest node.

[chrome tide]

I don't have a strong node right now.. LOL I have 4 1W nodes, but they are all in various testing stages, and no antenna outside of my house yet..

This is my jank G2 setup..

Don't worry, the garage door is unplugged and not used.. LOL

[lavish sorrel]

In that case point it at whatcha got lol

[nova frost]

So it's a password? Cus all Garth's proselytising about keys being stronger and probably easier than passwords is true...

[chrome tide]

It's a passphrase.. ;P

[mild hare]

https://tenor.com/view/salty-salt-gif-18695071

In technical terms, I bet it's...

[chrome tide]

I get you there is no salt.. LOL

Cuz you know, security is like 15th in line.. LOL

[nova frost]

Anyway, for fixing your Station G2, I suspect you'll just end up sitting it connected to something running tio and trying to capture the moment it crashes...

[chrome tide]

Well it's be up for almost 15 hours now!

[nova frost]

But my main point would be that you don't need to fix all the things all at once. It's ok to chuck stuff in a drawer from time to time.

https://tenor.com/view/sweep-it-under-the-rug-bart-simpson-lisa-simpson-the-simpsons-cut-corners-gif-20417861

[chrome tide]

So seems like it was a issue w/ multiple browsers connecting..

Tho I still see the flood of HTTPS stuff

[chrome tide]

must make fix.. ;P

I have troubles leaving issues alone.. I am compelled to try to figure out a solution.

At least when it comes to issues that I'm running into..

Ok, time for work..

[mild hare]

to fix more things

[chrome tide]

No, now I have to train my replacements to fix stuff..

Best part, is they aren't even network ppl..

Like the guy I'm training has 0 network engineer knowledge

[mild hare]

"raise your hand if you have a network+ or network vendor cert. raise your hand if you understand what these words mean. Ok, thank you all for coming. This is not a Wendy's."

[neon sandal]

Fox dens...waiting for their foxes.

[mild hare]

I'm hurrying

[neon sandal]

I didn't say anything :0

[dire shuttle]

1W nodes are 6x as powerful as the 0.15W that most Meshtastic nodes transmit at.

[dire shuttle]

Are you integrating Meshtastic with AREDN somehow?

[fervent pier]

My FemtoFox is alive!! Seems like it booted up with a simulated radio, is there an easy what after configuring everything to verify it's actually using the real radio now?

I see this but I can't verify that meshtastic is actually using it?

[forest current]

Most people dont use Meshsense apparently

[forest current]

Didnt they only change the default? They didnt add a hard minimum iirc

[nova frost]

Can only trace route every 30s

[chrome tide]

Yea, but what good are they inside my house ? I am trying to get secure locations to deploy them. That's the struggle right now for me..

[lusty prairie]

Let me find my headless configuration later on; I have it running on a pi zero as a service

[chrome tide]

Sweet thanks..

It's working great, besides the fact that I have to stay logged into the rPi.. LOL

[nova frost]

Is this another thing that needs adding to the femtofox menu?

[lusty prairie]

No it barely runs on a pi zero

[nova frost]

Really? It's that heavy-weight?

Whats it doing?

[chrome tide]

Absolutely not! Pretty sure it would kill the lil luckyfox..

[spring juniper]

I run the meshsense server on my basement utility server and have it poll the fox over wifi

[fervent pier]

There’s this red LED on the left and occasionally one on the right, anyone have a quick definition of the two?

[restive scarab]

basically activity, take a peek at /etc/rc.local and ... one of the other femto-something.sh scripts are twiddling /sys/class/gpio/gpio34 (34 is the "user" LED, 118 is the activity LED)

(things I had to learn the hard way getting the dang Babelfox working, cause pin#34 was wired up to the LR1120's BUSY)

[fervent pier]

Thank you!

[mild hare]

@covert chasm pssst, femtofox in here

[fervent pier]

FemtoFox back in the truck!

[lusty prairie]

[Unit]
Description=MeshSense Headless AppImage Service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=pi

# Tell Electron/Electron‑like apps not to try Wayland or portals
Environment=DISPLAY=:99
Environment=MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=0
Environment=ELECTRON_DISABLE_WAYLAND=1
Environment=XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000
Environment=ACCESS_KEY=mySecretKey # If you have an ACCESS_KEY; otherwise delete this line.

# Start under a clean DBus session + virtual X server.
# We wrap it in a shell so we can redirect stderr.
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '\
  exec /usr/bin/dbus-run-session -- \
    /usr/bin/xvfb-run --auto-servernum \
      --server-args="-screen 0 1024x768x24" \
      /home/pi/MeshSense/meshsense-beta-arm64.AppImage \
        --headless --disable-gpu \
  2>&1 \
'

# Send both stdout & stderr to the journal (stderr was already merged above)
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=inherit

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[chrome tide]

This is your meshsense.service file basically ?

[lusty prairie]

yep sudo systemctl edit --full meshsense.service

[chrome tide]

Seems I lost the access key, etc when doing that. How do I get those set back ?

[lusty prairie]

Environment=ACCESS_KEY=mySecretKey

try adding that where the rest of the Environment is

https://github.com/Affirmatech/MeshSense/issues/22 is where to find help with headless on a pi.

[nova frost]

Human generated secret key ✅
Required to run the service ✅
Stored in plaintext ✅
Not a security person, but 🤦

And this is heavy enough to overload a pi zero?

[lusty prairie]

yeah they should save the key in the program db somewhere vs a config file. A one time thing vs every launch

[warm geyser]

it's running Electron I guess which is to say that's running a whole-ass instance of Chrome

not surprised it overloads a pi0 or fox, heh

running a headless instance of chrome, but still lol

[lusty prairie]

it'll work on a pi zero but I wouldn't try it on a fox

[warm geyser]

entertaining that you also have to run it in xvfb-run, probably because it's a GUI app (Chrome) even though it's running headless

[nova frost]

Ah, chrome. I had to ask for more ram in my laptop because we work "in the cloud"

[nova frost]

Indeed

When is electron not lightweight? When it's running a whole-ass chrome.

[warm geyser]

I resemble that image more with every passing day, I find

[restive scarab]

Meshsense works natively on a pizero2, if you can wait ~45-60s for it to appear after launch and then be super unresponsize and looks funky on a smooshed resolution. native-tft/MUI is way nicer experience

[nova frost]

It's funny - my "local" mesh is mostly managed with one, and the guy came out as saying all he does with it is use it as a slightly easier interface than the web client.

I don't know who comes off worse in that comparison

My local mesh features a main router called tits tho, so I take the whole thing about as seriously.

[opaque abyss]

The web client is clunky

[chrome tide]

You have Twin nodes, Tits and Ass ?

[nova frost]

How did you guess?

[chrome tide]

Edumacated guess.. ;P

[nova frost]

One is located near here:

[nova frost]

I think the one above might actually be two nodes, one as a main and one as a backup.

Plus the latter mentioned one 🤔

[chrome tide]

Has there been any update on stock ?

[rough lagoon]

Heck on my hefty Win 11 laptop Meshsense can take 5 or more seconds to appear. But it is a slick interface for monitoring the mesh. Developer is pretty responsive to issues. Main issue some of us are having is if you leave it running for hours, it seems to knock nodes off WiFi. May be exposing some type of memory leak or something in the firmware. I recently switched MQTT over to a Rak w/Ethernet to see how it does compared to WiFi. But just know that's an issue - trick is figuring out which side the issue is on (esp given the overall weird WiFI issues some have seen in 2.6.x). Run the beta for Meshsense as well.

[chrome tide]

I know luckyfox is low power, but has anyone thought of doing a rp2040-zero carrier board ?

[mild hare]

rp2040 aint a linux board

[chrome tide]

Hmm, I thought it could run linux..

[fast adder]

That RP in the name threw me off at first too. Fun and cute board though! https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-RP2040-v1-0-p-5026.html

[forest current]

flashed a new femtofox with the latest foxbuntu and have it connected to ethernet, but its not showing up with an nmap scan. anything im missing or does that have to be configured via usb or serial first?

[chrome tide]

wifi or eth ?

[mild hare]

It should get dhcp out of the box. you soldered the 5 pin header on the luckfox?

if so,i would serial in and sudo ifconfig

[forest current]

yeah ill prob have to, and may have to double check the solder joints too

[forest current]

@nova frost which jst connector on the mikrofox pro is for serial? theres U9 and U10

actually U9 says uart4, so i assume its U10?

[chrome tide]

2.0 if I remember right

I think that's PH

[nova frost]

The one closest to the serial pins

So uh...

The ones furthest from the rj45

Dont put 5v down that connector's pin!

[forest current]

I was hoping to use it with a usb serial adapter, does it need a voltage pin at all? Wont it just use the 3v3 rail to supply it? I only have had to use Gnd tx rx for the adapter I think

[mild hare]

wait

[forest current]

weird, serial adapter works (i just used the regular socket headers on the fox)

except keyboard doesnt work

[mild hare]

on pro uart 2 is login and on usb-c

no jst

[forest current]

i wonder if this fox is defective, literally cant type anything or login, but i can see all console output

aaand it wont boot until i unplug the serial adapter lmao

somethings fucky

https://wiki.luckfox.com/Luckfox-Pico/Luckfox-Pico-RV1103/Luckfox-Pico-Login-UART/

im just doing it this way

[nova frost]

Run the 5v to 5v, and unplug the usb

The 3v3 out of those serial adapters is weak

That's all I'm saying

Oh, and if you can see output but can't input ... Check the tx to foxRX

[forest current]

5v from the adapter still same issue, i just reflowed the rx and tx header pins to the fox as well in case there was a tiny bridge i wasnt seeing

guess ill go inspect it further...

[nova frost]

Oh

Check round the network headers

And the csi xonnector

I dropped a bead of solder on one of them and it all went to shit

Literally brushed it off, all good again

Make sure you use a paw patrol toothbrush, too. That might be critical.

[forest current]

sigh

there was a bridge on the underside of the header

fak this fixed nothing

ok so literally only trying to get serial working right now. i separated the plastic part of the header pins to check for solder between that and the fox, and there was a tiny filament jumping rx and tx, so i removed that, and confirmed there are zero shorts now. but it still wont let me type

ok progress

i removed the fox from its hole and wired the adapter to its header pins directly, only vcc gnd rx tx, and it works

so the problem lies somewhere in the carrier board

removed rtc, removed radio board

[nova frost]

CE board?

[forest current]

now its only the femtofox pro board

and the fox

and the eth socket soldered on

confirmed zero shorts anywhere on the board or socket

[nova frost]

This the board I sent you, or another one?

[forest current]

so it seems that rx pin is being routed to or from something?

yeah the one you sent me

[nova frost]

Hmmm

It's being routed to the big socket.

I wonder if there's a short on the radio module board.

[forest current]

the radio module board is removed

ive stripped it down to the minimum

for testing

[nova frost]

Ok, so on the underside, check continuity between pins on all the headers.

You got a multimeter?

[forest current]

yeah

thats the ohms symbol on the multimeter right

ok not super sure what im looking for but

the 5vin gnd and 3v3 pins have nonzero values when touched together with the multimeter pins

the rest of the gpio pins have 0

and the eth pins have values

i assume theres a resistor between the power pins so probably normal?

rx and tx pins are fine as they show 0

however this is only on the fox itself so probably normal, i should test the underside of the pro itself right?

[nova frost]

I just dm'd you a picture

[forest current]

carrier board pins are fine

hello everyone

in case you missed it 2x earlier today

i am retarded

TIL onboard serial to usb converters exist

[nova frost]

https://tenor.com/view/the-end-of-teletubies-oof-gif-26682332

[forest current]

also the initial problem wasnt my fault, turns out my stupid router was giving a dhcp address that was already taken by another device via dhcp

dhclient -r and -i fixed it...

[mild hare]

@forest current that's my old pic of just a pico

[hollow dragon]

Aloha... not sure what I'm doing wrong. usually pretty savvy with this stuff. Can't SSH into it? Just looked at the COMMS Channel youtube video. No issues with imaging it. Did it 3 times - on a mac and windows. Pi imager and Etcher. Same results. Get blinking lights - looks like it downloaded initially then??? I'm not getting an IP address --- I'm stuck --

[chrome tide]

You have a serial connection to the board ?

[fast adder]

First boot takes several minutes. Have you waited a good long time?

[neon sandal]

Please clarify. Are you using a Raspberry Pi or a FemtoFox?

[hollow dragon]

I’m using a FemtoFox

[hollow dragon]

I have USB and RJ45 connected to it. I saw a IP address for it once. it was the 'pro' ver- with RTC. When it first came up it appeared to run updates. - dual lights... I think I had IP address - and then... Nothing

[fervent pier]

I think tio is going to be your friend here - if you plug a USB-C into the carrier board (not the LuckFox itself) you should be able to get a serial screen. That's how I found my issue

#1329096340700921898 message

[hollow dragon]

yeah I plugged into the carrier board. hmm serial screen via- i see no ip- the browser? femtofox.local:7681 nada...

[fervent pier]

Can you connect via IP, not hostname?

oh I misunderstood - connected via serial, you don't see IP either?

[hollow dragon]

yeah- I've re-imagd a few times as well. I feel like I'm having a stupid moment... where are you femtofox???

[mild hare]

at work so not a ton of help, but the usb-c port on the carrier board (not the luckfox pico) is a serial converter and power. Run a serial terminal and you can watch it boot

easier than a pi 😉

[chrome tide]

Connect to it via the USB port with a terminal software like Putty..

[fervent pier]

Just to confirm do you see the network interface itself?

ip addr show

[hollow dragon]

re-imaged it and I have a IP address. and a name femtofox - cool - did the same things with diff results

[neon sandal]

I am not trying to insult you at all, but you mentioned following TC2 instructions and mentioned the Pi Imager. TC2 has two different builds one with RPI and one with Femtofox. So since this is a weird problem... You did not install an image from the Pi Imager, right. You installed the Foxbuntu image from github?

[hollow dragon]

No worries I understand what ur saying - and see how that can happen - I just did what I've done countless times. Pretty straight forward really. Initially I thought I would ssh into the node. Then I discovered browser access.. time to play...

[neon sandal]

Good deal!. They say doing the same thing expecting different results is a sign of insanity but not with software 🙂

[hollow dragon]

Yeah I went through git hub and used etcher via- windows for this success... I tried the rasp pi one - it imaged and produced an ip, blinked through a process and then nada... 3x is a charming insanity... 🤪
I've got 3 MeshAdv hats - FemtoFox in the lab to play with! Countless other nodes.
Mahalo for letting me have the soapbox. I wish I new what happened...
DEV people: Big Island Hawaii - the whole state is going happy happy with Meshtastic! Nodes are being added daily- and then there's the travelers. MQTT in a variety of flavors which is challenging. Having FUN! With aloha and 73

[hollow dragon]

I'm on the board for BIARC - it would be nice to get some of you DEV people to chat with us someday. https://www.biarc.net/index.shtml
So many HAMs into Meshtastic - 915 plays well in our geography 📶

[hollow dragon]

femtofox ALOHA

[chrome tide]

Ok, so is usb network supported ? I think it's called NDIS...

[nova frost]

It is, but it's kinda awkward.

[mild hare]

Femtofox Pro v1.1 boards BACK IN STOCK!
Last of the pre-tariff boards!

[quasi onyx]

nice

[neon sandal]

Thanks for the hard work, I appreciate it. Can you identify what to order for the RTC?

[neon sandal]

This correct? HiLetgo 5pcs DS3231 AT24C32 Clock Module Real Time Clock Module IIC RTC Module for Arduino Without Battery

[nova frost]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N1LZSK3/

[mild hare]

@neon sandal these are the correct modules. Sorry but I do not have any RTC modules due to tariffs. It's a plug and play affair though.

[neon sandal]

NO problem. Thanks Tom for the correct link!

[mild hare]

Just for transparency and to give people a chance, I only listed 37 last night because I was short antennas (more are coming from WA, US). I have just over 60 total. I sold 14 last night. If my current listing sells out, the remainder will be listed as soon as I have more antennas. I only list what I have tested and packaged. No price hike but sadly no optional RTC modules (you'll have to aquire your own module).

[finite hamlet]

I came across this listing for RTC modules. They're a few $'s cheaper
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08X4H3NBR

[nova frost]

Yeah, if you don't need 5x modules, you can play a tune with the listings.

[lusty prairie]

Best way to link 2 femtofoxes together for UDP link meshtastic --set network.enabled_protocols 1
Can join presets using UDP (LF <-> MF). Or can use 2 yagi's for a mountain link (LF <-> LF).

[opaque abyss]

Does that just make them echo to and from each other?

[lusty prairie]

you can message on the default channel if you add it

# On your LF node
meshtastic --ch-add "MediumFast"
meshtastic --ch-set psk "base64:AQ==" --ch-index N

# On your MF node
meshtastic --ch-add "LongFast"
meshtastic --ch-set psk "base64:AQ==" --ch-index N

Then they can talk to eachother. so from a 3rd device you can send a message on LF and have it show up on MF default channel

[opaque abyss]

If you have two of these setups, would they make an infinite loop of packets?

[warm geyser]

no more than any two nodes that can talk to each other over LoRa

[dire shuttle]

I feel like you could use a crossover cable to do this if you didn't want to have your mesh be reliant on external network gear

I'm not Linuxy enough to know how to set that up off the top of my head, but it... seems doable

Anybody who's got a FemtoFox on solar, what does your power setup look like? I'm in western Washington and wondering if a 25W solar panel and a 10Ah battery are low-ball, about right, or overkill

Looks like @lusty prairie was just discussing this in the PugetMesh Discord and found 20W with 20Ah insufficient but close, so I'll aim for a 30W panel.

[fast adder]

two radios on one node solves this. Or an ESP32, etc, acting as a wifi AP.

[fast adder]

1 is the default if i'm not mistaken, so no network setup needed really. The bridge just starts forwarding packets, and any node with the channel name and psk can decode them. It's kind of amazing.

[dire shuttle]

ESP32 as the tiniest WAP+router is adorable

[nova frost]

Or one fox acting as ap?

[nova frost]

What voltage panels? I'm furiously working on something...

[dire shuttle]

Turns out it was a quote and I didn't notice at first: #1329096340700921898 message

[nova frost]

The ciiiiiiiircle of quooooooooootes!

🦁

[dire shuttle]

Is this actually supported by the FW?

Or would this be a bonus ESP32 just dedicated to being a WAP?

[nova frost]

I think this.

But I believe you can run a hat and a usb node on one SBC

[fervent pier]

so I tested this but between a TBeam (MediumFast) and Heltec V3 (LongFast side) - it seems to make it across the bridge betwen LF and MF, but not beacon out on the MF side

[nova frost]

I haven't had it running on-a-fox, but it Should Work™

[dire shuttle]

"... but because we thought it would be easy"

[fast adder]

Make sure all your MF nodes have a secondary LongFast channel

[fervent pier]

OH!!

I was thinking it would convert it over

[dire shuttle]

Wouldn't it only need to be the node doing the crossband?

[fast adder]

Bonus esp ya, but I don't see why you couldn't enable AP mode directly on the fox as tom mentioned?

[fervent pier]

Because my Fox is in my truck 🙂

[fast adder]

What happens on LongFast stays on LongFast (the channel name, not the modem preset)

[dire shuttle]

But nodes by default will forward packets for channels they can't decode

[fervent pier]

I don't know where to maybe discuss this long-term - this room probably isn't optimal and flooding it with a lot of non-FemtoFox stuff

[dire shuttle]

And once it's out of UDP, it's just another packet, right?

[fast adder]

Yes, Packets will forward, but you won't know they exist without the channel name/psk.

[dire shuttle]

I'm used to seeing them show up in Meshsense as encrypted

[merry shore]

Is UDP considered a hop?

[dire shuttle]

Supposedly

[fervent pier]

I was thinking I could do one radio on LongFast and another on MediumFast and UDP would allow me to bridge messages across - basically a translation layer as folks move between presets

I wanted something semi-invisible

[dire shuttle]

Same

[merry shore]

Eg, node A receives a message with hopcount N. It sends it over UDP to node B. Node B transmits it over the air. What is the hop count transmitted by node B?

[dire shuttle]

N-1, from what I've heard. I haven't looked at the source code for that

[merry shore]

N-1 seems like the right behavior to me, making A+B act like different interfaces of a single node

But I wasn't sure it if might end up as N-2

[fast adder]

This is what it does, it just can't change the channel name and PSK or that'd be a big security flaw.

Not everyone uses the default PSK on LongFast.

[fast adder]

I hear you, you just need to get to word out to add a secondary channel and the rest is invisible.

[nova frost]

Or use Meshing Around as a translator.

Just sayin'

[nova frost]

@fast adder maybe you can make a "UDP frontier exploring" thread or something?

I don't mind a bit of chat in here, but I don't want folk thinking they need to Mesh The Planet™ in one step.

(but we totally should)

[opaque abyss]

#1217252717844500480 doesnt have to be an idiom

[fast adder]

Maybe @oblique breach would like to add a UDP channel next to MQTT in Development? Otherwise a thread in, i don't know, firmware?

Or @twilit mountain

[fervent pier]

My FemtoFox build got a sticker today

Development > UDP ?

[twilit mountain]

vid thinks we already have too many channels. Wish @oblique breach would delete some instead 😅

[nova frost]

All the languages could be compressed, maybe? How friendly are go and c-sharp and rust?

😈

[oblique breach]

I would love to delete channels lol

I've been saying we have too many channels.... granted I know I just added several channels a few days ago... but that's different lol.

We definitely need to make more use of threads.

[nova frost]

Make a thread in mqtt. It's similar subject matter.

Message>medium

[oblique breach]

https://discord.com/channels/867578229534359593/1374849766248157246

[oblique breach]

lol of course now you post this

[nova frost]

Wherever.

[neon sandal]

TOM/OSC May I put this on my fox dens?

[nova frost]

Go for it.

[fast adder]

I’ll see myself out.

[mild hare]

Green nodes and HAM

[chrome tide]

A fox node I am.. Or A femto node I am..

[honest pilot]

hi All, thanks for a great device! I have one on the way. I haven't seen any mention of GPS support in the docs. Does meshtasticd support i2c / uart GPS modules?

[chrome tide]

There is UART pins on the board if I remember right..

Yea, the JST next to the USB port is UART if I remember right..

[honest pilot]

yeah there is a uart and i2c ports, but will meshtasticd see the GPS ?

[nova frost]

Yes, but I'm unsure of the magic words to make it work.

It will probably work via uart4

There's not many i2c GPSs out there, but if you find one the let us know 😄

[honest pilot]

sure there are https://www.adafruit.com/product/4415

here is one on amazon https://www.amazon.com/SparkFun-GPS-Breakout-I2C-supported-simultaneous/dp/B07946S423/ref=sr_1_3?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Bfwt54pAiFYO2Xs3micUMlFCzCBPcM10yDl_UChnnuC_Y6tjrzGsIcHixiit_4wURt5w3_2hsnZcfEaoWPkj5fXlFjCkiBDkBxmAUWRaBkpcpHgPNODMsw-o-qAPbH4w8TLafb7OUs4gVQlO3WYxHdQ0sGwwMkA8GyaH6yBxsjVDJ6Xx8I9EvKDfvY-UgnKS4V1_-VHllTFgXRI8MCwCQFHsxyOMmhiP7sM8y_grmJQ.1_Cw_abeELQILiptvhdDQJhfQgFQM-17nUS_eG82IHQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=i2c+gps&qid=1747927989&sr=8-3

[nova frost]

Hmm, looks good.

I'm pretty sure the Meshtastic firmware doesn't support it over i2c (although I do know the RAK one can be used over i2c)

[honest pilot]

hmm ok might pick one up when the femtofox gets here and see if i can get it working

[neon sandal]

3 femtofox left and 20+ in peoples carts. Somebody is going to miss the boat.

at least for this batch.

[upper salmon]

I snagged one thanks to fomo 😂

[chrome tide]

Woo-hoo, second femtofox is on its way!

[mild hare]

crap, forgot your extra goody. Dm me this evening and I'll throw it in a mailer.

[mild hare]

Sold out until antennas arrive. Should have the remainder listed sometime next week.

[chrome tide]

Just curious, but how many have you sold this round ?

[lavish sorrel]

I think the NY Tri-state area is going to have the single largest population of centralized Femtofox's...

[mild hare]

all I had ready (37) since 2 nights ago

[lavish sorrel]

You can buy ~2-3 of almost any other UART GPS module out there for the price of those...
Not to mention that the firmware would have to support it. There's no mention of GPS in the i2c entries in main.cpp.

[restive scarab]

even if we omit all of yours and mine? 😉

[polar ingot]

got this trying to ssh into my femto. shows the fox, ip address, and last loging then says -bash: error while loading shared libraries: lhbtin&g.wo.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory and boots me

[lavish sorrel]

ok don't push it.

[polar ingot]

and another one seems like meshtasticd crashed and tried to restart and failed, yesterday

May 21 18:38:39 femto meshtasticd[769]: INFO  | 01:35:49 16361
May 21 18:38:39 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=11/SEGV
May 21 18:38:39 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
May 21 18:38:39 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Consumed 2h 14min 7.065s CPU time.
May 21 18:38:42 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 1.
May 21 18:38:42 femto systemd[1]: Stopped Meshtastic Native Daemon.
May 21 18:38:42 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Consumed 2h 14min 7.065s CPU time.
May 21 18:38:42 femto systemd[1]: Started Meshtastic Native Daemon.
May 21 18:38:43 femto meshtasticd[2578]: Portduino is starting, VFS root at /root/.portduino/default
May 21 18:38:43 femto meshtasticd[2578]: Set up Meshtastic on Portduino...
May 21 18:38:43 femto meshtasticd[2578]: Using /etc/meshtasticd/config.yaml as config file
May 21 18:38:43 femto meshtasticd[2578]: Also using "/etc/meshtasticd/config.d/femtofox_SX1262_TCXO.yaml" as additional config file
May 21 18:38:43 femto meshtasticd[2578]: Also using "/etc/meshtasticd/config.d/femto_config.yaml" as additional config file
May 21 18:38:43 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=11/SEGV
May 21 18:38:43 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
May 21 18:38:46 femto systemd[1]: meshtasticd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2.
May 21 18:38:46 femto systemd[1]: Stopped Meshtastic Native Daemon.```

[mild hare]

I know you got skills but I gotta ask, quality microsd or bottom of drawer from old rpi project? Just going through the steps.

[polar ingot]

definetly not quality, but brand new. lets say "medium"

[mild hare]

also, just fresh in my mind, I had 2 cry while doing last run of QC and I reseated the pico and all was well.

[polar ingot]

these are both nodes that have been up for 10plus days

and the one that wont let me ssh into is still sending enviromental telemetry

[mild hare]

weird.

maybe fsck the cards just to rule that out?

hate to recommend reburn when you just got all the goodies running

i've yanked cards out like I was starting a chainsaw and no probs (yet) so probably not it.

"failed with result signal"

wish I knew what that meant

[polar ingot]

totally.

            =  %%=  **.       :-       *        -#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@*
                @@%-  +%-      =@@@# :#       +@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@-
                .%@@@*.  =*+-. -@@@@@@*   .+@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@*
                  +@@@@@%+-.     .-==--+%@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#
                .    -%@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#
                %=      -#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@-
                  -%%%#=:..     ..-+#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@*
                    :#**%@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@%=
                      -*+.-#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@*.
                          *#-    :-=++==---=%@@@@@@#-
                              :+**+++*#%@%%%#*+-
                     For settings, run `sudo femto-config`
                  Made for Femtofox  https://www.femtofox.com
                                    Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS(5.10.160)

IP address: 192.168.69.135  Uptime: 1 week 5 days 5h 26m
Last login: Thu May 22 20:28:44 2025 from 192.168.2.60
-bash: error while loading shared libraries: lhbtin&g.wo.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Connection to femtofoxhome.localhacks.lan closed.```

that one requires a latter, and has a built in UPS so no easy way to restart or fsck

[mild hare]

that wo.2 file is sus to me, not one I recognize.

I really want to say foxbuntu will check fsck on boot but not 100% sure

did you try power cycling it yet?

that wo.2 has me worried, like something got currupted. sorry man, no obvious answer.

[restive scarab]

the & in the lib name is also super weird, never seen that

lhb ~ lib ... def seems like the sd card

best guess is that's supposed to say libtinfo.so.6

[polar ingot]

yeah im thinking youre all probably right

i'll unplug it and let the ups die and plug it back in before climbing the latter

[mild hare]

btw this card has been fast and unkillable since the start of the project https://a.co/d/e12HSSL

[polar ingot]

I was going to try one of those emmc-microsd things

see if it speeds up the slowwwww

[mild hare]

fast quality card made a big difference too

[polar ingot]

which is the default uart? 2 or 4?

its uart2

doesn't seem to boot with the sd-emmc thing......

[mild hare]

let us know if you get that working

all 37 orders tested, tagged and bagged. most went out today, the rest go out tomorrow.

[polar ingot]

[    0.235805] input: adc-keys as /devices/platform/adc-keys/input/input0
[    0.257925] mmc_host mmc1: Bus speed (slot 0) = 300000Hz (slot req 300000Hz, actual 300000HZ div = 0)
[    0.291127] mmc_host mmc1: Bus speed (slot 0) = 200000Hz (slot req 200000Hz, actual 200000HZ div = 0)
[    0.323448] ALSA device list:
[    0.323511]   #0: rv-acodec
[    0.324146] Waiting for root device /dev/mmcblk1p7...
[    0.347741] mmc_host mmc1: Bus speed (slot 0) = 187500Hz (slot req 100000Hz, actual 93750HZ div = 1)```

thats where boot hangs.... and it turns off my usb battery bank after maybe 30 secconds like "hey I dont need you"

[mild hare]

what emmc you using? I havent tried this yet.

[polar ingot]

aliexpress 8gb model. works fine on my laptop with some very excellent speeds

ill find a link

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005008934276264.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.11.286c1802lBUT0R&gatewayAdapt=glo2vnm

[mild hare]

grabbed one was actually sorta cheap with tariffs

[polar ingot]

figured worth trying for the price....

Im comparing uboot to an SD card boot and looking for differences

[mild hare]

did you just write the foxbuntu image to it?

[polar ingot]

yup

with etcher

tried etcher on arch and etcher on windows 10

heres the boot from working SD in the area where the emmc hangs ```[ 0.211108] Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates
[ 0.226651] mmc_host mmc1: Bus speed (slot 0) = 400000Hz (slot req 400000Hz, actual 400000HZ div = 0)
[ 0.238378] input: adc-keys as /devices/platform/adc-keys/input/input0
[ 0.269387] mmc_host mmc1: Bus speed (slot 0) = 49500000Hz (slot req 50000000Hz, actual 49500000HZ div = 0)
[ 0.269557] mmc1: new high speed SDXC card at address 0001
[ 0.270486] mmcblk1: mmc1:0001 SDABC 58.2 GiB
[ 0.271679] mmcblk1: p1(env) p2(idblock) p3(uboot) p4(boot) p5(oem) p6(userdata) p7(rootfs)
[ 0.321411] ALSA device list:
[ 0.321447] #0: rv-acodec
[ 0.346323] EXT4-fs (mmcblk1p7): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)

im thinking the issue is: [ 0.324146] Waiting for root device /dev/mmcblk1p7...

[mild hare]

couple of things

Not sure kernel/dts has support for it. if it does I would probably mess with fstab in the chroot of the image before building and burning.

just thinking out loud for when I face the same problem

[polar ingot]

yeah. I was thinking about that also

maybe theres clues in their sdk for the built in emmc if you get that version of the board

[mild hare]

I forget the exact commands but in u-boot if you hit ctrl-c or escape (I forget) but once in u-boot cli mess around with mmc list and set to dev 1 and see if maybe that works. I don't have it in front of me but that's the first road I would go down

[mild hare]

naw that's nand

[polar ingot]

yeah, but dont they have some other 1106 boards with emmc?

[mild hare]

I think so.

[polar ingot]

yeah, just got the ctrl-c uboot... was looking for what to do next

[mild hare]

mmc list and I think mmc dev 1 ?

[polar ingot]

mmc@ffa90000: 0
mmc@ffaa0000: 1 (eMMC)Device 'mmc@ffaa0000': seq 1 is in use by 'mmc@ffaa0000'

mmc@ffaa0000: 1
=>

[mild hare]

i forget the commands but there is ones to list partitions and boot too

[polar ingot]

Card did not respond to voltage select!
mmc_init: -95, time 20
=>

Card did not respond to voltage select!
mmc_init: -95, time 20
=>

[mild hare]

ya know, I bet would have to change some stuff in the sdk, I think you are onto something with the onboard emmc.

will know more in a week or two 😉

[polar ingot]

sounds like fun